brendan carr

trump-fcc-threatens-to-enforce-equal-time-rule-on-late-night-talk-shows

Trump FCC threatens to enforce equal-time rule on late-night talk shows

brendan carr, Equal Time Rule, FCC, Policy / /

FCC Democrat says the rules haven’t changed

The equal-time rule, formally known as the Equal Opportunities Rule, applies to radio or TV broadcast stations with FCC licenses to use the public airwaves. When a station gives time to one political candidate, it must provide comparable time and placement to an opposing candidate if an opposing candidate makes a request.

The rule has an exemption for candidate appearances on bona fide news programs. As the FCC explained in 2022, “appearances by legally qualified candidates on bona fide newscasts, interview programs, certain types of news documentaries, and during on-the-spot coverage of bona fide news events are exempt from Equal Opportunities.”

Entertainment talk shows have generally been treated as bona fide news programs for this purpose. But Carr said in September that he’s not sure shows like The View should qualify for the exemption, and today’s public notice suggests the FCC may no longer treat these shows as exempt.

Commissioner Anna Gomez, the only Democrat on the FCC, issued a press release criticizing the FCC for “a misleading announcement suggesting that certain late-night and daytime programs may no longer qualify for the long-standing ‘bona fide news interview’ exemption under the commission’s political broadcasting rules.”

“Nothing has fundamentally changed with respect to our political broadcasting rules,” Gomez said. “The FCC has not adopted any new regulation, interpretation, or commission-level policy altering the long-standing news exemption or equal time framework. For decades, the commission has recognized that bona fide news interviews, late-night programs, and daytime news shows are entitled to editorial discretion based on newsworthiness, not political favoritism. That principle has not been repealed, revised, or voted on by the commission. This announcement therefore does not change the law, but it does represent an escalation in this FCC’s ongoing campaign to censor and control speech.”

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Letting prisons jam contraband phones is a bad idea, phone companies tell FCC

brendan carr, FCC, Policy, prison phone jamming / /

FCC hopes you like jammin’ too

“Jamming will block all communications,” including 911 calls, CTIA tells FCC.

Credit: Getty Images | da-kuk

A Federal Communications Commission proposal to let state and local prisons jam contraband cell phones has support from Republican attorneys general and prison phone companies but faces opposition from wireless carriers that say it would disrupt lawful communications. Groups dedicated to Wi-Fi and GPS also raised concerns in comments to the FCC.

“Jamming will block all communications, not just communications from contraband devices,” wireless lobby group CTIA said in December 29 comments in response to Chairman Brendan Carr’s proposal. The CTIA said that “jamming blocks all communications, including lawful communications such as 911 calling,” and argued that the FCC “has no authority to allow jamming.”

CTIA members AT&T and Verizon expressed their displeasure in separate comments to the FCC. “The proposed legal framework is based on a flawed factual premise,” AT&T wrote.

While the Communications Act prohibits interference with authorized radio communications, Carr’s plan tries to sidestep this prohibition by proposing to de-authorize certain communications, AT&T wrote. “This legal framework, however, is premised on a fundamental factual error: the assumption that jammers will only block ‘unauthorized’ communications without impacting lawful uses. There is no way to jam some communications on a spectrum band but not others,” AT&T wrote.

Previous FCC leaders recognized the problem that radio jammers can’t differentiate between contraband and legitimate devices, AT&T said. “As explained above, there are no technical workarounds to that limitation with respect to jammers,” AT&T wrote.

“Jammers block all wireless communications”

In 2013, the FCC explained that jamming systems transmit on the same frequencies as their targets in order to disrupt the links between devices and network base stations and that this process “render[s] any wireless device operating on those frequencies unusable. When used to disrupt wireless devices, radio signal jammers cannot differentiate between contraband devices and legitimate devices, including devices making 911 calls. Radio signal jammers block all wireless communications on affected spectrum bands.”

That apparently hasn’t changed. The FCC’s new proposal issued in September 2025 said the commission’s “understanding is that jamming solutions block calls on all affected frequencies and… are unable to allow 911 calls to be transmitted.” But the proposal indicates this may be an acceptable outcome, as “some state DOC [Department of Corrections] officials have indicated that correctional facilities typically do not allow any calls from within, including emergency calls.”

If the FCC adopts its plan, it would “authorize, for the first time, non-federal operation of radio frequency (RF) jamming solutions in correctional facilities,” the proposal said.

Carr said in September that previous FCC actions, such as authorizing “contraband interdiction systems” and letting wireless carriers disable contraband phones at a prison’s request, have not been enough. “Contraband cellphones have been pouring into state and local prisons by the tens of thousands every year,” Carr said. “They are used to run drug operations, orchestrate kidnappings, and further criminal enterprises in communities all across the country.”

Carr said that prisons and jails will not be required to install jamming systems and that the FCC “proposes to authorize targeted jamming. Jamming technology can be precise enough that it does not interrupt the regular communications of law enforcement or community members in the vicinity.” The FCC proposal asks the public for comment on “restrictions that might prove necessary to ensure that jamming solutions are limited to this targeted use, and to mitigate the risk that these solutions are deployed in contexts other than a correctional facility environment.”

Jamming has support from 23 state attorneys general, all Republicans, who told the FCC that “inmates routinely use smuggled phones to coordinate criminal enterprises, intimidate witnesses, and orchestrate violence both inside and outside prison walls.” More jamming support came from the state Department of Corrections in both Florida and South Carolina.

Prison phone companies like jamming

Prison phone companies that would financially benefit from increased use of official phone systems also support jamming cell phones. Global Tel*Link (aka ViaPath) called the plan “one more tool to help combat the serious problem of contraband wireless devices in correctional facilities.”

NCIC Correctional Services, another prison phone firm, said that jamming to create “‘dead zones’ within correctional facilities would permit smaller jails to restrict contraband device access where it is not cost-effective to install managed access systems.” Detection Innovation Group, which sells inmate-tracking technology to prisons and jails, also urged the FCC to allow jamming.

Telecom industry groups say that limiting the effect of jamming will be difficult or impossible. The harms identified over a decade ago “remain the same today, although their effects are magnified by the increased use of wireless devices for broadband,” said the Telecommunications Industry Association, a standards-development group. “If an RF jamming solution is deployed at a correctional facility, such deployment risks not only interfering with voice communications but disrupting vital broadband services as well within the facility itself as well as the surrounding community.”

Verizon told the FCC that the Communications Act “requires more restrictive use of jamming devices than the NPRM [Notice of Proposed Rulemaking] proposes.” The CTIA argued that jamming isn’t necessary because the wireless industry already offers Managed Access Systems (MAS) as “a safe and effective contraband interdiction ecosystem.”

A Managed Access System establishes “a private cellular network that captures communications (voice, text, data) on commercial wireless frequencies within a correctional facility, determines whether that exchange is coming from or going to a contraband device, and, if so, prevents those communications from connecting to the wireless provider’s network,” the CTIA said. “At the same time, MAS allows communications to and from approved devices to be transmitted without interruption, including 911 and public safety calls within the correctional facility.”

Wi-Fi and GPS groups warn of jamming risks

More opposition came from the Wi-Fi Alliance, a tech industry group that tests and certifies interoperability of Wi-Fi products. The FCC proposal failed to “address the potential impact of such jamming on lawfully operating Wi-Fi and other unlicensed devices,” the group told the FCC.

The FCC plan is not limited to jamming of phones on spectrum licensed for the exclusive use of wireless carriers. The FCC additionally sought comment on whether contraband devices operating on Wi-Fi airwaves and other unlicensed spectrum should be subject to jamming. That’s concerning to the Wi-Fi Alliance because Wi-Fi operates on unlicensed spectrum that is shared by many users.

“Accordingly, declaring that a jammer on unlicensed spectrum is permitted to disrupt the communications of another device also operating on unlicensed spectrum is contrary to the foundational principle of Part 15 [of FCC rules], under which all unauthorized devices must cooperate in the use of spectrum,” the group said. “Moreover, authorizing the use of jamming equipment in unlicensed spectrum pursuant to Part 15 would undermine decades of global spectrum policy, weaken trust in license-exempt technologies by providing no assurance that devices using those technologies will work, and set a dangerous precedent for the intentional misuse of unlicensed spectrum.”

Letting jammers interfere with Wi-Fi and other unlicensed devices would effectively turn the jammers into “a de facto licensed service, operating with primary status in bands that are designated for unlicensed use,” the Wi-Fi Alliance said. “To achieve that undesirable result, the Commission would be required to change the Table of Frequency Allocations and issue authorizations for operations on unlicensed spectrum (just as it contemplates for the use of cell phone spectrum in jamming devices). That outcome would upend the premise of Part 15 operations.”

The GPS Innovation Alliance, another industry group, warned that even if the FCC imposes strict limits on transmission power and out-of-band emissions, “jammer transmissions can have spillover effects on adjacent and nearby band operations. Only specialized, encrypted signals, and specialized receivers and devices designed to decrypt those signals, are jam-resistant, in contrast to how most commercial technologies work.”

Now that public comments are in, Carr has to decide whether to move ahead with the plan as originally written, scrap it entirely, or come up with a compromise that might address some of the concerns raised by opponents. The FCC’s NPRM suggests a pilot program could be used to evaluate interference risks before a broader rollout, and the pilot idea received some support from carriers in their comments. A final proposal would be put to a vote of commissioners at the Republican-majority FCC.

Photo of Jon Brodkin

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

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No one loves President Trump more than FCC Chairman Brendan Carr

Anna Gomez, brendan carr, FCC, Features, Policy, president trump, tom wheeler / /

Trump’s biggest fan runs the FCC

Carr used to insist on FCC independence. Now he uses FCC to fight Trump’s battles.

President-elect Donald Trump speaks to Brendan Carr, his intended pick for Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, as he attends a SpaceX Starship rocket launch on November 19, 2024 in Brownsville, Texas. Credit: Getty Images | Brandon Bell

Before he became chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr seemed to be a big believer in the agency’s role as an independent branch of the federal government. According to the pre-2025 version of Brendan Carr, the White House interfered with the agency’s independence when a Democratic president publicly urged the FCC to adopt net neutrality rules.

