The FCC Under Trump
President-elect Donald Trump announced that he will replace the current FCC Chair, Jessica Rosenworcel, with Commissioned Brendan Carr as the next agency Chair. “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 noted. “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.”
Carr is a Republican who was originally nominated to the Commission by Trump in 2017. He strongly supports Trump, going so far as insisting, “Since the 2016 election, the far left has hopped from hoax to hoax to hoax to explain how it lost to President Trump at the ballot box.”
Perhaps most striking, Carr authored the Heritage Foundations Project 2025 section on the FCC. As the report declares,
The 2025 Presidential Transition Project is the conservative movement’s unified effort to be ready for the next conservative Administration to govern at 12:00 noon, January 20, 2025. …. Indeed, one set of eyes reading these passages will be those of the 47th President of the United States, and we hope every other reader will join in making the incoming Administration a success.
Yet, as Trump famously ranted on the September 10th presidential debate with VP Kamala Harris: “I have nothing to do with Project 2025. … I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it purposely. I’m not going to read it.”
In addition to Carr, other contributors to the Project 2025 blueprint who are proposed for the next Trump administration are:
+ Russell Vought: he has been named to lead the Office of Management and Budget; he served as director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first term.
+ Peter Navarro: he was Trump’s former trade advisor who was recently released from prison for contempt-of-Congress and was named as senior counselor for trade and manufacturing
+ Paul Atkins: he is to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission
+ Tom Homan: he is the proposed “border czar” who previously served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
+ John Ratcliffe: he has been named CIA director and previously served as Trump’s director of national intelligence.
+ Monica Crowley: she has been named as assistant secretary of state and previously served as assistant secretary of the Treasury during Trump’s first term.
+ Michael Anton: has been named director of policy planning at the State Department and was formerly the spokesperson at the National Security Council.
In the Project 2025 report, Carr took aim at what he considered “Big Tech,” arguing:
“These corporate behemoths are not merely exercising market power; they are abusing dominant positions. They are not simply prevailing in the free market; they are taking advantage of a landscape that has been skewed—in many cases by the government—to favor their business models over those of their competitors. It is hard to imagine another industry in which a greater gap exists between power and accountability (p/847)”
He singled out for elimination Section 230 of the 1934 Communications Act that excludes online platforms from liability for content posted by their users; online companies can remove posts that violate their services’ standards. He argued:
“As Justice Clarence Thomas has made clear, courts have construed Section 230 broadly to confer on some of the world’s largest companies a sweeping immunity that is found nowhere in the text of the statute. … One way to start correcting this error is for the FCC to remind courts how the various portions of Section 230 operate. (p/848)”
And added:
“Congress should do so by ensuring that Internet companies no longer have carte blanche to censor protected speech while maintaining their Section 230 protections. (p/849)”
Carr also argued that online companies must contribute to the Universal Service Fund (USF), a federal and state fund to local and rural telecom access:
“By requiring traditional telephone customers to contribute to a fund that is being used increasingly to support broadband networks, the FCC’s current approach is the regulatory equivalent of taxing horseshoes to pay for highways. To put the FCC’s universal service program on a stable footing, Congress should require Big Tech companies to start contributing an appropriate amount. (p/850)”
One key issue of telecom policy that Carr did not discuss in the Project 2025 report is net neutrality. This is the principle that internet service providers (ISPs) should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking a website. Since its inception with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, it has come and gone, depending on which party is in the White House.
The FCC consists of five members, with the political party in power controlling three commissioners while the other party has two. Under Biden and a Democratic FCC, net neutrality has been supported; under a Trump presidency it will undoubtedly be reversed again.
Carr has long opposed net neutrality, insisting it created burdensome and overreaching regulations to govern the internet. One reason Carr might have chosen not to consider net neutrality was that the Supreme Court decision, Chevron v Natural Resources Defense Council (June 2024), limited the FCC’s power in ambiguous territory like net neutrality. A month after the Chevron decision, the Ohio Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals delayed the reintroduction of net neutrality.
Trump declared, “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.” As part of his effort to reducing the scope of immunity granted by Section 230 safe harbor and increasing transparency conditions, he sent letters to the CEOs of Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Meta (Facebook) and Apple, he asserting that their companies had played “significant roles” in “an unprecedent surge in online censorship.”
Carr has targeted what her calls a “censorship cartel,” particularly “the Orwellian named” NewsGuard Technologies. It was founded in 2018 by Steven Brill and L. Gordon Crovitz, who serve as co-CEOs. Carr criticized specific editorial decisions by NewsGuard, calling its findings “untrustworthy” or “high-risk” in an “apparent effort to suppress their information and viewpoints.”
Calling NewsGuard’s activities “an affront to Americans’ constitutional freedoms,” Carr warned that the Trump administration could “review” the activities of tech companies and third-party organizations “that have acted to curtail [First Amendment] rights.” Carr’s objectives led Rep. James Comer (R-KY), Chair, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, to launch an investigation into NewsGuard, citing concerns about “protected First Amendment speech” and “censorship campaigns.”
Most problematic, Trump has threatened to remove licenses from broadcasters who scrutinize his policies. During the presidential campaign, he threatened to sue CBS over “60 Minutes” interview with Harris. Carr may follow through.
“The FCC has no business threatening to take away broadcast licenses because the president does not like the content or coverage on a network,” current FCC Chair Rosenworcel said. “And that same First Amendment duty applies to what is out there online.”
Public Knowledge went further, warning: “Potential support for this level of press censorship, paired with Carr’s opposition to transparency requirements for broadcaster ads using artificial intelligence, points towards a dangerous trend in politics: free speech, but only for those who agree with you politically.”
Carr has long supported Elon Musk’s satellite efforts. Under the Republican-controlled FCC in 2020, it awarded Musk’s SpaceX $855.5 million from its Rural Digital Opportunities Fund to bring high-speed internet to rural homes and businesses.
However, in 2023, the Democratic-controlled FCC reversed the agency’s decision, killing the award. “I was surprised to find out by an FCC press release issued earlier this month that agency leadership had suddenly reversed course on an $885 million infrastructure award that Elon Musk’s Starlink won in 2020 to provide high-speed Internet service to unconnected Americans,” Carr wrote. Going further, he insisted, “The agency’s decision here mirrors the Administration’s broader set of infrastructure missteps by costing taxpayer dollars while leaving rural communities behind.”
Carr is expected to aggressively push for Musk’s Starlink to receive the original $885 million grant. Starlink committed to providing high-speed internet service to 642,925 unserved rural homes and businesses across 35 states.
Carr has called for the FCC to free up more spectrum for wireless service. As he wrote earlier this year:
“Over the last three years, America has slipped far behind other countries when it comes to spectrum—the airwaves that power so many of the modern technologies that can grow economies. And today, the Biden Administration has confirmed that we will continue to slip even further behind.”
At the heart of his proposed campaign is support for more wireless services. This will further aid Musk’s efforts. In particular, Carr may well push to re-focus the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program that provides $42.5 billion to expand high-speed internet access. His efforts will push BEAD away from fiber and towards satellite broadband.
Carr’s campaigns as the next FCC Chair will only be aided by the powerful control conservative Republicans have over the presidency, both Houses of Congress and at the Supreme Court.
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