What do you do when you're the lone Democrat on Trump's FCC? You go on tour
Anna Gomez, soon to be the lone Democrat on the Federal Communications Commission, has been sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump's 'weaponization' of her agency against the press. And now she's taking it on the road.
Gomez has embarked on a 'First Amendment Tour' of planned speeches across multiple states, saying Trump has shown a 'pattern of censorship and control' threatening free speech rights. Under Trump-appointed Chairman Brendan Carr, the FCC has conducted what she calls 'sham investigations' against news outlets.
Last week, Gomez gave a speech at California State University in Los Angeles — her first tour stop outside Washington, DC. She'll soon make appearances in Kentucky and Illinois, and the tour is expected to last through the end of the year.
'I want to speak out, make sure we get the message out about what is happening and how this is a threat to our democracy,' Gomez told CNN.
The FCC's efforts to investigate news outlets — including NPR, PBS, ABC, CBS and NBC — 'is a threat to the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press,' she added, 'and I want to encourage others to join me, to speak out and to push back against this violation of the First Amendment.'
Gomez suggested she could be fired for openly criticizing her agency. However, she said she's 'more worried about our democracy and the folks standing up to defend it.'
(The FCC is an independent agency, and the president cannot fire a commissioner without just cause. If Trump removed anyone from the panel, it could trigger a legal fight.)
'I will continue to speak out, regardless of what happens, because I think it's important that we bring attention to these actions that are so contrary to our constitutional freedoms,' Gomez told CNN.
After this week, Gomez, a 2023 Biden appointee, will be the only Democrat left on the five-seat commission. Her fellow Democrat, Geoffrey Starks, who was appointed by Trump and reappointed by Biden, will step down on Friday. Republican commissioner Nathan Simington, a Trump appointee, will also exit the agency at the end of this week.
The departures will leave just two commissioners on the bench: Gomez and Carr, the latter of whom has openly signaled a willingness to pursue media outlets deemed unfavorable by the president. The FCC will be unable to vote on any matters until it fills a vacant seat and fulfills a required three-commissioner quorum.
In the meantime, Gomez said she plans to be vocal about her chairman's actions.
Since Trump returned to the White House, Carr has reopened probes into NPR and PBS over their sponsorship practices and into CBS over alleged 'news distortion.' He's reinstated complaints against ABC News for its handling of a 2024 presidential debate and opened new probes into NBCUniversal and Disney over their diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
Those actions, Gomez said, have been justified by Carr using 'an undefined public interest standard,' which she translated as 'things we don't like to see.'
These are 'sham investigations,' Gomez bluntly told CNN. 'They are intended to affect how these broadcasters and companies are doing their business, whether it's how they make their editorial decisions or how they change their fair hiring practices.'
Gomez has also used the tour to delve into Trump's lawsuits against media companies — a tactic that has FCC connections, in the case of CBS News. The broadcaster's parent company, Paramount, is seeking the FCC's sign-off on its lucrative merger with Skydance Media. At the same time, Trump is suing CBS, accusing '60 Minutes' of deliberately mis-editing its October interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris to manipulate the election.
Even though experts have deemed the lawsuit bogus, CBS is reportedly considering settling the lawsuit. Pressure to settle the case and clear the way for FCC approval has trickled down to the network. CBS News president Wendy McMahon, a '60 Minutes' ally, stepped down last month. 'It's become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward,' she wrote in her farewell memo.
Weeks before that, longtime '60 Minutes' producer Bill Owens resigned because he felt he could no longer make 'independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes,' as he wrote in a memo to the show's staff. Days later, the newsmagazine's anchor Scott Pelley said that Paramount had started 'to supervise our content in new ways' amid the political pressure, and that Owens felt 'he had lost the independence that honest journalism requires.'
'That, to me, is completely against the public interest,' Gomez said of Owens and McMahon being pushed out, 'because what it says is that they are making news editorial decisions for reasons that have nothing to do with journalistic integrity, but everything to do with the corporate parent's desire to get their transaction done.'
While Gomez is using her speeches to sound alarms, she said there are glimmers of hope. The audience at last week's Los Angeles show, she said, was thrilled to see press freedom groups pushing back against the administration.
However, Gomez said, the overall takeaway from the L.A. event was just how pervasive the sense of fear for press freedom has become.
'There's a lot of fear about these actions being taken against broadcasters, in particular, and frustration,' Gomez said. 'We heard from a wide variety of people — reporters, broadcasters, professors, public media — and they all had the same message, which is that they are very nervous about the actions that this administration is taking.'
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