FCC Scrubs Its Website of Any Hint It’s an Independent Agency
The Federal Communications Commission website no longer reflects that the FCC is an “independent” agency after FCC Chair Brendan Carr testified to Congress on Wednesday that he didn’t consider it to be one.
Axios’s Sara Fischer caught the change, and posted about it on X: “This is INSANE. I took this screenshot of the @FCC website at 11:52 a.m. ET where it explicitly states the FCC is an independent agency. 25 minutes later, it has been removed following Carr’s comments during this hearing! See before and after screenshots below.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, there is no mention of the FCC being an “independent agency” on its website, only a “U.S. agency.” (The last publicly available confirmation of the word “independent” appearing on the site was October 1.)
During the hearing, Carr was pressed on whether he considered the FCC to be an independent agency: Though he had previously said himself that the agency was “long ago determined” by Congress to be independent, he claimed on Wednesday that his position had changed, and he now believes it to no longer be independent, since its members are subject to for-cause removal by the president.
One senator even read from the FCC’s website. New Mexico’s Ben Ray Luján said, “Just so you know, Brendan, on your website it just simply says, man, the FCC is independent.... This isn’t a trick question.”
Unluckily for Luján—and for the American people—it doesn’t say that anymore. Whether the change was the Trump administration’s attempt to protect Carr from appearing to lie during congressional testimony, or just a mask-off moment about the sad state of the FCC, it’s clear that the agency can no longer be trusted to act independently of the president.
President Donald Trump wants to pretend like he’s not crippling the economy, but job growth in 2025 has dropped by more than half, and it’s all his fault.
Only 499,000 jobs were created between February and November 2025, according to new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, down from 1.57 million new jobs during the same period last year—or a nearly 68 percent decrease year over year.
Although the job market started off strong, job creation began to falter in April, around the same time that Trump announced his “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariffs. CNN reported that 2025 has shown the weakest job-growth levels since the pandemic, and before that the Great Recession.
The BLS reported Tuesday that unemployment rose to 4.6 percent in November, the highest rate in four years.
The Trump administration has touted the addition of roughly 687,000 private-sector jobs (while shedding 188,000 government jobs), claiming that 100 percent of the job growth can be attributed to “native-born Americans.” However, the jobs report does not faithfully record workers’ nationality or legal status, so its claims about who exactly is getting these jobs are pure fiction.
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr admitted that he sees President Donald Trump as his boss, during a congressional hearing Wednesday, and refused to say that it would be wrong to do the president’s bidding as the chairman of what is supposed to be an independent agency.
Senator Andy Kim came at Carr with a targeted line of questioning about the FCC’s independence. Carr claimed that, contrary to what he had himself said to Congress in the past, the FCC isn’t technically independent because it isn’t protected from for-cause removal, meaning the president can fire FCC commissioners whenever he wants.
Kim followed up: “I’m just trying to get a sense from you: If you don’t think that the FCC is independent, then is President Trump your boss?”
“President Trump has designated me as chairman of the FCC; I think it comes as no surprise that I’m aligned with President Trump on policy,” Carr meandered, until Kim pressed him again.
“The president designated me as chairman,” said Carr. “I can be fired by the president, the president is the head of the executive branch.”
“So he’s your boss,” Kim responded. After Carr attempted to shift responsibility for his actions onto the other two members of the FCC, Kim asked, “You swore an oath when you came into your job. Does the oath have the word ‘president’ in it?”
Carr wouldn’t answer the question.
KIM: Is President Trump your boss?
CARR: President Trump has designated me as chair of the FCC
KIM: Do you consider him your boss?
CARR: I can be fired by the president
KIM: So he's your boss
CARR: Look, the decisions of the commissions are going to be based on a vote
KIM:… pic.twitter.com/VXNbsFxJUl
In response to Carr’s either feigning confusion or genuine perplexity about why anyone would care whether the president of the United States has influence over the media’s governing body, Kim decided to switch to a more direct line of questioning.
“Have you ever had a conversation with the president or senior administration officials about using the FCC to go after critics?” Kim said.
“First of all, senator, I don’t get into the specifics of conversations that I have,” Carr said.
“OK, let me reframe it then. Would it be appropriate for the president or senior administration officials to give you direction to pressure media companies?”
Carr, apparently committed to no longer answering questions, responded, “I’m sorry, I’m not gonna get into........© New Republic





















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Sabine Sterk
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Grant Arthur Gochin