Trumpist tends to dominate the discourse of a federal agency

Carr is quietly fulfilling his lofty deregulation pledges to corporate interests while picking those norm-busting battles with the mainstream media. These actions may be more transformative, but they don’t make as much headlines.

Carr recently stated his desire for the FCC to become involved in online speech, which could make the commission a powerful enforcer of the Big Tech companies’ content moderation rulings, such as those made by Google and Meta. Additionally, he wants to lessen government regulations on individual radio and television station owners, even as he ramps up his criticism of some legacy networks and programs.

His actions provide insight into how the second Trump administration is changing even comparatively stolid, independent Washington agencies by broadening their purview, rewarding preferred staff, and supporting Trump’s intensely personal battles.

“Prior administrations may have carried it out, but not to this degree,” Sen said. Blumenthal, Richard D. (Conn). pointed out Carr’s pressure on media outlets to POLITICO. Because broadcasters and print outlets have a stake in this, the cumulative effect of these attempts to intimidate and threaten is particularly startling. “.”.

Carr’s instincts are seen by his supporters as particularly sensitive to the Trump administration. “Some things that are outside of what we would treat in the telecom world as those regular boundaries,” said Nathan Leamer, a close ally of Carr and former FCC aide, in an interview with POLITICO. He sees Carr as adopting a new political desire to use the FCC’s power in this way. “”.

At his news conference on April 28, Carr told POLITICO, “We don’t want local broadcasters to end up like newspapers.”. Strong local broadcasters who are inspired to help their communities are what I want. “”.

The upcoming months will see how a regulator in Trump’s Washington strikes a balance between the conflicting demands of the MAGA political base, conventional GOP regulatory objectives, and the president’s unpredictably direct attention.

Carr’s gambits could clash with the First Amendment and the courts as they transition from saber-rattling to actual policy. They could even cause rifts among Republicans, not all of whom are looking forward to the FCC joining Trump’s culture war.

As early as this month, a significant test of Carr’s agenda will start. Carr has so far been operating without a complete commission, exercising the chair’s bully-pulpit authority to the utmost. Carr will have the working majority he needs to enact new regulations, merger votes, and even sanctions after the Senate approves Trump’s choice for a third GOP FCC commissioner.

That will make people wonder how hard he pushes some of his contentious investigations and efforts to broaden the agency’s purview.

Carr is considered a keen observer of the boundaries and potential of the FCC’s authority in Washington. He is also a study of the changes brought about by Trump. As a conservative lawyer concerned about government overreach over telecom networks and an advocate of regulatory restraint, he started his career as a seemingly mild-mannered traditional Republican.

He adopted a resolutely non-interventionist stance toward the media itself, arguing as late as 2021 that “no government official should be able to influence a newsroom’s decision about what stories to cover and how to frame them, not targeted by them.”. “.”.

His persona and his politics have changed over the past few years. Carr has mastered the art of popular messaging since Trump first proposed him as an FCC commissioner in 2017. He ran several campaigns that garnered widespread support on X and popular conservative appeal. (The previous chair had a quarter of his 168,000 followers, who watch his brave, recognizable, and occasionally combative posts. ().

He supported Trump’s efforts to control tech companies during his first term in 2020, saying that liberal politics were distorting their content moderation regulations. Later on, he backed Capitol Hill’s anti-TikTok campaign, claiming that the app was a threat to national security. (Since Trump reversed his position and chose to preserve the app, he has been more reserved. He has forced tech behemoths to foot the bill for broadband subsidies.

In more recent times, Carr found a strong ally in Elon Musk, who embraced him while he defended the tech billionaire’s interests and pushed for a larger role for the type of satellite broadband technology Musk sells through his Starlink service. He even contributed a chapter to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, naming Starlink, which argued that Washington ought to encourage space-based broadband services. Carr shared a flattering tribute to Musk on X last August, featuring the two posing together.

The proposed $8 billion Paramount-Skydance merger is one of the numerous merger deals that are currently pending. Carr has stated that he will consider those corporate practices when evaluating (and possibly delaying or canceling) transactions.

His list of accomplishments is already growing: shortly after Carr announced on Friday that Verizon was discontinuing its DEI policies, the FCC issued a favorable ruling regarding the company’s acquisition of Frontier Communications.

However, Carr has refrained from declaring a personal war on the press, in contrast to many others in the Trump world. He enjoys a certain wonky showmanship and uses subliminal clues that are sensitive to the various audiences he is addressing, including local and national reporters as well as longtime Washington players. Prior to givingling at his first open FCC meeting in February, he joined the press table to discuss his recent climb to the summit of an Alabama broadcast tower that was 1,800 feet high.

Companies view Carr from a variety of angles, including the amiable traditional deregulator of a decade ago. He has cut regulations to facilitate the construction of broadband networks and started a docket named “In Re: Delete, Delete, Delete” to gather suggestions for further deregulation.

