The Government's Official Position on a Network's Chilling Effect: "Self-Inflicted." Filed Four Days After He Named an Anchor.

On September 3 the FCC asked Judge Loren AliKhan to throw out Disney's First Amendment suit, arguing first that a district court cannot hear it at all — the Hobbs Act channels review to the courts of appeals, and under TRAC that holds even with no final order on the books. Then the merits: no but-for animus, the early renewal came from a 2025 discrimination investigation, not from Kimmel or "The View." Then the harm, in the agency's own words: minimal and self-inflicted. Eight ABC stations whose licenses weren't due until 2028 through 2031 are in an early renewal the FCC hadn't ordered on anyone in fifty years, the network has told a federal court under oath that license exposure changed a programming decision, and the government's answer is that the network did it to itself. Its proof of good faith is a quotation of Carr promising he is "open-minded" and has "not made a decision" — which is the exact claim the lawsuit exists to test. Four days before the filing, the president told this commission to punish Kristen Welker by name. Carr never responded. Both stories ran. Neither ran together.