President-elect Donald Trump tapped Republican Brendan Carr, an Elon Musk-backed critic of huge tech, to steer the Federal Communications Fee (FCC), calling Carr a “warrior for Free Speech” in an announcement on Sunday.
Carr has “fought in opposition to the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled Individuals’ Freedoms” and can “finish the regulatory onslaught that has been crippling America’s Job Creators and Innovators, and be sure that the FCC delivers for rural America,” Trump mentioned within the assertion.
Carr mentioned on Musk’s social platform X that he was “humbled and honored” to tackle the position of FCC chairman.
“We should dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for on a regular basis Individuals,” he wrote in one other put up Sunday.
Alex Wong / AP
It’s a phrase he has used repeatedly, posting on Friday: “Fb, Google, Apple, Microsoft & others have performed central roles within the censorship cartel,” including that it “should be dismantled.”
Carr was already the senior Republican on the FCC, an impartial company that regulates licenses for tv and radio, pricing of residence web, and different communications points in the USA.
The five-person fee may have a 3-2 Democratic majority till subsequent yr, when Trump will get to nominate a brand new member, The Related Press factors out, including that Carr has additionally been the fee’s normal counsel and was confirmed unanimously by the Senate thrice and nominated by each Trump and President Biden to the fee.
Lengthy rumored as a contender for FCC chair, he has constructed an alliance with billionaire Musk — Trump’s wealthiest backer, whose Starlink satellite tv for pc web service may benefit from entry to federal money.
The New York Occasions reported that Starlink acquired an $885 million grant in late 2020 from the FCC — however that the Democrat-led fee later revoked it as a result of the service could not show it will attain sufficient unconnected rural properties.
Carr “vociferously” opposed the choice, the newspaper reported.
“In my opinion, it amounted to nothing greater than regulatory lawfare in opposition to one of many left’s high targets: Mr. Musk,” he wrote in a Wall Road Journal opinion article final month.
Carr has additionally publicly agreed with the incoming Trump administration’s guarantees to slash regulation and punish tv networks for what they are saying is political bias.
Trump has repeatedly known as to strip main broadcasters resembling ABC, NBC and CBS of their licenses.
In the course of the 2024 marketing campaign, he singled out CBS, saying its license must be revoked after its flagship information program “60 Minutes” aired an interview together with his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris. Trump had declined to sit down for the same interview.
Trump sued CBS News, alleging the community’s “deceitful” modifying of the 60 Minutes interview of Harris misled the general public and unfairly deprived him. In an announcement, CBS News known as the previous president’s claims “utterly with out benefit” and mentioned the community meant to vigorously defend in opposition to the lawsuit.
Carr additionally wrote a chapter on the FCC within the controversial Project 2025 document that purported to put out a imaginative and prescient for a second Trump administration, by which he additionally known as for the regulation of the biggest tech firms, resembling Meta, Google and Apple.
The FCC must carry new urgency to 4 major objectives: reining in large tech, selling nationwide safety, “unleashing” financial prosperity and guaranteeing FCC accountability, he wrote within the doc by the conservative Heritage Basis.
Carr was a robust foe of the FCC’s reinstatement in April of landmark internet neutrality guidelines that have been repealed throughout the first Trump administration, the Reuters information company notes. The Biden FCC guidelines have been in flip placed on maintain by a federal appeals courtroom.
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