Adam Candeub, the Federal Communications Commission’s general counsel, is urging a renewed federal and state campaign against online pornography, arguing in a Heritage Foundation report and a Daily Signal column that obscenity law should again be used aggressively against internet distribution.
That is not just another think tank paper floating around Washington. Candeub is the top lawyer at the FCC under chair Brendan Carr, and Broadband Breakfast has reported that President Trump plans to nominate him to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust division. If that move happens, an official advocating broader obscenity enforcement would be closer to the department that can bring federal prosecutions.
In his Daily Signal column, Candeub wrote that courts historically allowed lawmakers to restrict pornographic material and that internet-era rulings broke with that approach. In the longer Heritage report, published July 6 under the title “Restoring Obscenity Regulation in an Internet Age,” he argues for reviving obscenity enforcement using existing federal law, including the modern version of the Comstock Act.
What Candeub is proposing
The legal mechanism is straightforward, and grimly old-fashioned: classify material as obscene, then treat its online transmission as an interstate offense. Candeub’s report says federal law prohibits sending obscene material across state lines, and he writes that state and local prosecutors could pursue cases in conservative communities. He also says national prosecutors could target large platforms, naming Google, for distributing obscenity.
Candeub points to the Supreme Court’s decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, which upheld Texas’ age-verification requirement for online adult content, as a possible opening. His report says the ruling may support a “dual-track” system in which states impose controls for minors while the legal position for adults remains unsettled. He also says the most favorable outcome for his approach would be a strengthened version of the Supreme Court’s Miller obscenity framework, paired with federal authority over online transmission.
The Heritage report also calls back to Comstock-era anti-vice laws, which historically targeted obscene materials and devices. Techdirt’s Michael McGrady argues that those doctrines were used against women, LGBTQ people, communities of color, sex workers, and publishers, including people whose speech was not pornographic.
Candeub’s argument sits inside a broader pressure campaign. Marcel van der Watt, president and CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, has called pornography a “national security threat” and urged the Justice Department to resume obscenity prosecutions, according to Techdirt. Republican Sen. Jim Banks of Indiana sent a May letter to Trump’s Justice Department saying the federal government made a mistake by ending obscenity prosecutions, AVN reported.
Candeub has been involved in related internet-speech fights before. Techdirt reported that he represented Jared Taylor in an unsuccessful suit against Twitter over moderation. It also described him as a participant in the first Trump administration’s effort to weaken or eliminate Section 230. The State News reported that Candeub contributed the Project 2025 section on Federal Trade Commission regulatory actions affecting online speech.
His founding-era framing is also contested. Candeub invokes the founders as supporters of stronger obscenity controls. Critics cited by Techdirt point to examples that complicate that story, including Benjamin Franklin’s sexual writings and Thomas Jefferson’s 1814 objection to a magistrate threatening prosecution over a controversial book. Jefferson wrote to bookseller Nicolas Dufief, “Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy?”
The policy fight, then, is wider than age gates on adult sites. Candeub is arguing for a prosecutorial theory that could pull platforms, publishers, and lawful adult expression into criminal obscenity enforcement. The courts would still have to accept that theory. Prosecutors would still have to bring the cases. The FCC’s top lawyer is now putting the blueprint in public.
This story draws on original reporting from Techdirt.
