Brendan Thomas Carr (born January 5, 1979) is an American lawyer who has served as the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) since 2025. Carr served as a commissioner of the FCC since 2017.
Carr studied government at Georgetown University and graduated from the Columbus School of Law in 2005. He worked in private practice before joining the FCC in 2012 as an attorney and becoming an advisor to Commissioner Ajit Pai in 2014. After Pai became the commission's chair in January 2017, Carr was appointed its general counsel. In June, President Donald Trump nominated Carr to serve as a commissioner of the FCC. As commissioner, Carr initially focused on networks, although 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 (2023).
In November 2024, president-elect Trump named Carr as his chair of the FCC. He took office following Trump's second inauguration. As chair, Carr has voiced support for punishing broadcasters over alleged anti-conservative biases.
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.[3] After Pai became the chair of the FCC in January 2017, Carr was appointed as its general counsel.[4] He married Machalagh Carr, the former oversight staff director on the House Committee on Ways and Means, with whom he has two children.[5]
Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (2017–2025)
In May 2017, Politico Pro reported that Carr was among several potential candidates to be nominated for the vacant FCC seat previously occupied by Tom Wheeler.[6] On June 28, president Donald Trump nominated Carr to the commission.[7] 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.[8] On August 2, the committee advanced his nomination, though Democrats objected to a five-year continuation of Carr's term.[9] The following day, Carr was confirmed by the Senate in a voice vote.[10] As commissioner, he visited a fiber optic cable manufacturing facility in North Carolina that month.[11] Carr marked his tenure with a focus on wireless infrastructure policy, particularly in streamlining deployment of 5G towers.[12] He voted to repeal net neutrality rules in December.[13]
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.[14] 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.[15] 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,[16] Carr was confirmed by the Senate on January 3, 2019, amid a government shutdown that furloughed most employees at the FCC.[17]
At a regulatory summit in Brussels in February 2018, Carr outlined a three-step process to ensure regulators are prepared for 5G.[18] Later that month, he discussed streamlining the historic and environmental review process for 5G networks.[19] Carr's plan received criticism from city officials[20] and Native American tribes—whose role in the review processes would be nullified, and consequently Democrats,[21] though it was praised by telecommunications companies, including Sprint and AT&T;[21] the plan was approved by the Federal Communications Commission in September.[22] In July, Carr proposed a US$100 million telehealth fund for low-income Americans.[23] The following month, the commission unanimously approved the fund as an extension of the Universal Service Fund.[24]
Leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic, Carr began philosophically distancing himself from Pai, focusing on reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.[25] He continued to focus on 5G, announcing a blueprint for the FCC to follow in March 2021.[26] Nomination delays from president Joe Biden enabled the FCC to retain a majority.[27] His efforts to advance 5G faced resistance from the Biden administration, leading to a public conflict between Carr and administration officials, including the president.[28] He led an effort to withhold authorization from Chinese manufacturers, including Huawei and ZTE.[29]
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 FCC. Carr wrote several pages involving telecommunications and technology regulation for Project 2025.[30] His work included calling for regulating technology companies, imposing transparency rules, and ending Section 230.[31]
Chair of the Federal Communications Commission (2025–present)
Appointment and early investigations
As early as 2020, Carr was believed to be a possible successor to chairman Ajit Pai.[32] After Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election, he was widely expected to be named as chair of the Federal Communications Commission.[33] According to The New York Times, Elon Musk privately expressed support for Carr, with whom he had a good relationship.[34] On November 17, 2024, Trump named Carr as his nominee for chair.[35] Carr stated his intention to broaden the FCC's mandate to include social media companies.[36] 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.[37] 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.[38] The following day, he requested a transcript of vice president Kamala Harris's interview on 60 Minutes (1968–present);[39] the FCC released the transcript in February.[40]
Carr heralded a shift in the Federal Communications Commission's purpose towards leveraging the bully pulpit against opponents of Trump's ideology.[41] An ally of Elon Musk,[41] he awarded Musk's SpaceX federal radio spectrum[42] and began an investigation into EchoStar over 5G deployment requirements, threatening to give satellite spectrum to SpaceX instead;[43] in response to the inquiry, EchoStar stopped paying interest payments.[44] In April, Carr urged European countries to sign contracts with SpaceX over Chinese competitors.[45] He eliminated a proposal that would have barred landlords from forcing bulk internet service on residents[46] and publicly questioned the Global Positioning System, seeking alternatives.[47] In a public notice, Carr asked for "unnecessary" regulations to remove.[48]
In February, Carr ordered investigations into diversity, equity, and inclusion practices at Comcast[49] and into KCBS over its coverage of immigration actions in San Jose, California.[50] In apparent response to Carr, Paramount Global, which had a merger pending before the FCC, ended its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.[51] In March, Carr told Bloomberg News that he would block any mergers involving companies with diversity, equity, and inclusion;[52] the following week, he announced that he had opened an investigation into The Walt Disney Company over its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.[53] 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".[54] The following month, T-Mobile closed its joint venture deal with Lumos Networks after agreeing to end its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.[55] 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.[56]
Carr speaking at a committee meeting in September 2025
