Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr wears a “Make Towers Great Again” hat during an event to announce his “Build America Agenda” on July 2, 2025, in Sioux Falls. (Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight)
SIOUX FALLS — Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr picked South Dakota as the place to unveil what he called a “Build America Agenda,” aimed at cutting regulations and revitalizing the telecommunications industry.
Carr delivered a speech Wednesday at the wireless infrastructure construction company VIKOR, surrounded by construction workers, American flags and Toby Keith country music playing from loudspeakers.
Before the event, Carr climbed a 200-foot KELO-TV tower. At the event, he wore and handed out red hats emblazoned with the slogan “Make Towers Great Again,” similar to hats at President Donald Trump’s political rallies that say “Make America Great Again.”
South Dakota, Carr said, symbolizes what’s possible when “we get our regulatory policies right.”
“I imagine that the ‘other S.F.’ — San Francisco — might seem like a more natural pick to most when outlining a tech or telecom agenda,” Carr said. “But I can’t think of a more appropriate place for me to announce the agenda that will guide much of the FCC’s upcoming work than right here in the real S.F.”
Carr was originally nominated to the FCC by Trump in 2017, and then renominated by President Joe Biden in 2023 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate both times. This year, Trump picked Carr to serve as FCC chairman.
Prior to Trump’s election win last year, Carr authored a chapter about the FCC in the controversial Project 2025 report, a policy roadmap for a second Trump term published by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
On Wednesday, Carr praised Trump’s second-term priorities and Republican leadership in South Dakota, including Republican U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Carr previously joined Thune to visit a broadband internet construction site in Colton in June 2023, spotlighting the value of federal investments in internet infrastructure.
Speech highlights
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced several goals of his Build America Agenda, including:
- Accelerating the shift from aging copper lines to high-speed internet.
- Encouraging greater collaboration and more concrete timelines to fix “slow, cumbersome” delays when telecom crews are stringing new fiber-optic lines across utility poles.
- Using legal powers to override local siting delays and permit faster infrastructure deployment.
- Revisiting how the FCC complies with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), in light of recent Supreme Court rulings relaxing requirements for environmental review.
- Selling off unused airwaves that companies can use to build new wireless networks.
- Eliminating rules slowing the space satellite industry, to “inject rocket fuel into our licensing process by standardizing our reviews through more objective metrics.”
- Eliminating decades-old rules governing outdated technologies like telegraphs and phone booths.
- Implementing workforce reforms aimed at “making it harder for foreign, fly-by-night crews to sweep in and undercut the safety and security of our networks.”
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