Then-candidate Donald Trump once famously insisted he could stand in the middle of NYC’s Fifth Avenue and shoot someone without losing any support. Well, that thesis has yet to be tested, but Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Brendan Carr has already abdicated any role with respect to Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream an execution, even if it goes over the nation’s airwaves.

Some context: The FCC regulates spectrum, but has limited powers to regulate the content that actually goes through it. The agency has historically rarely enforced the equal opportunity rule, which requires stations that give airtime to one candidate for an office to give comparable access to others. It can also fine or punish broadcasters who don’t disclose sponsors or air obscene and/or indecent content. Since 1949 the FCC has claimed the power to fight “news distortion,” but the FCC determined its “public interest” mandate gave it that authority; it never received explicit approval from Congress. The FCC has only invoked this power eight times before recently. After 2012, when the Supreme Court restricted the FCC’s indecency policy, the agency’s content enforcement actions have been relatively restrained.

Under Carr, who is very interested in telling broadcasters what to do, the FCC has bent over backwards to weaponize these authorities against networks that Trump sees as enemies. Carr has even threatened to terminate broadcast licenses over unfavorable coverage of the war with Iran. But when it comes to Hegseth’s Trump-authorized announcement that the Pentagon will livestream the execution by firing squad of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan—literally violently killing a man on air for propaganda purposes—Carr has no objections.

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