When the Biden-era FCC reinstated Obama-era net neutrality rules in 2024, Carr alleged that President Biden “took the extraordinary step to pressure the FCC—an independent agency that is designed to operate outside undue political influence from the Executive Branch.” As evidence, Carr pointed to a 2021 executive order in which Biden called on agency heads to “consider using their authorities” for various types of pro-competitive policies, including the adoption of net neutrality rules.

Carr said that President Obama similarly “pressure[d] an independent agency into grabbing power that the Legislative Branch never said it had delegated.” Obama’s intrusion into this independence, according to Carr, came in November 2014 when the president released a two-minute video urging the agency to implement net neutrality rules and reclassify broadband providers as common carriers.

While the FCC was created as an independent agency, it isn’t apolitical. There are Republican and Democratic members, and by design, the president’s party has a majority. FCC policies change dramatically from one administration to the next.

But Carr couldn’t have been clearer about his belief that the president should not publicly urge the FCC to take specific actions. “The White House did not let the FCC chair do his job,” Carr said last year, referring to the events of 2014 and 2015 involving Obama and then-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “The president intervened. He flipped him.”

But then Donald Trump won a second term in office and promoted Commissioner Carr to the position of FCC chairman in January 2025. A few weeks later, Trump issued an executive order declaring that historically independent agencies could no longer operate independently from the White House.

Carr’s devotion to President Trump

Trump has continued his longtime practice of publicly calling on FCC chairs to revoke broadcast licenses from news organizations that Trump dislikes. Former FCC chairs Jessica Rosenworcel and Ajit Pai rejected these calls when they led the agency. Carr has instead amplified Trump’s complaints and repeatedly threatened to revoke broadcast licenses through investigations into news distortion.

Carr, a longtime Trump supporter who sometimes wears a Trump-shaped lapel pin, wrote a Project 2025 chapter in 2023 describing how the FCC should be overhauled to achieve conservative priorities. It was never likely that he and Trump would differ much in their policy positions. But few, if any, leaders of historically independent agencies have aligned themselves with Trump as consistently and vocally as Carr has in his first year as FCC chairman.

Carr’s devotion to the president has been most obvious to the general public whenever he threatens broadcaster licenses. But Carr hardly seems independent of Trump when it comes to his other actions as head of the FCC. His press releases announcing various types of FCC decisions often praise Trump’s leadership and say the FCC is acting to advance a Trump priority.

“We are fully aligned with the agenda that President Trump is running,” Carr told The Wall Street Journal.

Far from insisting that the FCC make decisions independently, Carr has welcomed Trump’s direct orders. After Trump issued a December 11 executive order requiring the FCC to open a proceeding that could lead to preemption of state AI laws, Carr issued a statement saying that “the FCC welcomes President’s Trump’s direction.”

We emailed Carr in early December, requesting a phone interview or comments about whether he still believes the FCC should operate independently from the White House and did not receive a response. But on December 17, Carr confirmed during a Senate hearing that he no longer believes the FCC is independent from the White House.

“There’s been a sea change in the law since I wrote that sentence,” he said after being confronted with one of his previous statements describing the agency as independent. “The FCC is not an independent agency” because “the president can remove any member of the commission for any reason or no reason,” he said.

Wheeler, who is still active in tech and telecom policy at the Brookings Institution and Harvard Kennedy School, has watched the current FCC with dismay. “The FCC is a policy agency that exists in a political environment, and the Trump administration has turned it into a political agency existing in a policy environment,” Wheeler told Ars in a phone interview early this month.

Wheeler said he has “respect for Brendan, his brain, his political skills, his way of framing issues and expressing himself. I’m disappointed that he’s using them in the manner that he is, in just being a cipher for the MAGA agenda.”

Wheeler: Obama “never called me”

Congress created the FCC in 1934. As indications of its independence, the FCC has commissioners with specified tenures, a multimember structure, partisan balance, and adjudication authority. The agency can also issue regulations within limits set by Congress and courts.

US law lists 19 federal agencies, including the FCC, that are classified as “independent regulatory agencies.” The FCC’s independence was until recently acknowledged by the FCC itself, which said on its website that it is “an independent US government agency overseen by Congress.” Carr apparently wasn’t aware that the statement was still on the website until the December 17 Senate hearing. It was deleted quickly after Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) asked Carr, “Is your website wrong, is your website lying?”

Then-Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler and FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai smiling and talking to each other before a Congressional hearing.

Then-Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler (L) and FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai talk before testifying to the House Judiciary Committee on March 25, 2015, in Washington, DC.

Then-Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler (L) and FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai talk before testifying to the House Judiciary Committee on March 25, 2015, in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla

“Congress said, ‘you should be an independent agency,’ and Trump steps up and says, ‘no, you’re not an independent agency,’” Wheeler said. “Brendan apparently is going along with that if you judge from his trips to Mar-a-Lago and elsewhere.” Wheeler is also disappointed that after Trump’s executive order, “the Congress rolled over and just said, ‘oh, fine.’”

When Wheeler led a 2015 vote to implement net neutrality rules, Republicans in Congress claimed the agency was improperly influenced by Obama. “Five days of hearings under oath and an IG investigation that cleared me of wrongdoing,” Wheeler said, recalling the post-vote investigations by Congress and the FCC’s independent Inspector General’s office. “It was political. It was Republican-controlled committees who were looking for a reason to go after a Democratic-controlled FCC,” he said.

At the time, Wheeler told Congress there were “no secret instructions” from Obama. Wheeler said he treated Obama’s input “with respect” but also listened to “nearly four million Americans, who overwhelmingly spoke in favor of preserving a free and open Internet” in comments to the FCC.

Wheeler told Ars that during his term as FCC chairman, Obama “never called me.” Wheeler said that in his first week as chairman in 2013, “he said to me, ‘Tom, I will never call you. You’re an independent agency,’ and he was good to his word. Did he do a video? Yeah. Does he have a right to do a video? Of course.”

FCC decisions “coordinated through the White House”

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the only Democrat on the FCC, said in a phone interview in early December that “it is appropriate for the president to have an opinion, even to put an opinion out there,” as Biden and Obama did on net neutrality. “The public statements are different than actions,” she said. “What we’re seeing now are direct actions to undermine our independence.”

Gomez said Trump’s frequent demands on the FCC to revoke broadcast licenses have a “more coercive effect” because of “the overall actions by this president to fire anyone that doesn’t do his will.” That includes Trump firing both Democrats on the Federal Trade Commission, another historically independent agency.

The Supreme Court has so far allowed the firing of former FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter to stand while Slaughter’s lawsuit against Trump remains pending. At oral arguments, it appeared likely that the Supreme Court will rule that Trump can fire FTC commissioners.

At the December 17 Senate hearing, Carr cited the FTC case to support his view that the FCC isn’t independent. Carr said it used to be assumed that FCC commissioners would be protected from removal by the Supreme Court’s 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, which unanimously held that the president can only remove FTC commissioners for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.

The Communications Act was passed one year before Humphrey’s Executor and did not include explicit protection from removal, but “the theory had been that courts would read for-cause removal into the [Communications] statute and that was the basis for that viewpoint,” Carr said. “I think now it’s clear that’s not the case, so formally speaking the FCC isn’t independent because we don’t have that key piece, which is for-cause removal protection.” Carr said “the sine qua non of independence” is having protection from removal by the president.

Gomez has said she doesn’t know why Trump hasn’t fired her yet. “That erosion of our independence is negative for a variety of reasons,” Gomez said. “What worries me is that we will continue to see this White House pressure the FCC to favor or punish certain companies, to influence media ownership or media coverage, and to shape what information reaches the public.”

Gomez said the agency this year started sending decisions to the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for review before they are voted on. This practice is in line with one of the directives in the Trump executive order that declared independent agencies are no longer independent.

“We have a multi-member commission that makes these decisions, and somehow this is all getting coordinated through the White House before [the commissioners] vote on something. That is not independent,” Gomez said. While there were previously post-vote reviews, such as the standard reviews required under a 1980 law called the Paperwork Reduction Act, the OIRA process consists of “pre-clearance and approval of anything that we’re voting on. That is new,” Gomez said.

Gomez doesn’t know if those reviews have resulted in any significant changes to FCC actions before votes. “I’m not privy to that,” she said.

Carr heaps praise on Trump

Even before the Trump executive order that purported to eliminate the FCC’s independence, Carr attributed one of his first actions to an order from Trump. One day after the January 20 inauguration, Carr announced that he was ending the FCC’s promotion of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) policies. The press release said the FCC action was taken “pursuant to” Trump’s day-one executive order on DEI.

“Today, pursuant to the policies stated in the Executive Order, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced that he is ending the FCC’s promotion of DEI,” the January 21 press release said. In the months since, Carr has repeatedly demanded that companies end internal DEI practices in exchange for FCC merger approvals.

Carr’s press releases announcing FCC decisions have continued to praise Trump for his leadership of the country. Instead of stating that the FCC makes decisions independently, without “undue political influence from the Executive Branch,” Carr’s press releases often specifically describe FCC decisions as advancing Trump’s agenda.

“This action follows President Trump’s leadership and the Trump Administration’s decision to usher in prosperity through deregulation,” one such Carr press release said while announcing the “Delete, Delete, Delete” plan to eliminate many of the agency’s regulations.

Carr makes statements praising Trump both when he announces decisions on politically charged topics and when he announces decisions on more routine matters handled by the FCC. “With President Trump’s leadership, America is entering a new Golden Age of innovation in space—one where US businesses are going to dominate,” Carr said in October to explain why he was making changes to space licensing and spectrum use rules.

Carr: “Trump is fundamentally reshaping the media landscape”

Of course, Carr’s most controversial initiative almost certainly wouldn’t exist if not for President Trump’s frequent demands that news outlets be punished for supposed bias. Carr’s approach differs markedly from the two previous FCC chairs—Rosenworcel, a Democrat, and Pai, a Republican—who said the FCC should avoid regulating broadcast content in order to uphold the free speech protections in the First Amendment.

By contrast, Carr has repeatedly threatened to enforce the FCC’s previously dormant news distortion policy against broadcasters by taking away station licenses. Carr has made it clear in numerous public statements that he’s taking his cue from Trump.

