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Brendan Carr
American lawyer (born 1979) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Brendan Thomas Carr (born January 5, 1979) is an American lawyer who has served as the chair of the Federal Communications Commission since 2025. Carr has additionally served as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission since 2017.
Carr studied government from Georgetown University and graduated from the Columbus School of Law in 2005. He worked in private practice before joining the Federal Communications Commission in 2012 as an attorney before becoming an advisor to commissioner Ajit Pai in 2014. After Pai became the commission's chair in January 2017, Carr was appointed as its general counsel.
In June 2017, president Donald Trump nominated Carr to serve as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission. As commissioner, Carr initially focused on 5G networks, though he began criticizing social media companies and China over perceived authoritarian policies later in his first term. He was involved in Project 2025 and wrote a section of The Heritage Foundation's Mandate for Leadership (2024).
In November 2024, president-elect Donald Trump named Carr as his chair of the Federal Communications Commission. He took office following Trump's second inauguration.
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Early life and education (1979–2005)
Brendan Thomas Carr was born on January 5, 1979, in Washington, D.C.[1] He graduated from Georgetown University in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts in government and a minors in history and anthropology and from the Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law magna cum laude in 2005 with a Juris Doctor. At the Catholic University of America, he was a law clerk for the Federal Communications Commission and interned for commissioner Kathleen Q. Abernathy. Additionally, he interned for the United States House Energy Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet.[2]
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Career
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Private practice and advisorship (2005–2017)
Carr worked for Wiley Rein from September 2005 to June 2012, temporarily working for Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit judge Dennis Shedd as a law clerk from 2008 to 2009. Carr joined the Federal Communications Commission in July 2012 as an attorney in the Office of General Counsel. He became an advisor to commissioner Ajit Pai in February 2014.[2] After Pai became the chair of the Federal Communications Commission in January 2017, Carr was appointed as its general counsel.[3] He married Machalagh Carr, the former oversight staff director on the House Committee on Ways and Means, with whom he has two children.[4]
Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (2017–present)
In May 2017, Politico Pro reported that Carr was among several potential candidates to be nominated for the vacant Federal Communications Commission seat previously occupied by Tom Wheeler.[5] On June 28, president Donald Trump nominated Carr to the commission.[6] Carr appeared before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation the following month in which he defended his independence over his association to Ajit Pai.[7] On August 2, the committee advanced his nomination, though Democrats objected to a five-year continuation of Carr's term.[8] The following day, Carr was confirmed by the Senate in a voice vote.[9] As commissioner, he visited a fiber optic cable manufacturing facility in North Carolina that month.[10] Carr marked his tenure with a focus on wireless infrastructure policy, particularly in streamlining deployment of 5G towers.[11] He voted to repeal net neutrality rules in December.[12]
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Though Carr was confirmed through the remainder of Wheeler's term, his nomination for a five-year term elapsed at the conclusion of the first session of the 115th United States Congress in January 2018. Democrats intended to combine Carr's reconfirmation with a nominee to succeed commissioner Mignon Clyburn, who was widely expected to retire.[13] The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation voted to advance Carr's nomination for a five-year term in a 14–13 vote along party lines on January 18; Democrats mounted opposition over Carr's vote to repeal net neutrality.[14] After his nomination was temporarily held up by West Virginia senator Joe Manchin over exempted rural broadband subsidies in the Mobility Fund and by Alaska senators Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski over an Alaskan telecommunications company's exclusion from the rural health subsidies,[15] Carr was confirmed by the Senate on January 3, 2019, amid a government shutdown that furloughed most employees at the Federal Communications Commission.[16]
At a regulatory summit in Brussels in February 2018, Carr outlined a three-step process to ensure regulators are prepared for 5G.[17] Later that month, he discussed streamlining the historic and environmental review process for 5G networks.[18] Carr's plan received criticism from city officials[19] and Native American tribes—whose role in the review processes would be nullified, and consequently Democrats,[20] though it was praised by telecommunications companies, including Sprint and AT&T;[20] the plan was approved by the Federal Communications Commission in September.[21] In July, Carr proposed a US$100 million telehealth fund for low-income Americans.[22] The following month, the commission unanimously approved the fund as an extension of the Universal Service Fund.[23]
Leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, Carr began philosophically distancing himself from Pai, focusing on reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.[24] He continued to focus on 5G, announcing a blueprint for the Federal Communications Commission to follow in March 2021.[25] Nomination delays from president Joe Biden enabled the Federal Communications Commission to retain a majority.[26] His efforts to advance 5G faced resistance from the Biden administration, leading to a public conflict between Carr and administration officials, including the president.[27] He led an effort to withhold authorization from Chinese manufacturers, including Huawei and ZTE.[28]
In September 2022, a policy advisor to Ajit Pai contacted Carr to introduce him to Wesley Coopersmith, the chief of staff to the president of the The Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts. Coopersmith informed him of a working project, later known as Project 2025, to redevelop the federal government towards a conservative philosophy, sending him the first and seventh edition of The Heritage Foundation's Mandate for Leadership. Carr told Coopersmith that he was interested in contributing to Project 2025; despite the possibility that Carr's work could be considered political activity by Internal Revenue Service statute, an ethics lawyer for the Federal Communications Commission determined that Carr would not be in violation of the Hatch Act, though she warned that he should distance himself from his work at the Federal Communications Commission. Carr wrote several pages involving telecommunications and technology regulation for Project 2025.[29] His work included calling for regulating technology companies, imposing transparency rules, and ending Section 230.[30]
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Chair of the Federal Communications Commission (2025–present)
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As early as 2020, Carr was believed to be a possible successor to chairman Ajit Pai.[31] After Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election, he was widely expected to be named as chair of the Federal Communications Commission.[32] According to The New York Times, Elon Musk privately expressed support for Carr, with whom he had a good relationship.[33] On November 17, 2024, Trump named Carr as his nominee for chair.[34] Carr stated his intention to broaden the Federal Communications Commission's mandate to include social media companies.[35] He became chairman after the Trump's second inauguration on January 20, 2025, though he lacked a Republican majority, pending the confirmation of Olivia Trusty.[36] That month, Carr ordered an investigation into NPR and PBS sponsorships as a violation of commercial advertising regulations and stated that he did not believe Congress should continue to fund both organizations.[37] The following day, he requested a transcript of vice president Kamala Harris's interview on 60 Minutes (1968–present);[38] the Federal Communications Commission released the transcript in February.[39]
Carr heralded a shift in the Federal Communications Commission's purpose towards leveraging the bully pulpit against opponents of Trump's ideology.[40] An ally of Elon Musk,[40] he awarded Musk's SpaceX federal radio spectrum[41] and began an investigation into EchoStar over 5G deployment requirements, threatening to give satellite spectrum to SpaceX instead;[42] in response to the inquiry, EchoStar stopped paying interest payments.[43] In April, Carr urged European countries to sign contracts with SpaceX over Chinese competitors.[44] He eliminated a proposal that would have barred landlords from forcing bulk internet service on residents[45] and publicly questioned the Global Positioning System, seeking alternatives.[46] In a public notice, Carr asked for "unnecessary" regulations to remove.[47]
In February, Carr ordered investigations into diversity, equity, and inclusion practices at Comcast[48] and into KCBS over its coverage of immigration actions in San Jose, California.[49] In apparent response to Carr, Paramount Global, which had a merger pending before the Federal Communications Commission, ended its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.[50] In March, Carr told Bloomberg News that he would block any mergers involving companies with diversity, equity, and inclusion;[51] the following week, he announced that he had opened an investigation into The Walt Disney Company over its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.[52] Citing a complaint from Great American Media, Carr sent a letter to Google chief executive Sundar Pichai and YouTube executive Neal Mohan asking if YouTube TV was engaging in "faith-based discrimination".[53] The following month, T-Mobile closed its joint venture deal with Lumos Networks after agreeing to end its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.[54] The Federal Communications Commission approved Verizon's acquisition of Frontier Communications in May, assuring a commitment from Verizon that it would end its diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.[55]
The Federal Communications Commission returned to a quorum with Trusty's confirmation, giving Republicans a majority.[56] Carr moved to end net neutrality, though a federal appellate court had already struck down net neutrality regulations,[57] and refused to enforce a rule that would have lowered prison phone call prices.[58] The commission approved Paramount Global's merger with Skydance Media in July, achieving a commitment from Skydance that the resulting company, Paramount Skydance Corporation, would not have diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.[59] The commitment included installing an ombudsman to ensure a "diversity of viewpoints".[60] Carr suggested in an interview with CNBC that the cancellation of The Late Show franchise (1993–present) helped CBS News comply with regulations.[61] The Freedom of the Press Foundation filed an ethics complaint against him that month, citing his statements and actions in the merger process of Skydance Media and Paramount Global.[62]
