Reporting

President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign filed defamation lawsuits against three of the country’s most prominent news outlets: The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN. Then it filed another suit against a somewhat lower-profile news organization: northern Wisconsin’s WJFW-TV, which serves the 134th-largest market in the country.

A lot of hopes are riding on the auction of spectrum in the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band, which has a start date of July 23. The spectrum is considered mid-band – and industry stakeholders increasingly see mid-band spectrum offering the optimum mixture of bandwidth and coverage for 5G deployments. Perhaps no one has higher hopes for the auction than Verizon, which is light on mid-band spectrum holdings.

The nomination of Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O'Rielly for a new, five-year term on the FCC has been favorably reported out of the Senate Commerce Committee and now moves to the full Senate for a vote. Commissioner O'Rielly's term expired at the end of June 2019, but commissioners can continue to serve until the close of the next Congress. The new term would date from July 1, 2019. Wednesday's action came by voice vote, but with Committee Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-WA) voting no, even though, procedurally, she was the one to propose that it be reported favorably.

The role of Big Tech companies, the dangers of social media platforms, and the potential of a green future are all major issues in politics right now, and whoever wins the 2020 election will shape policies around them. Below are examples of where President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden stand on tech policy:

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit issued a rare emergency injunction July 21, blocking staffing changes that the Trump Administration’s new head of the Voice of America made to a US organization that protects digital speech worldwide. In a bluntly worded two-page order, the panel warned that actions taken by Michael Pack, a conservative filmmaker and associate of former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, could endanger activists under repressive governments who rely on the Open Technology Fund to combat Internet censorship and surveillance.

Top congressional Democrats warned in a cryptic letter that a foreign power was using disinformation to try to interfere in the presidential election and the activities of Congress, and demanded a prompt briefing by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to warn every member of Congress. While the letter writers did not specify the threat, officials familiar with a classified addendum attached to it said the Democrats’ concerns touched on intelligence related to a possible Russian-backed attempt to smear the presidential campaign of former Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. They contend that the

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.

Frontier has filed a waiver request with the Federal Communications Commission, the resolution of which could impact the company’s ability to participate in Phase 1 of the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction, scheduled to begin in Oct. Frontier entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April.

Public Knowledge, INCOMPAS, the Open Technology Institute and others warned Congress not to try to use the appropriations process -- via language in the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) -- to undo the Federal Communications Commission's Ligado decision at the behest of the Defense Department, saying it would be tantamount to sabotaging the FCC's spectrum authority. The FCC has already unanimously granted the Ligado (formerly LightSquared) proposal to use satellite spectrum adjacent to GPS spectrum for terrestrial broadband so long as it meets various conditions to prevent in

Broadband connectivity alone doesn’t make a postsecondary institution inclusive or competitive, said tech leaders from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) during a National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) webinar. The main point at the webinar was that HBCUs and TCUs must view cyberinfrastructure from a broad lens in order to better serve students and capitalize on research opportunities that can bring dollars to educational organizations.