A defiant Brendan Carr testified before the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday in his first public appearance before lawmakers since threatening broadcasters who aired comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show.
Over the course of nearly three hours, the Federal Communications Commission chairman ping-ponged between heated exchanges with Democrats and largely muted questions from Republicans. But at least some members of both parties expressed concern about regulators bending the First Amendment — though there’s little sign it will have much impact on Carr.
Taking center stage were comments Carr made in September in the wake of the public killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. After Kimmel made a joke on his late night show about the political ideology of the killer, Carr told interviewer Benny Johnson it was “some of the sickest conduct possible,” and could be a problem for broadcasters who aired the show. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he said.
The remarks went too far even for a handful of Republican lawmakers, including Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz (R-TX), who likened it to mafia talk. But during the hearing, Carr denied the comment was ever a threat in the first place, calling the idea “projection and distortion by Democrats.” He repeatedly doubled down on his insistence that the FCC should ensure broadcast licenses are being used in the public interest, including by enforcing against alleged news distortion. He refused to express regret for the comments. “My job is to enforce the law as passed by Congress that includes a public interest standard, and broadcast TV is fundamentally different than any other media,” Carr told the panel.
“My job is to enforce the law as passed by Congress that includes a public interest standard”
For the most part, it was Democrats who hammered Carr on his Kimmel comments, but Cruz reiterated his critique at the start of the hearing. He also, however, accused his Democratic colleagues of hypocrisy over their silence over alleged jawboning during the Biden administration. Cruz called on his Democratic peers to join him in passing reforms.
Several groups have warned the public interest obligation and news distortion standard for broadcast licensees are overly ambiguous and flawed, and Democrats may be open to refining them. Carr appeared at the hearing alongside the two other FCC commissioners, Democrat Anna Gomez and Republican Olivia Trusty. Speaking with reporters afterwards, Gomez said she would “welcome Congress legislating on the public interest standard because what we have seen under this administration is the weaponization of the FCC and the abuse of our regulatory authority in order to silence speech.” Gomez accused the Republican majority of “bandying about the phrase, ‘operating in the public interest,’ as an excuse to go after content this administration doesn’t like. And that is not valid. It’s contrary to the First Amendment.”
Most Republicans besides Cruz either didn’t address Carr’s broadcaster threats, or attacked Democrats for alleged hypocrisy without taking a stance themselves. Several Republicans asked about far less controversial topics, like broadband maps and robocall scam enforcement.
By contrast, Carr and panel Democrats often ended up talking over each other in testy exchanges. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) asked whether Carr would have threatened broadcasters to take Kimmel off the air had he made the kinds of remarks that Trump did on Truth Social recently, baselessly saying that progressive filmmaker Rob Reiner was killed because he angered people with “TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” “Democrats on this dais are accusing me of engaging in censorship,” Carr responded, “and now you’re trying to encourage me to police speech on the internet. I’m simply not going to do it.” Schatz asked if there are any conservative commentators or comedians that say anything offensive that he’d consider investigating. “I’m not looking at things that are offensive or awful, to use your words,” Carr said. “I’m looking at things that are consistent with our public interest rules and regulations.”
When Carr attempted to turn Klobuchar’s questioning of alleged censorship by the Trump administration back onto the Biden administration, Klobuchar shot back. “Joe Biden is no longer president. You are the head of the FCC, and Donald Trump is president and I’m trying to deal with this right now,” she said.
Other Democratic senators homed in on an obvious pattern at the FCC: the agency no longer considers itself to be independent. Carr refused to give a yes or no answer to Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) on whether the FCC is an independent agency. Lujan held up a print out of the FCC website that said it was. “This isn’t a trick question,” Lujan said. When Carr admitted the FCC is not independent, Lujan asked, “Is your website wrong? Is your website lying?”
“Possibly,” Carr said.
The FCC website appeared to have been updated recently to remove the word independent. Public Knowledge’s broadband policy director Alisa Valentin said on Bluesky that the FCC website appeared to still call the agency independent as of 11:54 AM Wednesday. The Internet Archive last captured the page on October 1st, when the word “independent” was still there.
Carr would not answer a question from Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) about whether he had any conversations with the president or his senior officials “about using the FCC to go after critics,” saying he would not discuss specific conversations with the president. When Kim reframed the question to whether it would be appropriate for the administration to give such direction to pressure media companies, Carr declined to “get into hypotheticals.”
“Trump is not your boss. The American people are your boss”
“The easy answer is no,” Kim said. “It’s not a hypothetical, it’s literally just trying to determine whether or not you are understanding your job being belonging to the American people. Trump is not your boss. The American people are your boss.” Kim also pointed out that Trump had posted in August that he would be in favor of the FCC revoking the broadcast licenses of ABC and NBC because he believed they engaged in biased coverage of him.
Cruz and Kim debated past examples of lawmakers pressuring the FCC to scrutinize media mergers based on what each perceived to be partisan interests. But Kim argued such letters are the “proper oversight role of Congress” and far different from “Chairman Carr’s threats to companies he directly regulates.”
Toward the end of the back-and-forth, the two lawmakers expressed some common ground. “The First Amendment is not simply a one-way license for one team to abuse the power and the other not,” Cruz said. “Instead we should respect the free speech of all Americans, regardless of party.” Kim said he agreed, and said he hoped to work together “to show that we do this regardless of who was violating, that we try to show that integrity to the process.”
Carr has already rejected one Democratic senator’s call for him to resign, and it looks unlikely that Congress will otherwise make any serious attempts to remove him. Cruz seems eager to use this moment to pass legal changes he thinks conservatives will come to appreciate once the shoe is on the other foot. The question now is whether he can build a strong enough coalition to do so.
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