Last year was “such a banger of a year,” Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), told the Washington Reporter in an interview, reflecting on his successes in deregulation, implementing new restrictions on foreign-manufactured drones, and abolishing the agency’s DEI protocols.
Carr began the year by mandating that the FCC’s staff return back to the office. “It’s really impressive how much the whole FCC team got done,” he said. “It started from when we came into the leadership position in the building in January; at that point the FCC was still operating under COVID-era work from home rules where you could fling the Code of Regulations around this building and not be in fear of hitting anybody. Now, we’re all fully back, and folks are being really productive.”
Carr also made news by telling the Reporter that the FCC is “mov[ing] to a final order” on national security disclosure requirements when asked about Senator Joni Ernst’s call to investigate the router company T.P. Link.
One of Carr’s first moves was “end[ing] the FCC’s promotion of DEI. We’d been spending millions and millions of dollars promoting DEI. We had it listed as our second or third highest strategic priority, rather than just connecting people. So we right away had to reverse course on some harmful policy and personnel issues that had been running during the Biden years.”
At the core of Carr’s deregulatory agenda is what he called his “Delete Delete Delete” program, which was the “largest deregulatory effort in the agency’s history, and so far we caught or teed up for deletion over 1,000 rules and regulations.”
“That’s over 300 pages in the FCC’s rule book just in the first 12 months,” he explained. “[If] you think about how much of this economy over the last five years in particular was just choked out by red tape from Washington, and we’re deleting those rules and regulations and allowing the country to innovate, once again, that’s going to be great for the economy, great for the consumers, great for affordability.”
Following the implementation of the “Delete, Delete, Delete” agenda, Carr noted that he and his colleagues “quickly pivoted into our own affirmative agenda.”
As Carr has traveled the country, he’s noticed shifts on the ground, he said. “I was just out in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, and there’s so much energy and innovation that’s booming thanks to President Trump,” he said. “We are unleashing American drone dominance by making sure that U.S.-based drone manufacturers are able to succeed. We are ensuring that America leads the way in AI and all of this is a combination of getting rid of the innovation-choking regulations of the past and also making sure there are policies to enable growth, like more spectrum and permitting reform.”
While in Vegas, Carr and his administration colleagues, including Michael Kratsios, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) “attended a grand opening ribbon cutting at the Las Vegas Police Department as they were launching a new fleet of dozens of American drones that they’re going to be incorporating to help improve public safety,” he said.
The FCC has several ways that it is helping American drone manufacturers, all while not disrupting their supply chain. “At the very end of last year, our national security agencies made a determination that foreign produced drones present an unacceptable threat to our national security, and so we broadly added all foreign produced drones to the FCC’s covered list,” Carr noted. “That covered list basically denies you the ability to import or market new models, new versions of devices that are on that covered list. There won’t be any disruption to consumers. They can continue to use and buy the drones they always have. But going forward, new models will be prohibited. That’s an important national security step. We also provided some guidance recently on some exceptions to that to get drones lawfully permitted for use in the U.S.”
“So on the one hand,” he said, “we’re blocking insecure drones from outside the U.S., and on the other hand, we’re helping to accelerate the growth of the domestic market in several ways. One, at the FCC, we’re going to be taking actions to help make it easier to test and operate those drones. And then again, across the federal government, there’s all sorts of work being done to make sure that these U.S.-based drone providers and manufacturers can succeed.”
Carr wants to implement further rulemaking that could affect what China hawks like Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) have honed in on when it comes to companies like TP-Link.
“Standing up reinvigorated efforts on national security is one of the big things that we’ve done right off the bat over the past year,” he said. “We set up a new council on national security. And one idea that we’ve been pushing, among many others, and we do a lot on that security, is this idea of what we call the FACT Act, which would make it so that if you have any sort of license or authorization from the FCC, we want to know if you are an entity that has concerning ties back to a foreign adversary nation.”
Carr’s Build America Initiative is at the forefront of what he’s accomplished as chair. “We’re focusing on getting folks building again, we are unleashing high speed infrastructure builds in communities all across the country by looking at permitting reform and similar efforts,” he said. “On the spectrum front, we had fallen to a deep malaise during the Biden years, when it comes to one of the most important features of our economic strength, which is spectrum, the wireless airwaves that we use to connect so much to our devices.”
Trump turned things around, he added.
“We had no authority to auction spectrum. It lapsed for the first time ever during the Biden years, but President Trump got that auction authority restored, and we have a real pipeline now of spectrum, and we’ve got auctions coming up, and that’s gonna be a great thing in terms of more competition and driving prices down for consumers. We’re boosting the space economy, helping to unleash the new golden age there, strengthening the telecom workforce, and then a lot of work, obviously, on empowering local broadcast television stations.”
