Trump designates FCC veteran Brendan Carr as chair of agency

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, as its chair, he said in a statement.

Carr has served at the agency since 2012, including as an adviser to a later chair, Ajit Pai, and has worked as its general counsel. Trump during his first presidency nominated Carr to serve as a commissioner in 2017.

“Commissioner Carr is a warrior for Free Speech, and has fought against the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled Americans’ Freedoms, and held back our Economy,” Trump said in a statement.

The commission, an independent agency overseen by Congress, regulates interstate and international communications and implements and enforces U.S. communications law and regulations.

In a statement after Trump’s election victory, Carr highlighted his priorities, saying that the agency should have a “an important role to play reining in Big Tech, ensuring that broadcasters operate in the public interest, and unleashing economic growth.”

He reiterated those points in a chapter for the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 manifesto seeking to influence policy in the second Trump administration. Carr recommended that the FCC limit the scope of Section 230 of the Communications Act to crack down on what conservatives perceive as Big Tech content-moderation abuses.

Carr has aligned himself publicly with Elon Musk, traveling to Texas to attend a rocket launch for SpaceX, the billionaire’s space exploration company. Since joining the FCC, he has also advocated for it to be “technology neutral” when it allocates broadband subsidy funding, making more room for satellite providers to compete alongside wired internet providers for federal broadband dollars.

In a December 2023 interview with the podcast This Week in Startups, Carr suggested that a way to get internet to areas that lack access is to subsidize the cost of Musk’s satellite internet provider. “You just cut everybody a coupon for $600, which is effectively the price of a Starlink dish, mail that coupon to everybody and call it a day,” Carr said.

Carr has also said video-sharing platform TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd., should be banned in the U.S. Trump tried to ban TikTok through an executive order during his last presidency but has now suggested he opposes a ban.

During Carr’s tenure, he has advocated for streamlining regulations to speed 5G infrastructure builds and partnered with organizations to draw more people into the telecom infrastructure workforce. He also leads a telehealth initiative for low-income Americans and veterans, according to the agency.

Carr graduated from Georgetown University and then the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law before clerking for federal appeals Judge Dennis Shedd. He then spent more than six years at Wiley Rein LLP, a well-known telecom law firm in Washington.

“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,” Pai wrote on X.

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(With assistance from Natalie Choy, Dana Hull, Meghashyam Mali and Joshua Green.)