“For years, people cowed down to the executives behind these companies based in Hollywood and New York, and they just accepted that these national broadcasters could dictate how people think about topics, that they could set the narrative for the country—and President Trump fundamentally rejected it,” Carr told Newsmax in July. “He smashed the facade that these are gatekeepers that can determine what people think. Everything we’re seeing right now flows from that decision by President Trump, and he’s winning. PBS has been defunded. NPR has been defunded. CBS is committing to restoring fact-based journalism… President Trump stood up to these legacy media gatekeepers, and now their business models are falling apart.”

Carr made that statement after approving CBS owner Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance on the condition that the company install an ombudsman, which Carr described as a “bias monitor.” Carr only approved the transaction once Paramount reached a $16 million settlement with Trump, who sued the company because he didn’t like how CBS edited a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris.

While the FCC order claimed the merger approval and ombudsman condition were unrelated to the Trump lawsuit, Carr repeatedly credited Trump for forcing changes at news broadcasters when giving interviews about that and other FCC actions. Carr uses similar language throughout these various interviews, saying that Trump “ran directly at” news organizations during his election campaign and “smashed the facade.”

“President Trump is fundamentally reshaping the media landscape,” he said in one interview. He said in another that “President Trump ran directly at the legacy mainstream media, and he smashed a facade that they’re the gatekeepers of truth.”

Ted Cruz and Rand Paul say Carr went too far

When Carr threatened the licenses of ABC stations over comments made by comedian Jimmy Kimmel, even some prominent Republicans said he went too far. “Brendan Carr has got no business weighing in on this,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said, calling Carr’s statement that ABC owner Disney must take action against Kimmel “absolutely inappropriate.”

Carr unconvincingly claimed that he never threatened ABC station licenses, even though he specifically said stations that continued to air Kimmel’s show were “running the possibility of fines or license revocations.” One person who didn’t buy Carr’s explanation was Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). The senator from Texas didn’t like it when Carr told ABC and Disney that “we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

Cruz said Carr’s “easy way or the hard way” statement was an obvious threat and “right outta Goodfellas.” Cruz would later say at the December 17 hearing that Congress should restrict the FCC’s power to intimidate news broadcasters. Cruz said, “the public interest standard and its wretched offspring, like the news distortion rule, have outlived whatever utility they once had and it is long past time for Congress to pass reforms.”

Even after bipartisan criticism, Carr refused to end his news distortion investigations. “How about no,” Carr wrote in November. “On my watch, the FCC will continue to hold broadcasters accountable to their public interest obligations.”

Wheeler: “Brendan needs to man up and own his decisions”

One of Carr’s defenses of his news distortion probes is that Rosenworcel’s FCC kept an advocacy group’s petition to deny a Fox station license renewal on the docket for over a year instead of dismissing it outright. Rosenworcel ultimately dismissed the petition, which alleged that Fox willfully distorted news with false reports of fraud in the 2020 election that Trump lost.

The petition pointed out that a judge presiding over a Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against Fox found that Fox News aired false statements about Dominion. Fox subsequently agreed to a $788 million settlement.

Rosenworcel simultaneously dismissed the Fox petition and three complaints alleging anti-Trump or anti-conservative bias by ABC, CBS, and NBC, saying that all four requests “seek to weaponize the licensing authority of the FCC in a way that is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment.” Carr reinstated the conservative complaints against ABC, CBS, and NBC, but not the one against Fox.

Carr defended his actions by saying the Biden administration “weaponized our country’s communications laws,” and that his own FCC simply “put the CBS complaint on the same procedural footing that the Biden FCC determined it should apply to the Fox complaint.”

Wheeler said Carr shouldn’t blame his actions on his predecessors. “I own my decisions,” Wheeler said. “I think that Brendan needs to man up and own his decisions and quit this ‘what about.’ He’s always out there saying, ‘Well, what about what Jessica did or what about what Wheeler did?’… Is that the best he can do? I mean, take responsibility for your decisions and go forward.”

Gomez: “This administration has weaponized the FCC”

Gomez said that when Congress created the FCC’s predecessor, the Federal Radio Commission, “it decided that it was too dangerous to have one person beholden to the president, to the whims of one person, in charge of the most important communication medium of the time, which was radio. So Congress decided, after deliberating it, to create a multi-member independent agency. And when it created the FCC, it did exactly that as well.”

Gomez continued: “[I]t has been important throughout history to keep that independence from political pressure. And what you’re seeing in this administration is completely different. This administration has weaponized the FCC in order to retaliate, pressure, and intimidate companies into doing its will.”

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez during a Bloomberg Television interview in New York, on Friday, Sept. 19, 2025.

Credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez during a Bloomberg Television interview in New York, on Friday, Sept. 19, 2025. Credit: Getty Images | Bloomberg

Gomez said the weaponization is evident in how the FCC handles mergers and other transactions in which the agency decides whether to approve the transfer of licenses from one company to another. Carr has explicitly demanded that companies eliminate their DEI policies in exchange for approvals.

“This FCC has said that it will not approve a single license transfer for companies that have diversity, equity, and inclusion policies,” Gomez said, noting that the FCC’s anti-DEI policies were implemented right after Trump’s anti-DEI executive order. “That is why you see the FCC granting transfers of control immediately after getting letters from companies agreeing to drop their diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.”

Companies such as AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Skydance have ended DEI programs to gain Carr’s approval for transactions.

“We also saw that weaponization of the licensing authority with regard to the [FCC] pressuring EchoStar to give up its licenses,” Gomez said. “And that was done purposefully in order to ensure that other parties could get ahold of EchoStar’s licenses for spectrum.”

Trump intervened in EchoStar battle

SpaceX and AT&T struck deals to buy EchoStar spectrum licenses after Carr threatened to revoke the licenses. Trump intervened after Carr’s threat, as Bloomberg reported that Trump called Carr and summoned him to a White House meeting with EchoStar President Charlie Ergen and urged them to make a deal.

Carr’s pressuring of EchoStar was criticized by the Free State Foundation, a free-market group that usually supports Republican priorities at the FCC.

“Rescission of deadline extension orders granted months earlier undoubtedly creates a type of regulatory uncertainty,” the foundation said in reference to the FCC’s investigation into EchoStar. “Arbitrary and unforeseen” changes to rules or agency actions create instability in the market for wireless broadband deployment, it said.

Gomez said the FCC’s “authority rests on technical expertise, evidence, and the public record. When our agency’s decisions are insulated from partisan pressure, the public can trust the outcomes are driven by facts rather than politics.” She said it is also “important to maintain our global credibility because we have been viewed as a model for transparent, rule-based telecommunications regulation.”

Gomez, a telecommunications attorney, has worked in various private-sector and government roles over the past 30 years, including as deputy chief of the FCC International Bureau and senior legal adviser to then-FCC Chairman William Kennard during the Clinton administration. Prior to Biden’s nomination for her to serve as an FCC commissioner in 2023, she was at the US State Department as senior adviser for International Information and Communications Policy.

Executive order required review of FCC actions

Gomez said the FCC submitting decisions to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs before they’re voted on is a big change for an independent agency. Gomez said she’s deeply familiar with the OIRA process because of her previous work at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an executive branch agency that advises the president on telecom policy. She was the NTIA deputy administrator from 2009 to 2013.

The Trump executive order that purports to eliminate agency independence states that “all executive departments and agencies, including so-called independent agencies, shall submit for review all proposed and final significant regulatory actions to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Executive Office of the President before publication in the Federal Register.”

In a section titled “OIRA Review of Agency Regulations,” the Trump executive order amends a definition of agency that was previously included in Section 3(b) of a 1993 executive order on regulatory reviews. The specified section in that Clinton executive order defined agency as “any authority of the United States that is an ‘agency’ under 44 U.S.C. 3502(1), other than those considered to be independent regulatory agencies.” This carveout excluded independent agencies like the FCC from the requirement to submit draft regulatory actions for review.

The definition of “agency” in Trump’s executive order removes the language that excluded all independent regulatory agencies from OIRA requirements but includes a carveout for the Federal Reserve. Trump’s order also added the Federal Election Commission to the roster of agencies whose actions require OIRA review of significant actions, such as rulemakings.

While Gomez objects to the pre-clearance requirement, she noted that there are proper ways in which the FCC coordinates with executive branch agencies. For example, the FCC has a memorandum of understanding with the NTIA on how to coordinate spectrum management actions to prevent interference with federal systems that rely on specific radio frequencies.

“Another good use of coordination is in security, for example, when we coordinate with the security agencies to make sure that we are taking national security into consideration with our actions,” she said. “Our statute requires us to coordinate with the State Department and the Department of Justice… and that’s important to do in advance, and it’s good government.”

It’s also not uncommon for the FCC to receive advice from the current president’s administration through the NTIA, which expresses the executive branch’s views on telecom-policy matters in filings submitted in the public record. Those dockets attract filings from government agencies, companies, industry trade groups, advocacy groups, and anyone else who is interested in filing a comment, and the FCC takes the input into account before making decisions.

“What is improper,” Gomez said, “is when our decisions are being directed by this administration and impeding us from making our independent, expert-based judgment of how to manage resources and act in the public interest.”

Pai defied Trump, insisted on FCC independence

Carr was hired as a legal adviser by then-Commissioner Pai in 2014 and was briefly the FCC’s general counsel during Pai’s first year as chair in 2017. Carr became an FCC commissioner in August 2017 after a nomination by President Trump.

Carr and Pai have seemingly agreed on nearly everything to do with the FCC, with the most obvious exception being the regulation of broadcast media content. “I believe in the First Amendment,” Pai said in 2017, six days after Trump called for NBC license revocations. “The FCC under my leadership will stand for the First Amendment. And under the law, the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content of a particular newscast.”

In a January 2021 speech during his last week as FCC chairman, Pai discussed how he led a 2018 vote against Sinclair Broadcast Group’s proposed acquisition of Tribune Media Company because it would violate station ownership limits. Carr joined Pai in the unanimous vote.

“Sinclair is widely perceived to be a right-leaning broadcaster,” Pai said in the speech delivered at the American Enterprise Institute. “And the perception is probably accurate, just as it is probably accurate to say that many of our nation’s broadcast networks lean to the left. But the last time I checked, the First Amendment still applies to broadcasters, which means Sinclair’s perceived political views and the content of its newscasts should be entirely irrelevant to the FCC’s decision-making process.”

