May 2017

Apparently, Michael Flynn told President Trump’s transition team weeks before the inauguration that he was under federal investigation for secretly working as a paid lobbyist for Turkey during the campaign. Despite this warning, which came about a month after the Justice Department notified Flynn of the inquiry, President Trump made Flynn his national security adviser. The job gave Flynn access to the president and nearly every secret held by American intelligence agencies. Flynn’s disclosure, on Jan. 4, was first made to the transition team’s chief lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, who is now the White House counsel. That conversation, and another one two days later between Flynn’s lawyer and transition lawyers, shows that the Trump team knew about the investigation of Flynn far earlier than has been previously reported. After Flynn’s dismissal, Trump tried to get James Comey, the FBI director, to drop the investigation — an act that some legal experts say is grounds for an investigation of President Trump for possible obstruction of justice. He fired Comey on May 9.

The Federal Communications Commission is set to move forward with a plan that would blow up the rules that have governed the internet in recent years and essentially start anew, opening the door to fundamental shifts in consumers’ online experiences.

The final regulation is expected to take some time to develop. The FCC’s planned action begins a rule-making process that will likely take months, meaning the broadband internet business won’t change overnight. But eventually the new rules, depending on how the commission fills in the details, have the potential to allow new alliances between broadband providers and major entertainment, shopping, search and social media platforms. Those deals could allow cable and wireless broadband providers to lure consumers with higher speeds and better quality video for favored services, even as their choices are potentially narrowed. Critics note that the providers’ profits would probably grow in the meantime. Even supporters of the changes acknowledge the new rules could give internet providers broad latitude to offer new services that arguably are inconsistent with recent ideas about net neutrality. The biggest potential change would allow providers to offer paid prioritization, a practice that would allow some internet traffic to move more quickly or more reliably in exchange for payment to the carrier. The current rules bar paid prioritization.

A warning to the hundreds of thousands of people publicly urging the Federal Communications Commission to keep its tough net neutrality rules: You might be wasting your time.

The FCC’s Republican majority has indicated it won’t be swayed by the electronic messages flooding the agency’s website. “Commission outcomes are not and cannot be decided by poll numbers or letter counts,” said FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, a Republican. A top aide to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who is leading the charge to repeal the rules, echoed that view. Robert McDowell, a former Republican FCC commissioner who has known Chairman Pai for years, said the facts on the issue will outweigh the volume of public comment. “Ajit Pai will be data-driven and not poll-driven,” McDowell said. Supporters of the regulations said it’s still important for members of the public to express their views: The opinions of average Americans could influence judges if a rule change is challenged in court as well as members of Congress if they decide to write net neutrality legislation.

Commissioners Pai and O’Rielly could be taking a big risk if they dismiss public sentiment, said Gigi Sohn, who served as counselor to former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, a Democrat who pushed the rules into place. “I say defy the American people at your own peril,” Sohn said. “To the extent the FCC is supposed to act in ‘the public convenience interest and necessity,’ it might be important what the people think,” she said, quoting a phrase from the telecommunications law regarding the FCC’s oversight of the public airwaves.

American Enterprise Institute’s Jeffrey Eisenach, who advised the Trump transition team on telecommunications policy, said, “When you get millions of comments that basically say, ‘Net neutrality is a principle that has to be upheld. I don’t really know the facts. If you vote against this rule, you’re the scum of the Earth,’ that’s not the kind of evidence that the commission should be weighing.” But Sohn said Americans are busy and even filing a short statement to the FCC shows that the issue is important to them. The agency’s leaders should care about that. “To simply kind of wipe your hands of the public submissions is really not what an administrative agency should be doing,” she said. “They’ve got to take them into account.”