Who Is Brendan Carr? What to Know About the FCC Chairman

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Brendan Carr has spoken out in support about Jimmy Kimmel‘s suspension.

On Sept. 17, an ABC spokesperson confirmed to PEOPLE that Kimmel’s talk show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, was indefinitely suspended following the host’s comments made earlier in the week regarding the fatal shooting of right-wing political commentator Charlie Kirk. During his monologue on Sept. 15, he directly addressed President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” supporters, saying, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them,” referencing suspected shooter Tyler Robinson.

The move came hours after Nexstar and Sinclair — two of the largest owners of local ABC affiliate stations — said they would not air episodes of Jimmy Fallon Live! “for the foreseeable future,” per Deadline. Nexstar is currently seeking the administration’s approval for a $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna, another broadcaster, per New York Magazine.

That same day, the FCC chairman appeared on Benny Johnson’s podcast and said that Kimmel had shown “some of the sickest conduct possible” and urged Disney to take action, per Deadline. According to CNBC, Carr also said his agency is “not done yet” making changes to the “media ecosystem.”

So, who is Brendan Carr? Here’s everything to know about the FCC chairman and his alleged role in Jimmy Kimmel Live!‘s suspension.

Carr previously worked as an attorney

Carr is a Georgetown University alum who went on to graduate from law school at the Catholic University of America, per his bio on the Practicing Law Institute (PLI).

Outside of school, he worked as an attorney at Wiley Rein LLP in the firm’s appellate, litigation and telecom practice, and also previously spent time as a clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for Judge Dennis W. Shedd, according to his bio.

As for his personal life, Carr lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and children, per PLI.

Carr has worked for the FCC since 2012

Carr joined the FCC as a legal adviser in 2012 and became general counsel five years later, according to The New York Times. The FCC is a government agency responsible for “regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable,” per its official website.

In 2017, Trump appointed Carr to one of the Republican seats on the commission, where he primarily focused on promoting high-speed wireless internet at the time. According to his PLI bio, he was then re-nominated and confirmed in 2019, when he began a new, five-year term.

Trump named him chair of the FCC in 2024

Shortly after Trump won the presidential election in November 2024, he named Carr to be the chairman of the FCC. According to The New York Times, he had been vocal about his agreement with the incoming administration’s promises to slash regulation and go after TV networks for perceived political bias.

Per the outlet, Carr was the author of a chapter on the FCC in Project 2025, the far-right plan that was started by Trump’s allies as a blueprint for what’s to come if he were elected. In the chapter, he argued that the agency should also regulate the largest tech companies, including Apple, Meta, Google and Microsoft.

At the time, Trump released a statement about Carr, praising him as a “warrior for free speech,” per the outlet.

He has previously said that the FCC wouldn’t hesitate to go after broadcasters that the FCC believed weren’t serving public interest with their news and programming, previously telling The Wall Street Journal, “broadcast licenses are not sacred cows.”

He has also previously criticized NBC News and MSNBC, which he said were “misleading the American public” with its coverage of a high-profile deportation, per the outlet.

He praised Nexstar for pulling Jimmy Kimmel Live! off air

Shortly before ABC announced Kimmel’s indefinite suspension, Carr criticized Kimmel’s comments on Johnson’s podcast, calling them a “concerted effort to lie to the American people.” He added that the FCC was “going to have remedies that we can look at.”

“Frankly, when you see stuff like this — I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he added. “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

Once the company made the decision to pull Jimmy Kimmel Live! off air, Carr praised Nexstar for putting pressure on ABC to remove Kimmel, writing on X that “it is important for broadcasters to push back on Disney programming that they determine falls short of community values.”

He also re-posted a video of Trump saying Kimmel was fired because he had “bad ratings.”

However, users on X have pointed out that Carr has previously made statements in the past that have contradicted his defense of Kimmel’s suspension. Former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger resurfaced a February 2019 post from Carr that read, “Should the government censor speech it doesn’t like? Of course not. The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the ‘public interest.’ “