In the motley crew of Donald Trump’s cabinet appointments, it would have been easy to miss the 45-year-old lawyer who is already part of the Washington establishment.
Brendan Carr does not have the celebrity recognition of RFK Jr, Linda McMahon or Elon Musk, but Trump’s pick for chairman of America’s airwaves regulator could prove to be one of his most consequential.
On Sunday, Trump chose Carr to lead the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), praising Carr as “a warrior for free speech” and a fighter against “the regulatory lawfare that has stifled Americans’ freedoms”.
Carr, who accompanied Trump and Musk to Texas as SpaceX’s giant Starship blasted off from the company’s Starbase on Tuesday night, has promised to use the role to crack down on big tech, scrap diversity targets and put an end to the perceived Left-wing bent of the US broadcast media.
The FCC, the US equivalent of Britain’s Ofcom, is partly known for indecency penalties against broadcasters, fining CBS over Janet Jackson’s notorious Superbowl “wardrobe malfunction” in 2004 and earning a call-out in Eminem’s “Without Me” after the rapper’s success led to a profanity crackdown.
The regulator has broad licence for enforcing rules around media plurality and fairness, which Carr is likely to deploy. He slammed the US network NBC for hosting Kamala Harris on the comedy show Saturday Night Live, and has pledged to enforce a “public interest obligation” on TV stations.
But his most eye-catching proposals surround his pledge to rein in big tech.
Carr, first appointed as one of the FCC’s five commissioners during Trump’s first term, has made no secret of his plans to target Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple, which many Republicans consider beehives of liberal bias.
Last Wednesday, days before his appointment, he accused the four companies of being part of a “censorship cartel” that “silenced Americans for doing nothing more than exercising their first amendment rights”, pressing the four giants over their work with the controversial fact-checking service NewsGuard.
“We must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans,” he wrote on X this week, interspersed with reaction GIFs and posts sparring with critics.
Being heavy on rhetoric is par for the course in Trump’s inner circle, but Carr is one of the few with an action plan. He wrote the chapter on the FCC in the infamous “Project 2025” wish list put together by a group of Republicans, but which Trump had sought to distance himself from during the election.
In the manifesto, Carr outlined plans to water down the “Section 230” protections enjoyed by companies such as Meta and Google, which give the companies widespread licence to moderate their services as they see fit.
While Section 230 is credited with allowing the commercial internet to thrive, many Republicans believe it has given the sites cover to censor conservatives, such as when Twitter blocked a damaging New York Post story regarding Hunter Biden in the weeks before the 2020 election.
Carr says under him, the FCC would issue an order “eliminating” many of these immunities. Additionally, he has said big internet companies should be subject to transparency rules, requiring them to disclose when Google downranks a website in search results or when YouTube “demonetises” a user.
If enforced, these rules would amount to an unprecedented regulatory crackdown on how social media polices itself, forcing big tech companies to continually defend and justify decisions.
It is unlikely that Carr considers Musk’s own social network part of the censorship industrial complex. In 2022, Carr criticised a campaign to block Musk from buying Twitter, and he has backed Musk’s “embrace of free speech”.
But Musk is more likely to benefit from Carr’s leadership in other ways. Starlink, the internet satellite network run by Musk’s SpaceX, is poised for a blitz of deregulation, with Carr pledging to rapidly approve new satellite launches.
When the FCC overturned an $885m (£700m) deal for Starlink to connect more than 600,000 homes two years ago, he attacked the reversal. Carr has also criticised the Biden administration’s much-delayed $42bn programme to develop traditional broadband networks, which Musk has suggested should have been spent with Starlink.
“Carr’s relationship with Elon Musk could be a sign of good things to come for the FCC’s approach to satellite broadband providers,” analysts at the political research firm Beacon Policy Advisors wrote.
The appointee could be good news for Meta and Google in one way. Carr has taken a tough line on TikTok, the Chinese-owned viral video app seen as a major rival to Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. He has said the new administration must follow through on Biden’s plans to ban TikTok, saying the app provides Beijing with the chance to run a “foreign influence campaign”.
The stance could set Carr up for a clash with Trump, who has vowed to “save TikTok” in an attempt to appeal to the app’s giant fanbase. But even if Washington’s new free speech warrior does not get his way here, he is determined to shake up big tech.
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