Trump Put Brendan Carr On The FCC, Now He’s Promoting Him To Chairman

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Sunday that he has selected Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Brendan Carr to be the chairman of the FCC.

“Commissioner Carr currently serves as the senior Republican on the FCC,” Trump said. “Before that, he was the FCC’s General Counsel. I first nominated Commissioner Carr to the FCC in 2017, and he has been confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate three times.”

“His current term runs through 2029 and, because of his great work, I will now be designating him as permanent Chairman,” he added.

Carr responded to the appointment with a statement on X: “Thank you, President Trump!”

“I am humbled and honored to serve as Chairman of the FCC,” he said. “Now we get to work.”

Former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, to whom Carr served as an advisor at the FCC, applauded Trump’s pick.

“Congratulations to my friend and former @FCC colleague @BrendanCarrFCC!” Pai said in a statement.

“He was a brilliant advisor and General Counsel and has been a superb Commissioner, and I’m confident he will be a great FCC Chairman,” he added. “Best wishes leading the agency!”

Carr earned his J.D. Magna Cum Laude from the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law, the Trump transition team said.

“Earlier in his career, Commissioner Carr worked as an attorney specializing in Appellate, Litigation, and Regulatory matters,” the statement said. “Previously, Commissioner Carr clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for Judge Dennis Shedd.”

Carr announced in a statement late last week that he was taking on four major Big Tech companies for their involvement in an alleged “censorship cartel” that he says targeted Americans for promoting narratives that the companies did not agree with.

Carr sent letters to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, and Apple CEO Tim Cook requesting that they provide the FCC with information pertaining to NewsGuard — a left-wing organization that has played a role in targeting conservatives online.

“Over the past few years, Americans have lived through an unprecedented surge in censorship,” Carr said in his letter. “Your companies played significant roles in this improper conduct. Big Tech companies silenced Americans for doing nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights.”

Carr said that the companies worked with so-called “media monitors” to censor speech involving politics, science, and religion.

The companies worked to “defund, demonetize, and otherwise put out of business news outlets and organizations that dared to deviate from an approved narrative,” Carr said.

Carr said that various congressional investigations and news reports showed the companies operated this “censorship cartel” with the help of Biden-Harris administration.

The letter said:

The relevant conduct extended from removing or blocking social media posts to labeling whole websites or apps as ‘untrustworthy’ or ‘high-risk’ in an apparent effort to suppress their information and viewpoints, including through efforts to delist them, lower their rankings, or harm their profitability. This censorship cartel is an affront to Americans’ constitutional freedoms and must be completely dismantled. Americans must be able to reclaim their right to free speech. Indeed, our democracy depends on freedom of expression.

Carr said that the incoming Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress would be taking a close look at the companies’ actions.

He requested information about their work with NewsGuard, a for-profit company that bills itself as the Internet’s arbiter of truth by “rat[ing] the credibility of news and information outlets and tell[ing] readers and advertisers which outlets they can trust.”

He noted that congressional investigations have found that NewsGuard selects “winner and losers in the news media space” by using its partnerships with advertising agencies to censor targeted outlets.

The letter said that NewsGuard’s own track record was a serious problem, for example rating “official propaganda from the Communist Party of China as more credible than American publications.”

NewsGuard also has on its advisory board at least one person who “signed the now infamous October 2020 letter from former intelligence community officials that flamed the false claim that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation — a letter that itself fueled a wave of censorship.”

Carr said that the companies had until December 10 to provide information to the FCC about all of their products and services that use or enable their customers to use NewsGuard.