The FCC’s Brendan Carr testifies during a House Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee oversight hearing in March 2022. The FCC is funded by, and responsible to Congress.
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Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
President-elect Donald Trump has picked Brendan Carr, a veteran Republican member of the Federal Communications Commission, to lead the agency that regulates broadcasting, telecommunications, broadband and other related industries.
For much of his career, Carr was seen as a relatively conventional Republican with a pro-corporate outlook. More recently, however, Carr has embraced Trumpian themes about social media, tech and television companies.
“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.”
The FCC mostly stays out of the public spotlight, but roars back into public view with controversies over television and radio broadcasts. While it’s an independent agency overseen by Congress, Trump has made clear he would like to bring it under tighter White House control and use it to punish TV networks that have fact-checked him or otherwise covered him in a way that sparks his ire.
Carr is a previous general counsel of the FCC who is in his third term as a commissioner. Allies and adversaries alike describe him to NPR as a smart, personable and highly qualified figure.
Carr is fully qualified for the job, says Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a longtime non-profit and public-interest telecommunications lawyer who is now a fellow at Georgetown University. But, Schwartzman says, Carr has conducted an “unusually public campaign” for the FCC chairmanship.
Carr has been “appearing non-stop on Fox News and other outlets with an uncharacteristically partisan message on pending FCC and, notably, non-FCC, issues,” Schwartzman notes. Many of Trump’s other picks for administration positions also have been frequent guests of Fox News.
Carr also wrote the FCC section of Project 2025, the agenda that the conservative Heritage Foundation sketched out for a second Trump term. Trump disavowed it during the campaign but its themes have dovetailed with his public pronouncements since the election. (A call by House Democrats for Carr to be investigated for engaging in partisan activity over the report did not result in formal action. Carr said he had secured approval from FCC ethics officials to do so in his personal capacity.)
Carr likely would pursue a deregulatory agenda. That may include further relaxing or stripping away rules inhibiting consolidation of media ownership, many of which were dropped after the U.S. Supreme Court rulings in 2021.
Earlier this month, Carr used the social network X to attack Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft for playing “central roles in the censorship cartel,” which he said “must be dismantled.” The billionaire Elon Musk — who owns X, advises Trump and has backed Carr’s prospects for the FCC chairmanship — reposted his claims and announcement.
Carr has backed federal legislation that would punish social media companies that block or suspend users for their “viewpoints,” an allegation that Musk and other conservatives have lodged against the tech giants.
Carr also supported a law passed by Congress to ban TikTok. “I just don’t see a path forward where we can allow this app to continue to operate in its current form,” he told NPR in 2022. Trump originally supported the ban too. But he reversed his position on the Chinese-owned app after meeting a major donor with a stake in its parent company.
Carr has also backed Trump’s call for licenses to be stripped from all three major broadcast networks for coverage choices that he has denounced. Carr slammed NBC for inviting Vice President Kamala Harris onto Saturday Night Live for a skit just days before Election Day. Carr argued that might have violated federal rules that seek to ensure candidates receive an opportunity for equal time on broadcasters, with an exception for legitimate news coverage.
“We need to keep every single remedy on the table,” Carr told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. “One of the remedies the FCC has, ultimately, would be license revocation, if we find that it’s egregious. And we’ll see what they have to say about this. But it needs to deter this kind of conduct.. The whole purpose of this rule is to give people a fair shot.”
Equal-time rules kick in only if an opposing candidate formally lodges a complaint or request with the offending broadcaster if another candidate appears on a show. The Trump campaign told NPR it accepted NBC’s unprompted offer the next day to run a minute-long video of Trump during a NASCAR broadcast and a post-game NFL show. Trump taped the video after a rally that Sunday.
Broadcast networks are not licensed by the federal government. Individual stations are. But the big three networks – NBC, ABC and CBS – own 80 stations among them. Each station is a profit center, and a pressure point, for the networks. Trump has already sued CBS News for its treatment of a 60 Minutes interview with Harris.