The Trump FCC’s Coercion Cartel

The first few weeks of the second Trump administration have combined the “shock and awe” of the 2003 invasion of Iraq with the Silicon Valley mantra “move fast and break things.” The shock treatment distracted attention from how President Trump and agencies of government such as the Federal Communications Commission are moving fast to break three foundational principles of American government and democracy: fair and legitimate investigations, judicial review, and executive branch agency independence. The effort begins with FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s initiation of culture war-themed investigations based on the application of undefined or ill-defined regulatory concepts, the details of which are known only to him. Such actions recall Justice Antonin Scalia’s admonition, in a 2015 Supreme Court decision, that “[t]he vagueness of the law can invite arbitrary power.” In this case, Carr’s message is clear to those the FCC regulates: “Fall in line or this could be you.” Carr’s framing of “censorship” incorrectly conflates the true meaning of the term—the involvement of the state in matters of speech that are protected by the First Amendment—with a politicized version created to attack the exercise of those First Amendment rights in editorial decisions. Nevertheless, dismantling the “censorship cartel” at the FCC appears to involve the creation of a “coercion cartel” to achieve submission. The founding fathers designed the American government as a bulwark against the abuse of power. The practices of President Trump and the Trump FCC—circumventing established legal processes, consolidating power, and coercing independent decision-makers—constitute an assault on those principles.

[Tom Wheeler is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. From 2013 to 2017, he was the 31st chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.]