Carr and his supporters present his plan as a shift toward “fairness.”. He claims that Democrats aren’t accustomed to fair governance on cable news and at events, claiming that they utilized the government as a weapon against them. He is now acting according to the same standards, reorienting the organization to provide conservative viewpoints and values the same amount of room. Along with frequently criticizing Democrats for their own content overreach, he has also brought up previous incidents in which the Biden administration forced social media companies to take down posts during the pandemic.

All things considered, his chairmanship can be viewed as a covert campaign against the national media, which his supporters claim has long been biased against conservatives, and in favor of local stations, whose owners have occasionally taken a more conservative stance and have previously garnered Trump’s support.

“I’m happy to be a very strong ally for local broadcasters and pushing back on the overreach that comes from Hollywood and New York programming that ABC, CBS, and NBC are pushing,” Carr told POLITICO in March, but only if these local broadcasters are genuinely pursuing and fulfilling their public interest obligation rather than fighting it.

Concerned observers believe that his campaign against specific news organizations in particular breaks down the barriers that have historically prevented the FCC from getting involved in what the media broadcasts.

The chair was contacted in March by a group of 18 organizations that were “alarmed by politically motivated pressure exerted on digital platforms, broadcasters, and journalists who exercise protected speech that the current administration disfavors.”. Along with senior House Democrats, three Senate Democrats issued a similar warning, calling for an inspector general to look into whether funds are being squandered and the law is being circumvented by starting “bogus” investigations.

Carr has been urged to back off by some conservatives, including Grover Norquist, who fears that his pursuit of the show on “60 Minutes” will “constitute regulatory overreach and advance precedent that can be weaponized by future FCCs.”. “.”.

Member of the House Judiciary Committee Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) is ranked. “Trump is unleashing his sycophant FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on every news group whose stories he doesn’t approve of,” invoked North Korea during one hearing. “”.

The National Association of Broadcasters, a longstanding lobbying force in Washington that typically supports news targets like CBS, has taken a dual stance on Carr.

In March, after initially remaining silent, it issued written comments criticizing Carr’s investigation of CBS’ “60 Minutes,” cautioning that “broadcasters should not be looking over their shoulders.”. However, the group praised Carr on social media that same day for his “support of local TV and radio stations” by advocating for possibly loosened media ownership laws.

Carr may lessen the severity of the industry’s criticism because broadcasters view it as a means of obtaining regulatory relief for their sector. They want to repeal long-standing ownership restrictions, like the one that caps the audience reach of TV station owners at 39% of American households. Additionally, in order to implement new broadcast TV technology, they require an ally. Broadcasters claim that all of this is existentially required to compete with Big Tech, and Carr appears open to the idea thus far.

CEO Curtis LeGeyt had refused to provide any specific criticism of Carr’s investigations when questioned face-to-face just weeks prior, arguing that any worries are “not unique to this administration.”. Rather, he cited prior concerns from the Obama and Biden administrations, such as the former Democratic chair’s invitation to public comment on whether to reject a Fox broadcast station’s request to renew its license in the face of grievances regarding Fox management’s handling of the 2020 presidential election.

The agency’s most obvious entanglement of politics, regulation, and the Trumpian loyalty test is Carr’s campaign against “60 Minutes.”. Less than a week before the election, Trump filed a lawsuit against CBS, raising his demands to $20 billion in February. It is said that mediation between the two parties has begun.

Reviving the Center for American Rights’ news distortion complaint against “60 Minutes,” which was filed in October, for its fall interview with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris was one of Carr’s first acts as FCC chair this February.

Conservatives were outraged by the complaint, which claimed that CBS had deceptively edited the interview by showing two different parts of Harris’ response in a promo and in the actual interview. This practice is within the bounds of journalistic discretion, but it was perceived as an attempt to protect Harris from criticism. Following Carr’s pressure, the complete transcript was made public this year, and according to “60 Minutes,” it clearly demonstrates that the broadcast “was not doctored or deceitful.”. “.”.

In February, Trump wrote, “CBS should lose its license,” and he shared screenshots of Carr’s regulatory actions, demonstrating his approval. Musk wrote that the journalists from “60 Minutes” “deserve a long prison sentence” for the interview with Harris.

In an April 13 Truth Social post, Trump referenced Carr by name and said he hoped the “highly respected” FCC head “will impose the maximum fines and punishment” on CBS and revoke their FCC license.

While CBS as a network is not licensed, its affiliated television stations are. License revocation has “long been viewed as the regulatory death penalty, so it’s a pretty high bar for me to go down that path,” Carr told reporters following the open meeting on April 28. However, it’s one choice. “”.

However, in the case of CBS and “60 Minutes,” the FCC’s potential power extends significantly. For its proposed $8 billion merger with Skydance Media, the network’s parent company, Paramount Global, also needs FCC approval. According to Carr, the merger and the “60 Minutes” complaint are related. Later, when reporters pressed him, he said that the issues were unrelated. ).

