The timing, as is so often the case in Washington, was almost too neat to be a coincidence. One day after ABC's late-night host Jimmy Kimmel told a joke at the expense of Melania Trump, the Federal Communications Commission — the government body that controls who may broadcast and who may not — ordered Disney's ABC stations to renew their licences immediately, decades ahead of schedule. It was, Disney's lawyers argued in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, an act of retaliation so brazen that it had not been attempted in more than fifty years of American broadcasting history. The lawsuit, which names the FCC and its chairman Brendan Carr as defendants, paints a portrait of a regulatory body that has been quietly bent to a president's will.

As evidence, it cites Donald Trump's own social media posts, in which he complained that ABC's coverage of him was "almost 100% negative" and openly mused that the network's broadcast licences "should be terminated." Disney calls the early-renewal order "unprecedented," noting that the commission had never before demanded accelerated applications from all stations owned by a single broadcaster. The thirty-day window it was given to comply, the lawsuit adds, is wholly unrealistic for filings that ordinarily take months to assemble. Chairman Carr has pushed back firmly, insisting that the renewal process is rooted in the public interest rather than political score-settling.

The FCC echoed that position in a statement to the BBC, arguing that all broadcasters — "even Disney" — carry a legal obligation to serve the public good, and pointing to a year-long inquiry into the company's diversity and inclusion practices as legitimate grounds for scrutiny.