Morning Consult

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) would like to be the next chairman of the House Commerce Committee if the GOP maintains its House majority in the next Congress.

Rep John Shimkus (R-IL), who has seniority on the panel over Rep Walden, has also indicated interest in seeking the position. “I would very much like to chair the Energy and Commerce Committee. I’m not alone.” He also said he’s now focused on his work with the House GOP’s campaign arm to ensure “that we have gavels” in 2017. Rep Walden currently chairs the Commerce Committee’s Communications and Technology Subcommittee.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) suggested that the political tug-of-war over the confirmation of Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel of the Federal Communications Commission could be smoothed over if FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler agrees to step down at the end of President Barack Obama’s term. “I suspect that nominees and unfinished legislation probably get freed up when we get past the election,” Chairman Thune said. “I think that would help, probably in a lot of ways, free up the Rosenworcel nomination,” said Chairman Thune, referring to a scenario in which Chairman Wheeler would promise to voluntarily leave the FCC when President Obama leaves the White House in January.

Chairman Wheeler’s term is set to expire in 2018. “As you know, I’ve asked that question in hearings, and he’s been very evasive in responding to it,” Chairman Thune said. The South Dakota Republican asked Chairman Wheeler at a March hearing if he would step down at the end of President Obama’s term. Leaders of the FCC have traditionally stepped down before their terms end to allow the new president to nominate a new agency head. “It’s a ways off,” Chairman Wheeler said at the March hearing. “I understand precedent. I understand expectations. I also understand that 10 or 11 months is a long time. So it’s probably not the wisest thing in the world to do to make some kind of ironclad commitment.” Chairman Wheeler is set to testify the week of Sept 12 at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing featuring all five FCC commissioners. He’s expected to face tough questions yet again about his post-election plans.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler said his agency will vote on new rules on business data services “by the end of the year.” “Action on this issue is a long time coming, but that time has arrived,” Chairman Wheeler told an audience at the National Cable and Telecommunications Association’s annual convention in Las Vegas (NV).

An FCC proposal aiming to revamp the business data services (BDS) market, also known as “special access,” was adopted by the agency in April. The proposed rule would impose price caps on the bulk data connections that telecommunication companies provide to businesses, particularly in markets deemed uncompetitive. “In many areas, competition in the supply of backhaul remains limited,” Chairman Wheeler said. “And that can translate into higher costs for wireless networks, higher prices for consumers, and an adverse impact on competition.” He said the FCC’s proposal will “encourage innovation and investment” while “ensuring that lack of competition in some places cannot be used to hold 5G hostage.” Chairman Wheeler said the commission’s proposal is “supported by the nation’s leading wireless carriers, save one.”

Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) scheduled a hearing for the week of Sept 12 to discuss the US government’s plan to transition its control of the Internet domain’s naming system to a private nonprofit organization. Sen Cruz, who’s helping lead GOP opposition to the scheduled Oct 1 handoff, will chair a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts hearing on Sept 14 to “investigate the possible dangers” of ceding control of the governing body, according to a release from his office.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency housed in the Commerce Department, has held a contract to run the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority for 18 years. NTIA said in August that it will move forward on its plan to hand over control of IANA to a private group of global stakeholders on Oct 1 “barring any significant impediment.” IANA governs the domain names used by Internet service providers to traffic data worldwide. The movement to transition IANA away from Commerce Department control has been two years in the making, with many experts in the Internet community saying it will promote transparency and prevent any one government from having excessive influence over the Internet. However, several GOP lawmakers have been vehemently against the transition. Sen Cruz has previously called the transition plan “an extraordinary threat to our freedom” that “will empower countries like Russia, like China, like Iran to censor speech on the Internet.”

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said that his panel will soon issue a report on the federal government’s use of simulated cell phone towers, also known as “stingrays.” “You’d be shocked — shocked — at what your federal government is doing to gather your personal information,” Chairman Chaffetz told an audience at the American Enterprise Institute. Chairman Chaffetz was at AEI to discuss his committee’s latest report on a series of wide-ranging cyberattacks against the Office of Personnel Management from 2012 to 2015, which saw the personal information of 22.1 million Americans with ties to the federal government stolen by hackers. The probe found that the hacks occurred because of OPM leaders’ repeated failures to heed inspector general warnings that its cybersecurity infrastructure was lacking. The committee report also found that OPM leaders failed to implement basic, required security controls and deploy high tech anti-hacking tools once it became evident that hackers had penetrated their databases.

Chairman Chaffetz said that his committee’s upcoming report on the federal collection of personal information through “stingrays” has even more outrageous findings. “They can’t keep it secure. That’s the point,” he said. “I don’t trust them, they’re not doing the basics, and they want to collect more data.”

Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn really wants you to know she’s not one of those “inside the Beltway” types. That may seem hard to believe coming from the daughter of Rep Jim Clyburn (D-SC), a congressman since 1993 and the No.3 Democrat in the House. But until she took the FCC job in 2009, Commissioner Clyburn never left her home state for more than a few weeks at a time. “I did not come up to DC to be like a lot of others (respectfully, this sounds a little tough) that I see in DC, who always want to be picture perfect, wrapped up in a bow, and ready for presentation,” Commissioner Clyburn says. “I am very different if you to compare me to my colleagues,” she said. Referring several times to her “Southern accent,” she said, “I am very much outside of the Beltway.” Commissioner Clyburn’s quiet and poised demeanor strikes a sharp contrast to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, the physically imposing FCC Chairman who exudes a larger-than-life political presence. Yet for nearly six months in 2013, Commissioenr Clyburn sat in Chairman Wheeler’s chair. She was acting FCC Chairwoman while Congress deliberated over Wheeler’s confirmation. There was a historic nature to her chairmanship.

A group of 32 telecommunications companies, phone manufacturers and tech firms will join AT&T in developing standards and procedures to fight robocalls, the automated calls and texts made to individuals to either sell products or commit scams.

AT&T Chairman and Chief Executive Randall Stephenson is heading the so-called Robocall Strike Force, which will include Apple, Google and Verizon. The task force will report back to the Federal Communications Commission by Oct. 19 with “concrete plans to accelerate the development and adoption of new tools and solutions” to combat the prevalence of robocalls, as well as suggestions for what the role of government should be in addressing the issue. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said that while he was happy to see the industry tackle the problem of robocalls, the agency could step in if they don’t see the task force making significant progress. “This is an industry group,” Chairman Wheeler said at the opening of the task force’s first meeting at the FCC. “We believe in multistakeholder solutions. And when the whole ecosystem can come together, it can produce good results. But without results, we will be forced to look for other solutions, because this scourge must stop.”

A plurality of Americans share the sentiment that media coverage is biased toward Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, a view pushed for decades by Republicans, and most recently by the party’s current nominee, Donald Trump. Days after Trump proclaimed to be running against two opponents – Clinton and the “disgusting and corrupt media” – a survey found almost four in 10 voters (38 percent) believe the media is biased in trying to help elect the Democratic nominee.

It was the mainstream media, the leading television stations and newspapers such as the ones Trump now critiques, who were blamed, in part, for egging on Trump’s candidacy during the Republican primary. In the view of Thomas E. Patterson, a professor of government and the press at Harvard University, “neither of the two basic indicators of news coverage would have predicted Trump’s heavy coverage,” coverage that he used to his advantage to propel his campaign without spending much on television commercials. But if that was the case during the primary, voters do not believe it to be the case anymore.

These days, only 12 percent of voters said the media is biased in trying to elect Trump. A sliver of Trump’s supporters (9 percent) believe the media is biased toward their candidate, while 66 percent of them said the media is trying to elect Clinton president. Just a little more than one in 10 Trump supporters (13 percent) said the media is fair and unbiased, compared with about a quarter of the overall population. The sentiment among Trump’s supporters was almost identical to that of all the Republican voters surveyed. Among Clinton’s supporters, four in 10 Americans said they viewed the media as unbiased, while 16 percent said it was biased toward helping elect Trump and only 19 percent said it was biased toward trying help elect Clinton.

Twenty-five advocacy groups want the Commerce Department to hold off on plans to cede its control over the body that governs internet domain names. But the United States shows no signs of halting plans to end its leadership of the body by the end of next month. The groups argue that riders on spending bills in Congress prohibit the internet naming transition from moving forward. If the Obama Administration moves forward with its plan to relinquish control, the groups say Congress should sue.

“We agree that internet governance should work from the bottom up, driven by the global community of private sector, civil society, and technical stakeholders,” said a letter, with signatures coming from groups like TechFreedom, Heritage Action for America and Taxpayers Protection Alliance. “Without robust safeguards, internet governance could fall under the sway of governments hostile to freedoms protected by the First Amendment.”

Russia could face punishment for hacks on Democratic Party organizations if proof emerges that the state is the culprit, President Barack Obama said. But he added that the hacking situation is unlikely to significantly impact the already difficult relations between Russia and the United States. Following speculation over the involvement of Russian intelligence agencies in hacks on the computer servers at the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the campaign for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, President Obama said the US could punish Russian for its role in the cyberattacks. But he said it requires a strong amount of proof to reach that point.

“We have provisions in place where if we see evidence of a malicious attack by a state actor, we can impose potentially certain proportional penalties,” President Obama said at a press conference with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. “But that requires us to really be able to pin down and know what we’re talking about. I don’t want to get ahead of the legal evidence and facts that we may have in order to make those kinds of decisions.” President Obama’s comments come accusations that the Russian government orchestrated a series of hacks on Democratic Party entities, potentially to influence the 2016 presidential election.