Carr has been harshly criticized for being overtly supportive of Trump as a result. The FCC investigation is “an obvious effort to create additional leverage in Trump’s settlement negotiations and encourage payment in a sham lawsuit in exchange for favorable regulatory outcome,” according to a March 31 letter from House Energy and Commerce Democrats Frank Pallone, Doris Matsui, and Yvette Clarke.

After the complaint received thousands of comments in late March, Carr told reporters he didn’t see any reason to drop it. “At this time, I haven’t personally reviewed comments,” he told POLITICO following the open meeting on April 28. All possibilities are still available. The investigation into that remains open. “”.

Requests for comment on Democrats’ claims of conflict of interest were not answered by FCC spokespersons. Carr told reporters that Trump’s settlement negotiations had “nothing to do” with his investigation following the April meeting. The White House refused to provide a statement.

“The FCC’s address is 45 L Street Northeast, and if there are broadcasters out there who don’t want to have to comply with their public interest obligations, they can mail in their license, and we can put it to a higher and better use,” Carr told POLITICO.

The extent to which the commission can lawfully pursue Carr’s saber rattling regarding companies’ content policies is unclear despite all the noise.

Companies are generously shielded from government crackdowns on their content by the First Amendment. Additionally, Carr cannot yet put any of his more divisive, partisan plans to a vote until he obtains a Republican majority on the commission—Trump nominee Olivia Trusty is still awaiting Senate confirmation.

The FCC’s internal enforcement authority is also being questioned by courts, which may limit Carr’s ability to discipline companies that are the subject of an investigation.

Courts may eventually step in, particularly as Carr attempts to expand his authority to target new parties like tech firms or YouTube TV. By reinterpreting the protections that online platforms have from lawsuits pertaining to the content they host, Carr hopes the FCC will limit the moderation of content on these platforms. “The FCC can take over if you’re going to censor,” Carr stated in April at DOJ headquarters. “.”.

Although Democrats are powerless to stop Carr’s actions while in the minority in both houses and soon on the FCC itself, Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, has been barraged with questions about the various investigations, including one of CBS, directed at Carr’s staff in March.

Carr has the authority to launch investigations on his own as FCC chair without a vote. Given that Trump has recently fired Democratic members of other agencies, it is unclear if he will nominate a replacement for Democratic Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, who is scheduled to depart this spring.

Anna Gomez, the junior Democrat at the FCC, is now trying to raise the alarm. Gomez told reporters following Carr’s first commission meeting, “I’ve heard from broadcasters who are already telling their reporters to be careful about how they cover stories because they fear government retribution.”. To “challenge government censorship and control,” she embarked on what she calls a First Amendment tour in late April. “.”.

It appears that these effects are widespread. A CBS veteran Scott Pelley complained on-air during a broadcast of “60 Minutes” on April 27 about increased corporate control over news programming, presumably as a result of the impending merger. Longtime executive producer Bill Owens resigned last week as a result of the increased pressure from executives. According to Pelley, “Paramount started to monitor our content in new ways.”. “It doesn’t make anyone here happy. “”.

Republican Commissioner Nathan Simington, on the other hand, dismissed worries, claiming that Carr’s actions are all within the agency’s historical parameters.

In an interview, Simington stated, “We’re a long way from Nixon calling the network heads into his office to lean on them.”. “We have moved past the Fairness Doctrine’s weaponization during JFK’s administration. Undoubtedly, there is a negative history of the executive branch depending on broadcasters. And I think we’re a long way from any of that if we look at historical precedent in that field. “.”.

Similarly to liberals who fear a crackdown, conservative activists view Carr as the reformer the FCC has been waiting for for years. They even present it as a way to rebuild media credibility.

The head of the Center for American Rights, which filed the “60 Minutes” complaint in October, Daniel Suhr, asked, “What do we do under the public interest standard when two-thirds of the public don’t trust the people we regulate? You can imagine if the Department of Transportation had a poll saying two-thirds of Americans don’t trust the airlines.

The government can implement these changes, Suhr added, “without in any way creating some sort of content police force.” “A large part of that is having media institutions that reflect the country as a whole, and not just the lead opinion you might find in New York or LA,” he said. “.”.

Suhr has called on the FCC to examine the ideological composition of CBS’ corporate officers, the locations of its editorial and reporting operations, and the establishment of a potential ombudsman as part of the Skydance-Paramount merger. Additionally, on April 21, Suhr submitted a fresh complaint to the FCC, calling on Carr to take tough measures against ABC, CBS, and NBC for their allegedly biased coverage of the Trump administration’s legal battle over deportation (the center kindly shared a quote from Carr’s own words on social media).

Even his Republican supporters are not entirely convinced that Carr’s delicate balancing act will ultimately succeed.

Boston College professor of law and nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute Daniel Lyons had hoped the FCC chair would stick to traditional telecom fare and steer clear of what he views as culture war rhetoric.

During an interview, Lyons bemoaned, “The chairman’s focus on the public broadcasting system investigation instead of moving forward on the CBS complaint looks more like grabbing headlines at the expense of that more important, basic work.”.