A Democratic commissioner with the country’s telecommunications regulator said she feels uncomfortable by the premise that the agency is being used to target companies for their hiring and promotional practices.
During an appearance at the 2025 NAB Show in Las Vegas on Monday, Anna Gomez, a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), described the regulatory atmosphere in Washington as “very stressful” under President Donald Trump, and said his Executive Orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusiveness (DEI) programs at the federal level had been misconstrued by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to apply to private companies.
“I find it disturbing for a lot of reasons, but it is control of a private company’s employment practices. That’s all it is,” Gomez said during a public interview moderated by Joe Flint of the Wall Street Journal.
She continued: “It has nothing to do with what we do at the FCC, other than the fact that there’s an Executive Order that told every agency to take actions to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Trump announced his intention to nominate Carr to the role of FCC chairman following his Election Day victory late last year, and carried through on that promise in mid-January.
Since becoming chairman, Carr has sent letters to at least two companies — Comcast and the Walt Disney Company — informing them of probes launched by the FCC into their DEI practices, citing Trump’s Executive Order as the guiding document that facilitated those investigations.
Comcast and Disney are regulated by the FCC because each company holds broadcast licenses associated with NBC-owned (Comcast) and ABC-owned (Disney) television stations. Comcast also offers telephone and broadband Internet services under the Xfinity brand, which are also regulated by the agency as a common carrier.
In a news interview last month, Carr said a company’s DEI practices would lead the FCC to scrutinize certain business-related transactions, and strongly suggested that they may be blocked if the FCC determines the deals do not satisfy certain public interest requirements.
“If there are businesses out there that are still promoting invidious forms of DEI discrimination, I really don’t see a path forward where the FCC could reach the conclusion that approving the transaction is going to be in the public interest,” Carr said.
Some federal lawmakers have accused Carr of weaponizing the authorities of the FCC to fulfill Trump’s various political agendas, and Gomez restated the same in no uncertain terms during her NAB Show appearance on Monday.
“This administration just tramples on the First Amendment, on press freedom, on freedom of speech,” Gomez commented.
Gomez took strong exception to investigations Carr re-opened involving news and entertainment programs leading up to the 2024 presidential election, including a probe against WCBS-TV (Channel 2) in New York City that is rooted in the broadcast of a “60 Minutes” segment featuring an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, which included an edited question that Trump characterized as an attempt by CBS to engage in “news distortion.”
The probe was closed by former FCC Chairperson Jessica Rosenworcel about two weeks before her departure in January. Carr made the decision to re-open it; some legal experts have raised doubts on his ability to do so unilaterally.
Gomez made clear her position is one that favors a full and permanent closure of the investigation, as Carr’s predecessor had attempted.
“The First Amendment is a pillar of our democracy, and we rely on the press to keep us in check, all of us,” Gomez said. “You do not want regulators like me interfering in your journalistic decisions. So I absolutely disagree with keeping these open.”
Gomez accused Carr and the Trump administration of “initiating investigations for practices that are…invidious discrimination,” and said the FCC’s approach in targeting CBS, Comcast and Disney amounted to state-sanctioned “harassment.”
“I’m not worried about myself, but I will not stop speaking out because I have to,” Gomez affirmed. “I cannot allow this to continue without raising alarm bells.”
