Bloomberg

Republicans are poised to become a majority of the Federal Communications Commission at year’s end unless President Joe Biden nominates a chair who can swiftly be approved by the Senate. Eight months into his administration, President Biden hasn’t named anyone to permanently lead the agency.

Billions of dollars aimed at helping low-income households afford internet access are going unclaimed as the Federal Communications Commission faces hurdles to enrolling participants in the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program. FCC officials and their nonprofit partners have to marshal resources for outreach to help individuals understand how the program works and overcome mistrust of government. Nonprofits and local organizations are best suited to enroll low-income individuals because they are trusted in those communities, agency officials and partners said.

The digital divide has remained stubbornly persistent for decades, even as the internet has become steadily more inextricable from daily life, business, health care, and education. Research group BroadbandNow estimates that 42 million Americans have no broadband access, while a depressing 120 million people in the US are without any connection fast enough to even call the internet, according to Microsoft. These disparities are particularly severe among Black, Hispanic, Indigenous, and rural communities.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) made public for the first time the data it's using to bolster its case that Facebook has monopoly power over social networking. From September 2012 through December 2020, Facebook’s share of time spent by users of social media apps in the US has averaged 92 percent per month, according to a filing in federal court in Washington.