Representative Darren Soto sharply questioned FCC Chairman Brendan Carr over alleged censorship of news and satire targeting U.S. President Donald Trump. Soto asked how the FCC could justify actions he said suppress criticism of Trump’s corruption. Carr responded that the FCC is obligated to act in the “public interest.” The exchange underscored growing concerns in Congress about free speech, media independence, and regulatory overreach.
#DarrenSoto #BrendanCarr #FCC #FreeSpeech #MediaFreedom #PressFreedom #Censorship #Congress #Trump #PoliticalAccountability #PublicInterest #RegulatoryPower #USPolitics #CapitolHill #BroadcastNews #FirstAmendment #GovernmentOversight #PoliticalDebate #Democracy #NewsMedia
Also Read
Slain Activist Charlie Kirk to Receive Posthumous Medal of Freedom, Announces Trump :: https://www.oneindia.com/international/slain-activist-charlie-kirk-to-receive-posthumous-medal-of-freedom-announces-trump-7857049.html?ref=DMDesc
Elon Musk Shares Video of Argentinas President-elect Javier Milei :: https://www.oneindia.com/international/argentina-president-elect-javier-milei-says-equality-should-never-come-before-freedom-gen-3698315.html?ref=DMDesc
India notes with concern Taliban decision to ban women from universities, calls for inclusive govt in Kabul :: https://www.oneindia.com/india/india-notes-with-concern-taliban-decision-to-ban-women-from-universities-calls-for-inclusive-govt-i-3502847.html?ref=DMDesc
#DarrenSoto #BrendanCarr #FCC #FreeSpeech #MediaFreedom #PressFreedom #Censorship #Congress #Trump #PoliticalAccountability #PublicInterest #RegulatoryPower #USPolitics #CapitolHill #BroadcastNews #FirstAmendment #GovernmentOversight #PoliticalDebate #Democracy #NewsMedia
Also Read
Slain Activist Charlie Kirk to Receive Posthumous Medal of Freedom, Announces Trump :: https://www.oneindia.com/international/slain-activist-charlie-kirk-to-receive-posthumous-medal-of-freedom-announces-trump-7857049.html?ref=DMDesc
Elon Musk Shares Video of Argentinas President-elect Javier Milei :: https://www.oneindia.com/international/argentina-president-elect-javier-milei-says-equality-should-never-come-before-freedom-gen-3698315.html?ref=DMDesc
India notes with concern Taliban decision to ban women from universities, calls for inclusive govt in Kabul :: https://www.oneindia.com/india/india-notes-with-concern-taliban-decision-to-ban-women-from-universities-calls-for-inclusive-govt-i-3502847.html?ref=DMDesc
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00President Trump has the most corrupt administration in modern history.
00:05Two billion dollar cryptocurrency scandal, pay to play pardons, pardoning January 6 insurrectionists,
00:12an Epstein pedophile cover up, White House ballrooms that are lavish,
00:17and the Trump family getting rich off of official U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, Southeast Asia and beyond.
00:24And when the national media like CBS, ABC and NBC cover these egregious scandals or use satire,
00:32FCC chairman Brendan Carr tried to crush them using his power as FCC chairman.
00:38CBS covers the cryptocurrency corruption, pardon of the Binance founder.
00:44Then CBS is forced to install a bias monitor two days after the merger approval under pressure from Carr and Trump,
00:51along with an extortion payment of 16 million dollars.
00:55ABC's Jimmy Kimmel uses satire to criticize Trump.
01:00Carr threatens their license.
01:02NBC's Seth Meyers uses satire to criticize Trump.
01:05Chairman Carr echoes Trump's call for Meyers ouster.
01:09Chairman, you've turned the FCC into Trump's attack dog.
01:12To crush First Amendment rights through FCC extortion, the Chinese Communist Party would be impressed.
01:18There was a time when you passionately defended First Amendment rights.
01:23In fact, you and I tangoed over COVID and issues related to that.
01:27So how do you justify using the FCC to censor news and satire of Trump's rampant corruption?
01:35Have an obligation to operate in the public interest.
01:42And in 2021, is it not the public interest right here to the FCC asking us to take action
01:47when there's a transaction pending at the FCC involving a Spanish language radio station in South Florida?
01:53Is it not in the public interest for people to know about the corruption that's happening in this administration?
01:59Step in and say to win in 2022, this must stop pressuring the FCC to block a sale because Democrats thought it would be bad.
02:06Reclaiming my time.
02:07You serve the American people.
02:09What is that issue?
02:09The sale didn't go through.
02:10Is blatant corruption by the Trump administration and you trying to hide it.
02:14And everybody knows it.
02:16Commissioner Gomez, one day Chairman Carr's reign of un-American censorship will be over.
02:22How do we restore public confidence in the FCC after this national censorship scandal?
02:30Thank you for that question.
02:31I think Congress can really help us here by putting guardrails on the FCC so that it cannot violate the First Amendment and censor content on broadcasters.
02:43And what do you think those guardrails should be?
02:45I think defining the public, what it means to serve in the public interest would be very helpful.
02:51Do you think highlighting corruption is in the public interest?
