FCC Isn’t an Independent Agency, Says Chair Brendan Carr

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr told a Senate oversight hearing that the FCC isn’t an independent agency, contradicting a description that, until then, had been featured on the Commission’s website. During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, senators asked the three FCC commissioners whether they believed President Trump could fire them at will. Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) cited the FCC’s website, which referred to it as “independent.” “The FCC isn’t an independent agency, formally speaking,” Chairman Carr said. “The president can remove any commissioner for any reason or no reason at all.” Before the hearing, the FCC website called the Commission “an independent U.S. government agency overseen by Congress,” according to Sen. Lujánmand a version of the site maintained by the Internet Archive. That language no longer appears on the site’s “About the FCC” page, which now says it is “a U.S. government agency overseen by Congress.” “We aren’t independent,” Olivia Trusty, another Republican commissioner on the FCC, said at the hearing, citing the Commissioners’ lack of removal protections. When Commissioner Anna Gomez, a Democrat, was asked if the FCC was independent, she replied, “Yes, and we should be.”