Trump didn’t like Pai’s rejection of the Sinclair deal. The president tweeted in July 2018, “So sad and unfair that the FCC wouldn’t approve the Sinclair Broadcast merger with Tribune. This would have been a great and much needed Conservative voice for and of the People. Liberal Fake News NBC and Comcast gets approved, much bigger, but not Sinclair. Disgraceful!”

Reflecting on this incident and other Trump comments about the Sinclair rejection in his January 2021 speech, Pai said, “in terms of powerful opponents in Washington, it’s hard to top the president.” Pai told the audience “that you don’t demonstrate the FCC’s independence by saying you’re independent. You do it by acting independently… This decision may have won me few friends, but I’m proud I lived up to my oath and preserved the agency’s independence.”

It’s no secret

Wheeler and Pai often clashed over policy differences when they served on the commission together. Pai even accused Wheeler of taking orders from Obama on net neutrality. But Pai’s exit speech made a positive impression on Wheeler.

“I seem to recall that Pai at the end of his term made a speech in which he talked about some of the proudest things he had done was maintaining the independence of the agency and protecting the First Amendment speech rights of the people,” Wheeler said.

While federal agency operations can change in ways that aren’t readily visible to the public, the changes to agency independence in Trump’s second term haven’t been hidden. “One thing about this is so much is out in the open, which I think is an effort to normalize it,” Gomez said. “And we have to resist it.”

Gomez knows she might not be able to serve out her entire term given that Trump fired Democrats from the FTC. The risk would be particularly high if the Supreme Court rules in Trump’s favor in the case filed by Slaughter. While the Senate has the authority to confirm or deny presidential nominations to the FCC and FTC, a Trump victory in the FTC case would give the president more power to dictate the membership of independent agencies.

“I don’t know why,” Gomez said when asked if she knows why Trump hasn’t fired her yet. “I don’t want to speculate. We’ll find out, I guess. But I’m focused on doing my work, and every day that I can continue to do my work and to speak out on behalf of consumers and the First Amendment is a good day.”

Photo of Jon Brodkin

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

No one loves President Trump more than FCC Chairman Brendan Carr Read More »

fcc-chair-scrubs-website-after-learning-it-called-fcc-an-“independent-agency”

FCC chair scrubs website after learning it called FCC an “independent agency”

brendan carr, FCC, jimmy kimmel, Policy / /

Meanwhile, Ted Cruz wants to restrict FCC’s power to intimidate broadcasters.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr speaks at a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee oversight hearing on December 17, 2025, in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty Images | Heather Diehl

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr today faced blistering criticism in a Senate hearing for his September threats to revoke ABC station licenses over comments made by Jimmy Kimmel. While Democrats provided nearly all the criticism, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said that Congress should act to restrict the FCC’s power to intimidate news broadcasters.

As an immediate result of today’s hearing, the FCC removed a statement from its website that said it is an independent agency. Carr, who has embraced President Trump’s declaration that independent agencies may no longer operate independently from the White House, apparently didn’t realize that the website still called the FCC an independent agency.

“Yes or no, is the FCC an independent agency?” Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) asked. Carr answered that the FCC is not independent, prompting Luján to point to a statement on the FCC website calling the FCC “an independent US government agency overseen by Congress.”

“Just so you know, Brendan, on your website, it just simply says, man, the FCC is independent. This isn’t a trick question… Is your website wrong? Is your website lying?” Luján asked.

“Possibly. The FCC is not an independent agency,” Carr answered. The website still included the statement of independence when Luján asked the question, but it’s now gone.

Carr: Trump can fire any member “for any reason or no reason”

Carr, who argued during the Biden years that the FCC must remain independent from the White House and accused Biden of improperly pressuring the agency, said today that it isn’t independent because the Communications Act does not give commissioners protection from removal by the president.

“The president can remove any member of the commission for any reason or no reason,” Carr said. Carr said his new position is a result of “a sea change in the law” related to an ongoing case involving the Federal Trade Commission, in which the Supreme Court appears likely to approve Trump’s firing of an FTC Democrat.

“I think it comes as no surprise that I’m aligned with President Trump on policy, I think that’s why he designated me as chairman… I can be fired by the president,” Carr said. Carr also said, “The Constitution is clear that all executive power is vested in the president, and Congress can’t change that by legislation.”

Changing the FCC website doesn’t change the law, of course. US law specifically lists 19 federal agencies, including the FCC, that are classified as “independent regulatory agencies.” Indications of the FCC’s independence include that it has commissioners with specified tenures, a multimember structure, partisan balance, and adjudication authority. Trump could test that historical independence by firing an FCC commissioner and waiting to see if the Supreme Court allows it, as he did with the FTC.

Ted Cruz wants to restrict FCC power

Carr’s statements on independence came toward the end of an FCC oversight hearing that lasted nearly three hours. Democrats on the Senate Commerce Committee spent much of the time accusing Carr of censoring broadcast stations, while Carr and Committee Chairman Cruz spent more time lobbing allegations of censorship at the Biden administration. But Cruz made it clear that he still thinks Carr shouldn’t have threatened ABC and suggested that Congress reduce the FCC’s power.

Cruz alleged that Democrats supported Biden administration censorship, but in the next sentence, he said the FCC shouldn’t have the legal authority that Carr has used to threaten broadcasters. Cruz said:

If my colleagues across the aisle do what many expect and hammer the chairman over their newfound religion on the First Amendment and free speech, I will be obliged to point out that those concerns were miraculously absent when the Biden administration was pressuring Big Tech to silence Americans for wrongthink on COVID and election security. It will underscore a simple truth, that the public interest standard and its wretched offspring, like the news distortion rule, have outlived whatever utility they once had and it is long past time for Congress to pass reforms.

Cruz avoided criticizing Carr directly today and praised the agency chairman for a “productive and refreshing” approach on most FCC matters. Nonetheless, Cruz’s statement suggests that he’d like to strip Carr and future FCC chairs of the power to wield the public interest standard and news distortion policy against broadcasters.

At today’s hearing and in recent months, Carr defended his actions on Kimmel by citing the public interest standard that the FCC applies to broadcasters that have licenses to use the public airwaves. Carr also defended his frequent threats to enforce the FCC’s rarely invoked news distortion policy, even though the FCC apparently hasn’t made a finding of news distortion since 1993.

Cruz said today he agrees with Carr “that Jimmy Kimmel is angry, overtly partisan, and profoundly unfunny,” and that “ABC and its affiliates would have been fully within their rights to fire him or simply to no longer air his program.” But Cruz added that government cannot “force private entities to take actions that the government cannot take directly. Government officials threatening adverse consequences for disfavored content is an unconstitutional coercion that chills protected speech.”

Cruz continued:

This is why it was so insidious how the Biden administration jawboned social media into shutting down conservatives online over accurate information on COVID or voter fraud. My Democrat colleagues were persistently silent over that scandal, but I welcome them now having discovered the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. Democrat or Republican, we cannot have the government arbitrating truth or opinion. Mr. Chairman, my question is this, so long as there is a public interest standard, shouldn’t it be understood to encompass robust First Amendment protections to ensure that the FCC cannot use it to chill speech?

Carr answered, “I agree with you there and I think the examples you laid out of weaponization in the Biden years are perfect examples.” Carr criticized liberals for asking the Biden-era FCC to not renew a Fox station license and criticized Congressional Democrats for “writing letters to cable companies pressuring them to drop Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax because they disagreed with the political perspectives of those cable channels.”

Cruz seemed satisfied with the answer and changed the topic to the FCC’s management of spectrum. After that, much of the hearing consisted of Democrats pointing to Carr’s past statements supporting free speech and accusing him of using the FCC to suppress broadcasters’ speech.

Senate Democrats criticize Carr’s Kimmel threats

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) asked Carr if it “is appropriate to use your position to threaten companies that broadcast political satire.” Carr responded, “I think any licensee that operates on the public airwaves has a responsibility to comply with the public interest standard, and that’s been the case for decades.”

Klobuchar replied, “I asked if you think it’s appropriate for you to use your position to threaten companies, and this incident with Kimmel wasn’t an isolated event. You launched investigations into every major broadcast network except Fox. Is that correct?”

Carr noted that “we have a number of investigations ongoing.” Later, he said, “If you want to step back and talk about weaponization, we saw that for four years in the Biden administration.”

“Joe Biden is no longer president,” Klobuchar said. “You are head of the FCC, and Donald Trump is president, and I am trying to deal with this right now.”

As he has in the past, Carr claimed today that he never threatened ABC station licenses. “Democrats at the time were saying that we explicitly threatened to pull a license if Jimmy Kimmel wasn’t fired,” Carr said. “That never happened; that was nothing more than projection and distortion by Democrats. What I am saying is any broadcaster that uses the airwaves, whether radio or TV, has to comply with the public interest standard.”

In fact, Carr said on a podcast in September that broadcast stations should tell ABC and its owner Disney that “we are not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out because we, the licensed broadcaster, are running the possibility of fines or license revocations from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion.”

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) pointed to another Carr statement from the podcast in which he said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Schatz criticized Carr’s claim that he never threatened licenses. “You’re kind of tiptoeing through the tulips here,” Schatz said.

FCC Democrat: Agency is censoring Trump critics

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, a Democrat, testified at today’s hearing and said that “the First Amendment applies to broadcasters regardless of whether they use spectrum or not, and the Communications Act prohibits the FCC from censoring broadcasters.”

Gomez said the Trump administration “has been on a campaign to censor content and to control the media and others, any critics of this administration, and it is weaponizing any levers it has in order to control that media. That includes using the FCC to threaten licensees, and broadcasters are being chilled. We are hearing from broadcasters that they are afraid to air programming that is critical of this administration because they’re afraid of being dragged before the FCC in an investigation.”

Gomez suggested the “public interest” phrase is being used by the FCC too vaguely in reference to investigations of broadcast stations. She said the FCC should “define what we mean by operating in the public interest,” saying the commission has been using the standard “as a means to go after any content we don’t like.” She said that “it’s still unconstitutional to revoke licenses based solely on content that the FCC doesn’t like.”

