WASHINGTON – President-elect Donald Trump On Sunday, he announced his selection of Brendan Carr to chair the Federal Communications Commission.
Carr is the top Republican commissioner at the FCC, the government agency that regulates radio, television and cable communications.
“Commissioner Carr is a fighter for Free Speech and has fought against regulatory legislation that stifles Americans’ liberties and holds our economy back,” Trump said. “It will end the regulatory onslaught that is crippling America’s Job Creators and Innovators, and ensure that the FCC delivers for rural America.”
Carr wrote the FCC chapter in the conservative playbook Project 2025where he argued that the agency’s primary goals are to “regulate Big Tech, promote national security, foster economic prosperity, and ensure FCC accountability and good governance.”
In its chapterCarr has suggested that TikTok be banned if it fails to separate from its China-based parent company — an issue Trump has previously held conflicting views on. joined the program himself this year. He also called for working with Congress to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which gives social media companies a level of immunity over content on their platforms and allows them to moderate certain objectionable content “in good faith.”
“Congress should do this by ensuring that Internet companies no longer have carte blanche to censor protected speech while maintaining Section 230 protection,” Carr wrote in Project 2025.
The FCC is made up of five commissioners who serve five-year terms, and only three are allowed to be from the same party, meaning it is bipartisan.
Jillian Frankel contributed.