Democrats Plan to Discuss Carr’s Actions in Second Senate Commerce Censorship Hearing
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Communications Subcommittee ranking member Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., separately told us that during Wednesday's hearing on social media censorship, they plan to again raise FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's actions that critics have said are targeting the media’s free speech rights. Commerce Democrats have been pushing Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to bring in Carr for a hearing. Cruz seeks to have Carr testify as part of a regular FCC oversight hearing, rather than during a censorship-focused panel (see 2510030062). Several Democratic leaders made Carr’s actions the focus of an unofficial hearing in late September (see 2509290062).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
Cantwell and Lujan indicated that they will invoke Carr in the context of Wednesday's Senate Commerce hearing, which will focus on major social media companies. The panel will include testimony from Markham Erickson, Google's vice president of government affairs and public policy, and Neil Potts, Meta's vice president of public policy. Also testifying will be Will Creeley, legal director at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. The hearing will begin at 10 a.m. in 253 Russell.
Senate Commerce Democrats previously discussed concerns about Carr’s actions during an Oct. 9 hearing on the Biden administration's social media censorship (see 2510080049). They mostly cited Carr’s mid-September comments against ABC and parent Disney, which were widely perceived as influencing the network’s since-reversed decision to pull Jimmy Kimmel Live! from the air (see 2509180055).