Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, a newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
The FCC chairman usually doesn’t garner much attention, but in today’s edition, Daniel Arkin examines how that has changed during the Trump administration. Plus, Adam Edelman reports on Pete Buttigieg’s return to Indiana, the site of the GOP’s next redistricting push.
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— Adam Wollner
Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension puts the spotlight on Trump’s FCC chair
By Daniel Arkin
President Donald Trump hailed Brendan Carr as a “warrior for free speech” when he tapped him as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, the independent agency that regulates the broadcast television industry and other platforms.
Carr has lived up to the warrior moniker. Since taking the job, Carr has launched a wave of investigations against leading media corporations and has criticized some for perceived liberal bias.
He appears to have scored his biggest win yet with ABC’s decision to pull Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show from the airwaves just hours after he blasted the comedian for his comments on Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
“We’re not done yet,” Carr said on CNBC today, as Kimmel’s defenders and the FCC’s critics accused him of waging a crackdown on free speech in America.
The chairman of the FCC doesn’t typically attract the spotlight, but Carr has frequently made headlines. He has taken to task prominent names such as CBS News and The New York Times, and his office has launched formal reviews of the “big three” broadcast networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — as well as NPR and PBS.
“I think this is unprecedented,” said Craig Aaron, the co-chief executive of Free Press, a nonprofit organization that advocates against corporate monopolies in media. “I think there’s a lot of people who have been in power or been in the White House who would in the past, who would like to bend and abuse the power of the FCC, to bend the will of the media that covers them and the comedians that make fun of them — but they’ve never dared to go this far.”
The background: Carr, known for wearing a gold-colored pin modeled on Trump’s profile, worked as a lawyer in private practice before joining the FCC in 2012 as a staff attorney. He later served as an adviser to former FCC chairman Ajit Pai. Trump appointed Carr to a Republican seat on the commission in 2017, during the president’s first term, before elevating him to the top job.
In the intervening years, Carr had raised his profile inside the Republican Party and the wider conservative ecosystem. He wrote a chapter about the FCC for the Heritage Foundation’s “Mandate for Leadership” policy document — better known as Project 2025.
“The FCC should promote freedom of speech,” Carr wrote in the opening to his chapter.
Read more from Daniel →
More Kirk shooting fallout:
The Trump administration is putting together plans to take action against left-wing groups that the president and his allies accuse of fomenting political violence, potentially as soon as this month, Vaughn Hillyard, Jonathan Allen and Kelly O’Donnell report.
Pentagon leaders are considering a new recruiting campaign that would encourage young people to honor Kirk’s legacy by joining the military, Courtney Kube reports.
MAGA influencers and GOP lawmakers have pushed for swift consequences against anyone who makes light of his killing — and professors, teachers and school staff members have come under particular scrutiny, Tyler Kingkade reports.
Erika Kirk has been named CEO of Turning Point USA, the conservative youth organization that was co-founded and led by her husband, Katherine Doyle reports.
Pete Buttigieg enters the redistricting chat
By Adam Edelman
Pete Buttigieg became the latest potential Democratic presidential contender to jump into the redistricting fray, attending a rally in Indiana to push back against the GOP’s plans to redraw the state’s congressional map before next year’s midterms.
Buttigieg called mid-decade redistricting efforts “cheating” and vowed that “if they do the wrong thing, we will be here to hold them politically accountable.”
Invoking President Donald Trump’s past claims of voter fraud, Buttigieg said Republicans “have tried to undermine our trust in the way that our neighbors run our elections in our communities.”
“I’m not talking about changing what’s inside of a machine. I’m not talking about changing a vote that went one way and making it look like it came another way. I’m talking about a form of cheating that is happening right out in the open,” Buttigieg said. “They’re admitting it out loud that they don’t have to do that to manipulate the results of an election.”
Republicans already control seven of Indiana’s nine congressional districts, but the party is looking to make inroads anywhere it can as it seeks to protect a razor-thin House majority. Indiana’s Republican Gov. Mike Braun said this week that a special legislative session on redistricting “probably will happen” and that not holding one could risk blowback from Trump.
“If we try to drag our feet as a state on it, probably, we’ll have consequences of not working with the Trump administration as tightly as we should,” he said on WOWO, an Indiana talk radio station.
Aside from Buttigieg, other Democratic White House hopefuls have attempted to make their mark on the issue.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has aggressively pushed a plan to help redraw his state’s congressional map in response to Republican efforts in Texas, while Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker helped provide refuge for Texas Democrats who fled the state to delay the GOP’s plans.
Read more from Adam →
Speaking of 2028: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said former Vice President Kamala Harris will “have to answer” for why she did not speak out publicly about Joe Biden’s ability to serve during his presidential term, Allan Smith and Shaquille Brewster report.
That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Bridget Bowman.
If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com