Change is in the air. The US President-elect Donald Trump has picked his Republican ally Brendan Carr to lead the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
“Commissioner Carr is a warrior for free speech, and has fought against the regulatory lawfare that has stifled Americans' freedoms, and held back our economy,” Trump said in a statement on Sunday.
“He will end the regulatory onslaught that has been crippling America's job creators and innovators, and ensure that the FCC delivers for rural America.”
Serving in the agency since 2012 and as a commissioner since 2017, Carr was long seen as a relatively conventional Republican, described by both allies and adversaries as highly qualified and personable.
Lately, though, he’s been increasingly vocal and has embraced Trumpian themes about technology, television companies, and social media. Carr said Sunday on X that “we must dismantle the censorship cartel,” for instance.
Right after Trump’s election victory, Carr said in a statement that the FCC should rein in big tech companies. During the election campaign, he appeared regularly on Fox News – like many other Trump nominees, by the way.
Carr also wrote the FCC section of Project 2025, the agenda that the conservative Heritage Foundation sketched out for a second Trump term. The President-elect disavowed the document during the campaign.
In the document, Carr said the FCC should impose transparency rules on big tech companies and essentially decimate Section 230, the famous 1996 statute shielding internet companies, including social media platforms, from liability.
Just as importantly, Carr – who wants to ban TikTok in the US – is a supporter of Elon Musk, the billionaire supporter of Trump.
Musk also supports Carr – maybe because the latter wants the FCC to be more “technology neutral” in allocating broadband subsidy funding so that satellite providers like Starlink could compete with wired internet providers for federal dollars.
Coincidentally, Carr suggested in December 2023 that subsidizing the cost of Starlink dish could be a way to get the internet to areas that lack access. He has been a harsh critic of the FCC's decision not to finalize nearly $900 million in broadband subsidies for Starlink.
Since the FCC – an independent agency overseen by Congress – regulates broadcasting and telecommunications, Carr’s nomination is truly telling. Critics are already asking whether he could become Trump’s tool to assault the press.
Carr has backed Trump's call for licenses to be stripped from all three major broadcast networks – not licensed by the federal government – for coverage choices that he has denounced.
On the campaign trail and in interviews, Trump has spoken of jailing reporters for coverage he doesn’t like.
Last year, he called for NBC News to be investigated for treason over its reports about the criminal charges he faces. After the debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump attacked ABC for its decision to fact-check him.
In fact, one could stop speculating about what Trump would do because he already described his vision in a post on Truth Social in 2023. “I will bring the independent regulatory agencies such as the FCC and the FTC back under presidential authority as the Constitution demands,” he wrote.
Such efforts to bring the FCC under full White House control would surely face legal challenges. Besides, the process would consume so much time that no license renewal could be denied before the end of Trump’s term, CNN wrote before the election.
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