# Brendan Carr Chairman of the [[FCC]] since January 20, 2025, a commissioner since 2017, and the author of the FCC chapter of [[Project 2025]] — which argued that the agency should "restore" a broadcasting public-interest standard and rein in Big Tech. What he has actually done with the chair is use the two powers the Commission unambiguously holds, **license renewal** and **merger approval**, as leverage over the news operations of the companies that need them. The vault treats him as the regulatory instrument of [[Media Capture]]: the point in the government where a network's editorial choices become a transaction cost. ## The record **Approvals as leverage.** The Skydance takeover of Paramount (see [[Skydance-Paramount]]) needed FCC sign-off to transfer CBS's station licenses. It got it in July 2025, on a 2–1 vote over [[Anna Gomez]]'s dissent, weeks after Paramount paid $16 million to settle the President's suit over a *60 Minutes* edit and after Skydance committed to an ombudsman and an end to DEI programs — the sequence [[CBS News]] and [[60 Minutes]] lay out. In March 2026 the Commission approved [[Nexstar]]'s $6.2 billion purchase of Tegna by waiver, producing a company reaching roughly 54% of U.S. households against the 39% statutory cap ([[Nexstar and Tegna Timeline]]); Gomez said the merger was approved "behind closed doors," and Carr's answer was that any rule "can be waived when the waiver standard is met." He has defended case-by-case review as preferable to a rule: "transactions that are in the public interest, we can let through." **Kimmel.** On September 17, 2025, after [[Jimmy Kimmel]]'s monologue about the Charlie Kirk shooting, Carr said on a podcast that broadcasters could handle it "the easy way or the hard way" and that the Commission had "remedies" to consider; Nexstar and Sinclair pulled the show from their ABC affiliates within hours and ABC suspended it. It returned six days later. The episode is the cleanest demonstration of the mechanism — no order was issued, no proceeding opened, and the effect was immediate — and it drew a Senate Commerce hearing request and criticism from Republicans including Ted Cruz, who called it "dangerous as hell." **"News distortion."** Carr revived a rarely used news-distortion policy to open inquiries into CBS (the Harris interview edit), NBC and ABC, and in March 2026 warned the networks again over their coverage of the [[Iran War 2026]]. He has also pursued Disney's ABC-owned stations for equal-time violations over a candidate's appearance on *The View* ([[ABC and Disney v. FCC]] tracks the litigation). Whether any of this could survive a First Amendment challenge is, on most readings, beside the point: the threat operates before the law does. **Deregulation.** On the other side of the ledger he has moved to lift ownership limits, kill the remaining [[Net Neutrality]] rules, and speed spectrum and satellite approvals — the agenda that puts him in the same room as [[Verizon]], [[Nexstar]] and the [[Hill and Valley Forum]] crowd, and that makes the consolidation he approves and the leverage he exercises the same policy seen from two sides. ## Reading him Carr is a lawyer, not a broadcaster; his career is the FCC general counsel's office and then a commission seat under three presidents. The question the vault keeps open is whether the news-distortion campaign is an end or a means. On the record so far it is a means — every pressure episode has ended in a transaction (a settlement, an approval, a personnel change at a network) rather than an order — which is why [[Regulatory Capture]] understates it: the regulator is not captured by the industry, the industry's news divisions are captured through the regulator. ## See Also - [[FCC]] · [[Anna Gomez]] · [[Olivia Trusty]] - [[Media Capture]] · [[Regulatory Capture]] · [[Project 2025]] - [[Skydance-Paramount]] · [[CBS News]] · [[60 Minutes]] · [[Nexstar]] · [[Nexstar and Tegna Timeline]] · [[Warner Bros. Discovery]] - [[Jimmy Kimmel]] · [[ABC News]] · [[ABC and Disney v. FCC]] · [[Disney Timeline]] - [[Net Neutrality]] · [[Verizon]] · [[Hill and Valley Forum]] - [[NewsGuard]] — Carr's November 2024 "censorship cartel" letter