How the MAGA Plan to Control TV Triggered a Free-Speech Fight

Under Trump, the F.C.C. has used obscure regulatory powers to crack down on network TV. Some conservatives are pushing back.

On a Wednesday morning in mid-December, Senator Ted Cruz, chairman of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee, faced off with a potentially hostile witness — Brendan Carr, the conservative Republican who heads the Federal Communications Commission.

Cruz called Carr to testify before the committee in October, days after Carr very publicly demanded that ABC suspend the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, citing a monologue about Charlie Kirk’s killer that inflamed the MAGA right. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr had said on a right-wing podcast. Disney, ABC’s parent company, took Kimmel off the air for a week.