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) criticized Carr for investigating San Francisco-based KCBS over a report on Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities, in which the station described vehicles driven by ICE agents. Carr defended the probe today, saying, “The concern there in the report was there may have been interference with lawful ICE operations and so we were asking questions about what happened.”

Markey said, “The news journalists were just covering an important news story, and some conservatives were upset by the coverage, so you used your power as FCC chairman to hang a sword of Damocles over a local radio station’s head… Guess what happened? The station demoted the anchor who first read that news report over the air and pulled back on its political coverage. You got what you wanted.”

Carr said, “Broadcasters understand, perhaps for the first time in years, that they’re going to be held accountable to the public interest, to broadcast hoax rules, to the news distortion policy. I think that’s a good thing.”

Carr then criticized Markey for signing a letter to the FCC in 2018 that asked the agency to investigate conservative broadcaster Sinclair. The Markey/Carr exchange ended with the two men shouting over each other, making much of it unintelligible, although Markey said that Carr should resign because he’s creating a chilling effect on news broadcasters.

Cruz similarly criticized Democrats for targeting Sinclair, prompting Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) to defend the 2018 letter. “Chairman Carr’s threats to companies he directly regulates are not the same thing as a letter from Congress requesting an agency examine a matter of public concern. Members on both sides of the aisle frequently write similar letters; that’s the proper oversight role of Congress,” he said.

Photo of Jon Brodkin

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

FCC chair scrubs website after learning it called FCC an “independent agency” Read More »

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“How about no”: FCC boss Brendan Carr says he won’t end news distortion probes

brendan carr, FCC, news distortion policy, Policy / /

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr says he won’t scrap the agency’s controversial news distortion policy despite calls from a bipartisan group of former FCC chairs and commissioners.

“How about no,” Carr wrote in an X post in response to the petition from former FCC leaders. “On my watch, the FCC will continue to hold broadcasters accountable to their public interest obligations.”

The petition filed yesterday by former FCC chairs and commissioners asked the FCC to repeal its 1960s-era news distortion policy, which Carr has repeatedly invoked in threats to revoke broadcast licenses. In the recent Jimmy Kimmel controversy, Carr said that ABC affiliates could have licenses revoked for news distortion if they kept the comedian on the air.

The petition said the Kimmel incident and several other Carr threats illustrate “the extraordinary intrusions on editorial decision-making that Chairman Carr apparently understands the news distortion policy to permit.” The petition argued that the “policy’s purpose—to eliminate bias in the news—is not a legitimate government interest,” that it has chilled broadcasters’ speech, that it has been weaponized for partisan purposes, that it is overly vague, and is unnecessary given the separate rule against broadcast hoaxes.

“The news distortion policy is no longer justifiable under today’s First Amendment doctrine and no longer necessary in today’s media environment… The Commission should repeal the policy in full and recognize that it may not investigate or penalize broadcasters for ‘distorting,’ ‘slanting,’ or ‘staging’ the news, unless the broadcast at issue independently meets the high standard for broadcasting a dangerous hoax under 47 C.F.R. § 73.1217,” the petition said.

News distortion policy rarely enforced

The petition was filed by Mark Fowler, a Republican who chaired the FCC from 1981 to 1987; Dennis Patrick, a Republican who chaired the FCC from 1987 to 1989; Alfred Sikes, a Republican who chaired the FCC from 1989 to 1993; Tom Wheeler, a Democrat who chaired the FCC from 2013 to 2017; Andrew Barrett, a Republican who served as a commissioner from 1989 to 1996; Ervin Duggan, a Democrat who served as a commissioner from 1990 to 1994; and Rachelle Chong, a Republican who served as a commissioner from 1994 to 1997.

“How about no”: FCC boss Brendan Carr says he won’t end news distortion probes Read More »

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ISPs created so many fees that FCC will kill requirement to list them all

brendan carr, FCC, Policy / /

The FCC was required by Congress to implement broadband-label rules, but the Carr FCC says the law doesn’t “require itemizing pass through fees that vary by location.”

“Commenters state that itemizing such fees requires providers to produce multiple labels for identical services,” the FCC plan says, with a footnote to comments from industry groups such as USTelecom and NCTA. “We believe, consistent with commenters in the Delete, Delete, Delete proceeding, that itemizing can lead to a proliferation of labels and of labels so lengthy that the fees overwhelm other important elements of the label.”

In a blog post Monday, Carr said his plan is part of a “focus on consumer protection.” He said the FCC “will vote on a notice that would reexamine broadband nutrition labels so that we can separate the wheat from the chaff. We want consumers to get quick and easy access to the information they want and need to compare broadband plans (as Congress has provided) without imposing unnecessary burdens.”

ISPs would still be required to provide the labels, but with less information. The NPRM said that eliminating the rules targeted for deletion will not “change the core label requirements to display a broadband consumer label containing critical information about the provider’s service offerings, including information about pricing, introductory rates, data allowances, and performance metrics.”

ISPs said listing fees was too hard

In 2023, five major trade groups representing US broadband providers petitioned the FCC to scrap the list-every-fee requirement before it took effect. Comcast told the commission that the rule “impose[s] significant administrative burdens and unnecessary complexity in complying with the broadband label requirements.”

Rejecting the industry complaints, then-Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said that “every consumer needs transparent information when making decisions about what Internet service offering makes the most sense for their family or household. No one wants to be hit with charges they didn’t ask for or they did not expect.”

The Rosenworcel FCC’s order denying the industry petition pointedly said that ISPs could simplify pricing instead of charging loads of fees. “ISPs could alternatively roll such discretionary fees into the base monthly price, thereby eliminating the need to itemize them on the label,” the order said.

ISPs created so many fees that FCC will kill requirement to list them all Read More »

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FCC chairman leads “cruel” vote to take Wi-Fi access away from school kids

brendan carr, FCC, Policy, wi-fi hotspots / /

The FCC votes were criticized by advocacy groups. “Students who rely on long bus rides to complete assignments and library patrons who depend on hotspots for work, education, or telehealth will suddenly lose access to essential tools. This decision is a step backward,” said Joseph Wender, executive director of the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition.

“Chairman Carr’s cruel move to delete our kids’ Internet connections won’t make America smarter,” said Revati Prasad, executive director of the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. The FCC “openly voted to snatch back the opportunity to offer more Americans, especially in rural areas, the high-speed Internet access to do the business of life online—pay bills, make telehealth appointments, fill out school applications—after the library closes,” American Library Association President Sam Helmick said.

The advocacy groups said that in New Mexico, “Farmington Municipal Schools equipped its 90 buses with Wi-Fi, serving over 6,500 students daily. Parents reported that children returned home with homework already completed.” In Ohio, “the Brown County Public Library’s hotspot program allowed homeschool families to join virtual classes, entrepreneurs to run mobile businesses, and veterans to participate in telehealth appointments and certification testing.”

Helmick said the library association is also “discouraged by the lack of due process, which left no opportunity for staff, patrons and library advocates to give input on the draft order.” Gomez similarly criticized the process, saying the FCC didn’t release the draft order until after the deadline for interested parties to meet with commissioners’ offices.

Gomez: Programs weren’t illegal

Gomez disputed Carr’s legal argument, saying that “Congress gave the FCC permission to expand the applications of E-Rate funding as the technologies used to educate children evolve.” She pointed out that the Universal Service law says the FCC may designate additional services for support. Gomez continued:

When the E-Rate program was implemented, dial-up Internet was the standard, and today, September 30th, 2025, AOL is discontinuing dial-up service. It is safe to say the landscape of communications technology has changed dramatically throughout the life of the E-Rate program. As underscored during my visit to the High School for Environmental Studies in New York a couple of weeks ago, students are now using Chromebooks in classrooms on a regular basis, and they are expected to submit homework assignments online using platforms like Google classroom. These changes are made possible with support from E-Rate funding.

Gomez said that in 2003, under President George W. Bush, the FCC “expanded E-Rate support to cover Internet access for bookmobiles. It also clarified that E-Rate funding could cover a school bus driver’s use of wireless services while transporting students, a librarian’s use of wireless services on a library’s mobile library unit van, and teachers’ use of wireless services while accompanying students on a field trip. Expanding E-Rate support to cover hotspots and Wi-Fi on school buses was consistent with that precedent.”

FCC chairman leads “cruel” vote to take Wi-Fi access away from school kids Read More »

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After threatening ABC over Kimmel, FCC chair may eliminate TV ownership caps

brendan carr, fcc ownership cap, nexstar, Policy, sinclair / /

Anna Gomez, the only Democrat on the Republican-majority commission, criticized Carr’s fight against ABC in her comments at today’s FCC meeting. Carr’s FCC “seiz[ed] on a late-night comedian’s comments as a pretext to punish speech it disliked” in “an act of clear government intimidation,” she said.

Gomez said that “corporate behemoths who own large swaths of local stations across the country” continued blocking Kimmel for several days after the show returned “because these billion-dollar media companies have business before the FCC. They will need regulatory approval of their transactions and are pushing to reduce regulatory guardrails so they can grow even bigger.”

Local stations are “trapped in the middle as these massive companies impose their will and their values upon local communities,” Gomez continued. “This precise example neatly encapsulates the danger of allowing vast and unfettered media consolidation. This could drastically alter the media ecosystem and the number of voices that are a part of it.”

National ownership cap

Gomez didn’t vote against today’s action. She said the NPRM “is required by statute” and that she supports “seeking comment on these very important issues.” But Gomez said she’s concerned about consolidation limiting the variety of news and viewpoints on local TV stations.

Congress set the national ownership cap at 39 percent in 2004 and exempted the cap from the FCC’s required quadrennial review of media ownership rules. There is debate over whether the FCC has the authority to eliminate the national limit, and Gomez argued that “given the prior Congressional action, I believe that only Congress can raise the cap.”

The FCC’s “regulatory structure is in large part based on a balance of power between national networks with incentives to serve national interests and local broadcasters with incentives to serve their local communities,” Gomez said. That balance could be disrupted by a single company owning enough broadcast stations to reach the majority of US households, she said.

“In the past two weeks, the public has raised serious concerns that large station groups made programming decisions to serve their national corporate interests, not their communities of license,” Gomez said. “What is the impact of letting them get even bigger?”

