FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s war on the First Amendment

ABC filed its formal opposition to the Federal Communications Commission’s effort to force it to submit to an early renewal of its broadcast station licenses, calling it an effort to chill the speech of broadcasters across the country.

In a new filing with the FCC, ABC charges that the agency’s willingness to pursue the early renewal of eight of its licenses far before they expire is “extraordinary and unprecedented.” The company alleges the FCC “has spent the last 18 months searching for some pretext for revoking the Stations’ licenses,” but charges that the agency’s real motivations for pursuing these licenses are clear: “Each is owned by ABC, and the Administration has openly and repeatedly called for the revocation of ABC’s licenses, because it dislikes the content and viewpoints expressed on ABC network programs.” The FCC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In Pasadena, California, there’s a cute red brick courtyard where one storefront isn’t like the rest. The glass doors open onto a sparse industrial hallway, which leads to a sunlit foyer with a large spiral staircase. Go up, and you’ll see a typical coworking space: open tables, healthy snacks, a collection of meeting rooms with glass walls. Follow one hallway most of the way back, and you’ll find Office 18.

There are no signs of life in this tiny private office that’s supposed to be the headquarters of Odyssey Robot, an upstart US drone company. We saw three small desks and chairs, but no power strips, no monitors, no keyboards or chargers or decorations. Two of the desks were covered with sealed cardboard packages.

The Federal Communications Commission will vote next month on whether a single company can own broadcast stations that reach more than 39 percent of US TV households.

In a Breitbart op-ed on Wednesday, Republican FCC Chair Brendan Carr announced an August 6th vote to end the national ownership cap rule, which was intended to prevent one company from dominating the media landscape and incentivize serving local communities. Carr argued the rise of social media and streaming platforms renders the rule obsolete, because national programmers can reach “100 percent of the country” without the need to access public airwaves. Under this reasoning, capping local broadcast TV owners at 39 percent “is preventing them from gaining the same scale that their competitors are free to enjoy.”

Under a new bipartisan bill, Americans could sue for damages if a government official illegally tries to coerce a social media, AI, or broadcasting company to remove their post — regardless of whether the platform actually does it.

Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced the JAWBONE Act on Thursday, which, in addition to letting individuals sue for these kinds of damages, would create new transparency requirements for government communications with social media, AI, and broadcast companies.

Several former Federal Communications Commissioners and staffers across parties are urging a federal appeals court to force a vote on the FCC’s news distortion policy, which they argue should be repealed after being abused by Republican Chair Brendan Carr.

On Tuesday, a group of petitioners asked the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to require the FCC to vote on a petition to repeal the News Distortion Policy. The petition was filed by the bipartisan group of former officials in November of 2025, after Carr invoked the rule to pressure ABC into temporarily suspending comedian Jimmy Kimmel. But only the agency chair can bring it to the full commission for a vote, and Carr has so far failed to do so while opposing a repeal. Now, the former officials are asking the court to grant a writ of mandamus, which would compel the FCC to take action. The goal is to force a response from the agency, putting each of the three commissioners on the record about the policy, and opening a potential legal pathway to remove a tool the group believes has been weaponized.

Under the guidance of consummate bully / chairman Brendan Carr, the FCC is taking steps toward cracking down on children’s entertainment that in any way explores the complexities of gender identity.

On Wednesday, the FCC’s Media Bureau announced that it is soliciting comments from the public about whether the TV ratings system has made sound decisions regarding children’s programming with transgender or nonbinary characters. In a statement about the commenting period the FCC said that it was soliciting feedback due to an alleged uptick in “significant concerns” about whether “controversial gender identity issues are being included or promoted in children’s programs without providing any disclosure or transparency to parents.”

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr never meant to threaten broadcast licenses over their coverage of the war in Iran, he told reporters after an event hosted by FGS and Semafor.

“My comments weren’t actually on the Iran war,” Carr said in response to a question from The Verge about his statement regarding coverage of the war. “I understand why people say that. I made a statement quoting a tweet.”

All year on The Vergecast, we’ve been tracking the many bizarre and problematic actions of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. There has been a lot to discuss! Then, this week, ahead of one of our last episodes of the year, Carr appeared in front of the Senate Commerce Committee and spent three hours explaining how he thinks about his job, the FCC, and the state of online communication and entertainment. It was a lot.

On this episode of The Vergecast, we begin with a dissection of Carr’s testimony, his threats against broadcasters, and the ways in which he’s using old ideas about content delivery to get his political way. Nilay and David walk through some of Carr’s most important quotes, explain the history of broadband regulation, and look ahead to how Carr might bring these same tactics to internet regulation next year.

A defiant Brendan Carr testified before the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday in his first public appearance before lawmakers since threatening broadcasters who aired comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show.

Over the course of nearly three hours, the Federal Communications Commission chairman ping-ponged between heated exchanges with Democrats and largely muted questions from Republicans. But at least some members of both parties expressed concern about regulators bending the First Amendment — though there’s little sign it will have much impact on Carr.

FCC chair Brendan Carr has reportedly written to the BBC, PBS, and NPR announcing an investigation into whether a controversial BBC documentary with a misleading edit of a Donald Trump speech was ever aired in the US.

