The Dangerous Impacts of FCC Chairman Carr's Agenda
As a sitting commissioner, Brendan Carr didn’t have to go through the Senate confirmation process when then-President-elect Donald Trump tapped him to serve as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Carr was able to avoid immediate scrutiny in Congress over his agenda, his previous statements and his affiliations.
But Carr has been staking out increasingly extreme and harmful positions over the past year or so in a transparent bid for the chairmanship in a Trump administration. We’ve tracked those stances, along with their main beneficiaries — and who will bear the cost.
Deregulating broadband
Carr outlined his broadband plans in the chapter he wrote for Project 2025. He consistently puts industry interests over those of consumers — and especially over those of people so frequently subjected to subpar service choices and outcomes in communities of color and low-income areas. In his chapter, he advocates for a “serious top-to-bottom review” of FCC regulations and proposes to “eliminat[e] many of the heavy-handed” or “overly cumbersome” ones.
In keeping with such an overhaul, Carr has made his opinion on the Title II classification of broadband well known, reading out a 40-minute dissent last April during the Commission’s vote on the 2024 Safeguarding and Securing the Open Internet Order, which had restored the agency’s Net Neutrality rules and its Title II authority to hold internet service providers (ISPs) accountable. He most certainly will not challenge the 6th Circuit’s rejection of the order.
Free Press has been on the frontlines defending Net Neutrality and Title II reclassification — and intervened in the case on behalf of the FCC when industry groups challenged the order. With the 6th Circuit’s bad January decision rejecting those rules and overturning FCC authority, Carr may now have no opportunity to act on this score. Yet we know that whatever Free Press does to counteract that court decision — in further appeals, in Congress or at the FCC itself — Carr will be an opponent and stumbling block. Neither our court loss nor Carr’s views change our advocacy on the principles in Title II. While industry has complained that these kinds of simple consumer-protection mechanisms are burdensome and hurt investment, Title II provides a light-touch and deregulatory framework — yet the avenue for oversight it provides allows the Commission to step in if ISPs treat their customers unfairly.
Broadband funding is also on the chopping block. In his Project 2025 chapter, Carr complained that infrastructure spending has been “plagued by inefficiency” — a notable accusation considering his vote under the first Trump FCC to approve granting millions of dollars to applicants — including Musk’s Starlink. But Free Press research revealed that some of the funding would have brought broadband connectivity to unoccupied parking lots, storage tanks and traffic islands, as well as urban areas that other providers already served. Carr claimed that absent coordination, we could risk “overbuilding” areas that already have some modicum of broadband access. He advocates for limiting funding so that it goes only to “communities without adequate Internet infrastructure” and proposes a “review of [the FCC’s] existing broadband programs, including the different components” of the Universal Service Fund (USF).
While reviewing USF is a rare agenda item on which Free Press may agree with Carr to some limited extent, his interest appears to lie in cutting costs, funding specific companies and protecting certain industry sectors rather than ensuring that the program benefits consumers. Combined with the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program and the lack of prospects for funding its renewal in Congress, Carr’s views on Title II are a huge problem here as well. Limiting broadband spending only to deployment where no infrastructure exists — and gutting USF to save costs — could risk leaving lower-income consumers in the lurch. And thanks to the confusion caused by the Republican-controlled FCC’s broadband classification errors, it’s even questionable whether and how the agency can improve broadband affordability with its Lifeline funding program.
Dishing out corporate giveaways
Carr’s tenure as chairman will likely usher in an era of corporate giveaways at the expense of individuals. He has publicly aligned himself with executives of companies he favors and advocated for the rollback of regulations that would otherwise impede them.
First, Carr has consistently supported Elon Musk on social media, in person and in his work at the FCC. Carr has posted pictures with Musk on his social media accounts, complimenting Musk’s business practices in the same breath. He has also publicly criticized the Biden administration, accusing it of unfairly targeting Musk’s businesses.
