Bloomberg

On the issue of network neutrality, Democratic Senators are planning to use the Congressional Review Act, or CRA to force a vote in Congress on the issue. Sen Claire McCaskill (D-MO) became the 30th senator to get behind the measure, giving Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) enough senators to call the vote. The CRA procedure gives Congress a chance to reverse an agency decision.

Sinclair Broadcast Group likely will face demands to sell TV stations in at least 10 cities to satisfy regulators who are wrapping up a review of the company’s plan to buy Tribune Media Co. -- a $3.9 billion deal that would create a national broadcasting giant.  Apparently, Federal Communications Commission staff members in a recent discussion focused on completing the review by a self-imposed deadline of Jan. 17.  The deal would create a coast-to-coast string of stations exceeding current ownership limits and Sinclair has acknowledged that it might have to sell some of the stations.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is still waiting on Twitter to answer questions in the committee’s Russia investigation, Committee Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) said.  “I’m disappointed. I’ve been disappointed throughout this” by Twitter Inc.’s failure to be more cooperative Vice Chairman Warner said. “The other companies met the deadline." Facebook and Alphabet's Google have delivered answers to detailed questions Senators posed after a public hearing with the three technology giants in 2017 on disclosures that Russians had exploited their networks.

The engineer who was fired by Google after he criticized its diversity policies is suing the internet giant, alleging that he and others at Google were harassed over their conservative political views. 

The Federal Communications Commission rejected calls to delay ending network neutrality rules over a flawed public comment system, saying it had not relied on thousands of identical or suspicious submissions in its decision making. “We reject calls to delay adoption of this Order out of concerns that certain non-substantive comments (on which the Commission did not rely) may have been submitted under multiple different names or allegedly ‘fake’ names,” the commission said in its final order released late on Jan 4.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai spent 2017 dismantling Obama-era rules on network neutrality. A handful of lawmakers in liberal-leaning US states plan to spend 2018 building them back up. Even supporters of state legislation on net neutrality think this may go too far. CA State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) introduced a bill that would only apply to behavior within the state, saying any other approach would be too vulnerable to legal challenge. “We're expecting that there will be litigation,” he said.