Carr was a frequent target of criticism from Democrats following his criticisms of comedian Jimmy Kimmel, after which several local stations preempted their parent companies’ coverage and decided to temporarily pull Kimmel’s show off their airwaves.
Those moves, Carr said, are not only legal, but also fit in with the storied history of local news channels choosing what is best for their audiences. “A local TV station hadn’t pushed back on those national programmers, Disney, in this case, in maybe 20 years at the FCC,” he said. “That used to be more natural, because in fact, our FCC rules themselves expressly say that if you’re a local broadcaster and you think that something coming down the pipe from the national programmer isn’t a good fit for your community right now, you can preempt it. It’s your right under the rules, and then they exercise it, and people absolutely lose their minds. But yet, that’s what we will see, is local broadcasting people saying, ‘look, no, I don’t want this from Disney today or this week or ever. I don’t want this from Fox. I don’t want this from Paramount.’”
While the saga led to Carr briefly dominating multiple news cycles, he said that the lessons are worth it. “We want those local broadcasters to feel empowered, and to the extent they do today, which I think they do, I think that’s a great thing,” he said. “And the outrage, the news coverage, that’s going to come, that’s going to go, but long term, and we’ve got local broadcasters pushing back on national programmers, I think that that’s helping to get a little bit better balance in the media ecosystem.”
But, the controversy showed him “that the legacy national news media and their Democrat allies in Congress can certainly operate as a cartel to focus people’s attention very quickly and very narrowly on what it is that they want. I think one of the lessons learned for me from this is that it’s a really, really good thing that you had local broadcast TV stations, in this case, Sinclair and Nexstar, that made the decision for themselves to preempt, to not air those Kimmel episodes for a period of time.”
Nevertheless, “there have been some real significant wins in terms of how President Trump is reshaping the entire media landscape. PBS is defunded, NPR is defunded, Joy Reid is gone at NBC, Colbert is leaving CBS. Across the board, we’re really changing the status quo in what had been a stagnant, biased ecosystem for too long.”
While Carr had a hectic 2025, one of the first unresolved issues on his plate in 2026 is posed to be the merger between TEGNA and Nexstar. Of the proposal, he told the Reporter that “we’re looking at that one. That’s one we haven’t made a final decision on. When it comes to broadcast in general, my big concern has been that you’ve got these large national programmers like Comcast, like Disney, and over the years, they have come to just totally dominate the actual licensed local broadcast TV stations, whether they’re Nexstar or Gray or TEGNA.”
“The main portion of our media policy agenda is, how do we put some checks in place to constrain the outsized power of those national programs?” he said. “So that’s one sort of thread that cuts across a lot of our media policy work, and we’ll see how it plays out with respect to any individual transaction. But the long poll of the tent is you’ve got Disney and ABC that reach 100 percent of TV stations today with their programming, and we’re looking at lots of different ways to ensure that folks can stand up to and compete effectively against Disney and Comcast.”
Below is a transcript of our interview with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, lightly edited for clarity.
Washington Reporter:
Chairman Carr, before we get to the future, let’s start with the past and recap your 2025.
Chairman Brendan Carr:
2025 was such a banger of a year. It’s really impressive how much the whole FCC team got done. It started from when we came into the leadership position in the building in January; at that point the FCC was still operating under COVID-era work from home rules where you could fling the Code of Regulations around this building and not be in fear of hitting anybody. Now, we’re all fully back, and folks are being really productive. Right off the bat we ended the FCC’s promotion of DEI. We’d been spending millions and millions of dollars promoting DEI. We had it listed as our second or third highest strategic priority, rather than just connecting people. So we right away had to reverse course on some harmful policy and personnel issues that had been running during the Biden years. Then we quickly pivoted into our own affirmative agenda. We launched the Build America Initiative, where we’re focusing on getting folks building again, we are unleashing high speed infrastructure builds in communities all across the country by looking at permitting reform and similar efforts. On the spectrum front, we had fallen to a deep malaise during the Biden years, when it comes to one of the most important features of our economic strength, which is spectrum, the wireless airwaves that we use to connect so much to our devices. And President Trump turned things around. We had no authority to auction spectrum. It lapsed for the first time ever during the Biden years, but President Trump got that auction authority restored, and we have a real pipeline now of spectrum, and we’ve got auctions coming up, and that’s gonna be a great thing in terms of more competition and driving prices down for consumers. We’re boosting the space economy, helping to unleash the new golden age there, strengthening the telecom workforce, and then a lot of work, obviously, on empowering local broadcast television stations. There have been some real significant wins in terms of how President Trump is reshaping the entire media landscape. PBS is defunded, NPR is defunded, Joy Reid is gone at NBC, Colbert is leaving CBS. Across the board, we’re really changing the status quo in what had been a stagnant, biased ecosystem for too long.
