FCC's Carr Denounced for Project 2025 Involvement

Democrats and consumer advocates are speaking out against a Republican Federal Communications Commission official’s role in crafting Project 2025, an aggressive conservative plan to remake the federal government pushed by allies of former president Donald Trump, according to The Washington Post.

The sprawling proposal calls for sweeping changes, including dismantling the Education Department, dramatically reducing the federal workforce and giving the president more control over the civil service, as my colleagues Josh Dawsey and Hannah Knowles reported. The plan has sparked significant backlash from Democrats and President Biden since its April release.

Brendan Carr

Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, whom Trump appointed to the agency in 2017, wrote a portion of the report for the Conservative group The Heritage Foundation calling for a dramatic reimagining of the agency, shifting more of its focus to reining in tech giants like Facebook and Google.

Most notably, Carr’s chapter calls for enlisting the Federal Communications Commission into the Republican battle against Section 230, the law that shields digital platforms from lawsuits over user-generated content. Carr has long advocated for revamping the law on grounds that social media companies are disproportionately “censoring” viewpoints on the right, which many conservatives allege.

Carr also advocated harnessing the FCC’s powers to impose “transparency rules on Big Tech” and suggested the agency could play a role in banning TikTok from the United States.

Together, the moves would mark a major departure from the FCC’s traditional focus on the telecom sector — and a win for giants like Verizon and AT&T, consumer advocates said.

“It's a reckless compilation of ideological, pro-corporate proposals,” said Robert Weissman, president of the left-leaning advocacy group Public Citizen.

Carr did not respond to a request for comment.