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Twenty-nine businesses, including ten tech giants, signed President Barack Obama's Equal Pay Pledge, the White House announced. In the pledge companies, including Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, are committing to take steps to address the gender pay gap. That commitment includes five points, including: acknowledging the role that business play in reducing the gap; conducting annual internal analysis on the gap; reviewing hiring and promotion practices for gender bias; conducting more “enterprise-wide equity initiatives;” and adopting other best practices to “close the national wage gap.” Other tech giants signing on include Akamai Technologies, Dropbox, IBM, Intel, LinkedIn, MailChimp, and Mulesoft.

The new signatories joined on Women’s Equality Day, a holiday commemorating both the certification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote, and women’s continued pursuit of equality.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) tore into the Federal Communications Commission's updated media ownership rules. The FCC’s rules dictate that entities cannot own both a newspaper and broadcast station in the same market. The requirement isn’t new, but the FCC decided in August to keep the regulation in place after a review. In a statement, Chairman Goodlatte said the FCC had “overreacted” and that it was “likely to harm the objectives of smaller media outlets eager to compete.” “Today, the FCC continues its recent tradition of advancing unnecessary and burdensome regulations on a partisan basis while ignoring new technologies and market realities, with the likely outcome of harming competition,” he said.

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) also noted its disappointment on the ruling in a letter to the FCC, and the group later sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the agency for documents regarding the decision. The NAB characterized the FCC’s decision as a “ ‘head in the sand’ approach” to the media marketplace.

A coalition of 28 organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Democracy and Technology signed a letter expressing opposition to the Department of Homeland Security’s proposal to include social media in its review of visa-waiver applicants. The groups argued that such a proposal would not be effective, would cost too much and would impinge on privacy. The letter also expressed concern that Arab-Americans and Muslims could be unfairly targeted.

“The risk of discrimination based on analysis of social media content and connections is great and will fall hardest on Arab and Muslim communities,” the letter stated. “Cultural and linguistic barriers increase the risk that social media activity will be misconstrued.” The Department of Homeland Security published the measure on June 23. “Collecting social media data will enhance the existing investigative process and provide DHS greater clarity and visibility to possible nefarious activity and connections by providing an additional tool set which analysts and investigators may use to better analyze and investigate the case,” the department wrote.

[Commentary] We all know the stories of crumbling roads, failing bridges and broadband access that lags behind our international peers. The last few decades have been hard on our urban centers but Americans are falling in love with cities again. Cities all over the country are experiencing major influxes of new residents.

The Democratic Party, in its Cities Agenda amendment to the platform, is now the first political party to develop a comprehensive plan on city infrastructure during this election cycle. And this week, the Republican party also made cities an issue in their campaign. Donald Trump entered the conversation with a speech in Detroit (MI) outlining an ambitious infrastructure agenda, declaring "We will build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, seaports and airports that our country deserves.” We look forward to seeing the details of his plan. Indeed, public transportation, roadways, highways, bridges, electricity, and waterways are at the very core of the services our citizens need to thrive. Our infrastructure is the skeleton that supports cities and improving it lifts up local economies. It’s a major factor in where people decide to work and businesses decide to locate. From the creation of bike paths and making safe water accessible to all, infrastructure impacts public health and quality of life outcomes. Regardless of who wins the White House, or the majorities in Congress this November, we must increase the pressure on our federal leaders to fix our cities.

[Mayor Sly James has served Kansas City, Missouri since 2011]

[Commentary] In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission, at the urging of the White House, voted along party lines to preempt portions of Tennessee and North Carolina laws designed to delineate the terms and conditions under which municipalities may construct and deploy broadband Internet networks in order to offer advanced communications services to the general public. Notwithstanding clear Supreme Court precedent holding that this type of preemption is unconstitutional, the FCC nonetheless plowed ahead with its efforts to have the federal government dictate to a state how it governs its municipal subdivisions. For this reason, many leading telecom lawyers predicted that the FCC's order was dead on arrival. Seeing the hopelessness of the FCC's case, even the Department of Justice refused to back the agency on appeal — a very rare refrain. As expected, earlier in August, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Tennessee v. FCC trounced the FCC's constitutional end-run, finding that "nowhere in [the Communications Act's] general charge to 'promote competition in the telecommunications market' is a directive to do so by pre-empting a state’s allocation of powers between itself and its subdivision." According to the court, this is "fundamental constitutional policy."