Washington Reporter:
Can you talk about your Delete Delete Delete agenda, because I know that was a huge priority of yours. How do you see that helping Americans in going into this year?
Chairman Brendan Carr:
We launched the largest deregulatory effort in the agency’s history, and so far we caught or teed up for deletion over 1,000 rules and regulations. That’s over 300 pages in the FCC’s rule book just in the first 12 months. And you think about how much of this economy over the last five years in particular was just choked out by red tape from Washington, and we’re deleting those rules and regulations and allowing the country to innovate, once again, that’s going to be great for the economy, great for the consumers, great for affordability. I was just out in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show, and there’s so much energy and innovation that’s booming thanks to President Trump. We are unleashing American drone dominance by making sure that U.S.-based drone manufacturers are able to succeed. We are ensuring that America leads the way in AI and all of this is a combination of getting rid of the innovation-choking regulations of the past and also making sure there are policies to enable growth, like more spectrum and permitting reform.
Washington Reporter:
One of the areas that you’ve been working on with your colleagues across the federal government is cracking down on foreign made drones, especially those from China. You were in Vegas with Michael Kratsios, the head of OSTP. How is this playing out across the federal government right now?
Chairman Brendan Carr:
One of the things we did out in Las Vegas is that Kratsios and I attended a grand opening ribbon cutting at the Las Vegas Police Department as they were launching a new fleet of dozens of American drones that they’re going to be incorporating to help improve public safety. We’re doing several things. One, just at the very end of last year, our national security agencies made a determination that foreign produced drones present an unacceptable threat to our national security, and so we broadly added all foreign produced drones to the FCC’s covered list. That covered list basically denies you the ability to import or market new models, new versions of devices that are on that covered list. There won’t be any disruption to consumers. They can continue to use and buy the drones they always have. But going forward, new models will be prohibited. That’s an important national security step. We also provided some guidance recently on some exceptions to that to get drones lawfully permitted for use in the U.S. So on the one hand, we’re blocking insecure drones from outside the U.S., and on the other hand, we’re helping to accelerate the growth of the domestic market in several ways. One, at the FCC, we’re going to be taking actions to help make it easier to test and operate those drones. And then again, across the federal government, there’s all sorts of work being done to make sure that these U.S.-based drone providers and manufacturers can succeed.
Washington Reporter:
The FCC is also working in conjunction with China hawks in Congress about what’s going on with the new order that you want to be voted on that establishes disclosure requirements with potential emerging national security threats. We saw Joni Ernst leading the way on this TP-Link wireless route issuer, for example. Can you talk about why that is a priority from your agency standpoint as well?
Chairman Brendan Carr:
Standing up reinvigorated efforts on national security is one of the big things that we’ve done right off the bat over the past year; we set up a new council on national security. And one idea that we’ve been pushing, among many others, and we do a lot on that security, is this idea of what we call the FACT Act, which would make it so that if you have any sort of license or authorization from the FCC, we want to know if you are an entity that has concerning ties back to a foreign adversary nation. We’re going to move forward to a final order in a proceeding that’s going to require that level of transparency so we know if there’s any issue with any sort of licensee or authorized entity that will be able to take action.
Washington Reporter:
Ending closer here to home, I want you to talk a little bit more about what’s next for your Build America agenda. What do you want 2026 to have in store for that?
Chairman Brendan Carr:
The American consumer is going to benefit really tremendously from this Build America agenda and all the work that President Trump is doing. I’ll give you just one example: people have been used to their cell phone service and they like it or they get it right to their phone. And they’re also used to satellite services from space, maybe to a Starlink dish, or some of the older style dishes out there. And one of the biggest new trends in technology in telecom is what we call direct to cell, where there’s this entire new generation of low Earth orbit satellites. Starlink is an example. Amazon’s Project Leo was another example. And you can go directly from a low Earth orbit satellite, right to your smartphone, called direct to cell, DTC, and it’s an emerging technology, and we have already, in the first year, positioned the United States to lead the world in this new technology. One company, Dish, is selling a very large chunk of its spectrum to Starlink to SpaceX. A lot of people thought that Elon Musk would never purchase spectrum, but he did. He invested billions of dollars in obtaining the spectrum and can be used soon to support and launch this direct to cell technology. So when you look at what’s one of the most important emerging techs, it’s the ability for anyone, anywhere, right to their phone, to have guaranteed connectivity, high speed connectivity, with no more dead zones. And it’s emerging. It’s not here yet. It’s emerging. But we took the legwork this first year to position the United States to get it first and to lead the world, and I think that’s gonna be a very big deal. The other thing we’re doing, including this month, is we’re gonna vote to supercharge WiFi. A lot of WiFi operates now on what’s called a six gigahertz band, and we require devices to operate at a relatively low power in that band, but we’ll be voting to allow higher power devices to operate in that band, which just means you’re gonna get better, faster WiFi, and it’s going to enable new interesting things like augmented reality, virtual reality, IoT. We’re really excited about that as well. There are just so many good things in store, from a spectrum perspective, from a connectivity perspective, and of course we’re going to continue to work to crack down on illegal robocalls, which we hear people loud and clear they’re not happy about. And we got a lot of actions working out on that front too.
