President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday named Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, as the new chairman of the agency tasked with regulating broadcasting, telecommunications, and broadband.
Carr is a longtime member of the commission and served previously as the FCC’s general counsel. He has been unanimously confirmed by the Senate three times and was nominated by both Trump and President Joe Biden to the commission.
The FCC is an independent agency that is overseen by Congress, but Trump has suggested he wanted to bring it under tighter White House control, in part to use the agency to punish TV networks that cover him in a way he doesn’t like.
Carr has of late embraced Trump’s ideas about social media and tech. Carr wrote a section devoted to the FCC in “Project 2025,” a sweeping blueprint for gutting the federal workforce and dismantling federal agencies in a second Trump administration produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Trump has claimed he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025, but many of its themes have aligned with his statements.
Carr said in a statement congratulating Trump on his win that he believed “the FCC will have an important role to play reining in Big Tech, ensuring that broadcasters operate in the public interest, and unleashing economic growth.”
“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 five-person commission has a 3-2 Democratic majority until next year, when Trump gets to appoint a new member.
Carr has made appearances on Fox News Channel, including when he slammed Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris’s appearance on Saturday Night Live the weekend before the election—charging that the network didn’t offer equal time to Trump.
Also a prolific writer of op-eds, Carr wrote in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal last month decrying an FCC decision to revoke a federal award for Elon Musk’s satellite service, Starlink. He said the move couldn’t be explained “by any objective application of the facts, the law or sound policy.”
“In my view, it amounted to nothing more than regulatory lawfare against one of the left’s top targets: Mr. Musk,” Carr wrote.
—Will Weissert and Colleen Long, Associated Press
Accedi per aggiungere un commento
Altri post in questo gruppo
The summer holidays are here and many of us will heading off on trips to hot and sunny destinations,
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly new
Russia on Wednesday became the latest country to restrict some
AI development is moving at a rapid pace, but it risks running headlon
Amazon is the the most efficient, popular online retailer. So maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that it’s a gold mine for scammers. These individuals, bless their blackened hearts, are adept at cra
Amazon is rolling out a service where its Prime members can now order their blueberries and milk at the same time as basic items like batte
