President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday picked Brendan Carr to become chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
What To Know: Carr, the FCC's current top Republican commissioner, has worked at the organization since 2012 and is an outspoken supporter of free speech, deregulation and economic growth in the telecommunications sector. Carr wrote the FCC chapter of Project 2025, a conservative political initiative spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation.
Project 2025: In his chapter in Project 2025, Carr expressed his support for updating and eliminating obsolete regulations to empower the private sector in developing network infrastructure. He showed particular interest in promoting technologies like Elon Musk’s Starlink and Amazon.com, Inc.'s AMZN Kuiper satellite internet services.
"This technology can beam a reliable, high-speed Internet signal to nearly any part of the globe at a fraction of the cost of other technologies. This has the potential to significantly accelerate efforts to end the digital divide and disrupt the federal regulatory and subsidy regime that applies to communications networks. The FCC should expedite its work to support this new technology by acting more quickly in its review and approval of applications to launch new satellites," Carr wrote in Project 2025.
Over the past year, Carr disagreed with Democratic FCC commissioners for denying Starlink money from a rural broadband subsidy program, including in this post on the social media platform, X:
Carr also called out Vice President Kamala Harris for little progress on a $42 billion program to expand broadband access, for which the U.S. Department of Commerce determined Starlink had only limited eligibility.
Carr told POLITICO that he believes much of the broadband program's $42 billion should be used to develop land-based connections, but perhaps as much as one-third could be used for satellite internet.
DOGE: President-elect Trump created a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and tapped Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the department's efforts to reduce wasteful federal spending and streamline government operations. The DOGE may help to advance Carr's agenda of deregulation and empowerment of the private sector, including Musk's Starlink satellites.
In a recent interview on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, Trump highlighted Starlink's potential to disrupt traditional land-based broadband technologies and the subsidies for providers like AT&T Inc. T and Comcast Corp. CMCSA.
"We're spending a trillion dollars to get cables all over the country, up to upstate areas where you have two farms, and they are spending millions of dollars to have a cable. Elon can do it for nothing," Trump said.
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