Carr has even vociferously defended Musk’s companies from outside scrutiny and enforcement in other nations, which is far outside the purview of any U.S. agency commissioner. He confronted the National Telecommunications Agency of Brazil for blocking and imposing fines on X and freezing Starlink assets after Musk refused to comply with court orders. And Carr has accused organizations calling for an investigation into Musk and Starlink of “regulatory harassment that accelerated the moment Elon Musk stood up for free speech.”
Carr has been particularly vocal in his dissent over the Commission’s decision to reject Starlink’s application for almost $900 million in Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) subsidies (granted to deploy broadband to rural, unserved areas of the country). The Commission had preliminarily awarded this to Starlink but clawed it back when Starlink failed to show it was able to meet service requirements for RDOF funding (see Application for Review of Starlink Services, LLC, Order on Review, pp. 5–6). Carr lambasted this decision, calling it “regulatory harassment” (same, p. 14).
The relationship between Carr and Musk could pay huge dividends for Musk — he stands to gain millions, if not billions, in federal grant funds. Carr stated that while the RDOF funds are lost, he “believes ‘it would be fair to get [Starlink] back’ into the FCC’s broadband program.” Carr has slammed the Biden administration’s implementation of the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program as dysfunctional and delayed and has, in particular, criticized its “preferences . . . for fiber” and “against unlicensed fixed wireless and satellite services.” He offers these views even though the FCC does not even administer BEAD, which is housed at the Department of Commerce.
As Politico reported, Carr has suggested a greater share of BEAD — “close to a third” — should go to satellite services, and said that “we should not be putting the brakes or harassing any U.S.-based satellite company.” While Carr has stated that “his goal is less to support Musk personally” and rather a push for satellites more broadly, Starlink is a clear beneficiary of this move — and Carr’s repeated engagement with Musk belies this claim.
Carr’s promotion to chairman will likely pave the way for greenlighting consolidation for broadband and media companies. Carr supported the merger between Sprint and T-Mobile, two large mobile broadband providers in a market with limited competition. He has also advocated for the Commission to loosen its media-ownership rules, which limit how many broadcasting stations a single entity can own in a given market.
But many of the rules Carr would rescind were put in place to ensure that people in local communities had access to a diversity of viewpoints and locally responsive news and information. Even at a time when communities indicate they do not have enough news and information to make informed choices in local elections, Carr would allow for even more consolidation, which reduces local news. In September 2024, Free Press joined a group of allies on an amicus brief supporting the FCC’s media ownership rules, noting how those limits promote competition, localism and diversity — which in turn benefits people who rely on local broadcasting, including those who cannot afford mobile and high-speed internet or have spotty access to it.
To make matters worse, Carr’s views on media consolidation apply on a partisan basis. Despite having little concern about media consolidation in the context of the agency’s ownership limits more generally, he suddenly was extremely concerned when he viewed the group buying stations as left-wing. Carr plans to consider a petition from the conservative Media Research Center requesting that the Commission revisit an FCC decision permitting a fund linked to George Soros to acquire more than 200 local radio stations. He has also launched an investigation into KCBS, a Bay Area radio station, for allegedly sharing undercover ICE agents’ locations and vehicle descriptions. While Carr has claimed the coverage is impeding law enforcement’s efforts, the First Amendment protects such coverage. People have the right to report on matters of public interest such as this — and Carr should not be allowed to weaponize government authority to intimidate reporters from airing content the Trump administration dislikes.
Carr’s selective alarm should be a red flag for anyone who cares about censorship and political representation. An FCC chairman going after media groups allegedly on the left — while blessing acquisitions by station groups allegedly on the right — would pave the way for right-leaning media companies to gain even more market power. No FCC chair has any business meddling in partisan politics and behind-the-scenes content regulation in the first place.