By pursuing this nakedly political agenda, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has wasted significant federal and state resources litigating his patently unconstitutional power grab. Nevertheless, Chairman Wheeler is far from contrite. If anything, Chairman Wheeler is doubling down on his political hubris. In response to the Sixth Circuit's ruling in Tennessee, Chairman Wheeler retorted that the case perpetuated "anti-competitive broadband statutes" and thus "thwarted" the "efforts of communities wanting better broadband ... by the political power of those who, by protecting their monopoly, have failed to deliver acceptable service at an acceptable price." Moreover, Chairman Wheeler boasted that he would be "happy to testify on behalf of consumer choice" should other "states seek to limit the right of people to act for better broadband." If Chairman Wheeler wants to have a policy debate about municipal broadband, then let's have it.

[Spiwak is the president of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies.]

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is steeling himself for a protracted battle against an increasingly hostile press, adding the media to the list of establishment institutions he intends to crush on his way to the White House.

Trump’s stunning move to make Breitbart News Executive Chairman Steve Bannon his campaign’s CEO was a decision to shake up his faltering campaign, but it was also a clear response to the complaints about the coverage of his candidacy. Under Bannon’s leadership, Breitbart has championed Trump’s rise while adopting a provocative and combative tone toward the press, the GOP’s congressional leadership and others who have criticized or questioned the nominee. Bringing Bannon into the Trump tent will almost certainly lead to a new chapter in the fight between Trump and the media, which is already engaged in a fierce debate over how to cover the GOP nominee.

AT&T’s top policy executive is leaving the company. Jim Cicconi will retire at the end of September from the company where he’s worked for more than a decade. Cicconi will be replaced by Bob Quinn, who leads the company’s federal regulatory advocacy.

Facebook said that it would start displaying advertisements to users who have an ad blocker installed on their desktop browsers.

Its decision comes amid rising concerns from the advertising industry that the proliferation of ad blocking software is hurting their business. Facebook said that it believes that it now gives users enough control over what ads they see to warrant circumnavigating the blocking software. “We’ve designed our ad formats, ad performance and controls to address the underlying reasons people have turned to ad blocking software,” said Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth. “When we asked people about why they used ad blocking software, the primary reason we heard was to stop annoying, disruptive ads,” he said. “As we offer people more powerful controls, we’ll also begin showing ads on Facebook desktop for people who currently use ad blocking software.” Bosworth also slammed ad blocking software that stops blocking ads from publishers or services that pay for the privilege, calling that “a practice that is at best confusing to people and that reduces the funding needed to support the journalism and other free services that we enjoy on the web.” The move aligns Facebook, at least in spirit, with the publishers over whom it has significant power as a primary channel for content distribution.

Republicans believe they are finally close to overhauling a landmark law that has been a cornerstone of tech and telecom regulation for decades.

The effort to update the Communications Act, which gives the Federal Communications Commission its authority, has been years in the making and has powerful support. John Thune (R-SD), the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and veteran lawmakers on the House Commerce Committee are vowing to make changing the law a centerpiece of their 2017 agenda. Proponents of updating the law, first written in 1934 and last revised in 1996, say it's showing its age and is ill-suited to dealing with a world dominated by high-speed internet and mobile devices instead of phone service and traditional radio broadcasts.

[Commentary] The high-capacity broadband lines that connect our banks, airlines, schools, libraries and hospitals, referred to as “business data services”, are critical to each and every community. But today, 97 percent of this high-capacity broadband market is controlled by one — and sometimes two — providers. Roughly one-fifth of all Americans live in rural areas where wireless broadband coverage – and competitive options – is severely limited.

Though smart policies can heal this gap over time, they are currently stuck with few choices and no real hope for more investment in the short term. For well over a decade, groups like mine have urged the Federal Communications Commission to fix this broken market because we have seen the impact it has on businesses and residents looking to compete in the 21st century economy. In our advocacy, we’ve faced roadblock after roadblock from the largest entrenched telephone companies that have very little incentive to deliver high-speed Internet to the rural communities. However, after ten years of battles with these dominant Internet and cable companies, we are hopeful for an important victory. The FCC has undergone a proceeding that can make an immediate difference, requiring that the big monopolies charge reasonable rates for the connections that libraries, schools, and even smaller Internet Service Providers need to keep their doors open. In many small communities, the only path out to the greater Internet is via the big telephone companies’ networks. Following the most exhaustive data collection in the FCC’s history, the Commission is poised to introduce a technology neutral framework that will promote broadband competition and investment to the benefit of all Americans. The gatekeepers are not going quietly and are engaging in a last ditch Hail Mary effort to derail the FCC’s progress and protect their profits. Although great for their shareholders, these profits are estimated to have cost the U.S. economy $150 billion in the last five years. That is money that should have stayed in local communities, supporting main street businesses.

[Christopher Mitchell is the Director of the Community Broadband Networks Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and the Policy Director at Next Century Cities]