New FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is making a clean sweep of the FCC’s diversity equity and inclusion efforts. Carr had promised to do away with DEI agendas once designated chairman.
“Today, I am announcing that I am ending the FCC’s promotion of DEI and will focus the agency’s work on competently carrying out the FCC’s mission, as defined by Congress,” Carr said in a statement Tuesday.
The action drew swift condemnation from Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez, who lamented what she described as “the focus on culture wars.”
“Embedding DEI”
Chairman Carr pointed to the first section of the Communications Act, where Congress states that it created the FCC for the purpose of regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication “without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin or sex,” he said.
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“Promoting invidious forms of discrimination runs contrary to the Communications Act and deprives Americans of their rights to fair and equal treatment under the law.”
DEI also represents “a wasteful expenditure of taxpayer resources,” he said. Carr said the FCC had joined other private and public sector institutions in promoting what he described as discriminatory DEI policies during the Biden administration.
“The FCC did so by embedding DEI in its strategic priorities, budget requests, advisory groups, rulemaking proceedings and many other components of its official work,” he said.
He said that starting during the past four years, FCC leadership added the promotion of DEI to its Strategic Plan and listed it as the FCC’s second highest strategic priority. “Promoting DEI will no longer be any part of the FCC’s strategic plans,” he said.
He said that the FCC’s annual budget requests to Congress stated that the FCC would use its appropriated funds to promote DEI but that this will stop.
He also is eliminating the FCC’s DEI Advisory Group — “I have concluded that the work of the FCC’s Communications Equity and Diversity Council is complete” — and rescinded an Equity Action Plan published in 2022.
He will pull the plug on a cross-agency group named the Digital Discrimination Task Force, formed in 2022, and revoke a DEI portion of a directive to the FCC’s Advisory Committees.
Also, “Starting during the Biden administration, FCC leadership added the promotion of DEI to the commission’s annual performance plans. Promoting DEI will no longer be any part of the FCC’s performance plans going forward.”
And the FCC’s economic reports will no longer include promotion of DEI.
In the release, Carr said President Trump had wasted no time in making DEI cuts. The president on his first day issued an executive order titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.”
“A shame”
Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez issued a statement in response. She called the outcome “a shame.”
“The Federal Communications Commission was created for the purpose of ‘regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire and radio so as to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, Nationwide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service,’” she wrote, providing the emphasis shown.
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“Most recently, in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Congress directed the commission to prevent and eliminate digital discrimination. Turning off the light on initiatives aimed at helping us find what causes inequality kneecaps our ability to implement these congressional directives.”
Gomez said, “It is our foundational mission to serve all — without discrimination. Let’s be clear, diversity, equity and inclusion does not equal discrimination. It is precisely our efforts to be equitable and inclusive that strengthen our ability to fulfill our mission.”
She said the Communications Equity and Diversity Council and its predecessors dating to 2003 had offered valuable recommendations.
“I am deeply familiar with the important work this advisory group does for our agency. Former Chairman Ajit Pai created its immediate predecessor in 2017, the Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment, and appointed me as vice chair and subsequently chair. It is a shame that the current administration does not see value in the recommendations from telecommunications industry leaders, consumer experts and local government officials.”
She said the commission should not be “distracted by culture wars.”