Undermining free speech in broadcasting
As Free Press has tracked and recounted, Carr has promised to weaponize the FCC’s authority over broadcast licenses for political purposes. His message to broadcasters over the past few months has been clear: If you air content that displeases Carr or President Trump, you will face retribution from the agency.
During a congressional hearing in September, Carr twice refused to answer questions about the propriety of Trump’s suggestion that ABC’s broadcasting license should be stripped because its journalists fact-checked him during his presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. In October, after Trump complained about an interview with Harris that aired on CBS’ 60 Minutes, Carr insinuated that the network had engaged in news distortion, which could factor into the FCC review of the merger between CBS’ parent company, Paramount, and Skydance. Then, in November, Carr complained about Harris’ appearance on Saturday Night Live, wrongly accusing NBC of a “clear and blatant effort to evade the equal time rule” and stating that the Commission should “keep every remedy on the table” for this supposed violation, including revoking the broadcast licenses of local television stations that NBC and Telemundo own.
Carr’s invocation of these FCC rules is based on flagrantly bad-faith readings of them. As Free Press has pointed out before, the Commission’s Equal Opportunity Rule is not a requirement that broadcasters affirmatively reach out to offer political candidates equal time or that stations provide opposing candidates with time on the same program. Indeed, NBC gave the Trump campaign free commercial time the next day. Notwithstanding that fact, NBC would not have violated the Equal Opportunity Rule unless Trump had requested and been denied that time, because the candidate must request broadcast time to trigger the rule.
Carr’s first days as chairman have brought these partisan fears to bear. One of Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel’s last acts before stepping down to make way for Carr was to dismiss four broadcast license challenges with political associations — three right-wing complaints against ABC, CBS and NBC broadcasts for allegedly disadvantaging the Trump presidential campaign and one petition to deny a Fox-owned television station’s license based on Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation case against Fox News. Rosenworcel stated that each challenge, “from all courts — right and left . . . weaponize[d] the licensing authority of the FCC in a way that is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment.” In a blatantly political move, Carr revived the ABC, CBS and NBC complaints while letting the Fox petition lie. In an equally transparent partisan attack, Carr notified the presidents and CEOs of NPR and PBS that he was opening an investigation against them. While he claims the investigation concerns their underwriting announcements, what it appears he’s really trying to do is intimidate public broadcasters so they won’t cover the Trump administration critically and hold it accountable.
Of course, as a sitting FCC commissioner, Carr should and likely does already know all of this, just as he likely knows that threatening broadcasters for fact-checking or editing choices careens dangerously into the First Amendment. Even without lifting another finger, Carr’s conduct has already had a chilling effect: Broadcasters are on notice that political retribution is on the table and that their licenses and profits could be at risk if they do not fall in line.
Exceeding and expanding FCC oversight to go after Big Tech
Carr doesn’t just threaten broadcasters’ First Amendment rights; he does the same to online platforms. He has made proposals that would extend the Commission’s authority to go after “Big Tech” — an unprecedented and unheralded expansion of agency power that stretches the Communications Act to its limits. And in a stunning display of hypocrisy, he does so while crying about regulatory overreach when the Rosenworcel FCC reclaimed its Title II oversight authority over broadband.
Carr has accused large technology companies of suppressing information by permitting the nonpartisan NewsGuard to offer fact checks on their sites. In November, he sent a fiery letter to the CEOs of Alphabet, Apple, Meta and Microsoft, calling them a “censorship cartel” to the glee of Elon Musk on social media. As Free Press has noted, Carr’s move flips the First Amendment on its head. The First Amendment is about protecting people from government intrusion and censorship — not about what private companies host on their sites or their content-moderation practices. Yet Carr launched this barely veiled threat against platforms for using NewsGuard services and demanded responses to his letter about their involvement with the organization. Observing that “Big Tech’s prized liability shield, Section 230, is codified in the Communications Act, which the FCC administers,” Carr suggested that using NewsGuard for fact-checking could strip the companies of their Section 230 coverage because they might not be operating “in good faith.”
