The Federal Communications Commission is legally structured as an independent regulatory agency — one deliberately insulated from the direct influence of whichever administration holds power. But internal FCC documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and subsequent lawsuit tell a more complicated story about how Chairman Brendan Carr has been conducting agency business since his appointment by President Donald Trump on January 20, 2025.
The records, obtained by the advocacy group Democracy Forward and provided to The Guardian, cover the period between March 12, 2025 and February 11, 2026. They reveal a pattern of scheduled White House meetings, calls with senior administration officials, communications with conservative media producers, and previously undisclosed meetings with major broadcast industry executives — all while Carr has publicly refused to confirm or deny the nature of his communications with the White House.
What the Documents Show
According to the internal FCC calendar records — memorialized as Microsoft Outlook calendar entries — Carr attended at least eight meetings at the White House during the period covered by the documents. He also had at least three scheduled calls with administration officials, including two conversations with chief of staff Susie Wiles. Phone calls with other administration officials, including Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are also documented in the records.
Some calendar entries include details about the subject matter discussed. On August 29, 2025, Carr was listed as the organizer of a “White House deputies” meeting focused on “FAA/Spectrum issues,” which also included FCC chief of staff Greg Watson and Arpan Sura, a senior counsel specializing in spectrum, space, and artificial intelligence. A November 2025 meeting was titled “Drones – Principals meeting.” Other entries, however, are far less descriptive — a June 2, 2025 entry records only that Carr attended a “WH mtg,” with no further elaboration on its purpose or participants.
The documents also illuminate Carr’s media strategy. They include communications with producers at Fox News, and they make public previously undisclosed meetings Carr held with Fox Corp chief executive Lachlan Murdoch and Sinclair Broadcast Group chair David Smith — both figures with significant business interests subject to FCC oversight and decision-making.
The Question of Independence
Dan McGrath, special counsel for oversight at Democracy Forward, responded directly to the scope of what the documents reveal. “These records show a remarkable breadth of access to FCC leadership for this administration’s political allies, conservative media figures, and powerful industry interests, including companies and organizations with business before the commission,” McGrath said. “This raises serious questions about whether the FCC is operating as an independent regulator, or whether political relationships and industry influence have become too intertwined with its decision-making.”
The disclosure comes against a backdrop of escalating concerns about the FCC’s role under Carr’s leadership. While it is not without precedent for FCC chairs to meet with administrations of their appointing party, critics and legal scholars have noted that Carr’s alignment with the Trump White House’s stated goals — particularly its interest in using regulatory levers against legacy broadcast networks — appears to exceed historical norms for an agency designed to operate at arm’s length from executive influence.
The ABC License Controversy and Carr’s Public Posture
The question of White House coordination first gained sharp public attention when Carr issued a highly unusual order forcing ABC to apply early to renew its eight local broadcast licenses — just one day after President Trump and Melania Trump publicly called for ABC to be penalized over a joke made by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. When pressed on the timeline by Politico journalist Dasha Burns, Carr declined to clarify the nature of any communications with the White House. “As a general rule, we don’t get into any discussions that happen with the White House or don’t happen with the White House,” Carr told Burns. He later reiterated: “As a general matter, I don’t speak publicly about conversations with the White House, or whether they happen or don’t happen.”
The internal documents do not definitively establish whether a specific White House call preceded or followed the ABC license announcement. But they do establish that regular, documented contact between Carr’s office and the White House was an established feature of his tenure as FCC chair.
A Pattern of Regulatory Pressure on Broadcasters
The ABC situation is not an isolated case. According to analysis from the Brookings Institution, FCC Chairman Carr threatened the licenses of local broadcasters over their coverage of the Iran war — the latest in a series of instances in which broadcasters have faced pressure linked to their editorial decisions. Brookings visiting fellow Tom Wheeler, a former FCC chairman himself, noted in March 2026 that Section 326 of the Communications Act explicitly prohibits the FCC from exercising “censorship” or interfering with broadcasters’ free expression.
The Paramount-Skydance merger approval added another dimension to the controversy. The FCC approved the $8 billion deal by a 2-1 vote along party lines — a vote that came shortly after Paramount paid $16 million to settle a lawsuit brought by President Trump over a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. As part of the settlement and deal approval, Paramount agreed to eliminate its diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and to install what critics described as a content monitor at CBS.
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, who cast the sole dissenting vote, issued a statement calling the approval an act of “cowardly capitulation that could set a dangerous precedent, reshaping the future of entertainment, while eroding the freedom of the press.” In a subsequent PBS NewsHour interview, Gomez described the episode as part of “this administration’s campaign of censorship and control,” pointing to the sequence of events: presidential pressure over the “60 Minutes” segment, FCC pressure over the same segment, and deal approval following settlement and content concessions.
Who Is Brendan Carr?
Carr is not a newcomer to the FCC. According to his official biography, he first joined the agency as a staffer in 2012, was nominated by President Trump to serve as a Commissioner in 2017, renominated by President Biden in 2023, and confirmed unanimously by the Senate three times. Trump designated him as FCC Chairman on January 20, 2025. Before his FCC career, Carr worked as an attorney at Wiley Rein LLP, a prominent telecommunications law firm, and clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Under his chairmanship, the FCC has described its agenda as a “Build America Agenda” centered on infrastructure permitting reform, wireless leadership, space economy development, and what Carr calls the “Delete, Delete, Delete” deregulatory initiative. His official biography makes no mention of the broadcast license investigations or the regulatory actions against legacy media organizations that have defined much of his public profile since January 2025.
The Broader Regulatory Picture
The FCC’s authority over broadcast licenses gives it substantial leverage over the economics of American television. License renewals, which are typically routine, can be delayed, complicated, or denied — a prospect that carries enormous financial and operational consequences for broadcasters. Critics, including former FCC chairs and First Amendment scholars, have argued that using the license renewal process as an instrument of editorial pressure fundamentally undermines the independence the agency was designed to protect.
The documents obtained by Democracy Forward do not reveal the content of conversations between Carr and White House officials. What they do establish is that those conversations, and those meetings, were a regular and documented feature of Carr’s tenure — and that they were occurring at the same time as the agency was taking unprecedented actions against broadcast networks that had drawn the ire of the sitting president.
Whether the frequency and nature of that contact crosses any legal or ethical line is a question the documents alone cannot answer. But they do make it significantly harder to sustain the claim — implicit in Carr’s repeated public deflections — that the White House and the FCC’s regulatory decisions occupy entirely separate spheres.
This article draws on reporting from The Guardian, PBS NewsHour, and The Brookings Institution.