02:55I think the FCC should stay out of content, whether we like it or not.
03:00And that is the problem, is this administration wants to retaliate against news organizations that have the temerity to report factually about this administration.
03:12Well, the history books will not be kind to that.
03:14It's been over a year since Trump took office and we still don't have rural broadband and rural communities like mine and others.
03:20You came to my district a while back in Orlando to hear from veterans who utilize Internet to help with their health care.
03:28What has the effect been of the BEAD program still not being rolled out across America with regard to consumers?
03:35Yes, it is so important for us to be able to participate in this economy today, the digital economy, to have access to affordable broadband.
03:45And the communities that don't have that are getting further and further left behind.
03:50And as you know, when we came, we were talking about the Affordable Connectivity Program and how important that was to veterans to be able to make their meetings and their health care appointments without having to, in fact, travel.
04:03It saved them days of painful travel.
04:05So we need to focus on this issue so that every American can have access to affordable and accessible broadband, especially if we want to be world leaders in artificial intelligence.
04:17It is so important.
04:19And what happens to rural businesses, farms, ranches when they don't have access to high-speed broadband?
04:25If you don't have access to high-speed broadband, you really are at risk of being left behind.
04:29It is an imperative in today's economy, in this digital economy, to have access to broadband.
04:35Thanks, Chairman. I yield back.
04:38Thanks, gentlemen.
04:39The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Latta, for five minutes.
04:41Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the Commission for being with us today.
04:45Chairman Carr, Commissioner Gomez, and Commissioner Trustee, congratulations.
04:51It's great since you've been in my office years back to follow your career.
04:56Congratulations.
04:57Chairman Carr, let me just start off.
04:59With the BEAD program, how much shovels in the ground were there in the Biden administration?
05:05The BEAD program was President Biden's $42 billion plan to connect millions of Americans to high-speed Internet.
05:12And after over 1,000 days of the Biden administration implementing it, not a single shovel's worth of dirt was turned.
05:19Now, President Trump and Secretary Lutnik and NTI Administrator Roth have come in, and they've turned that program around.
05:25And we're finally going to be seeing dirt turning and Americans getting connected.
05:29So I just want to make sure I heard that correctly.
05:31Nothing happened in the Biden administration.
05:34Let me turn to another topic I know you and I talked about through the years, especially when we had this spectrum authority auction lapse.
05:42You know, because how far did we fall behind in this country when we didn't have that authority to self-spectrum?
05:48And the other question I'd like to ask is this, because it's always one of the things we always worry about.
05:52How much money did we lose in that time frame for not being able to have that auction authority?
05:56Yeah, during the Biden administration, the FCC's spectrum auction authority lapse for the very first time ever, and that enabled other countries, China and others, to leapfrog the United States.
06:08We fell several hundred megahertz behind them.
06:11But thankfully, this Congress came together.
06:12President Trump came together and passed a working families tax cut that created a strong pipeline of 800 megahertz.
06:19And again, every time you bring spectrum online, that drives down prices for consumers.
06:24And so that's what we're doing right now.
06:26I'm sorry, I understood that correctly.
06:27It was during the Biden administration that authority lapse.
06:30Let me ask you another question, because this just came in.
06:32I know that we talked about this for years, and I worked on legislation on robocalls and trying to protect the public out there.
06:38What's that?
06:39And I know that in reading your testimony that the commission wants to move forward and make sure that we protect people out there from these robocalls that people are getting.
06:49Well, thank you.
06:51Robocalls obviously are our number one consumer complaint.
06:53And right now we're building on the long-term bipartisan work of the agency on this.
06:58One thing we're doing is historically the F.C. would focus on a very small number of robocallers that generate a lot of calls.
07:04And they would fine them hundreds of millions of dollars, but those fines would largely go uncollected.
07:08And what we're doing now is we're picking up on something we did in the last administration, which is to kick providers out of our robocall mitigation database
07:15if they're not doing enough to fight illegal robocalls that effectively cuts them off from the U.S. telephone network.
07:20And more generally, we're going at every single portion of the life cycle of illegal robocalls and making it harder for the bad actors to get their calls through,
07:29including we're looking particularly at foreign-originated illegal robocalls.
07:34Well, I know the American public out there is going to appreciate your work on that because I know I just got a call the other day from a constituent
07:42that had problems with robocalls coming into their business.
07:45Commissioner Trusky, you know where I'm from and what my area looks like.
07:51And there's areas out there, of course, that we don't have broadband.
07:55And I know I worked years back making sure that we had accurate maps before we'd spend money to make sure that dollars were spent.
08:03And in your testimony, you talk about some of the things you're really focusing on.
08:06And one of the things I think it's really important you talk about is when we talk about rural health care and telehealth.
08:12And I know when I'm in my rural hospitals, they can't afford to have a lot of different programs, you might say,
08:20or docs doing certain procedures, especially on the mental health side.
08:25Could you just elaborate a little bit on the mental health side and the telehealth side?
08:30Absolutely.
08:30Thank you so much for the question.
08:31As you know, the rural health care program ensures that rural patients have access to modern quality health care, including telehealth.
