A comparison of Brendan Carr’s old and new remarks on the topic might suggest we’re looking at a case of ID theft. Why does he no longer grasp the things that seemed clear to him very recently?
The unprecedented sight of the FCC goading ABC into suspending comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show for allegedly showing insufficient grief over the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk has drawn bipartisan outrage from liberals and libertarians alike.
But after months of seeing President Trump’s FCC exploit its role as overseer of airwaves and approver of telecom mergers to threaten broadcasters for allegedly undermining the president and his allies, it’s important to remember that its chairman, Brendan Carr, has a history of opposing the abuse of government power to punish speech.
For example, since joining the commission in 2017, he has been a reliable voice opposing net-neutrality regulations barring internet providers from favoring or impeding particular sites, calling those rules a threat to internet freedom.
He called the 2015 version of net-neutrality regulation “Obama-era FCC’s regulatory overreach” and decried its 2024 revival under President Biden as a play to “expand the government’s control over every feature of the Internet ecosystem.”
In a speech at the State of the Net policy conference in 2019, he defined the competition between the US and China to build 5G as a contest of values: “Do we want permissionless innovation? Do we want free speech? Do we want rule of law?”
When Democratic members of the House took issue in 2021 with TV providers’ carriage of channels like One American News Network that had presented President Trump’s lies about the 2020 election as facts, he took offense in a lengthy statement that called their inquiry “a chilling transgression of the free speech rights that every media outlet in this country enjoys.
