1. Brendan Thomas Carr was born on January 5,1979 and is an American attorney who has served as the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission since January 2025.
30 Facts About Brendan Carr
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Brendan Carr previously served as the agency's general counsel and as an aide to FCC commissioner Ajit Pai.
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In private practice, Carr formerly worked as a telecommunications attorney at Wiley Rein.
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Brendan Carr is noted for his support for banning TikTok on national security grounds.
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Brendan Carr is an opponent of content moderation on digital platforms, saying he would seek to "dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights", and wants the FCC to punish news broadcasters he sees as unfair to Donald Trump or Republicans in general.
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Brendan Carr authored a chapter in Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, the blueprint document of Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which outlines proposed policies for a future Donald Trump administration.
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In office, Brendan Carr has been noted for being unusually vocal about public policy issues for a regulatory appointee, accusing House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff of overseeing a "secret and partisan surveillance machine".
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Brendan Carr was born on January 5,1979, in Washington, DC, US He graduated from Georgetown University in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts in government.
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Brendan Carr later attended Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law, where he was an editor of the Catholic University Law Review.
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From 2005 to 2007, Brendan Carr was an associate in private practice at the law firm Wiley Rein, where he worked on appellate and telecommunications legal matters.
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Brendan Carr was a law clerk for Judge Dennis Shedd of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 2007 to 2008, then rejoined Wiley Rein.
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Brendan Carr joined the Federal Communications Commission as a legal advisor to commissioner Ajit Pai.
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In January 2017, Brendan Carr became general counsel of the FCC.
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President Donald Trump nominated Brendan Carr to become a commissioner of the FCC in June 2017, and Brendan Carr was confirmed by the United States Senate in August 2017.
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Brendan Carr was renominated to a full five-year term by President Trump in 2018 and confirmed by Congress on a voice vote on January 2,2019.
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Brendan Carr argued in 2020 that the World Health Organization was "beclowned" in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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In 2020, observers including Doug Brake of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and Chris Lewis of Public Knowledge speculated that Brendan Carr would be a leading candidate to serve as FCC chairman under a second term for Trump.
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In 2021, Brendan Carr criticized the Biden administration's proposal for $100 billion in new broadband deployment as part of the original American Jobs Plan proposal.
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In May 2022, Brendan Carr called for the Disinformation Governance Board, an advisory board within the Department of Homeland Security, to be shut down, slamming the body as "Orwellian".
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In November 2022, Brendan Carr traveled to Taipei, Taiwan, to attend meetings on cybersecurity and telecommunications matters.
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In 2023, Brendan Carr criticized the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's broadband funding program, which he argued gave undue preference to fiber.
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In November 2024, Brendan Carr accused NewsGuard, a company that rates the credibility of news outlets, of facilitating what he called a "censorship cartel".
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Brendan Carr sent letters to major technology companies questioning their relationships with NewsGuard, and suggesting that such partnerships might jeopardize their Section 230 liability protections.
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Brendan Carr is an opponent of net neutrality protections and has endorsed efforts to reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
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Brendan Carr vehemently opposed efforts to block Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter.
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In 2023, Brendan Carr authored the chapter on the Federal Communications Commission in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 book, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.
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Brendan Carr has said that parents whose children use the application should be concerned with their privacy.
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In June 2022, Brendan Carr wrote an open letter urging Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their respective app stores, arguing the platform poses a security risk.
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Brendan Carr privately wrote a letter to Jonathan Kanter, Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice Antitrust Division, where he urged the DOJ to scrutinize Apple and Google's handling of TikTok on their app stores.
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In 2024, Brendan Carr advocated for an investigation into Apple over the company's shutdown of Beeper Mini, an application that brought iMessage compatibility to Android phones.