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Over the weekend, Donald Trump named Brendan Carr, an author of the far-right playbook Project 2025, to serve as Federal Communications Commission chairman in his next administration. The appointment places a MAGA loyalist in a powerful position to crack down on the free press (even as he says he's against censorship) and to potentially deliver material benefits to at least one Trump ally: tech billionaire Elon Musk. And because Carr is already one of five FCC commissioners, his ascension to commission chairman won’t require Senate confirmation.
Back in 2022, Carr vigorously opposed the FCC majority's decision to decline to award Musk’s Starlink satellite internet company nearly $1 billion in government contracts to set up broadband services in rural areas. The current FCC chair, Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel, has stood by the board majority’s assessment that there were better alternatives to choose from. But Carr insisted the decision had to be the result of what he called “regulatory harassment” against Musk.
Carr claimed the decision showed the FCC was on “the growing list of administrative agencies that are taking action against Elon Musk’s businesses” and said the decision “certainly fits the Biden Administration’s pattern of regulatory harassment.” And the chapter he wrote on Project 2025 specifically calls for the FCC to “expedite its work to support” companies like Starlink, which could lead to a hefty payday for Musk, whom Trump has tapped to lead a new group called the “Department of Government Efficiency.”
Carr is also an ally of Republicans who peddle baseless claims about the media conspiring to silence them. In his Project 2025 chapter, Carr wrote that Big Tech companies have threatened “individual liberty” with “its attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the public digital town square,” a statement that reads as a gauzy way of summarizing conservative kvetching over social media platforms moderating content to remove disinformation and hate speech.
Carr supports changes to Section 230, a law granting social media companies liability protection for most of the content placed on their platform. Republicans hate that the law broadly lets these companies moderate content as they wish, and Carr’s proposed changes would make it harder for social media platforms to do that.
He also wrote that he supports a complete ban of TikTok, though Trump’s wavering position on the app makes the future of such a ban unclear at this point.
If Republicans are going to have their “own media,” as Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán has advised them to create, it’s going to require some hard-nosed tactics and willing participants in powerful positions. In Carr, Trump could very well have an FCC chairman willing to serve as his media attack dog.
This tweet Carr posted on Monday certainly suggests he’s looking at the position through an explicitly political lens.