Protocol

The White House is set to announce plans for its much-anticipated Alliance for the Future of the Internet, a bid to rally a coalition of democracies around a vision for an open and free web.

President Biden signed Congress's $1.2 trillion infrastructure package into law, including a whopping $65 billion to expand broadband access. Now, it's up to federal agencies, states and civil society groups to implement it. The bill prioritized broadband projects that target unserved communities — as laid out in the bill, that means communities that either have no broadband access or lack sufficient speeds.

In the era of email, lawmakers may dash off a couple letters a week to other parts of the government. Often, the missives are little more than press releases on congressional letterhead; the occasional smart letter, however, can work as an obscure policy lever by convincing agencies they have political cover to take on more controversial enforcement, interpret statutes more broadly and even dust off powers they've long abandoned, all without Congress taking a single vote.