Politico

As another Covid-era school year begins, it’s not just local and state governments and internet providers that are desperate for broadband cash. A coalition representing schools and libraries is urging Congress to replenish funding for a Federal Communications Commission funding program aimed at boosting connectivity for students, school staff and library patrons.

As the House debates taking up the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure deal in tandem with Democrats’ partisan spending plan, lawmakers who work on telecommunications and technology issues used Aug 23's House Rules Committee hearing to outline their specific grievances with how Senate negotiators structured the $65 billion in broadband funding —complaints that are likely to pop up in other forms later this Congress. House Commerce Committee Chair Frank Pallone (D-NJ) told the Rules Co

As the Senate chips away at final passage of the $550 billion infrastructure package, the compromise’s top detractors are fretting about where negotiators placed the agreed-upon $42.5 billion in broadband deployment grants for states.

Jessica Rosenworcel just gaveled her seventh monthly meeting as Acting Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman and left-leaning telecom industry observers are growing increasingly anxious about the White House’s lack of a permanent choice. Speculation has run rampant about potential contenders, from former Obama-era FCC staffer Gigi Sohn to Free Press co-CEO Jessica González to sitting Commissioners Geoffrey Starks. The normally five-member FCC has been short a commissioner since January, and the resulting 2-2 deadlock has stalled Democratic agenda items like restoring net neutrality.

Carl Shapiro, the lead economics expert in the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust suit against Facebook, has parted ways with the agency—adding yet another impediment to the regulator’s largest court fight. The University of California-Berkeley economist has criticized new FTC Chair Lina Khan’s aggressive approach to antitrust enforcement, and she in turn has faulted the agency’s traditional reliance on economists’ analyses in its fights against alleged monopolists.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman David Scott (D-GA) and Minority Leader G.T. Thompson (R-PA) pressed House leadership for a floor vote on the panel’s $43.2 billion rural broadband bill, H.R. 4374, which was unanimously approved by the committee earlier in July.

Gayle Manchin, the wife of Sen Joe Manchin (D-WV) and federal co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission, is planning to make broadband connectivity a central pillar of her remit and is already talking to many of the region’s governors about working as a bloc. “I would like to see the 13 governors that are a part of this region actually come together and work on this as a unit,” said Manchin. “There’s power in numbers.” She suggested these 13 governors would have leverage if they went right to cable providers to ask for better connectivity.