Trump-Appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch Calls Out Trump FCC Boss for Targeting Jimmy Kimmel In Ominous Warning

Erin Schaff/The New York Times via AP, Pool, File

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch called out President Donald Trump’s hand-picked leader of the FCC in a concurring opinion on Monday as the court ruled to allow the president to fire FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter.

The 6-3 ruling in Trump v. Slaughter was penned by Chief Justice John Roberts with the court’s three liberal justices dissenting. Robert’s opinion overturned the landmark Humphrey’s Executor ruling, which for the last 91 years put limits on the president’s powers to fire officials in executive agencies.

Trump crowed about the ruling on social media soon after it was announced, writing, “To show the importance of the Slaughter Case, 90 years of precedent has been COMPLETELY AND UNEQUIVOCALLY OVERRULED, greatly increasing Presidential Power at a time when it is most needed!”

Trump will now have significantly more power to shape key executive agencies like the SEC, FTC and FCC – all of which are meant to operate independently from partisan politics. Gorsuch, however, offered a word of warning in his concurring opinion about government overreach:

Independent agencies today hold tremendous sway over the Nation’s affairs. They regulate our businesses, and our financial markets. They set the rules for the internet and airwaves. They decide how we light our homes, how we run our elections, and the manner of our employment. They determine what toys our children will play with, and how we interact with each other at work. And, as the dissent explains, so much more. Often, these agencies do all this with hardly any statutory guidance, based on broad grants of legislative authority.

He went on to specifically mention FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s criticism of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel in September of last year, which many critics also saw as a veiled threat of censorship after Kimmel made a joke Carr did not like.

“Last year, taking objection to a network host’s on-air remarks, the Chairman of the FCC suggested there would be ‘additional work . . . ahead’ for the agency if broadcasting companies did not ‘find ways to . . . take action.’ The Benny Show, Sept. 17, 2025 (‘[W]e can do this the easy way or the hard way’),” Gorsuch continued, adding:

The whole of the President’s authority also may be greater than the sum of its parts. It would be one thing if today’s decision afforded the White House more control over the airwaves. Or financial markets. Or energy. But Presidents now will enjoy waxing authority over all those areas and more.

A business out of favor with the party in control of the White House might be able to stave off an FCC investigation. But can it survive a subsequent FTC rule declaring unlawful one of its longstanding trade practices? What about an in-house adjudication by OSHA? Or a prosecution for a new crime the SEC announces? Not to mention what these now-coordinated powers could do to disfavored individuals who lack the resources needed to fend off such attacks.

Gorsuch concluded, “It may be true that after today there is no more ‘fourth branch’ of government. But the fourth branch’s powers still exist; they have just been reassigned to the President.”

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!