The Federal Communications Commission returned to a quorum with Trusty's confirmation, giving Republicans a majority.[57] Carr moved to end net neutrality, though a federal appellate court had already struck down net neutrality regulations,[58] and refused to enforce a rule that would have lowered prison phone call prices.[59] 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.[60] The commitment included installing an ombudsman to ensure a "diversity of viewpoints".[61] Carr suggested in an interview with CNBC that the cancellation of The Late Show franchise (1993–present) helped CBS News comply with regulations.[62] 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.[63]
In September 2025, Carr pressured the Walt Disney Company, which owns the American Broadcasting Company, over comments Jimmy Kimmel made about the murder of Charlie Kirk, on his eponymous ABC show Jimmy Kimmel Live! (2003–present). Carr encouraged local stations to preempt Kimmel's show,[64] stating in comments made on the right-wing political commentator Benny Johnson's podcast that the FCC "can do this the easy way or the hard way." Carr added that "companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."[65] Shortly afterwards, Nexstar Media Group, the largest television station owner in the United States, stated that it would not air Jimmy Kimmel Live! "for the foreseeable future".[66] Nexstar was in the process of acquiring Tegna, the fourth-largest broadcaster, a move necessitating FCC approval;[67] the company later denied that Carr's comments influenced its decision.[66] Hours later, ABC announced that it was pulling the show indefinitely.[64] According to The Wall Street Journal, the company's decision was made by Bob Iger, the chief executive of Disney, and Dana Walden, the co-chairman of Disney Entertainment.[68]
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, joined by House minority whip Katherine Clark and House Democratic Caucus chair Pete Aguilar, denounced Carr's comments and called for him to resign.[69] Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer also called for Carr's resignation,[70] and along with ten Senate Democrats, wrote a letter to Carr criticizing his comments and demanding answers to questions about their implications for broadcasters.[71] Several Republican members of Congress criticized or expressed concern about Carr's comments,[71] including Texas senator Ted Cruz, the chair of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, who compared Carr's statements to mafia tactics and called the threats "dangerous as hell".[72]
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.[12] As a commissioner, he voted to repeal a rule that required broadcast stations to have a physical studio for each coverage area.[77] Carr criticized an internal plan from the first Trump administration, obtained by Axios, that would nationalize 5G network construction[78] and later decried it as "China-like nationalization".[79] 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.[80] 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.[81] Carr opposed secretary of transportation Pete Buttigieg's efforts to delay 5G network deployments amid apparent risks to flight safety.[82] He dissented in a vote to revoke Starlink's rural broadband subsidies.[83]
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,[89] 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.[90] 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.[91] He approved of the merger of Sprint Corporation and T-Mobile US[92] and the attempted acquisition of Tegna by Standard General.[93] Carr rejected the Open Markets Institute's argument that the FCC could block the then-proposed acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk.[94] After PayPal modified its policies to allow the company to fine users for promoting misinformation, he criticized the move as "Orwellian".[95] In July 2022, Carr proposed forcing large technology companies to pay into the Universal Service Fund.[96] After Apple moved to shut down Beeper Mini, he called to investigate the company.[97]
Carr has voiced support for punishing broadcasters over alleged anti-conservative biases,[98] which includes cracking down on speech that Carr says doesn't serve the public interest which he describes as including bias against conservatives.[99] Following the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel in 2025, Carr stated that he believed public broadcasters should serve the public interest, and that "if there's local TV stations that don't think that running that programming does it, then they have every right under the law in their contracts to preempt it." He further stated that the U.S. was "in the midst of a massive shift in dynamics in the media ecosystem for lots of reasons, again, including the permission structure that President Trump's election has provided. And I would simply say we're not done yet with seeing the consequences of that." People magazine reported that after the suspension, social media users found previous comments made by Carr that were contrary to his stated reasons for pressuring the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel. In 2019, Carr stated that "The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the 'public interest.'" In another post from 2022, Carr stated that "Political satire is one of the oldest and most important forms of free speech. It challenges those in power while using humor to draw more into the discussion. That's why people in influential positions have always targeted it for censorship."[65]
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.[100] 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".[101] Carr sought to add the drone manufacturer DJI to the Covered List,[102] and referred to a report from The Washington Post that showed that DJI accepted Chinese state funding as "deeply concerning".[103] Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, he began directly calling out Chinese officials on social media.[104] Carr supported a ban on Huawei and ZTE devices.[105] Carr has opposed TikTok over national security concerns; the Post described him as its "loudest media critic".[106] In June 2022, he called for Apple and Google to remove the app from their stores,[107] after BuzzFeed News reported that TikTok employees in China had purportedly been able to access data from American users.[108]
↑ Hendel 2025: No longer: He has also abandoned the FCC's posture as an independent regulator in favor of an openly personal embrace of Trump. … In April, alongside officials at the Justice Department, Carr donned a golden pin featuring Donald Trump's face.
↑ Stelter 2025: Carr has been a regular at Mar-a-Lago as well as Fox News, and earlier this year he showed his loyalty to Trump by wearing a gold lapel pin of the president's face.
Broadwater, Luke (September 19, 2025). "Trump Says Critical Coverage of Him Is 'Really Illegal'". The New York Times. Retrieved September 21, 2025. Mr. Carr has argued that he can withhold licenses that aren't being used in the public's interest to crack down on speech that doesn't serve local viewers, which includes coverage that is biased against conservatives, a standard that many telecommunications experts and Democrats say is too broad.
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