Ex-FCC Officials Unite: Brendan Carr Must Be Held Accountable

A coalition of former Federal Communications Commissioners and staff from both sides of the aisle is pushing a federal appeals court to mandate a vote on the FCC’s news distortion policy, which they claim has been misused by Republican Chair Brendan Carr.

On Tuesday, these petitioners urged the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to compel the FCC to vote on their petition to repeal the News Distortion Policy. This bipartisan group filed the petition in November 2025 after Carr leveraged the rule to pressure ABC into temporarily suspending comedian Jimmy Kimmel. However, only the agency chair can bring the matter to a full commission vote, and Carr has yet to do so while opposing its repeal. The former officials are now seeking a writ of mandamus to force the FCC to act, aiming to put all three commissioners on record regarding the policy and potentially pave the way for its removal, which they believe has been weaponized.

“The News Distortion Policy is a loaded gun that Chairman Carr is using to threaten broadcasters,” stated Mark Fowler, a Republican who led the agency in the ’80s. “Until it is repealed, we will not have a free press.” Tom Wheeler, a former Democratic chair from 2013 to 2017, echoed this sentiment, warning that the policy could be misused to monitor perceived media bias, deter broadcasters from covering contentious stories, and penalize outlets that air content unfavorable to the Trump administration. The petitioners also include the Radio Television Digital News Association, former Republican FCC chairs Dennis Patrick and Alfred Sikes, Republican commissioners Andrew Barrett and Rachelle Chong, former Democratic commissioner Ervin Duggan, and four additional former senior leaders at the agency.

The News Distortion Policy, a rarely used tool at the FCC since 1949, allows the agency to take action against broadcasters that intentionally distort factual reports about significant news events. Since the FCC only regulates broadcast TV and radio, it does not extend to cable networks, online news platforms, or other media forms. According to the agency’s website, “Expressions of opinion or errors stemming from mistakes are not actionable.” The former officials noted that certain legal safeguards had historically ensured its limited and careful application.

However, under Carr’s leadership, the policy has seen a resurgence. He has repeatedly threatened to invoke it against broadcasters he perceives as favoring political opponents or showing bias against President Donald Trump, including CBS, which faced a lawsuit from Trump over its editing of a 60 Minutes interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris, and ABC, which aired a joke from Kimmel related to conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Most recently, he seemed to threaten the broadcast licenses of stations that aired critical coverage of Trump’s actions in Iran, although he later denied any intent. Carr’s use of the policy has even drawn criticism from some Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who likened Carr to a “mafioso” following his threat against Kimmel.

For the petitioners to succeed, the DC circuit court would need to determine that the FCC has failed in its duty to act, caused an unreasonable delay, and that no other adequate remedy exists. The petition emphasizes the urgency of the situation, especially with midterm elections on the horizon, stating that “this abuse of regulatory power to shape voter perception and control information the electorate has access to is a particularly urgent matter.”

If the court orders the FCC to vote, the petition may still face challenges. Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez has criticized the News Distortion Policy as “vague and ineffective,” but Carr has dismissed calls for its repeal. Republican Commissioner Olivia Trusty, the third member of the partially staffed FCC, may hesitate to oppose Carr on such a prominent issue, asserting that the policy “reflects a simple principle: a station cannot truly serve its community if it knowingly distorts the news about important events.”

Attorney Andrew Jay Schwartzman, who is leading the petition alongside former Biden FCC nominee Gigi Sohn and advocacy groups Protect Democracy and TechFreedom, acknowledges that the full commission might refuse to repeal the policy. However, he believes that taking this step would at least open a legal pathway that has been previously blocked. “That would be OK with us, because we can then appeal that denial,” Schwartzman stated. “The problem here is that Brendan Carr is sitting on the petition.”

The petitioners argue that a fresh review of the policy should lead to its repeal. They point to recent Supreme Court opinions on the First Amendment that have “called into question whether the Commission’s application of the policy is even constitutional.” This includes the Supreme Court’s decision in the NetChoice cases, which addressed state laws aimed at limiting social media content moderation, where “a plurality of the Supreme Court opined there is no legitimate government interest — and therefore no permissible application under the First Amendment — in ‘correct[ing] the mix of speech’ in order to ‘better balance the speech market.’” This perspective aligns with the concerns raised by the former FCC officials regarding the news distortion policy.

“When unlikely allies share an opinion, that opinion eclipses partisanship and ideology,” said Chong, one of the former Republican commissioners involved in the petition. “You could not find a group of petitioners with more divergent political beliefs than this one, and yet, we all agree on one thing: The news distortion policy should be repealed.”