He used two levers at the same time to pressure Kimmel off the air, issuing public threats to ABC and its parent company Disney, and also invoking his significant power over the station ownership groups that carry his show across the country.

In just eight months in office, Carr has used a similar mix of public pressure and background leverage to push two major telecom giants, Verizon and T-Mobile, to abandon their diversity, equity and inclusion practices to win merger sign-offs. His investigation into the venerable CBS news program “60 Minutes” helped win similar concessions and commitments on media bias as he negotiated Skydance’s merger with CBS parent company Paramount — and may have led to a settlement and direct payment to Trump himself.

None of these actions required official regulatory crackdowns. Carr didn’t even have a working GOP majority on the FCC until June. His chairmanship has instead been an exercise in sidestepping formal lanes to enact conservative policy priorities.

“The goal is to get the companies to capitulate in advance, to the point where the FCC or the administration doesn’t even need to speak,” FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the agency’s lone Democrat, told POLITICO in an interview.

“It’s the process that’s the point. It’s the threats that are the point,” she added.

The Kimmel story is a case study in Carr’s use of leverage. Carr made his threats informally, complaining during a conservative podcast on Sept. 17 that Kimmel’s alleged falsehoods about the killing of Charlie Kirk could open ABC and parent company Disney to FCC investigation under rarely used news distor