WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday named Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Fee, as the brand new chairman of the company tasked with regulating broadcasting, telecommunications and broadband.
Carr is a longtime member of the fee and served beforehand because the FCC’s normal counsel. He has been unanimously confirmed by the Senate thrice and was nominated by each Trump and President Joe Biden to the fee.
The FCC is an unbiased company that’s overseen by Congress, however Trump has advised he wished to carry it below tighter White Home management, partly to make use of the company to punish TV networks that cowl him in a method he doesn’t like.
Carr has of late embraced Trump’s concepts about social media and tech. Carr wrote a piece dedicated to the FCC in “Project 2025,” a sweeping blueprint for gutting the federal workforce and dismantling federal businesses in a second Trump administration produced by the conservative Heritage Basis.
Trump has claimed he doesn’t know something about Venture 2025, however a lot of its themes have aligned together with his statements.
Carr stated in a press release congratulating Trump on his win that he believed “the FCC may have an essential function to play reining in Huge Tech, making certain that broadcasters function within the public curiosity, and unleashing financial development.”
“Commissioner Carr is a warrior for Free Speech, and has fought towards the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled Individuals’ Freedoms, and held again our Economic system,” Trump stated in a press release on Sunday. “He’ll finish the regulatory onslaught that has been crippling America’s Job Creators and Innovators, and make sure that the FCC delivers for rural America.”
The five-person fee has a 3-2 Democratic majority till subsequent 12 months, when Trump will get to nominate a brand new member.
Carr has made appearances on Fox Information Channel, together with when he slammed Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris’ look on “ Saturday Night Live” the weekend before the election — charging that the community didn’t supply equal time to Trump.
Additionally a prolific author of op-eds, Carr wrote in an opinion piece for The Wall Road Journal final month decrying an FCC choice to revoke a federal award for Elon Musk’s satellite tv for pc service, Starlink. He stated the transfer couldn’t be defined “by any goal utility of the information, the regulation or sound coverage.”
“For my part, it amounted to nothing greater than regulatory lawfare towards one of many left’s high targets: Mr. Musk,” Carr wrote.
