U.S. President-elect Donald Trump claimed on Sunday that his nomination of Brendan Carr to chair the Federal Communications Commission would elevate "a warrior for free speech," but one veteran journalist warned the selection of Carr is a "key step in Trump's assault on the free press," while others expressed concerns about the future of net neutrality and censorship on social media platforms.
A portion of Project 2025—the far-right policy document that Trump repeatedly said he had nothing to do with—was authored by Carr, who has been an FCC commissioner since 2017.
Carr wrote in Project 2025 about "reining in Big Tech" and called for Section 230 of the Communication Act to be limited in order to stop what conservatives have called discrimination against right-wing views by Facebook, Google, and other Silicon Valley giants. Carr was the only current government official to co-author Project 2025.
Section 230 affirms that online platforms are not the "publishers" of users' content and are permitted to use content moderation "in good faith" as they see fit, to limit content that is violent, bigoted, or otherwise objectionable.
The U.S. Supreme Court this year affirmed in Netchoice v. Paxton that content moderation is protected by the First Amendment, but both Carr and Trump have decried Section 230 as censoring conservative views.
"When people tell you what they plan to do, you should believe them. Brendan Carr has clearly stated that he plans to attack Section 230 and force online platforms to carry sludge," said Adam Kovacevich, founder and CEO of progressive tech coaltion Chamber of Progress. "That's why Democrats need to defend Section 230, which protects content moderation and keeps the Internet from becoming a cesspool."
Last week, Carr wrote to tech companies including Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple, accusing them of silencing conservatives by partnering with NewsGuard, which rates the credibility of news websites, and calling the companies a "censorship cartel."
As an FCC commissioner, said City University of New York journalism professor Jeff Jarvis, Carr "is already trying to force platforms to carry right-wing propaganda."
Carr also called for social media platform TikTok to be banned in the U.S. if it does not cut ties with its China-based parent company, ByteDance.
TikTok sued the U.S. government earlier this year over the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversaries Act, which threatens the company with a ban unless ByteDance sells the platform.
Supporters of net neutrality rules, the Obama-era regulations that stop internet service providers from blocking or throttling content and creating "fast lanes" for web companies that pay a fee, condemned Carr's nomination, saying the commissioner will "kill" the regulations that the Biden FCC has worked to revive.
"He's committed to ending net neutrality and undermining the FCC's ability to hold accountable companies like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon for abusing internet users," said Craig Aaron, co-CEO of public advocacy group Free Press.
Carr's nomination was announced two weeks after the commissioner claimed on social media that Vice President Kamala Harris' appearance on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" was "a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC's Equal Time rule."
The FCC's equal time guidelines do not require networks to "provide opposing candidates with programs identical to the initiating candidate." A spokesperson for the commission said in a statement after Carr's complaint that "the FCC has not made any determination regarding political programming rules."
The FCC is barred from punishing TV networks for their editorial decisions in most cases, but with Trump having called on the commission to strip companies like NBC and CBS of their licenses because of what he views as unfair coverage of him, advocates expressed concern that Carr could use his position to pressure and threaten networks.
"Be wary of any reporting that regurgitates Trump's claim that Brendan Carr is a 'warrior for Free Speech,'" said Tim Karr, senior director of strategy and communications for Free Press. "He's actually the opposite, willing to use the FCC to go after TV broadcasters that are 'unfair' to Trump, or to punish fact-checkers, like NewsGuard, that vet Trump's many false claims."
Carr has aligned himself with billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who spent nearly $120 million to support Trump's presidential campaign. The commissioner dissented in 2022 when the FCC revoked an $885 million grant that had been given to Starlink, Musk's satellite internet provider; the Democratic-led FCC said Starlink didn't meet the requirements for the commission's Digital Rural Opportunity Fund.
"Carr wants to use his perch to funnel money to companies run by Trump cronies like Elon Musk, while punishing opponents by increasing their fees or ending subsidies and contracts," said Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future. "In short, Carr plans to use the full weight of the FCC to help billionaires and authoritarians while abandoning the agency's actual mission of protecting the public interest."
Carr, said Aaron, "has been campaigning for this job with promises to do the bidding of Donald Trump and Elon Musk," and "got this job because he will carry out Trump and Musk's personal vendettas."
"While styling himself as a free-speech champion, Carr refused to stand up when Trump threatened to take away the broadcast licenses of TV stations for daring to fact check him during the campaign," said Aaron. "This alone should be disqualifying. The public needs a watchdog looking out for them at this independent agency, not an attack dog for Trump and Musk."
"His close relationships with far-right zealots and his craven cozying up to the CEOs he's supposed to be regulating tell you everything about the kind of FCC chairman he will be," he added. "For more than a year now Carr has been auditioning for this job, desperate to gain Trump's attention and show how he's willing to bend the rules and twist the law to serve this administration. His groveling is now being rewarded with a promotion, and it's the American public who will pay a heavy price."