Washington Reporter:
Are you surprised, given the time that you’ve spent at the FCC, that this agency is one that is working so closely with the White House on this affordability issue and messaging?
Chairman Brendan Carr:
As chair, I’m very closely aligned, thankfully, with President Trump and with his agenda. And so the close collaboration and work together is very welcome from my perspective. And I think it is interesting you see at the White House and across all of these agencies, folks are working hard. We’re going fast, but, there’s a broad coordination to make sure that everything that we’re doing ultimately is going to be driving prices down for consumers and driving up competition.
Washington Reporter:
One of the issues that you’re going to be dealing with this year is the Nexstar Media Group and TEGNA Inc. merger. How do you conceptualize what needs to happen there, or what will happen or should happen there, to make sure that as you talk about these affordability issues that it doesn’t have any adverse effects on consumers?
Chairman Brendan Carr:
We’re looking at that one. That’s one we haven’t made a final decision on. When it comes to broadcast in general, my big concern has been that you’ve got these large national programmers like Comcast, like Disney, and over the years, they have come to just totally dominate the actual licensed local broadcast TV stations, whether they’re Nexstar or Gray or TEGNA. The main portion of our media policy agenda is, how do we put some checks in place to constrain the outsized power of those national programs? So that’s one sort of thread that cuts across a lot of our media policy work, and we’ll see how it plays out with respect to any individual transaction. But the long poll of the tent is you’ve got Disney and ABC that reach 100 percent of TV stations today with their programming, and we’re looking at lots of different ways to ensure that folks can stand up to and compete effectively against Disney and Comcast.
Washington Reporter:
I’m as jaded as anyone about the media landscape, but I want to talk about Jimmy Kimmel. We wrote an editorial defending you on this, but I was astonished by this. If you could rewind the clock and deal with that situation again, what lessons did you learn? What surprised you? Did anything surprise you about the power of fake news to have Democrats in Congress calling for your head over this whole ordeal?
Chairman Brendan Carr:
The thing that that continues to show is that the legacy national news media and their Democrat allies in Congress can certainly operate as a cartel to focus people’s attention very quickly and very narrowly on what it is that they want. I think one of the lessons learned for me from this is that it’s a really, really good thing that you had local broadcast TV stations, in this case, Sinclair and Nexstar, that made the decision for themselves to preempt, to not air those Kimmel episodes for a period of time. A local TV station hadn’t pushed back on those national programmers, Disney, in this case, in maybe 20 years at the FCC. That used to be more natural, because in fact, our FCC rules themselves expressly say that if you’re a local broadcaster and you think that something coming down the pipe from the national programmer isn’t a good fit for your community right now, you can preempt it. It’s your right under the rules, and then they exercise it, and people absolutely lose their minds. But yet, that’s what we will see, is local broadcasting people saying, ‘look, no, I don’t want this from Disney today or this week or ever. I don’t want this from Fox. I don’t want this from Paramount.’ We want those local broadcasters to feel empowered, and to the extent they do today, which I think they do, I think that’s a great thing. And the outrage, the news coverage, that’s going to come, that’s going to go, but long term, and we’ve got local broadcasters pushing back on national programmers, I think that that’s helping to get a little bit better balance in the media ecosystem.
Washington Reporter:
I would confidently tell you that I laughed more times during our 17 minute interview than I would during 17 minutes of Jimmy Kimmel on my TV that I choose to not watch.
Chairman Brendan Carr:
Before, late night hosts were court jesters, making fun of everybody and they were entertaining. Now, they’re court clerics where they’re simply enforcing a very particular ideology. It’s them that changed, not the American people or the law. Eric Swalwell announcing his gubernatorial campaign on Kimmel is the funniest thing from that show last year.
Washington Reporter:
When you’re done with the FCC, do you want a late night slot yourself, given what you’ve learned about the ecosystem?
Chairman Brendan Carr:
Once a year the FCC chair is expected to do a self roast at a dinner where you tell jokes. I don’t know how this tradition started, but I did it at the end of the year, and it is tougher than it looks. I tried to entertain people about 20 minutes or so, and I give myself an A-minus in that.
Washington Reporter:
Chairman Carr, let me know before this year’s and we’ll make sure it’s the best one yet. Thanks for talking about Happy New Year!
