The FCC’s Internal War Just Went Public
Anna Gomez is accusing her own agency of trying to intimidate media companies
The FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner just did something almost unheard of.
Anna Gomez publicly warned The Walt Disney Company that her own agency appears to be targeting the company for political reasons.
In a letter sent to Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro, Gomez accused FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and the Republican-led commission of using investigations as a weapon — not necessarily to win cases, but to pressure media companies into submission.
Her argument is blunt: the intimidation itself is the strategy.
Gomez called the FCC’s actions “dangerous” and described what she says is a broader campaign to punish companies seen as unfriendly to the Trump administration. She later told CNN the investigations are designed to “silence dissent” and praised Disney for refusing to completely back down.
That’s extraordinary language coming from a sitting commissioner talking about her own agency.
And it raises a bigger question: why is Gomez still there at all?
Across the federal government, dissenters and internal critics have largely been pushed aside. But the FCC operates under different rules. The commission currently has only three sitting members — Carr, Gomez, and Republican commissioner Olivia Trusty. Major FCC actions require a quorum. Remove Gomez, and the commission risks grinding to a halt.
So in a strange twist, Brendan Carr may actually need the very person publicly accusing him of political intimidation.
At least for now. Given Trump’s history, it’s difficult to imagine Carr and the White House tolerating a public internal critic indefinitely.
Gomez’s official term expires next month, but FCC commissioners can often remain in their seats until a replacement is confirmed by the Senate. And so far, Trump hasn’t nominated one. That means the FCC’s “lone Democrat” could remain a very public thorn in Carr’s side well into 2028 if the seat stays vacant.
But due to Gomez moving to the fore in this narrative, Trump and Carr are sure to try to remove her as soon as they can.
Meanwhile, Gomez is escalating her rhetoric. And with her official term about to expire, she may feel she has little left to lose by warning publicly about what she believes is happening inside the agency.
In the letter, she argued that many of the FCC investigations under Carr are carefully designed never to fully reach court scrutiny because the real objective isn’t enforcement.
“The threat is the point,” she wrote.
She also took direct aim at Disney’s decision to settle Trump’s lawsuit against ABC and George Stephanopoulos late last year. Gomez warned the company that the settlement bought no lasting protection.
She writes, “You cannot buy this Administration’s favor. For the right price, you can only borrow it. And the price always goes up.”
Disney already learned the lesson many media companies are learning right now: accommodation doesn’t stop the pressure. All it does is show the bully that the tactic is working.
Meanwhile, the rot of normalization keeps growing.
A federal regulatory agency openly signaling to media companies that criticism of the administration may come with consequences. A commissioner openly accusing her own chairman of political intimidation. Media corporations calculating whether resistance is worth the cost.
Just another day in American media.
What do you think? Is Gomez a free speech warrior? Or is she the villain undermining her own commission?
The ending pretends neutrality after spending the entire article establishing that Gomez is probably right.
If a regulatory agency is using investigations primarily as pressure mechanisms against politically inconvenient media companies, then “is she a free speech warrior or the villain?” is not an honest framing. It’s engagement bait disguised as balance.
The more important line in the piece is this one:
“The threat is the point.”
Because that’s how soft coercion works in modern systems. You often don’t need to win in court. You just need enough pressure to make institutions start self-editing in advance.
I'm going to forward this post to Kraig Kitchin. He may offer an opinion or, at the very least, take a stand. He's essentially retired but I sure would love to get him on Disciples of Democracy. He pretends to be Switzerland now but deep down I know where he lives.