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Domestic and foreign issues
Carr denounced the Unite the Right rally in August 2017.[63] In response to the World Health Organization's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, he stated that the organization had been "beclowned". Weeks after the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump, Carr described the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence as a "secret and partisan surveillance machine" and attacked its chairman, Adam Schiff, questioning the collection and publication of phone records in the impeachment inquiry.[3]
Telecommunications, media, and business affairs
In an interview with Politico Pro's Margaret Harding McGill, Carr stated that he found net neutrality rules unnecessary. He expressed support for encouraging industry investment and reforming spectrum auctions at the legislative level.[11] As a commissioner, he voted to repeal a rule that required broadcast stations to have a physical studio for each coverage area.[64] Carr criticized an internal plan from the first Trump administration, obtained by Axios, that would nationalize 5G network construction[65] and later decried it as "China-like nationalization".[66] After Democrats on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce pressured cable providers to answer to concerns that television programming contributed to misinformation about the 2020 presidential election in a letter, he described the letter as a "chilling transgression" of freedom of speech.[67] In July 2021, Carr appeared with Florida governor Ron DeSantis to urge president Joe Biden to offer internet service to Cubans in an effort to circumvent censorship, an act that would allegedly violate international law.[68] Carr opposed secretary of transportation Pete Buttigieg's efforts to delay 5G network deployments amid apparent risks to flight safety.[69] He dissented in a vote to revoke Starlink's rural broadband subsidies.[70]
In response to an opinion column in The Washington Post by Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, outlining his ideas for removing harmful content, Carr criticized Zuckerberg's call for government regulation as a violation of the First Amendment.[71] He later praised Zuckerberg's "instincts" to show Trump's posts that amplified COVID-19 misinformation unaltered.[72] Carr supported Trump's "Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship" targeting Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.[73] As Trump's social media use was threatened by misinformation, including involving the 2020 election, he offered a conservative case for reinterpreting Section 230, reaffirming Pai's supposed ability to do so in October 2020.[74] His arguments were later litigated by the editorial board at The Wall Street Journal, The Heritage Foundation, and senators Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz.[24]
Carr supported a bill from Utah senator Mike Lee that would force the Federal Communications Commission to act within six months to act on mergers,[75] though he approved of Ajit Pai's motion to hold a legal hearing over the attempted acquisition of Tribune Media by Sinclair Broadcast Group months later, citing Sinclair Broadcast Group's divestiture plan.[76] In response to criticism from Democratic commissioners over a US$48 million fine against Sinclair that the commission's Republican majority approved in May 2020 following an investigation settlement, Carr referred to dissent as politically motivated.[77] He approved of the merger of Sprint Corporation and T-Mobile US[78] and the attempted acquisition of Tegna by Standard General.[79] Carr rejected the Open Markets Institute's argument that the Federal Communications Commission could block the then-proposed acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk.[80] After PayPal modified its policies to allow the company to fine users for promoting misinformation, he criticized the move as "Orwellian".[81] In July 2022, Carr proposed forcing large technology companies to pay into the Universal Service Fund.[82] After Apple moved to shut down Beeper Mini, he called to investigate the company.[83]
China policy
As China Mobile sought access to the U.S. market, Carr called for the enterprise's application to be denied and for China Unicom and China Telecom to be examined.[84] At a meeting to discuss blocking broadband subsidies for companies that do not remove equipment developed by Huawei and ZTE, he warned that cell towers in missile fields in Montana are "running on Huawei equipment".[85] Carr sought to add the drone manufacturer DJI to the Covered List[86] and referred to a report from The Washington Post that showed that DJI accepted Chinese state funding as "deeply concerning".[87] Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, he began directly calling out Chinese officials on social media.[88] Carr supported a ban on Huawei and ZTE devices.[89] Carr has opposed TikTok over national security concerns; the Post described him as its "loudest media critic".[90] In June 2022, he called for Apple and Google to remove the app from their stores[91] after BuzzFeed News reported that TikTok employees in China had purportedly been able to access data from American users.[92]
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