Trump FCC Pick Brendan Carr Wants to Be the Speech Police. That’s Not His Job

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, wants to refashion the broadband regulator into the nation’s speech police on social platforms.

As FCC chair, Carr would set the agency’s agenda on issues like broadband deployment, net neutrality, and telecom privacy. But since Carr was nominated as a commissioner in 2017 by Trump, he’s spent much of his time focusing on contentious internet speech rules that the agency has historically never played a role in. Without a massive regulatory overhaul from Congress or the courts, passing his agenda would be an uphill battle.

In a Sunday statement appointing Carr, Trump called him “a warrior for Free Speech” who will “end the regulatory onslaught that has been crippling America’s Job Creators.” Thanking Trump, Carr wrote on X, “We must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans.”

Carr authored the Project 2025 chapter on the FCC, writing that the agency needed to prioritize issues like “reining in Big tech” and “promoting national security.” Specifically on his to-do list, Carr says that the FCC should issue an order that reinterprets Section 230 to eliminate the “expansive” liability immunities it provides to social platforms. Section 230 is part of the Communications Decency Act passed in 1996, which protects internet companies from being sued over content that appears on their platforms and has given companies the ability to decide what content can or cannot be posted.

But there is no precedent for the FCC governing online speech, and experts tell WIRED that the agency has no authority to act on Trump and Carr’s speech prescriptions.

“This is a radical view that they can somehow do something about Section 230 at the FCC,” says Chris Lewis, president and CEO at Public Knowledge, a progressive tech advocacy group.

In his Project 2025 write-up, Carr specifically argues that companies should allow users to personalize their own content filters and that platforms should remove only illegal user-generated content. Carr has also forged a relationship with X owner Elon Musk, who has also suggested that platforms like his own should only take down unlawful content like child abuse imagery. (Carr appeared with Musk and Trump at a Tuesday SpaceX launch.)

“What he can do and wants to do is use his bully pulpit to bully companies that moderate content in a way he doesn’t like,” says Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, a digital rights advocacy group. “And if he continues to do that, he’s very likely to run smack into the First Amendment, which, contrary to misconception, is the real thing that protects online speech.” Section 230 protects social media companies from being sued over the content users post on their platforms, while the First Amendment explicitly bars the government from interfering in someone’s ability to exercise free speech. Over the summer, the Supreme Court ruled that a company’s moderation decisions are protected under the First Amendment.

As for Section 230, the Supreme Court may have just made it more difficult for administrative agencies like the FCC to reinterpret it to their liking. Over the summer, the court overturned Chevron v. Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC), a decision that had allowed for government agencies to independently interpret their authorities. With the Chevron deference made moot, it could be an uphill battle for the FCC to make its own interpretations of the law.

“Agencies are basically losing the ability to interpret how they can enforce when language is vague in the statute,” says Lewis. “Section 230’s language is actually very short and very straightforward and has no FCC action attached to it.” If Carr decided to issue a rule modifying Section 230, it would likely be met with legal challenges. Still, Republicans currently control all three branches of government and could either rule in the administration’s favor or pass new legislation putting the FCC as the top cop on the beat.

Trump has tried to deputize the FCC into policing online speech before. In 2020, Trump signed an executive order instructing the FCC to begin a rule-making process to reinterpret when Section 230 would apply to social platforms like Facebook and Instagram. The Center for Democracy and Technology, which receives funding from big tech companies, challenged the order as unconstitutional, saying that it unfairly punished X, then known as Twitter, “to chill the constitutionally protected speech of all online platforms and individuals.”

Months later, FCC general counsel Tom Johnson published a blog post arguing that the agency has the authority to reinterpret the foundational internet law. A few days after that, then FCC chairman Ajit Pai announced that the agency would move forward on a rule-making process, but no rule was ordered before President Joe Biden’s inauguration, giving Democrats control over agency decisions.

“It was ignored and rejected, basically,” says Lewis.

Democratic FCC members called the Section 230 directive “politically motivated and legally unsound.” At the time, current FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel said, “The FCC has no business being the president’s speech police.”

Concerns over Carr’s leadership at the commission extend beyond regulating social media moderation. In Carr’s Project 2025 chapter, he said that the agency should not only target internet companies over censorship concerns, but TV and radio broadcasters as well. Trump has regularly threatened or sued media outlets over negative coverage. Just this week, the former president sued The New York Times and Penguin Random House for alleged bias.

In recent letters and statements, Carr appears eager to get to work. When Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on Saturday Night Live earlier this month, Carr floated the idea of revoking NBC’s broadcasting license, something that is in the FCC’s control.

“This is a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule,” Carr wrote on X at the time. Carr also recently suggested that the FCC could go after 60 Minutes over a complaint that the program violated the agency’s news distortion rule by editing an interview with Kamala Harris. CBS News maintains that the clip was an honest depiction of Harris’ answer. Carr said this week that the FCC would examine the complaint as it reviews a proposed merger between Skydance and Paramount global, CBS’s parent company.

Carr has also taken Musk’s side in regulatory issues the Starlink maker has before the FCC. In a dissenting statement on the FCC’s decision to bar Starlink from broadband subsidies, Carr equated the agency’s actions to “regulatory harassment.” With a Republican majority and Carr as FCC chair, he would have more control over which internet companies receive federal funding.

It remains unclear exactly how Carr would pursue changes to Section 230 and if they would survive legal scrutiny. But if the agency cannot go after online speech, Carr’s chairmanship could be defined more by what it decided not to do in place of what it couldn’t.

“He wants to abdicate his responsibility running an agency that’s supposed to protect the public from exploitation, greed, and abuse of big telecom companies by pointing his finger and waving over there at this other set of companies that he doesn’t actually have any meaningful authority to regulate,” says Greer.