In his Project 2025 chapter, Carr writes that the FCC should issue an order interpreting Section 230 in a way that eliminates much of the immunity it has bestowed on platforms. But while Carr is correct that Section 230 is codified in the Communications Act, this move toward regulating the speech of social-media platforms would be a dramatic and new overreach for the Commission. Free Press has also advocated for smart Section 230 reform — perhaps even agreeing with Carr on certain discrete suggestions, namely restoring the original distinction between distributor and publisher liability into the understanding of the statute.
Carr generally claims that the FCC regulates too much. Yet his suggestion that the agency should do more to regulate speech on the internet directly contradicts his critique in the broadband sphere, where he falsely claims that Net Neutrality was a Biden-administration attempt to expand government power over the internet. It also appears from his invocations of Section 230 in the NewsGuard letter — and from his accusation that Big Tech is attempting “to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square” — that Carr is motivated by a false concern over conservative viewpoint discrimination rather than online safety.
Carr’s regulatory power grab to claim new jurisdiction and authority over tech companies goes beyond content moderation. In his Project 2025 chapter, he says that Big Tech companies (he doesn’t specify which ones) should be required to contribute to the Commission’s Universal Service Fund. His singling out of Big Tech here, too, suggests that his recommendations are part of his political agenda to go after certain companies and political viewpoints he dislikes. (Free Press, on the other hand, has proposed that all companies in the country — or at least all phone companies and broadband providers — should help pay for universal service through progressive taxation or funding from the Department of Treasury.)
Rolling back DEI initiatives
On his first day as chair, Carr announced he was “ending the FCC’s promotion of DEI.” Consistent with Congress’ 2021 mandate in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — which requires the Commission to “prevent[ ] digital discrimination of access based on income level, race, ethnicity, color, religion, or national origin” — the Rosenworcel FCC prioritized DEI efforts. This work included improving equity in access to communications services, working to help underserved communities “leverage and benefit from the wide range of opportunities made possible by digital technologies, media, communication services, and next-generation networks,” and ensuring that the Commission’s workforce reflects the communities it serves.
In line with this goal, the FCC reinstated its collection and public disclosure of television and radio broadcasters’ Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) workforce-composition data, including employees’ gender, race and ethnicity. The agency restored this process after a 20-year hiatus, finding that “continuing to collect this information in a transparent manner is consistent with a broader shift towards greater openness regarding diversity, equity and inclusion across both corporate America and government.” Public interest advocates like Free Press have wanted to use this data to review whether broadcasters reflect the diverse communities they serve.
However, this agency action received a strong dissent from Carr, who claimed it violated Fifth Amendment due process and the First Amendment. While this move would help ensure that a broadcaster’s employees and decision makers actually “reflect [its] viewers, listeners, and readers, and can speak for and to them,” as Commissioner Starks noted, Carr has made it clear that he intends to discontinue such efforts.
A Carr FCC could also rescind, or refuse to enforce, the FCC’s new rules preventing ISPs from discriminating against customers even if those rules survive court challenge. Despite language from Congress that delegates this authority to the Commission, Carr dismissed the action as an “ideological decision[ ]” and dissented vigorously.
The bottom line
Without fail, Carr has shown a willingness to bend the FCC and its power to Trump’s liking and the benefit of Trump cronies and other corporate players — at the expense of everyday people. While abdicating the Commission’s light-touch watchdog role over broadband, he grabs for new power over other technology companies. He calls civil rights groups like Free Press “censors” when we criticize him, even as he toys with the First Amendment rights of broadcasters, online platforms and the people using both of these sources to access information and communicate with others. There is no consistent principle to Carr’s positions except that they keep Trump happy.
Carr’s agenda — and, more generally, his move further right — stems from his obvious allegiance to Trump. But make no mistake: It’s also an opportunistic power grab in Carr’s own self-interest. His noxious record landed him this promotion, and there can only be more dangerous moves to come.
