The next phase of Elon Musk’s plan to entangle his companies with the workings of the federal government is well underway. That entails not only President Donald Trump’s photo op with a Tesla in front of the White House but also, surprisingly, the future of your internet connection. More specifically, Musk is making moves that could change the way millions of Americans access the internet by boosting Starlink, the satellite-based internet company operated by his company, SpaceX, of which he is the founder, CEO, and major shareholder. Starlink and other space-based internet projects work by beaming internet service from satellites in orbit down to Earth’s surface, as opposed to wired broadband internet, which typically relies on fiber-optic cable. Satellite internet’s major advantage is that, with a few exceptions, it can work almost anywhere on the planet. Its drawbacks — including slow speeds, high latency, and spotty reliability — mean that fiber internet is better for the vast majority of people right now. Recently, the Commerce Department said it plans to rewrite the rules of a $42 billion high-speed internet initiative in a way that would benefit Starlink. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) meanwhile granted Starlink a waiver that will make its new service, which lets phones connect to satellites, more powerful, as satellite competitors urged the agency to rein in Musk’s company, which they say is “anticompetitive.” “Elon Musk has been pretty cavalier about his ability to turn on or turn off Starlink to influence policy decisions,” said Drew Garner, director of policy engagement at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, referring to a series of recent posts on X from Musk about cutting off Starlink access in Ukraine. In addition to hacking away at the federal government in his unelected position as the head of DOGE, Musk could also become the single individual who is “the dominant force in telecom policy,” according to Blair Levin, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and former chief of staff at the FCC. What’s more, the US telecommunications system is key to national security, and Musk’s business interests might not always line up with Washington’s. “We have never before had a situation where the owner of a major communications company is inside the government. This is a very unusual situation,” Levin said. “It’s very troubling.”

An unexpected federal review is still holding up Louisiana’s $1.3 billion in federal broadband funding, according to one of the state’s broadband officers. “The review is still ongoing,” said Thomas Tyler, deputy director of the state’s broadband office. Louisiana, along with Delaware and Nevada, received approval on their spending plans for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program in the waning days of the Biden administration. That approval came from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the Commerce Department agency handling BEAD. 

Federal Communications Commissioner Anna Gomez urged policymakers to set aside partisan fights and focus on more pressing issues, like ensuring the availability of spectrum and broadband infrastructure. “I keep hoping that we will turn away from the partisan culture wars and instead focus on our core priorities,” Commissioner Gomez said speaking at the INCOMPAS Policy Summit. She pointed to more pressing issues, like legal challenges to the Universal Service Fund that could jeopardize broadband access for millions of Americans.

Meta has spent more than a year advocating for new laws requiring app stores to give parents control over kids’ app downloads, and just saw an early victory in the states. But Google charges that it’s really just a misguided effort to “offload” Meta’s own responsibility to keep kids safe. The missive follows the passage of Utah’s App Store Accountability Act, the first of its kind to advance to the governor’s desk, putting the onus on app store operators to keep kids from accessing inappropriate content. There are similar bills in more than a dozen states across the country in a growing trend of kids safety legislation, in the wake of the Kids Online Safety Act’s failure to become law last year, and ongoing legal battles over many other state laws. While Meta, Snap, and X issued a joint statement praising the Utah bill’s passage, Google calls it “concerning.” Rather than protect kids and give parents more control, Google director of public policy Kareem Ghanem writes, the legislation “requires app stores to share if a user is a kid or teenager with all app developers (effectively millions of individual companies) without parental consent or rules on how the information is used. That raises real privacy and safety risks, like the potential for bad actors to sell the data or use it for other nefarious purposes.” Social media companies would be the real beneficiaries of the law, Ghanem writes, because they could “avoid that responsibility despite the fact that apps are just one of many ways that kids can access these platforms.” Both Meta and Google’s YouTube have come under fire in the past for allegedly not doing enough to keep its youngest users safe on their platforms by pushing videos of kids to potential predators or keeping teens in a content loop that makes them feel bad about themselves. Both companies have said they maintain robust policies and resources to create healthy experiences on their platforms.

Under pressure from the U.S. DOGE Service team to root out alleged fraud, the Social Security Administration is considering dramatically curtailing the phone services that 73 million retired and disabled Americans rely on to apply for and access their earned government benefits, according to two people briefed on internal deliberations and records obtained by The Washington Post. Social Security leadership is considering a proposal to end telephone service for claims processing and direct-deposit bank account transactions, instead directing elderly and disabled people to the internet and in-person field offices. The change would disrupt Social Security’s internal operations and threaten its ability to serve the public, current and former officials warned, just as DOGE is targeting the agency for across-the-board staff cuts of more than 12 percent. They also noted that the agency’s toll-free number is a mainstay for older customers who do not have online access or who have trouble navigating the internet.

Andrew Ferguson started his legal career with such a conventional antitrust practice—defending companies facing investigations and allegations of anticompetitive conduct—that his parents joked he was a “pro-trust lawyer.” A decade later, Ferguson’s rapid ascendance through Republican circles has put him in charge of the Federal Trade Commission, where he will try to chart a new course for antitrust enforcement: mixing MAGA populism with strains of the GOP’s traditional lighter-touch approach to regulation. While Ferguson has been outspoken in criticizing his progressive predecessor Lina Khan’s approach to business as too heavy-handed, he is also part of a populist GOP wing that shares her suspicions of corporate power, especially as a threat to personal liberty. In his first weeks on the job, Ferguson disappointed Wall Street by announcing that he would maintain Khan’s tough merger-oversight guidelines, which gave enforcers more leeway to block deals. He also shares her belief that antitrust enforcement should address a broader range of problems than just the classic concerns about consumer prices and the supply of goods. Still, the similarities only go so far, and Ferguson has brought a distinctly Trumpian bent to the chairman’s office.