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If you have given to focus on Federal Communications Commission in recent years, may have had something to do with Brendan Carr. The group’s chairman since 2025, Carr has waged an ongoing public campaign against free speech: he has run afoul of late-night hosts like Jimmy Kimmel, threatened to revoke Iran’s military broadcast licenses, and networks targeting their DEI policies.
Disturbing as Carr said and his actions, he counts one critic of the agency: Commissioner Anna Gomez, who is the only Democrat among the three commissioners of the FCC, has been talking about the damage he thinks the agency is doing to the freedom of the American press – and has repeatedly urged the public and the media, which are major networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC, to deal with the problem.
In May, Commissioner Gomez wrote a a wonderful public letter to Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro, where he warned that the company – which owns ABC – is facing “a sustained, coordinated campaign of censorship and regulation, carried out using the tools of the FCC as a federal regulator and aimed at suppressing a free and independent press.” Gomez encouraged D’Amaro to take on his agency’s actions, adding that “this is a fight worth having, and I believe you will win.”
I wanted to speak with Commissioner Gomez about that bold letter, the dangers he sees for the press and the American people under the Trump administration, and how he works with a chairman he is bitterly opposed to. Gomez, whose FCC term ends this month, was generous enough to sit down and talk about it all. You can read our discussion below, or listen to it on the podcast platform of your choice.
These interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
KATIE DRUMMOND: Welcome, Commissioner Gomez. Thank you for being here.
ANNA GOMEZ: Thank you. It’s great to be here.
I want to start, before we talk more about Disney and your letter and everything else, with a very important question for our audience. What is the main mission of your organization? Give me FCC 101. What does the FCC do?
Well, the FCC is the country’s telecommunications regulator. In large groups, our mission is to ensure that everyone in the country is connected, for example, to high-speed broadband; providing you with radio licenses as we do with your mobile phones, satellites, and broadcasters; to protect consumers, such as our ongoing battle against robocallers.
Too bad, yes.
To ensure that public security has what it needs to do its job, usually through airports, and to ensure that innovation can progress, say by negotiating in different countries to use the airwaves, to have new products and services.
To be clear, the FCC regulates what comes out over the air—so radio, television—but doesn’t it regulate, for example, cable or broadcast or digital content? So this podcast, for example. Or if you turn on your TV and choose to watch Netflix instead of watching television, that would be out of the FCC’s hands.
That’s right. Our authority comes from our ability to license these broadcasters. We have very few cable laws, but for the most part, we only monitor television.
You have been with the FCC in various capacities over the years. You were sworn in as a Commissioner in 2023. What exactly does a Commissioner do? Tell us a little bit about your day-to-day work.