After threatening ABC over Kimmel, FCC chair may eliminate TV ownership caps Read More »

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After getting Jimmy Kimmel suspended, FCC chair threatens ABC’s The View

brendan carr, Equal Time Rule, jimmy kimmel, Policy, The View / /

Carr: “Turn your license in to the FCC, we’ll find something else to do with it.”

President-elect Donald Trump speaks to Brendan Carr, his intended pick for Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, as he attends a SpaceX Starship rocket launch on November 19, 2024 in Brownsville, Texas. Credit: Getty Images | Brandon Bell

After pressuring ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is setting his regulatory sights on ABC’s The View and NBC late-night hosts Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon.

Carr appeared yesterday on the radio show hosted by Scott Jennings, who describes himself as “the last man standing athwart the liberal mob.” Jennings asked Carr whether The View and other ABC programs violate FCC rules, and made a reference to President Trump calling on NBC to cancel Fallon and Meyers.

“A lot of people think there are other shows on ABC that maybe run afoul of this more often than Jimmy Kimmel,” Jennings said. “I’m thinking specifically of The View, and President Trump himself has mentioned Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers at NBC. Do you have comments on those shows, and are they doing what Kimmel did Monday night, and is it even worse on those programs in your opinion?”

In response, Carr discussed the FCC’s Equal Opportunities Rule, also known as the Equal Time Rule, and said the FCC could determine that those shows don’t qualify for an exemption to the rule.

“When you look at these other TV shows, what’s interesting is the FCC does have a rule called the Equal Opportunity Rule, which means, for instance, if you’re in the run-up to an election and you have one partisan elected official on, you have to give equal time, equal opportunity, to the opposing partisan politician,” Carr said.

At another point in the interview, Carr said broadcasters that object to FCC enforcement “can turn your license in to the FCC, we’ll find something else to do with it.”

Bona fide news exemption

Carr said the FCC hasn’t previously enforced the rule on those shows because of an exemption for “bona fide news” programs. He said the FCC could determine the shows mentioned by Jennings aren’t exempt:

There’s an exception to that rule called the bona fide news exception, which means if you are a bona fide news program, you don’t have to abide by the Equal Opportunity Rule. Over the years, the FCC has developed a body of case law on that that has suggested that most of these late night shows, other than SNL, are bona fide news programs. I would assume you could make the argument that The View is a bona fide news show but I’m not so sure about that, and I think it’s worthwhile to have the FCC look into whether The View and some of these other programs you have still qualify as bona fide news programs and [are] therefore exempt from the Equal Opportunity regime that Congress has put in place.

The Equal Opportunity Rule applies to radio and TV broadcast stations with FCC licenses to use the airwaves. An FCC fact sheet explains that stations giving time to one candidate must provide “comparable time and placement to opposing candidates” upon request. The onus is on candidates to request air time—”the station is not required to seek out opposing legally qualified candidates and offer them Equal Opportunities,” the fact sheet says.

The exemption mentioned by Carr means that “appearances by legally qualified candidates on bona fide newscasts, interview programs, certain types of news documentaries, and during on-the-spot coverage of bona fide news events are exempt from Equal Opportunities,” the fact sheet says.

In 1994, the FCC said that “Congress removed the inhibiting effect of the equal opportunities obligation upon bona fide news programming to encourage increased news coverage of political campaign activity.” Congress gave the FCC leeway to interpret the scope of bona fide news exemptions.

Referring to its 1988 ruling on Entertainment Tonight and Entertainment This Week, the FCC said it found that “the principal consideration should be ‘whether the program reports news of some area of current events… in a manner similar to more traditional newscasts.’ The Commission has thus declined to evaluate the relative quality or significance of the topics and stories selected for newscast coverage, relying instead on the broadcaster’s good faith news judgment.”

Carr’s allegations

Carr alleged in November 2024 that NBC putting Kamala Harris on Saturday Night Live before the election was “a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule.” In fact, NBC gave Trump two free 60-second messages in order to comply with the rule.

Carr didn’t cite any specific incidents on The View or late-night shows that would violate the FCC rule. The View has addressed its attempts to get Trump on the show, however. Executive Producer Brian Teta told Deadline in April 2024, “We’ve invited Trump to join us at the table for both 2016 and 2020 elections, and he declined, and at a certain point, we stopped asking. So I don’t anticipate that changing. I think he’s pretty familiar with how the co-hosts feel about him and doesn’t see himself coming here.”

The Kimmel controversy erupted over a monologue in which he said, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it.”

With accused murderer Tyler Robinson being described as having liberal views, Carr and other conservatives alleged that Kimmel misled viewers. Carr appeared on right-wing commentator Benny Johnson’s podcast on Wednesday and said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Nexstar and Sinclair, two major owners of TV stations, both urged ABC to take action against Kimmel and said their stations would not air his show. The pressure from broadcasters is happening at a time when both Nexstar and ABC owner Disney are seeking Trump administration approval for mergers.

Democrats accuse Carr of hypocrisy on First Amendment

Anna Gomez, the only Democrat on the Republican-majority FCC, said yesterday that Carr overstepped his authority, but “billion-dollar companies with pending business before the agency” are “vulnerable to pressure to bend to the government’s ideological demands.”

Democratic lawmakers criticized Carr and proposed investigations into the chair for abuse of authority. “It is not simply unacceptable for the FCC chairman to threaten a media organization because he does not like the content of its programming—it violates the First Amendment that you claim to champion,” Senate Democrats wrote in a letter to Carr. “The FCC’s role in overseeing the public airwaves does not give it the power to act as a roving press censor, targeting broadcasters based on their political commentary. But under your leadership, the FCC is being weaponized to do precisely that.”

Democrats pointed to some of Carr’s previous statements in which he decried government censorship. During his 2023 re-confirmation proceedings, Senate Democrats asked Carr about social media posts in which he accused Democrats of engaging in censorship like “what you’d see in the Soviet Union.”

“I posted those tweets in the context of expressing my view on the First Amendment that debate on matters of public interest should be robust, uninhibited, and wide open,” Carr wrote in his response to Democratic senators. “I believe that the best remedy to speech that someone does not like or finds objectionable is more speech. I posted them because I believe that a newsroom’s decision about what stories to cover and how to frame them should, consistent with the First Amendment, be beyond the reach of any government official.”

Years earlier, in 2019, Carr posted a tweet that said, “Should the government censor speech it doesn’t like? Of course not. The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the ‘public interest.'”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) also criticized Carr’s approach, saying it would lead to the same tactics being used against Republicans the next time Democrats are in power.

Carr to broadcasters: Give your licenses back to FCC

Carr said this week he’s only addressing licensed broadcasters, which have public-interest obligations, as opposed to cable and streaming services that don’t need FCC licenses. Network programming itself doesn’t need an FCC license, but the TV stations that carry network shows require licenses.

Carr tried to cast Kimmel’s suspension as the result of organic pressure from licensed broadcasters, rather than FCC coercion. “There’s no untoward coercion happening here,” Carr told Jennings. “The market was intended to function this way, where local TV stations get to push back.”

But TV station owners did so in exactly the way that Carr urged them to. “The individual licensed stations that are taking their content, it’s time for them to step up and say this garbage isn’t something that we think serves the needs of our local communities,” Carr said on Johnson’s podcast. Carr said that Kimmel’s monologue “appears to be some of the sickest conduct possible.”

On the Jennings show, Carr alleged that Democrats in the previous administration implemented “a two-tiered weaponized system of justice,” and that his FCC is instead giving everyone “a fair shake and even-handed treatment.”

Carr has repeatedly threatened broadcasters with the FCC’s rarely enforced news distortion policy. As we’ve explained, the FCC technically has no rule or regulation against news distortion, which is why it is called a policy and not a rule. But on Jennings’ show, he described it as a rule.

“We do have those rules at the FCC: If you engage in news distortion, we can take action,” Carr said.

As we’ve written several times, it is difficult legally for the FCC to revoke broadcast licenses. But it isn’t difficult for Carr to exert pressure on networks and broadcasters through public statements. Carr suggested yesterday that broadcasters turn in their licenses if they don’t like his approach to enforcement.

“If you’re a broadcaster and you don’t like being held accountable for the first time in a long time through the public interest standard, that’s fine. You can turn your license in to the FCC, we’ll find something else to do with it,” Carr said. “Or you can go to Congress and say, ‘I don’t want the FCC having public interest obligations on broadcasters anymore, I want broadcasters to be like cable, to be like a streaming service.’ That’s fine too. But as long as that’s the system that Congress has created, we’re going to enforce it.”

Photo of Jon Brodkin

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

After getting Jimmy Kimmel suspended, FCC chair threatens ABC’s The View Read More »

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FCC chair teams up with Ted Cruz to block Wi-Fi hotspots for schoolkids

brendan carr, FCC, Policy, ted cruz, wi-fi / /

“Chairman Carr’s moves today are very unfortunate as they further signal that the Commission is no longer prioritizing closing the digital divide,” Schwartzman said. “In the 21st Century, education doesn’t stop when a student leaves school and today’s actions could lead to many students having a tougher time completing homework assignments because their families lack Internet access.”

Biden FCC expanded school and library program

Under then-Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, the FCC expanded its E-Rate program in 2024 to let schools and libraries use Universal Service funding to lend out Wi-Fi hotspots and services that could be used off-premises. The FCC previously distributed Wi-Fi hotspots and other Internet access technology under pandemic-related spending authorized by Congress in 2021, but that program ended. The new hotspot lending program was supposed to begin this year.

Carr argues that when the Congressionally approved program ended, the FCC lost its authority to fund Wi-Fi hotspots for use outside of schools and libraries. “I dissented from both decisions at the time, and I am now pleased to circulate these two items, which will end the FCC’s illegal funding [of] unsupervised screen time for young kids,” he said.

Under Rosenworcel, the FCC said the Communications Act gives it “broad and flexible authority to establish rules governing the equipment and services that will be supported for eligible schools and libraries, as well as to design the specific mechanisms of support.”

The E-Rate program can continue providing telecom services to schools and libraries despite the hotspot component being axed. E-Rate disbursed about $1.75 billion in 2024, but could spend more based on demand because it has a funding cap of about $5 billion per year. E-Rate and other Universal Service programs are paid for through fees imposed on phone companies, which typically pass the cost on to consumers.

