Trump's Censorship Czar Faces Senate Grilling on Efforts to Silence and Control the Media; Backpedals on Earlier Acknowledgement of FCC Independence
WASHINGTON — During a Wednesday Senate oversight hearing, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr faced a thorough grilling from Commerce Committee Democrats — and even some Republicans — about his 2025 campaign to censor and control media content that President Trump dislikes.
Carr repeatedly claimed that his efforts to do so were in service of the public interest. But recent polling from The Economist and YouGov shows 68 percent of the American public found it “unacceptable” for the government to pressure broadcasters to remove programming that includes speech it disagrees with.
While the FCC has historically operated as an independent agency, Carr also claimed that the Commission serves President Trump above all else. “The FCC is not an independent agency,” he said during Wednesday’s hearing, despite language on its website that described the FCC as “an independent U.S. government agency.” During a previous appearance before Congress, Carr himself said: “Congress long ago determined that the FCC is an independent, expert agency.”
Shortly after Carr changed his position on long-held FCC autonomy, the agency struck the word “independent” from its online description, according to multiple press reports.
Free Press Action General Counsel and Vice President of Policy Matt Wood said:
“If Brendan Carr proved anything today, it’s only that he’s willing to shout down senators and contort his supposed free-speech principles to protect Trump’s ego and attack Trump’s critics.
“Carr was loud, but it backfired. His disrespect for senators was in keeping with an administration that so values bullying and intimidation. But Carr’s fast-talking lies about the FCC’s broadcast jurisdiction don’t obscure just how eager he’s been to violate the First Amendment and weaponize the agency to threaten the media.
“Carr simply would not answer the questions he was asked. He repeatedly refused to affirm that political opinion and satire deserve constitutional protection. He said that he has the power to review the editing choices of broadcast journalists. He defended his own anti-free-speech actions by falsely suggesting that Democrats did it first. And he proudly trashed his own agency’s historical independence. Right after senators pointed out the contradiction between the FCC’s online description and Carr’s claim that Donald Trump ultimately called the shots, language noting the agency’s independence disappeared from the FCC.gov website — a chilling authoritarian touch.”