Trump picks Brendan Carr to lead the Federal Communications Commission

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump announced Sunday that he has selected Brendan Carr, a Republican on the Federal Communications Commission who wrote a chapter on the regulatory agency in the conservative Project 2025 playbook, to be the FCC’s chairman.

Carr argued in the Project 2025 chapter that the agency, which is tasked with regulating radio, television and cable communications, should prioritize “reining in Big Tech, promoting national security, unleashing economic prosperity, and ensuring FCC accountability and good governance.”

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

Carr, who is the top Republican on the commission, thanked Trump in a post to Xsaying he is “humbled and honored to serve as Chairman of the FCC. Now we get to work.”

Carr did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

In his chapterCarr suggested TikTok should be banned if it fails to disentangle from its China-based parent company — an issue on which Trump held conflicting views before he joined the app 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 for the content on their platforms and allows them to moderate certain objectionable content “in good faith.”

“Congress should do so by ensuring that Internet companies no longer have carte blanche to censor protected speech while maintaining their Section 230 protections,” Carr wrote in Project 2025’s book.

The FCC is composed of five commissioners serving five-year terms, and only three are allowed to be from the same party, meaning it is bipartisan.