By David Shepardson and Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President-elect Donald Trump has picked Brendan Carr, a critic of the Biden administration's telecom policies and Big Tech, as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, he said in a statement on Sunday.
Carr, 45, is currently the top Republican on the FCC (BME:FCC), the independent agency that regulates telecommunications.
He has been a harsh critic of the FCC's decision not to finalize nearly $900 million in broadband subsidies for Elon Musk's SpaceX satellite internet unit Starlink, as well as the Commerce Department's $42 billion broadband infrastructure program and President Joe Biden's spectrum policy.
Last week, Carr wrote to Meta's Facebook (NASDAQ:META), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)'s Google, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) saying they had taken steps to censor Americans. Carr said on Sunday the FCC must "restore free speech rights for everyday Americans."
Democratic Senator Ed Markey said on Sunday Carr's letter amounted to "a regulator implicitly threatening private companies for their speech. The FCC under Trump is prepared to become the Federal Censorship Commission."
The president-elect has scorned actions by Disney (NYSE:DIS)'s ABC, Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA)'s NBC and Paramount Global's CBS and suggested they could lose their FCC licenses for various actions. Trump also sued CBS over its "60 Minutes" interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Carr criticized NBC for letting Harris appear on "Saturday Night Live" just before the election.
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Trump in his first term called on the FCC to revoke broadcast licenses, prompting then FCC Chair Ajit Pai to reject the idea, saying "the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content."
The National Association of Broadcasters praised Carr as "a steadfast leader in holding Big Tech accountable and supporting policies that will allow local broadcast stations to better compete with these behemoths and thrive."
Carr has called on the FCC to loosen rules that limit the number of radio and TV stations a company can own in a single market and criticized the Biden FCC's digital discrimination rule arguing it give "the federal government a roving mandate to micromanage nearly every aspect of how the internet functions."
The FCC issues eight-year licenses to individual broadcast stations, not to broadcast networks.
In 2022, Carr, a strong critic of China, became the first FCC commissioner to visit Taiwan. He has been an advocate of the FCC's hard line on Chinese telecom companies.
Carr was a strong opponent of the FCC's decision in April to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules that were repealed during the first Trump administration. The Biden FCC rules were put on hold by a federal appeals court.
Trump nominated Carr to the FCC in his first administration in January 2017 after he had served as the FCC's general counsel.
The incoming administration will need to nominate a Republican to fill a third seat on the five-member commission before it can take full control of the agency. Democrats did not gain full control of the FCC until September 2023 - more than two-and-a-half years into Biden's term.
Carr "is a warrior for free speech, and has fought against the regulatory lawfare that has stifled Americans’ freedoms, and held back our economy," Trump said in a statement.