John Hendel

Federal Communications Commission nominee Nathan Simington reached out to Fox News in an attempt at “engaging” host Laura Ingraham to support President Donald Trump’s quest to make it easier to sue social media companies like Facebook and Twitter. Simington, a senior adviser in a key Commerce Department tech agency, wrote that the popular Fox News host could help sway the FCC to act on Trump's proposal before Election Day.

Apparently, the Trump administration is pressuring Republican Senators to ratchet up scrutiny of social media companies it sees as biased against conservatives in the run-up to the Nov 2020 election. In recent weeks, the White House has pressed Senate Republican leaders on key committees to hold public hearings on the law that protects Facebook, Twitter and other internet companies from lawsuits over how they treat user posts. And action is following.

The White House is searching for a replacement for Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joe Simons, a Republican who has publicly resisted President Donald Trump’s efforts to crack down on social media companies. Chairman Simons, a veteran antitrust lawyer, hasn’t announced he’s leaving the agency. He is serving a term that doesn’t end until September 2024, and he cannot legally be removed by the president except in cases of gross negligence.

As the Republican National Convention kicked off, the Trump campaign touted 5G among the president’s second-term goals, specifically stating he would “win the race to 5G and establish a national high-speed wireless internet network.”  This phrasing is a head-scratcher given the Trump orbit’s past flirtations with nationalizing 5G, an approach taking multiple forms over the years and deeply opposed by many at the Federal Communications Commission and on Capitol Hill.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is pushing Congress to make “more funding available for connectivity during the COVID-19 pandemic — including at least $430 million in funding for the highly successful but underfunded COVID-19 Telehealth Program,” a spokesperson said, noting that the FCC has conveyed these requests for months. Congress in March slated $200 million for the Covid-19 Telehealth Program, and the FCC has since awarded that cash to subsidize connectivity for 539 health care entities across the country.

A Federal Communications Commission proposal that began circulating Aug 14 among FCC commissioners would formally close the door on a controversial plan involving consumers’ cable set-top boxes. Will Wiquist, a spokesperson for Chairman Ajit Pai, said that this new proposal “would terminate the proceeding in which the prior Commission proposed imposing complex and unnecessary regulations on the navigation device market that generated bipartisan opposition within and outside the agency, and serious concerns from a wide range of stakeholders and experts, including the U.S.

Aug 17's session of the Democratic National Convention featured multiple tech industry veterans weighing in to support Joe Biden’s presidential bid, including Republicans, despite the broad skepticism his party has taken toward Silicon Valley since the Obama years. Two notable Biden advocates: Susan Molinari, the former House GOP lawmaker who was a top lobbyist for Google from 2012 to 2018, and Meg Whitman, CEO of Quibi and a former chief executive for eBay and Hewlett Packard Enterprise who a decade ago was the Republican nominee for governor in California.

House appropriators have begun moving their funding bills to the floor. The juiciest Democratic wish lists on broadband infrastructure spending (that’s in a separate funding bill for the FCC, which provides enormous emergency funding for broadband to the tune of more than $60 billion) haven't been scheduled for votes yet.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is angering a lot of powerful people as his chairmanship hits its fourth and potentially final year. The Pentagon, the Commerce Department and the Department of Transportation. Electric utilities, airlines and the auto industry. Public safety officials and weather forecasters. Top lawmakers of both parties, including Sen John Kennedy (R-LA) an ally of President Donald Trump’s who controls the FCC’s purse strings on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

He rails against the "far left's" hoaxes. He says the World Health Organization has been “beclowned” over its response to the coronavirus. And he describes a “secret and partisan surveillance machine” run by House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA). Those aren't President Donald Trump's words. They came from Brendan Carr, the junior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, who is embracing a flavor of distinctly Trumpian rhetoric that could help him leapfrog his way to the chairmanship of the five-member regulatory agency.