It’s official: Brendan Carr has been selected by Trump to head the FCC. It signals that the days of free speech are numbered.
Notice: We understand that the collapse of America can be distressing to some American readers, but help is available. If you are suffering from a mental health crisis, you can call 988 to talk to someone.
Earlier this month, we published a report on what was perceived as the frontrunner choice to head the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). That person is Brendan Carr. Carr, of course, has major plans to put an end to the open internet and kill free speech on the internet. This while shovelling lots of money towards Elon Musk. There’s also the secondary concern that he would carry out the marching orders of convicted felon, Donald Trump, to revoke the broadcast licenses of all media outlets that dared to question Trump somewhere along the line. This among a host of other concerns.
Well, today, we are leaning that Carr is no longer the suspected front runner for the position. Reports have surfaced that says that he has been officially picked by Trump to head up the agency. From the BBC:
US President-elect Donald Trump has named “big tech” critic Brendan Carr to lead the US communications regulator, after he takes office in January 2025.
Carr has attacked what he sees as the censorship of conservative viewpoints by top social media firms other than X, a site owned by his ally and fellow Trump backer, Elon Musk.
He authored a chapter of Project 2025 – a “wish list” for a second Trump presidency by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Trump has distanced himself from the document.
Announcing Carr’s promotion to chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), an agency on which he has served for years, Trump called him a “warrior for free speech”.
So, a real shot across the bow for free speech. Carr, as noted, wrote the chapter surrounding technology of Project 2025. Now, there is an even bigger chance that this extremist vision for America, at least on this angle, is going to get carried out. Part of that, of course, includes anyone who questions Trump will be punished.
Karl Bode of Techdirt also wrote his thoughts on the pick:
Surprising exactly nobody, Donald Trump has appointed Brendan Carr to lead the nation’s top telecom and media regulator. As we noted last week, there’s zero daylight between Carr’s policies and the policies of unpopular telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast. Carr is as close to the dictionary definition of “regulatory capture” as you’re going to get (with a few additional wrinkles we’ll get to down below).
You might recall that Trump’s team promised it would “blacklist” any participants in Project 2025, back when it was pretending to distance itself from the unpopular policy platform. That promise is already out the window, given Carr wrote an entire Project 2025 chapter on how he planned to use the FCC to harass any tech and media companies that didn’t adequately bend the knee to Trump authoritarianism.
Carr’s top priority will be dutifully dismantling all remaining FCC broadband consumer protection efforts, whether that’s net neutrality, the FCC’s recent inquiry into shitty broadband usage caps, broadband consumer privacy protections, efforts to stop broadband “redlining” (read: racism in fiber deployment), good faith efforts to help the poor afford broadband, and efforts to stop your cable, phone, wireless, or broadband provider from ripping you off with shitty fees.
FCC’s consumer protection efforts have been on shaky ground for a while, but Trump 2.0 (read: “populism” that isn’t actually all that popular) will be the absolute death of them. The Trump-corrupted Supreme Court has already set the stage for telecoms (any U.S. company, really) to declare that absolutely any effort to protect consumers is a violation of the law. I wish I was being hyperbolic.
All fights over these sorts of issues now head to the state or local level, bogging the court system and regulatory reform down indefinitely (the entire point). If you live in a state that couldn’t care less about corporate oversight or consumer protection, you’re shit out of luck for the foreseeable future. Thank a Trump voter when the myriad impacts start to materialize. You may need to use pie charts.
So, should he sail through the nomination process (a likely thing at this point), he can quickly get down to the business of ripping apart the internet in numerous different ways. All we can do is watch the ensuing chaos that will inevitably happen. Here’s hoping those states that vowed to fight Trump hold the line.
Notice: We understand that the collapse of America can be distressing to some American readers, but help is available. If you are suffering from a mental health crisis, you can call 988 to talk to someone.
