WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday named Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, as the new chairman of the agency charged with regulating broadcasting, telecommunications and broadband.
Carr is a longtime member of the commission and previously served as general counsel to the FCC. He has been unanimously confirmed by the Senate three times and was nominated to the committee by both Trump and President Joe Biden.
The FCC is an independent agency overseen by Congress, but Trump has suggested he wanted to bring it under tighter control from the White House, in part to use the agency to punish TV networks that cover him in ways that he doesn’t like it.
Carr has lately embraced Trump’s ideas on social media and technology. Carr wrote a section devoted to the FCC in “Project 2025,” a sweeping blueprint for wiping out the federal workforce and dismantling federal agencies in a second Trump administration produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Trump has claimed he knows nothing about Project 2025, but many of the themes are consistent with his statements.
Carr said in a statement congratulating Trump on his victory that he believed “the FCC will play an important role in reining in Big Tech, ensuring broadcasters operate in the public interest and unleashing economic growth.”
“Commissioner Carr is a fighter for free speech and has fought against regulations that have suppressed American freedoms and held back our economy,” Trump said in a statement on Sunday. “He will end the regulatory onslaught that has crippled America’s job creators and innovators and ensure the FCC delivers results for rural America.”
The five-member committee has a 3-2 Democratic majority until next year, when Trump may appoint a new member.