FCC chair teams up with Ted Cruz to block Wi-Fi hotspots for schoolkids Read More »

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Delete, Delete, Delete: How FCC Republicans are killing rules faster than ever

brendan carr, direct final rule, FCC, fcc delete delete delete, Features, Policy / /

FCC speeds up rule-cutting, giving public as little as 10 days to file objections.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr testifies before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government on May 21, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty Images | John McDonnell

The Federal Communications Commission’s Republican chairman is eliminating regulations at breakneck speed by using a process that cuts dozens of rules at a time while giving the public only 10 or 20 days to review each proposal and submit objections.

Chairman Brendan Carr started his “Delete, Delete, Delete” rule-cutting initiative in March and later announced he’d be using the Direct Final Rule (DFR) mechanism to eliminate regulations without a full public-comment period. Direct Final Rule is just one of several mechanisms the FCC is using in the Delete, Delete, Delete initiative. But despite the seeming obscurity of regulations deleted under Direct Final Rule so far, many observers are concerned that the process could easily be abused to eliminate more significant rules that protect consumers.

On July 24, the FCC removed what it called “11 outdated and useless rule provisions” related to telegraphs, rabbit-ear broadcast receivers, and phone booths. The FCC said the 11 provisions consist of “39 regulatory burdens, 7,194 words, and 16 pages.”

The FCC eliminated these rules without the “prior notice and comment” period typically used to comply with the US Administrative Procedure Act (APA), with the FCC finding that it had “good cause” to skip that step. The FCC said it would allow comment for 10 days and that rule eliminations would take effect automatically after the 10-day period unless the FCC concluded that it received “significant adverse comments.”

On August 7, the FCC again used Direct Final Rule to eliminate 98 rules and requirements imposed on broadcasters. This time, the FCC allowed 20 days for comment. But it maintained its stance that the rules would be deleted automatically at the end of the period if no “significant” comments were received.

By contrast, FCC rulemakings usually allow 30 days for initial comments and another 15 days for reply comments. The FCC then considers the comments, responds to the major issues raised, and drafts a final proposal that is put up for a commission vote. This process, which takes months and gives both the public and commissioners more opportunity to consider the changes, can apply both to the creation of new rules and the elimination of existing ones.

FCC’s lone Democrat warns of “Trojan horse”

Telecom companies want the FCC to eliminate rules quickly. As we’ve previously written, AT&T submitted comments to the Delete, Delete, Delete docket urging the agency to eliminate rules that can result in financial penalties “without the delay imposed by notice-and-comment proceeding.”

Carr’s use of Direct Final Rule has drawn criticism from advocacy groups, local governments that could be affected by rule changes, and the FCC’s only Democratic commissioner. Anna Gomez, the lone FCC Democrat, told Ars in a phone interview that the rapid rule-cutting method “could be a Trojan horse because what we did, or what the commission did, is it adopted a process without public comment to eliminate any rule it finds to be outdated and, crucially, unwarranted. We don’t define what either of those terms mean, which therefore could lead to a situation that’s ripe for abuse.”

Gomez said she’d “be concerned if we eliminated rules that are meant to protect or inform consumers, or to promote competition, such as the broadband labels. This commission seems to have entirely lost its focus on consumers.”

Gomez told us that she doesn’t think a 10-day comment period is ever appropriate and that Carr seems to be trying “to meet some kind of arbitrary rule reduction quota.” If the rules being eliminated are truly obsolete, “then what’s the rush?” she asked. “If we don’t give sufficient time for public comment, then what happens when we make a mistake? What happens when we eliminate rules and it turns out, in fact, that these rules were important to keep? That’s why we give the public due process to comment on when we adopt rules and when we eliminate rules.”

Gomez hasn’t objected to the specific rules deleted under this process so far, but she spoke out against the method used by Carr both times Direct Final Rule method was used. “I told the chairman that I could support initiating a proceeding to look at how a Direct Final Rule process could be used going forward and including a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking proposing to eliminate the rules the draft order purports to eliminate today. That offer was declined,” she said in her dissenting statement in the July vote.

Gomez said that rules originally adopted under a notice-and-comment process should not be eliminated “without seeking public comment on appropriate processes and guardrails.” She added that the “order does not limit the Direct Final Rule process to elimination of rules that are objectively obsolete with a clear definition of how that will be applied, asserting instead authority to remove rules that are ‘outdated or unwarranted.'”

Local governments object

Carr argued that the Administrative Procedure Act “gives the commission the authority to fast-track the elimination of rules that inarguably fail to serve the public interest. Using this authority, the Commission can forgo the usual prior notice and public comment period before repealing the rules for these bygone regulations.”

Carr justified the deletions by saying that “outdated and unnecessary regulations from Washington often derail efforts to build high-speed networks and infrastructure across the country.” It’s not clear why the specific rule deletions were needed to accelerate broadband deployment, though. As Carr said, the FCC’s first use of Direct Finale Rule targeted regulations for “telegraph services, rabbit-ear broadcast receivers, and telephone booths—technologies that were considered outdated decades ago.”

Carr’s interpretation of the Administrative Procedure Act is wrong, said an August 6 filing submitted by local governments in Maryland, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia, Oregon, Virginia, California, New York, and Texas. Direct Final Rule “is intended for extremely simple, non-substantive decisions,” and the FCC process “is insufficient to ensure that future Commission decisions will fall within the good cause exception of the Administrative Procedure Act,” the filing said.

Local governments argued that “the new procedure is itself a substantive decision” and should be subject to a full notice-and-comment rulemaking. “The procedure adopted by the Commission makes it almost inevitable that the Commission will adopt rule changes outside of any APA exceptions,” the filing said.

The FCC could face court challenges. Gerard Lavery Lederer, a lawyer for the local government coalition, told Ars, “we fully anticipate that Chairman Carr and the FCC’s general counsel will take our concerns seriously.” But he also said local governments are worried about the FCC adopting industry proposals that “violate local government rights as preserved by Congress in the [Communications] Act” or that have “5th Amendment takings implications and/or 10th Amendment overreach issues.”

Is that tech really “obsolete”?

At least some rules targeted for deletion, like regulations on equipment used by radio and TV broadcast stations, may seem too arcane to care about. But a coalition of 22 public interest, civil rights, labor, and digital rights groups argued in a July 17 letter to Carr that some of the rule deletions could harm vulnerable populations and that the shortened comment period wasn’t long enough to determine the impact.

“For example, the Commission has targeted rules relating to calling cards and telephone booths in the draft Order as ‘obsolete,'” the letter said. “However, calling cards and pay phones remain important technologies for rural areas, immigrant communities, the unhoused, and others without reliable access to modern communications services. The impact on these communities is not clear and will not likely be clear in the short time provided for comment.”

The letter also said the FCC’s new procedure “would effectively eliminate any hope for timely judicial review of elimination of a rule on delegated authority.” Actions taken via delegated authority are handled by FCC bureaus without a vote of the commission.

So far, Carr has held commission votes for his Direct Final Rule actions rather than letting FCC bureau issue orders themselves. But in the July order, the FCC said its bureaus and offices have previously adopted or repealed rules without notice and comment and “reaffirm[ed] that all Bureaus and Offices may continue to take such actions in situations that are exempt from the APA’s notice-and-comment requirements.”

“This is about pushing boundaries”

The advocacy groups’ letter said that delegating authority to bureaus “makes judicial review virtually impossible, even though the order goes into effect immediately.” Parties impacted by actions made on delegated authority can’t go straight to the courts and must instead “file an application for review with the Commission as a prerequisite to any petition for judicial review,” the letter said. The groups argued that “a Chairman that does not wish to permit judicial review of elimination of a rule through DFR may order a bureau to remove the rule, then simply refuse to take action on the application for review.”

The letter was signed by Public Knowledge; Asian Americans Advancing Justice-AAJC; the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society; the Center for Digital Democracy; Common Sense Media; the Communications Workers of America; the Electronic Privacy Information Center; HTTP; LGBT Tech; the Media Access Project; MediaJustice; the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council; the National Action Network; NBJC; the National Council of Negro Women; the National Digital Inclusion Alliance; the National Hispanic Media Coalition; the National Urban League; New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI); The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; the United Church of Christ Media Justice Ministry; and UnidosUS.

Harold Feld, senior VP of consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge, told Ars that the FCC “has a long record of thinking that things are obsolete and then discovering when they run an actual proceeding that there are people still using these things.” Feld is worried that the Direct Final Rule process could be used to eliminate consumer protections that apply to old phone networks when they are replaced by either fiber or wireless service.

“I certainly think that this is about pushing boundaries,” Feld said. When there’s a full notice-and-comment period, the FCC has to “actually address every argument made” before eliminating a rule. When the FCC provides less explanation of a decision, that “makes it much harder to challenge on appeal,” he said.

“Once you have this tool that lets you just get rid of rules without the need to do a proceeding, without the need to address the comments that are raised in that proceeding… it’s easy to see how this ramps up and how hard it is for people to stay constantly alert to look for an announcement where they will then only have 10 days to respond once it gets published,” he said.

What is a “significant” comment?

The FCC says its use of Direct Final Rule is guided by December 2024 recommendations from the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), a government agency. But the FCC didn’t implement Direct Final Rule in the exact way recommended by the ACUS.

The ACUS said its guidance “encourages agencies to use direct final rulemaking, interim final rulemaking, and alternative methods of public engagement to ensure robust public participation even when they rely properly on the good cause exemption.” But the ACUS recommended taking public comment for at least 30 days, while the FCC has used 10- and 20-day periods.

The ACUS also said that agencies should only move ahead with rule deletions “if no significant adverse comments are received.” If such comments are received, the agency “can either withdraw the rule or publish a regular proposed rule that is open for public comment,” the recommendation said.

The FCC said that if it receives comments, “we will evaluate whether they are significant adverse comments that warrant further procedures before changing the rules.” The letter from 22 advocacy groups said it is worried about the leeway the FCC is giving itself in defining whether a comment is adverse and significant:

Although ACUS recommends that the agency revert to standard notice-and-comment rulemaking in the event of a single adverse comment, the draft Order requires multiple adverse comments—at which point the bureau/Commission will consider whether to shift to notice-and-comment rulemaking. If the bureau/Commission decides that adverse comments are not ‘substantive,’ it will explain its determination in a public notice that will not be filed in the Federal Register. The Commission states that it will be guided, but not bound, by the definition of ‘adverse comment’ recommended by ACUS.