08:39And the FCC has made some process improvements to improve access to this essential program by extending the application deadline,
08:49by making sure funding aligns with demands.
08:51And we've been able to roll over unused funds for this year, for 2025, to ensure that we increase access to this important service.
09:00I think as part of the USF Congressional Working Group,
09:02there's another opportunity to explore additional reforms that can be made to this program
09:07to ensure that Americans in rural communities across the country have access to the quality care that they need.
09:13Well, thank you.
09:15If I could just return to you, Commissioner Carr, just real quickly,
09:18because we had discussions when we talked about 4G, 5G, 6G.
09:22And I'd always ask this question.
09:24Are we winning a race?
09:25I mean, you know, who's our competitor out there?
09:27We've got to win this race.
09:28So are we winning this race out there when we talk about 6G?
09:31We are.
09:33We had fallen behind, in my view, during the Biden years, and now we've hit the accelerator,
09:37and we are going to be leading the world once again in next-generation technology.
09:41Thank you very much.
09:42My time has expired.
09:43I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
09:45Chair, now I recognize Representative New York, Ms. Clark, for five minutes for your questions.
09:49Good morning, and thank you, Chairman Hudson, Ranking Member Matt Sui, for convening this hearing.
09:54Given the actions of the FCC under Chairman Carr, it's long overdue.
09:59Less than one year into his tenure, the FCC under Chairman Carr has given this committee many worthy avenues of exploration and oversight,
10:08most of which appear to stem from his new role as an obsequious partisan fulfilling President Trump's desire to exact revenge on his perceived enemies
10:18and line the pockets of the oligarch class.
10:21While appearing before this committee less than four years ago under the Biden administration,
10:26then-Commissioner Carr rightly acknowledged the independence of the FCC free from executive branch interference,
10:33but recently made clear that under the Trump administration, that independence is gone.
10:39While this may seem like a shocking about-face, it shouldn't be that surprising,
10:43given Mr. Carr's role as author of the horrific Project 2025 manifesto,
10:49as well as the frankly bizarre choice to wear a golden lapel pin bearing President Trump's face.
10:56The weaponization of the FCC under Chairman Carr is not just frustrating, but dangerous.
11:02Dangerous for the nation and the ideals upon which it was founded.
11:06Individuals' freedom of speech and a press corps free from political intimidation are vital to a democracy.
11:12It's what also allows informed citizens to speak their minds without fear of government reprisal
11:20and serves as an important check on those in power.
11:25Unfortunately, these ideals are lost under this iteration of the FCC,
11:29which appears bound to the whims of a president intent on punishing those who report accurately on his unsettling behavior.
11:37Because my time is limited, I can't possibly list every example of the weaponization of the FCC in the last year,
11:45but a few that come to mind include reinstating complaints against news organizations
11:51that were critical of Trump during the election while failing to reinstate a petition
11:55filed against the president's media outlet of choice, Fox.
11:59Ordering baseless investigations into NPR and PBS.
12:03Using mergers to extract political revenge and more,
12:08such as withholding approval of the Paramount Skydance merger
12:12until Trump's personal lawsuit was settled with financial payment.
12:16Launching a ridiculous investigation into KCBS in San Jose
12:21for merely reporting on ICE activity in their own community.
12:25Threatening to unilaterally alter national media ownership limits,
12:29which would reduce diversity in media and further endanger local news.
12:36Overtly partisan reinterpretations of the FCC's public interest standard
12:40and news distortion policies to enact a regime of censorship.
12:46And most notably, the overt threatening of licenses of broadcasters
12:54for carrying Jimmy Kimmel live show.
12:56To the last point, Senator Cruz, who I rarely agree with,
13:01aptly described Chairman Carr's threats as akin to something out of a mafia movie.
13:06And let me just say, I don't see any Michael Corleones in this room today.
13:11Only Afredo.
13:13So my question is to Commissioner Gomez.
13:16For nearly 90 years, the FCC has functioned as an independent agency
13:21to insulate communications policy from political pressure.
13:25Can you explain why the FCC's independence is essential to its credibility and effectiveness?
13:30And what potential risks arise as that independence is eroded?
13:35Thank you for that question.
13:37You know, when Congress created our predecessor, the Federal Radio Commission,
13:41it considered putting the commission under the Department of Commerce.
13:45And Herbert Hoover at the time said it was a terrible idea because it was dangerous
13:49to have the regulator of the most important communications medium at the time
13:55being overseen by a single person.
13:59And so that's why it created an independent agency.
14:01It's important to have an independent agency because we must be seen as an expert body
14:07that makes decisions based on that expertise
14:10and not based on the political whims of one administration.
14:13Commissioner Gomez, how do FCC media ownership caps support diversity of viewpoints
14:19and locally focused news?
14:21And what do communities risk losing if these limits are weakened?
14:25Our core principles when we talk about the public interest in local broadcasting
14:29are localism, diversity of viewpoints, and competition.
14:34The caps ensure that we have multiple voices in every market.
14:38That is why we have them.
14:40We want to ensure that we have that.
14:42If we lose those caps, what we are going to lose is that diversity of viewpoints
14:47and we risk having one voice funneling all the information to our voters.
Be the first to comment