Will Trump Weaponize the FCC to Crack Down on Media Outlets He Doesn’t Like?

Donald Trump has spent years delegitimizing much of the media in the eyes of his followers. Now, he is moving beyond his rhetoric about “enemies of the people” and “the enemy from within” to working out ways to actually intimidate big media companies into toeing the line — and it appears he may even try to use the financial might of billionaire allies such as Elon Musk to buy up oppositional media entities such as MSNBC.

Trump has urged Republicans in Congress to “kill” the PRESS Act, which essentially expands press protections against government spying and the seizure of reporting materials.

On the campaign trail, Trump talked of jailing hostile media figures and yanking the broadcasting licenses from networks whose coverage he disapproves of, and has even joked about journalists being shot and killed. He has accused NBC of “treason” and has said that CBS should lose its broadcasting license for its allegedly softball interview of Kamala Harris, and that ABC should lose its license for fact-checking him during the presidential debate in September.

Trump has also repeatedly sued media outlets for coverage he regards as unfavorable. And at his “Department of Government Efficiency,” Elon Musk has made clear his desire to slash more than half a billion dollars from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which would have devasting consequences for local public television and radio outlets. Musk has also taken to X to urge that National Public Radio be entirely defunded.

In 2023, Trump announced that he would bring the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under direct “presidential authority,” surely one of the most authoritarian of his many dictatorial pronouncements.

Now that he stands on the cusp of power again, Trump is working to institutionalize these vengeful impulses. Namely, he seems set on using the powers of the FCC, under his nominee Brendan Carr — who wrote the Project 2025 chapter on the commission — to go after what he sees as a “censorship” regime by big tech and by media outlets that he accuses of freezing out conservative voices.

Carr, who is currently an FCC commissioner, is an outspoken advocate of forcing social media companies to strip down internal rules against the posting of misinformation — despite the fact the Supreme Court has ruled that it is within the free speech rights of these private companies to moderate content as they see fit. And while the FCC has no direct authority to force social media companies to toe the party line, it can use the full intimidatory force of the federal government to create a hostile climate for those companies if they don’t voluntarily change their ways.

Carr is one of only several high-profile Project 2025 authors to make their way into Trump’s inner circle as he constructs his new administration. The project’s intellectual father, Russell Vought, is slated to head the Office of Management and Budget, and Axios has identified several other key administration figures who also have ties to the right-wing policy blueprint.

So much for Trump’s claim, during the campaign, that he wasn’t really familiar with Project 2025 and certainly wasn’t about to implement all of their hard right ideas. Turns out, come the new year, men such as Carr will indeed be playing a central role in the administration’s war on what they call the “deep state,” of which they view liberal media outlets as a key part.

On the campaign trail, Trump talked of jailing hostile media figures and yanking the broadcasting licenses from networks whose coverage he disapproves of.

Where Carr will likely have the most power to threaten media that challenge the Trump administration is in the world of radio and television broadcasting. The FCC’s arsenal of licensing powers gives a rogue administration a powerful structural advantage if it really does go to war against the notion of a free press. The fear here is that the Trump administration might seek to use the emergency powers contained within the 1934 Communications Act and the 1996 Telecommunications Act — both of which give the president extraordinary powers to shut down communications systems in the event of an “emergency.”

Given the Supreme Court’s ruling that a president is immune from prosecution for what would otherwise be illegal acts if he can argue they were carried out in his presidential capacity, there’s a real risk that Trump might invoke emergency powers, on the flimsiest of pretexts, to shut down broadcasters whose tone has rubbed him the wrong way.

Instead of serving as a voice of moderation, Brendon Carr has amplified Trump’s assaults on the broadcasting networks, invoking the specter that the FCC might seek to yank their licenses. Even if it doesn’t go that far, it can refuse to sign off on paperwork needed for parent companies to be able to sell off the broadcast networks, or their local affiliates, that they own — thus holding media companies’ finances hostage to the FCC leadership’s whim.

At the same time, Carr has made it clear that he wants to expand, and speed up the delivery of, subsidies to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network, accusing the Biden administration of “regulatory harassment” of Musk and his companies.

All of this solidifies the sense of self-dealing across government agencies and personnel in the Trump era, and the fear that a crisis is upon the United States in which the leading agencies of the federal government will become little more than enforcers acting on behalf of the personal and partisan interests of the president.

It’s unclear whether all of Carr’s wish list will come to fruition. Even with the legal system swinging rightward, his more outlandish actions are likely to run into headwinds in the courts. Moreover, as of now Republicans are outnumbered by Democrats 3-2 on the FCC board. But that balance will shift over the coming years, and when it does, Carr will be on hand to dole out as much pain as possible to media and internet companies that don’t toe Trump’s line.

Whether the broadcasting networks, social media companies and other targets of Trump’s ire have the stamina — and the guts — to stand up to the president is an open question. Indeed, CNN recently reported a “chilling effect” among television industry executives.

If broadcasters, print outlets and publishers tone down their critique of Trump’s actions in order to remain in his good books — or to avoid the huge costs of having to defend themselves legally in the face of a torrent of lawsuits directed their way — Trump and Carr’s mere threats might be enough to tame much of the free press even without the fire-and-brimstone punishments that both men have promised to dole out.