WATCH LIVE: Senate hearing on the FCC with Chairman Brendan Carr

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr will face questioning in the Senate on Wednesday for the first time since he pressured broadcasters to block ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel from broadcasting, a stance that has drawn bipartisan criticism and raised concerns about government interference in the media.

The hearing is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. ET. Watch in the player above.

Carr will appear before the Senate Commerce Committee for an oversight hearing that will also include the FCC’s other commissioners, Olivia Trusty and Anna M. Gomez. This will be the first Senate commerce oversight hearing with all FCC commissioners since 2020, although there are two vacancies on the five-member panel.

Since his appointment by President Donald Trump last November to lead the nation’s top broadcast regulatory body, Carr has been closely aligned with the administration’s aggressive stance toward media outlets it considers hostile. He has launched FCC investigations into ABC, CBS and NBC News, as well as some local stations.

In his second term, Trump filed a lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and most recently the British Broadcasting Corporation. At Trump’s request, Congress agreed this summer to cancel $1.1 billion allocated for public broadcasting.

Earlier this year, Carr came under fire from lawmakers in both parties after he denounced Kimmel’s comments about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. He called Kimmel’s comments “really sick” and warned the broadcasters, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” Hours later, ABC announced that Kimmel had been suspended indefinitely.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, who scheduled the hearing last month, was among the Republicans who criticized Carr’s comments at the time.

“I think it’s incredibly dangerous for the government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t like, and we’re going to threaten to take you off the air if we don’t like what you say,” Cruz said on his podcast, calling Carr’s comments “very dangerous.”

The hearing comes as Carr faces additional scrutiny from Democrats over media consolidation. Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen, a member of the committee, joined other Democrats this week in urging Carr to closely study Nexstar Media Group’s proposed acquisition of rival streaming company Tegna.

In a letter sent Tuesday, lawmakers warned that the deal would further concentrate media power in the U.S. local television market.

“Regulatory approval of the cartel would likely raise prices for consumers, accelerate job losses, and weaken the independence and news coverage of local television stations,” they wrote.

The deal would require the FCC to relax rules that limit the number of stations a single company may own. Carr said he’s open to changing those ownership boundaries. Nexstar was one of two ABC affiliate owners who said they would preempt Kimmel’s exposure with local programming after his comments about Kirk.

Kimmel’s suspension came after his monologue included a reference to Kirk’s shooting and a comparison of Trump’s grief to “how a 4-year-old grieves over a goldfish.” The show returned to broadcast less than a week after the indefinite suspension was announced.