Trump’s FCC pick comes in swinging at Big Tech
The next head of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, is keen to “smash the censorship cartel,” he said Thursday, naming as his first priority stopping social media companies and the “narrative checkers” they engage from suppressing conservative viewpoints.
The remarks suggest Carr, a veteran Republican member of the commission who has previously clashed with Big Tech, plans to dramatically reorient the 90-year-old agency that regulates the telecommunications industry to take a heavier hand against social media companies, which many on the right view as hostile to conservatives.
“I expect a significant workstream at the FCC to deal with tech censorship,” he said on the sidelines of the commission’s first meeting since he was named as the next chair. “Some of it will probably help other agencies, maybe it’s Congress, but I’m going to fully play my part in trying to sort of smash the censorship cartel.”
He also said he would accelerate the licensing process for the parts of the space industry under the FCC’s remit, such as satellites, to assist a dawning space boom.
“It can take longer to move a piece of paper of licensing from one desk to another than it can to build an entire rocket, and that has to end,” Carr said.
Parts of his agenda lie at the hazy frontiers of the FCC’s authorities and could prompt legal challenges over how broad a remit the agency has. Supporters say Carr knows the law, and President-elect Donald Trump hails him as a “warrior for free speech.” His critics on the left, such as Chris Lewis, president of the Washington-based nonprofit Public Knowledge, have expressed alarm, calling Carr’s selective approach to scrutinizing online censorship a “dangerous trend” toward “free speech, but only for those who agree with you politically.”
Even before Trump picked him earlier this week as the chairman of the agency, Carr had blasted off letters to the heads of Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft, warning that their companies’ activities would be reviewed as part of “broad ranging actions to restore the First Amendment rights that the Constitution grants to all Americans.” Elon Musk’s X, which has greatly curtailed efforts to moderate posts both internally or through outside fact-checkers, was not among the social media companies Carr targeted.
Two days after he was revealed as the FCC pick, he flew to Texas, where he stood with Trump to his right and Musk to his left, at the site of the latest launch of SpaceX’s Starship rocket.
Carr, 45, has made no bones about his plans to steer the sometimes sleepy telecommunications regulator headlong into the maelstrom of a new Trump presidency. Beyond his plans to police social media platforms and aid space contracting in a way that would be a boon to Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, he has signaled openness to TV networks having their licenses revoked for perceived liberal bias.
On Thursday, Carr called his letters to the four tech giants just a start, and promised further scrutiny of the companies in the coming years, both within the FCC and in partnership with other parts of the government. Conservatives including Trump and Carr have long accused social media companies of disproportionately suppressing their posts as they police rules against hate speech and misinformation.
Carr said he planned to push forward on his plans after further huddling with Trump’s team to “make sure I understand 100% their agenda.”
The FCC, an independent agency, has traditionally been a step removed from partisan politics – and White House direction – compared with some other federal departments. Its five commissioners, only three of whom can be from the same party, regulate TV and radio broadcasting, telephone and internet service providers, as well as satellites. Its chair is appointed by the president, a selection not subject to congressional confirmation.
Carr – a protégé of Ajit Pai, the Republican FCC chairman during Trump’s first term – is likely to be a capable adversary to liberals, having demonstrated a knack for finding legal footholds to involve himself in political controversies of the moment.
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, said Thursday she planned to step down on Jan. 20. Carr will begin his chairmanship with the FCC split 2-2 between Republican and Democratic appointees; a GOP majority will be secured once Trump names a fifth tiebreaker commissioner, subject to Senate confirmation.
No ‘sacred cows’
Carr’s aspirations have prompted some Democrats to voice concerns that his agenda may teeter into infringements on free speech and the media.
“It is essential that every public servant honor the Constitution,” Rosenworcel said Thursday, when asked about her successor’s plans. “The FCC should not be in the business of taking away broadcast licenses if a public official does not like the content or coverage on that station.”
After Trump complained about his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, getting time on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, Carr discussed on Fox News the need to enforce equal time rules, saying, “one of the remedies ultimately would be license revocation.” The Commission has been averse to revoking licenses for decades, except in foreign ownership cases.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., blasted Carr’s plans as an “authoritarian agenda” aimed at getting social media and TV broadcasters “to toe the far-right line or face the FCC’s wrath.”
Carr defended his views on Thursday, saying broadcast licenses, which are issued by the FCC to TV and radio networks, are not “sacred cows.”
“You know, Jeff Bezos had that op-ed right now saying that when it comes to reporters and journalists, trust in the industry is at an all-time low,” Carr said, referring to the owner of The Washington Post. “He has said that something needs to change. I think he’s right.”
The most notable tool Carr has said he would use is Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934, which accords internet companies a degree of legal immunity for hosting and moderating user content. In an unsuccessful push to reinterpret Section 230, conservatives during Trump’s first term argued that social media companies have used it as a legal shield to suppress right-leaning voices.
