Trump Earlobe Nibbler Brendan Carr Faces Inquiry Into His Broad Abuse Of FCC Power
If you think back to Brendan Carr’s first tenure as a regular Commissioner at the FCC, he was constantly warning about “FCC overreach.” We couldn’t have privacy rules or net neutrality rules protecting consumers from Comcast, he said, because that would be an extremist abuse of government authority. In fact, any oversight of shitty telecom monopolies was deemed “radical overreach” by Carr.
Of course, once Carr began to see that there was a path for him to be head of the agency, his phony concern about FCC abuse of power was thrown in the toilet. Instead, Carr spent all his time appearing on cable TV whining about how TikTok (an app his agency doesn’t regulate) should be banned in order to please Donald Trump (who then turned around and scuttled said ban to help his rich friend).
Fast forward to Carr’s short tenure as FCC boss, and it’s not hyperbole to say he’s abused FCC authority more in just a few months than any other FCC official in U.S. history.
Carr’s been illegally leveraging FCC power to trample the First Amendment, bullying media companies that aren’t kissing Trump’s ass, attacking FCC civil rights reforms, attacking public broadcasters, and harassing private companies for not being sexist and racist enough. While giggling about it like a little toddler. And desperately, desperately wanting to be taken seriously as a serious policymaker.
Enter Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats, who say they’ve launched an investigation into Carr’s very obvious abuse of FCC authority. In a letter to Carr, they state he’s wasting taxpayer money on all sorts of weird grievance gibberish, while trampling the First Amendment in the process. As per tradition, they’re very nice about it:
“We write to express deep concern over your actions to target and intimidate news organizations and broadcasters in violation of the First Amendment. These troubling actions assault the Constitutionally protected freedom of the press and violate the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) statutory prohibition against engaging in censorship,” the three Committee leaders wrote to Chairman Carr. “Moreover, directing FCC staff to devote time and resources to bogus investigations constitutes a violation of the law, gross mismanagement, extreme waste of funds, and an abuse of authority. Therefore, we are also sharing a copy of this letter with the FCC’s Office of Inspector General and are recommending that it open an investigation.”
In their letter, The E&C Committees three leaders (Frank Pallone, Doris Matsui, and Yvette D. Clarke) are requiring that Carr turn over all sorts of documents by April 14 as part of their own inquiry, including communications between Carr and the Trump administration.
Documents that probably don’t exist given the administration’s love of ignoring records laws while they do sensitive war planning over Signal chats with journalists or destroy functional adult governance via unencrypted Starlink terminals duct taped to the White House roof. So we’ll see if any sort of meaningful accountability comes from this, and if House Dems hold Carr’s feet to the fire.
Carr’s assault on the First Amendment and journalism certainly is historically terrible, but it’s curious that neither Democrats nor the press really care all that much that Carr is also completely demolishing the entirety of telecom consumer protection. That seems to still be flying under the radar. His treatment of journalists shouldn’t be the only thing getting this level of attention.
With the help of the Supreme Court and Trump executive orders Carr’s destroying the entirety of what’s left of telecom monopoly oversight, giving lumbering terrible monopolies like AT&T and Comcast carte blanche to do literally whatever they want in the years to come.
That, of course, means killing off the FCC’s inquiry in to predatory broadband usage caps. And killing popular net neutrality rules. And eliminating media consolidation limits so NBC Universal Comcast can get bigger and shittier. And eliminating all FCC inquiries into predatory fees. And eliminating enforcement of rules requiring that your broadband and cable company be transparent about pricing.
Curiously I’m not seeing much in the way of investigations into any of that. Nor am I seeing many (if any) mainstream press stories about what that means for markets and consumers. And while there’s definitely a lot going on at the moment, I’m not sure I’ve seen a single Democrat spend much (if any) time talking about it on social media in an effort to inform and agitate the electorate (for what it’s worth, letting Comcast and AT&T fuck consumers over is not “populist”).
A lot of Democrats (and the media companies being threatened by Carr) were already abundantly feckless on stuff like labor and consumer rights before the authoritarians came to town. Might be nice if that changed.