An Open Letter: FCC’s Carr Is Hiding The Ball From The Courts

The illegality of your authoritarian management of the Federal Communications Commission is exacerbated by the fact that President Trump has asserted unprecedented executive branch control over this agency. The FCC is an independent regulatory agency, whose commissioners can only be removed for cause. But on February 18, 2025, President Trump issued an unprecedented Executive Order 14215, “Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies.” In this order, President Trump purports to assert control over all administrative agencies, including what the order calls “so-called independent agencies.” Putting all this together results in an FCC structure where, instead of an independent regulatory body—whose decisions are based on the collective judgment of five Commissioners and are subject to judicial review—we now have the following procedure: President Trump makes key communications policy decisions. He communicates these decisions to you, his appointed Chairman, who then relays them to a bureau within the agency. This bureau issues decisions that are not subject to judicial review, and you refuse to act on Applications for Review of the bureau's decision by the full agency. This completely avoids the obligation to defend the decision in court. This illegal scheme must end now. You cannot be allowed to continue to ignore the other commissioner’s statutory role and play the game of “hide the ball” from the courts!