Criticism from many corners

TechFreedom, a libertarian-leaning think tank, said it supports Carr’s goals in the “Delete, Delete, Delete” initiative but objected to the Direct Final Rule process. TechFreedom wrote in July comments that “deleting outdated regulations via a Direct Final Rule is unprecedented at the FCC.”

“No such process exists under current FCC rules,” the group said, urging the agency to seek public comment on the process. “If the Commission wishes to establish a new method by which it can eliminate existing regulations without undertaking a full rulemaking proceeding, it should open a docket specific to that subject and seek public comment,” the filing said.

TechFreedom said it is especially important for the FCC to “seek comment as to when the direct final rule procedures should be invoked… What is ‘routine,’ ‘insignificant,’ or ‘inconsequential’ and who is to decide—the Commissioners or the Bureau chiefs?”

The American Library Association and other groups wrote on August 14 that either 10 or 20 days is not long enough for public comment. Moreover, the groups said the two Direct Final Rule actions so far “offer minimal explanation for why the rules are being removed. There is only one sentence describing elimination of many rules and each rule removal is described in a footnote with a parenthetical about the change. It is not enough.”

The Utility Reform Network offered similar objections about the process and said that the FCC declaring technologies to be “obsolete” and markets “outdated” without a detailed explanation “suggests the Commission’s view that these rules are not minor or technical changes but support a larger deregulatory effort that should itself be subject to notice-and-comment rulemaking.”

The National Consumer Law Center and other groups said that “rushing regulatory changes as proposed is likely illegal in many instances, counterproductive, and bad policy,” and that “changes to regulations should be effectuated only through careful, thoughtful, and considered processes.”

We contacted Chairman Carr’s office and did not receive a response.

FCC delegated key decisions to bureaus

Gomez told Ars that Direct Final Rule could serve a purpose “with the right procedures and guardrails in place.” For example, she said the quick rule deletions can be justified for eliminating rules that have become obsolete because of a court reversal or Congressional actions.

“I would argue that we cannot, under the Administrative Procedure Act and the Constitution, simply eliminate rules because we’ve made a judgment call that they are unwarranted,” she said. “That does not meet the good cause exemption to notice-and-comment requirements.”

Gomez also opposes FCC bureaus making significant decisions without a commission vote, which effectively gives Carr more power over the agency’s operations. For example, T-Mobile’s purchase of US Cellular’s wireless operations and Verizon’s purchase of Frontier were approved by the FCC at the Bureau level.

In another instance cited by Gomez, the FCC Media Bureau waived a requirement for broadcast licensees to file their biennial ownership reports for 18 months. “The waiver order, which was done at the bureau level on delegated authority, simply said ‘we find good cause to waive these rules.’ There was no analysis whatsoever,” Gomez said.

Gomez also pointed out that the Carr FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau delayed implementation of certain price caps on prison phone services. The various bureau-level decisions are a “stretching of the guardrails that we have internally for when things should be done on delegated authority, and when they should be voted by the commission,” Gomez said. “I’m concerned that [Direct Final Rule] is just the next iteration of the same issue.”

Photo of Jon Brodkin

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

Delete, Delete, Delete: How FCC Republicans are killing rules faster than ever Read More »

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How the Trump FCC justified requiring a “bias monitor” at CBS

brendan carr, Paramount Skydance, Policy, Trump CBS / /

Paramount/Skydance merger

Trump FCC claims there’s precedent for CBS ombudsman, but it’s a weak one.

President-elect Donald Trump speaks to Brendan Carr, his intended pick for Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, as he attends a SpaceX Starship rocket launch on November 19, 2024 in Brownsville, Texas. Credit: Getty Images | Brandon Bell

The Federal Communications Commission’s approval of CBS owner Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance came with a condition to install an ombudsman, which FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has described as a “bias monitor.” It appears that the bias monitor will make sure the news company’s reporting meets standards demanded by President Donald Trump.

“One of the things they’re going to have to do is put an ombudsman in place for two years, so basically a bias monitor that will report directly to the president [of Paramount],” Carr told Newsmax on Thursday, right after the FCC announced its approval of the merger.

The Carr FCC claims there is precedent for such a bias monitor. But the precedent cited in last week’s merger approval points to a very different case involving NBC and GE, one in which an ombudsman was used to protect NBC’s editorial independence from interference by its new owner.

By contrast, it looks like Paramount is hiring a monitor to make sure that CBS reporting doesn’t anger President Trump. Paramount obtained the FCC’s merger approval only after reaching a $16 million settlement with Trump, who sued the company because he didn’t like how CBS edited a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris. Trump claimed last week that Paramount is providing another $20 million worth of “advertising, PSAs, or similar programming,” and called the deal “another in a long line of VICTORIES over the Fake News Media.”

NBC/GE precedent was “viewpoint-neutral”

The FCC merger approval says that “to promote transparency and increased accountability, Skydance will have in place, for a period of at least two years, an ombudsman who reports to the President of New Paramount, and who will receive and evaluate any complaints of bias or other concerns involving CBS.”

The Carr FCC apparently couldn’t find a precedent that would closely match the ombudsman condition being imposed on Paramount. The above sentence has a footnote citing the FCC’s January 2011 approval of Comcast’s purchase of NBCUniversal, saying the Obama-era order found “such a mechanism effective in preventing editorial bias in the operation of the NBC broadcast network.”

But in 2011, the FCC said the purpose of the ombudsman was to ensure that NBC’s reporting would not be altered to fit the business interests of its owner. The FCC said at the time:

The Applicants state that, since GE’s acquisition of NBC in 1986, GE has ensured that the content of NBC’s news and public affairs programming is not influenced by the non-media interests of GE. Under this policy, which was noted with favor when the Commission approved GE’s acquisition of NBC, NBC and its O&O [owned and operated] stations have been free to report about GE without interference or influence. In addition, GE appointed an ombudsman to further ensure that the policy of independence of NBCU’s news operations would be maintained. Although the Applicants contend there is no legal requirement that they do so, they offer to maintain this policy and to retain the ombudsman position in the post-transaction entity to ensure the continued journalistic integrity and independence of NBCU’s news operations.

The NBC/GE condition “was a viewpoint-neutral economic measure. It did not matter if the content had a pro or con position on any political or regulatory issue, but only whether it might have been broadcast to promote GE’s pecuniary interests,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a longtime attorney and advocate who specializes in media and telecommunications policy. Schwartzman told Ars today that the NBC/GE condition cited by the Carr FCC is “very different from the viewpoint-based nature of the CBS condition.”

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, the commission’s only Democrat, said the agency is “imposing never-before-seen controls over newsroom decisions and editorial judgment, in direct violation of the First Amendment and the law.”

FCC: Trump lawsuit totally unrelated

The FCC’s merger approval order said that “the now-settled lawsuit filed by President Donald J. Trump against Paramount and CBS News” is “unrelated to our review of the Transaction.” But on Newsmax, Carr credited Trump with forcing changes at CBS and other media outlets.

“For years, people cowed down to the executives behind these companies based in Hollywood and New York, and they just accepted that these national broadcasters could dictate how people think about topics, that they could set the narrative for the country—and President Trump fundamentally rejected it,” Carr said. “He smashed the facade that these are gatekeepers that can determine what people think. Everything we’re seeing right now flows from that decision by President Trump, and he’s winning. PBS has been defunded. NPR has been defunded. CBS is committing to restoring fact-based journalism… President Trump stood up to these legacy media gatekeepers and now their business models are falling apart.”

Carr went on Fox News to discuss the CBS cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s show, saying that “all of this is downstream of President Trump’s decision to stand up, and he stood up for the American people because the American people do not trust these legacy gatekeepers anymore.” Carr also wrote in a post on X, “The partisan left’s ritualist wailing and gnashing of teeth over Colbert is quite revealing. They’re acting like they’re losing a loyal DNC spokesperson that was entitled to an exemption from the laws of economics.”

Warren: “Bribery is illegal no matter who is president”

In a July 22 letter to Carr, Skydance said it “will ensure that CBS’s reporting is fair, unbiased, and fact-based.” With the installation of an ombudsman who will report to the company president, “New Paramount’s executive leadership will carefully consider any such complaints in overseeing CBS’s news programming,” the letter said, also making reference to the previous case of an ombudsman at NBC. Skydance sent another letter about its elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, complying with Carr’s demand to end such programs.

As Carr described it to Newsmax, the merging companies “made commitments to address bias and restore fact-based reporting. I think that’s so important. Look, the American public simply do not trust these legacy media broadcasters, so if they stick with that commitment, you know we’re sort of trust-but-verify mode, that’ll be a big win.”

The FCC’s merger-approval order favorably cites comments from the Center for American Rights (CAR), a conservative group that filed a news distortion complaint against CBS over the Harris interview. The group “filed a supplemental brief, in which it discusses a report by Media Research Center (MRC) concerning negative media coverage of the Trump administration,” the FCC said. “CAR asserts that the MRC report confirms that the news media generally, and CBS News in particular, is relentlessly slanted and biased. It concludes that Commission action is necessary to condition the Transaction on an end to this blatant bias.”

Although the FCC insists that the Trump lawsuit wasn’t relevant to its merger review, Carr previously made it clear that the news distortion complaint would be a factor in determining whether the merger would be approved. The FCC investigation into the Harris interview doesn’t seem to have turned up much. CBS was accused of distorting the news by airing two different answers given by Harris to the same question, but the unedited transcript and camera feeds showed that the two clips simply contained two different sentences from the same answer.

Congressional Democrats said they will investigate the circumstances of the merger, including allegations that Skydance and Paramount bribed Trump to get it approved. “Bribery is illegal no matter who is president,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said. “It sure looks like Skydance and Paramount paid $36 million to Donald Trump for this merger, and he’s even bragged about this crooked-looking deal… this merger must be investigated for any criminal behavior. It’s an open question whether the Trump administration’s approval of this merger was the result of a bribe.”

Photo of Jon Brodkin

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

How the Trump FCC justified requiring a “bias monitor” at CBS Read More »