Carr is determined to narrow that shield – and to make that stick this time. “It’s a scalpel approach,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, said. “He’s a very serious person, and he understands the pitfalls of some of the more sensational proposals.”
Space fever
Carr prizes his relationship with Musk, whose fortunes will depend in part on decisions the FCC makes in the next four years. SpaceX’s 6,400 Starlink satellites orbiting the Earth are currently the company’s cash cow, and the agency regulates them.
Even before his trip to Texas this week with Trump and Musk, Carr has visited SpaceX sites repeatedly this year, including in August, when he donned a hardhat and sneakers to ascend the metal “chopsticks” tower that caught Starship’s rocket booster last month in a historic landing. Carr said he asked whether SpaceX engineers could erect a glass box atop the tower from which he could watch a rocket launch up close. Musk’s team demurred, unwilling to risk accidentally frying a commissioner.
A range of pending applications before the FCC could make Starlink, far and away the world’s largest satellite system, more profitable and transform it into a full-on competitor to traditional phone and internet companies such as AT&T and Verizon.
These include requests to more than quadruple Starlink’s number of satellites, to provide phone service along with internet service, and to move Starlink satellites closer to Earth, allowing for faster network speeds.
Carr’s friendly relationship with Musk, who backed and hailed the commissioner’s promotion and banters with him on X, has raised concerns from lawmakers and industry observers.
“I have a serious problem with people who head the companies that are subject to regulation being the same ones who pick the regulators,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said. “That is a recipe for lawlessness.”
Carr has accused the Biden administration of “regulatory lawfare” against Musk, including in the FCC disqualifying Starlink from $886 million in rural broadband subsidies a couple years ago on the grounds of the technology being too nascent. He also defended Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in 2022.
“Elon Musk has transformed long-dormant industries,” Carr posted on X in August, with a photo of the two together. “It’s a great blueprint for reforming the Administrative State.”
Kimberly Burke, director of government affairs for the consultancy Quilty Space, said Carr’s appointment could tip the FCC toward “a world in which nearly every SpaceX ask gets green-lit.”
Carr pushed back on allegations of being too cozy with Musk, saying that he felt Democratic officials are the ones who have been biased.
“If you look back at the last couple of years, there’s no question in my mind that your last name dictated how the government treated you,” Carr said. “A Soros-backed group got an unprecedented shortcut from the FCC to buy 200-plus radio stations, and nobody had any sort of curiosity or interest about how close Soros was with different people in the government.”
Carr said he also supported Bezos’ satellite ambitions and visited Amazon’s fledgling satellite program, Project Kuiper, in Washington state a couple of months ago. Amazon has said it is investing more than $10 billion to build a satellite system that can compete against Starlink, but Kuiper has so far been mired in delays, with executives aiming to get an operational system in the air next year.
“What is really important for the country is not any one company, it’s the LEO system,” Carr said, using the industry term for low Earth orbit satellites. “I use the word ‘Starlink’ a lot, but it’s more of a Kleenex type of a thing, as opposed to tissue paper, which is LEO. So, more tissue paper!”
Legal roots
Carr was born in 1979 and grew up in Washington legal circles. His father, Thomas Carr, was a white-collar criminal defense lawyer who relished complex legal matters and represented President Richard M. Nixon in a case his law firm code-named a “Very Challenging Opportunity.”
After attending Georgetown, Carr got his law degree at Catholic University of America, then clerked for Judge Dennis W. Shedd in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, before joining the FCC general counsel’s office as an attorney working on wireless, international and public safety issues.
David Horowitz, FCC assistant general counsel at the time, recalls Carr as a sharp young lawyer on his team.
“He was a good team member, a smart guy,” Horowitz said. “He didn’t let politics get in the way of anything.”
Carr was promoted to serve as an adviser to Pai in 2014, and shortly after started developing his public profile by experimenting with live-tweeting the FCC’s monthly meetings, a novelty at the time. His first tweet was an after-hours musing on an obscure aspect of radio spectrum auctions: “Foolish consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds but deliberate inconsistency is the ogre of arbitrariness.”
Trump appointed Carr in 2017 to the FCC’s five-person commission, where he has gained a reputation for sticking to his guns. Earlier this year, he filibustered for 33 minutes against the reinstatement of Obama-era net neutrality rules that would regulate internet service providers more like utilities, to the amusement and annoyance of the three Democratic commissioners, who outvoted him.
Carr’s wife, Machalagh Carr, was former chief of staff for Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and last year founded the Alexandria-based consultancy Quell Strategies. The couple has three sons.
Carr said Thursday that cutting red tape would be a priority, citing complaints from small satellite manufacturers that approvals take too long. “The chair (Rosenworcel) has done a great job setting up the Space Bureau,” he said. “But now we’ve got to inject some rocket fuel in that process and really start to go.”
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Cat Zakrzewski and Tony Romm contributed to this report.