Every morning, Federal Communications Commissioner Anna Gomez says she checks her email “to see if I’m going into work.”
The idea that Gomez could wake up one day to an email dismissing her is not unfounded. That’s essentially how the two Democratic commissioners at the Federal Trade Commission, another agency of the federal government that was created to be independent, found out that Trump was firing them — even though doing so without cause breached decades-old Supreme Court precedent.
Now that it’s only Gomez and Carr left at the commission, since Democrat Geoffrey Starks and Republican Nathan Simington both stepped down last week, the agency no longer has a quorum to vote on significant actions. Only three members of the five-person committee can be from the same party, and while Trump has one Republican nominee awaiting confirmation and a second rumored, Gomez isn’t confident that Trump will eventually move to nominate another Democrat. “I have not seen him nominate a single Democrat to the entire administration,” she tells The Verge in a brief interview after an event with the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) in Washington, DC. “I have only seen him fire them.”
One might assume that Gomez’s nationwide tour critiquing the agency chair’s actions would make for a tense office environment back at the FCC. But, she says, she actually has a “good working relationship” with Carr. “It just is what it is,” she says. “He knows that I need to speak out, and we have a relationship where I can tell him my concerns also.” Does she have any sense of why Trump hasn’t attempted to fire her? “No,” Gomez says.
“I have not seen him nominate a single Democrat to the entire administration. I have only seen him fire them”
But the loss of a quorum at the FCC could set up more points of opposition until a third commissioner is confirmed by the Senate. FCC bureaus are allowed to carry out some work themselves on what’s called delegated authority, but are not supposed to deal with novel issues meant to be handled at the commission level. Those are the kinds of things Gomez thinks should wait for a quorum so the FCC can vote on them, leading to a final decision that — unlike bureau-level actions — is reviewable in court. Gomez has already critiqued the bureau-level approval of Verizon’s $20 billion Frontier acquisition as a “backroom” deal, and warns that the review of Paramount’s proposed Skydance deal should not be handled in the same way.
During the CTA event, Gomez gave a tentative response to whether the FCC had adequate guardrails to fend off conflicts of interest with Musk’s companies, like SpaceX, which operates the Starlink satellite internet network, that can benefit from certain agency policy. Until recently, Musk had a cozy relationship with Trump, and his involvement with DOGE raised questions about the kinds of information he could access that related to his financial interests (the White House insisted Musk would step back from any potential conflicts). “I can only imagine our general counsel would be very involved in making those decisions,” Gomez says. “As a commissioner, I don’t have perfect insight into those types of activities, but our chairman is the former general counsel of the agency and is fully aware of those obligations.”
Despite the tenuous position she’s in, Gomez says she’s been encouraged during her First Amendment tour to see support from people of different ideological backgrounds. “This is not a red or a blue issue. This is an issue of right or wrong. This is an issue of protecting our democracy and the First Amendment,” she says. “I think it’s important that we speak up and push back, because we can’t let this become the status quo.”
