Donald Trump appoints Brendan Carr as head of telecoms regulator, with tech giants in his sights

Brendan Carr has worked at the FCC since 2012, and has been one of its commissioners since 2017, appointed to the position by Donald Trump during his first term. He had previously worked as a lawyer specializing in regulatory issues. “Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft and others played a central role in the censorship cartel,” he had already declared on Friday, also on the X network.

Rural regions

“The Orwellian organization NewsGuard, along with fact-checking groups and advertising agencies, helped enforce one-sided narratives. The censorship cartel must be dismantled,” he added. For Donald Trump, Brendan Carr “will end the regulatory assault that has paralyzed American job creators and innovators, and ensure that the FCC meets the expectations of rural America,” he said. he further assured in his press release.

Internet access in rural areas is the subject that earned Brendan Carr the support of Elon Musk, appointed by Donald Trump to head a commission for “governmental efficiency”. In 2022, in fact, the FCC revoked a subsidy of $885 million which had been granted at the end of 2020 to Starlink, a satellite internet service provider, and one of Elon Musk's companies. This funding was supposed to bring high-speed internet to rural homes and businesses, but Starlink and the other company benefiting from these funds “failed to demonstrate that the providers were capable of providing the promised service” , the FCC had indicated.

Consequences in the media?

Brendan Carr then spoke out against this decision. On October 14, while the electoral campaign was in full swing, he mentioned this decision in an article published in the Wall Street Journal: “in my opinion, this is nothing other than a retaliatory measure regulatory against one of the main targets of the left: Elon Musk”. Brendan Carr is also the author of the telecoms chapter of “Project 2025”, a nearly 900-page document developed by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, and road map for the overhaul of the federal state under Donald Trump .