Breitbart obtained a copy of the letter, which hasn’t been shared publicly by either Carr or the FCC. It’s addressed to Katherine Maher, the CEO of NPR, Paula Kerger, the president and CEO of PBS, and Tim Davie, who was the director-general of the BBC until he announced his resignation last week.

Broadband customers may find themselves blighted by unexpected charges again, thanks to Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr. The FCC has submitted a proposal to revise “unnecessary” requirements for internet service providers to itemize every fee on monthly bills, citing that it “may confuse customers.”

The proposal comes in response to complaints by ISPs over a Biden-era transparency rule that took effect in April 2024, arguing that their self-inflicted billing complexity made it impractical and burdensome to list every fee they impose on consumers. Compliance with the rule requires that ISPs either create a broadband “nutrition label” that makes it easier for consumers to accurately compare plan prices and avoid hidden fees, or include those hidden charges in the overall price.

Jimmy Kimmel made a triumphant return to television (in most, but not all, cities) on Tuesday night, devoting his monologue to his short but shocking removal from the air. The comedian tackled the uproar head-on, directly naming Brendan Carr, the Federal Communications Commission chair who had instigated Kimmel’s censorship. In a later segment, he took aim at Carr during a sketch in which Robert De Niro played an unnamed FCC chair occupying Carr’s office.

In his opening remarks, Kimmel impressed upon the value of free speech, saying that he had met comedians and talk show hosts from totalitarian countries who had told him that they could “get thrown in prison for making fun of those in power.” The freedom of speech, Kimmel said, was “something I’m embarrassed to say I took for granted until they pulled my friend Stephen [Colbert] off the air and tried to coerce the affiliates who run our show in the cities that you live in to take my show off the air. That’s not legal. That’s not American. That is un-American, and it is so dangerous.”

On Monday, the Freedom of the Press Foundation filed a complaint against Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr. The filing, sent to the Office of Disciplinary Counsel at the DC Court of Appeals, alleges that Carr had repeatedly broken basic principles of conduct as a licensed attorney, including by leveraging his power to control media outlets’ speech. As a legal complaint it’s a long shot — but as a document, it sums up months of Carr’s escalating war on free speech.

While the complaint’s examples go back months, Status reports that the FPF’s “tipping point” was Carr’s recent approval of a merger between Paramount and Skydance. It’s a situation that started out sketchy and has somehow managed to look steadily worse.

In less than 100 days the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been converted from a media and telecom watchdog into a bizarre, rights-trampling grievance machine built for one purpose: to coddle and protect the ego of President Donald J. Trump.

Gone is the agency that used to occasionally care about whether broadband maps were accurate or if consumers are being ripped off by sneaky cable industry fees. Gone is the agency that sometimes cared about media consolidation, or had begun taking a closer look at decades of discrimination in next-generation broadband deployment.

In its place is an FCC custom-built to harass companies and organizations that fail to support Trumpism, usually via a rotating crop of publicity-seeking pseudo-investigations that often have a fleeting relationship to factual reality or the law.

Media and telecom policy experts have been taken aback by the quick transformation under Chairman Brendan Carr, who they say has abused agency authority and the law to harass journalists, cajole insufficiently deferential media companies, and bully telecom giants into taking an obedient knee to the administration.

“I have been shocked at the lengths that the Chairman will go to use the FCC as a vessel to address the president’s personal grievances,” says Gigi Sohn, a respected consumer advocate and former FCC staffer whose nomination to the agency was derailed by industry lobbying in 2023. “His implied threats over the DEI policies of major telecom and media companies have also gone beyond what I would have expected — but they 100 percent mirror what the president is doing with corporations, law firms, and universities.”

Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr has accused Comcast of “news distortion” over its networks’ coverage of Kilmar Armando Abrego, a Maryland man who was deported to El Salvador due to what the government said was an “administrative error.”

“Comcast outlets spent days misleading the American public,” Carr wrote in a reply to a post on X, which criticized the Comcast-owned MSNBC and Warner Bros. Discovery’s CNN for not covering a White House press briefing about the deportation of immigrants. “Comcast knows that federal law requires its licensed operations to serve the public interest.”

Brendan Carr is now formally the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, giving him the power to set the agency’s agenda and usher through a host of regulations with major implications for the tech and media industries as soon as he has a Republican majority.

In a statement, Carr named a few areas of focus: “issues ranging from tech and media regulation to unleashing new opportunities for jobs and growth through agency actions on spectrum, infrastructure, and the space economy.”

President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday that intends to name Brendan Carr as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Carr, a commissioner at the FCC since 2017, has made a name for himself by threatening to use the commission’s powers to regulate speech online and over the airwaves.

Carr authored Project 2025’s section on the FCC, using it to propose restrictions on social media platforms meant to bolster conservative speech. He proposed limiting the legal shield that gives websites wide latitude to host and moderate user-generated content. He also suggested putting regulations on tech companies that would limit their ability to block and prioritize that content as they choose.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr loves the idea of government speech regulations, and he especially loves the idea that he will be the one to impose them in a future Trump administration.

That’s the short version.