Trump names Brendan Carr, elder GOP chief at FCC, to navigator the agency

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday named Brendan Carr, the elder Republican on the Federal Communications fee, as the recent chairman of the agency tasked with regulating broadcasting, telecommunications and broadband.

Carr is a longtime member of the fee and served previously as the FCC’s general counsel. He has been unanimously confirmed by the Senate three times and was nominated by both Trump and President Joe Biden to the fee.

The FCC is an independent agency that is overseen by Congress, but Trump has suggested he wanted to bring it under tighter White House control, in part to use the agency to punish TV networks that cover him in a way he doesn’t like.

Carr has of late embraced Trump’s ideas about social media and tech. Carr wrote a section devoted to the FCC in “ assignment 2025,” a sweeping blueprint for gutting the federal workforce and dismantling federal agencies in a second Trump administration produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Trump has claimed he doesn’t recognize anything about assignment 2025, but many of its themes have aligned with his statements.

Carr said in a statement congratulating Trump on his triumph that he believed “the FCC will have an significant role to play reining in large Tech, ensuring that broadcasters operate in the community yield, and unleashing market advancement.”

“Commissioner Carr is a warrior for Free talk, and has fought against the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled Americans’ Freedoms, and held back our Economy,” Trump said in a statement on Sunday. “He will complete the regulatory onslaught that has been crippling America’s Job Creators and Innovators, and ensure that the FCC delivers for rural America.”

The five-person fee has a 3-2 Democratic majority until next year, when Trump gets to appoint a recent member.

Carr has made appearances on Fox information Channel, including when he slammed Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris ’ appearance on “ Saturday Night Live” the weekend before the election — charging that the network didn’t propose equal period to Trump.

Also a prolific writer of op-eds, Carr wrote in an view piece for The Wall Street Journal last month decrying an FCC selection to revoke a federal award for Elon Musk’s satellite service, Starlink. He said the shift couldn’t be explained “by any objective application of the facts, the law or sound policy.”

“In my view, it amounted to nothing more than regulatory lawfare against one of the left’s top targets: Mr. Musk,” Carr wrote.