MIKE MCKENNA: What’s Going On At The FCC?

Way back in October 2019, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 13892, which required government agencies to act “transparently and fairly … when engaged in civil administrative enforcement or adjudication.”

If that seems like a minimum, it should. The entire judicial system of the United States is built on the simple yet powerful ideas of fairness and transparency. It seems like the minimum to require the same of our government bureaucracies when they attempt to enforce the law.

Of course, President Joe Biden immediately revoked this executive order; the modern-day Democratic Party is more interested in the expansion of government authority than in the preservation of individual liberties. (RELATED: MORGAN MURPHY: Trump Gives Washington Long-Overdue Reality Check)

However, to emphasize its importance to Mr. Trump — who knows a thing or two about agencies which are disinterested in due process, transparency, and fairness — this executive order was immediately reinstated on Jan. 20, 2025. Despite this reinstatement, it is not clear that everyone in the new administration got the message.

In one immediately egregious example of lack of adherence to the new and very welcome approach to enforcement, the newly-minted chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Brendan Carr, decided to pursue Team Biden’s jihad against Telynx, a service network over which spamming calls to senior FCC staff and leadership had been placed back in February 2024.

This enforcement action was unusual from the beginning (the FCC does not go after AT&T, for example, when a bad actor uses a burner phone to make a drug deal). It didn’t get better. After the company rejected the FCC’s request to keep the investigation open beyond the statute of limitations, the commission responded by issuing a proposed fine of nearly $5 million against the company.

FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington, a Trump-appointee like Chairman Carr, was the lone dissenter in the 3-1 vote earlier this month to approve the fine. Mr. Simington cited last June’s Supreme Court’s decision in SEC v. Jarkesy. There the Court held that the Securities and Exchange Commission couldn’t impose civil penalties on its own; that the accused had the right to a jury trial.

That reasoning is, of course, right in line with Mr. Trump’s approach in Executive Order 13892.

Sometimes it takes a while to get ahold of the bureaucracy. As recently as last week, there were still signs in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building pointing to an “Office of Domestic Climate Policy,” whatever that may have been. But it seems reasonable to expect, however, that on significantly more important matters like agency enforcement actions that result in million-dollar fines and the attendant damage to legitimate businesses — word would get out that there is a new sheriff in town and he believes in due process.

This instance is especially unsettling for two reasons. First, Chairman Carr wrote the chapter on the FCC for Project 2025. He should know better. Second, it is not unreasonable to think that the agency responsible for policing telecom scams might want to get to the bottom of how they themselves were victimized by such a scam, rather than sweeping the experience under the rug.

President Trump, a victim of federal agency enforcement gone wrong, said it best in Executive Order 13892: “The Federal Government should, where feasible, foster greater private-sector cooperation in enforcement, promote information sharing with the private sector, and establish predictable outcomes for private conduct.”

Let’s hope all his appointees will eventually share his zeal to make the process better, smarter, fairer, more predictable and more transparent.

Michael McKenna was the Deputy Director in the Office of Legislative Affairs in the first Trump Administration.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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