Elections and Media

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel hopes the outcome of the 2022 midterm elections will help break the longstanding 2-2 tie on the regulatory commission, but she also defended the body’s deadlocked body’s record during her leadership. “We’ve turned the noise down, and turned up the number of things we’re getting done,” she said, alluding to the commission’s profile under her predecessor as chair, Ajit Pai. At the behest of former President Trump, Pai spearheaded a series of dramatic rollbacks of longstanding media rules when the five-member commission tilted 3-

Elon Musk waded into uncharted political waters when he urged “independent-minded voters” to cast their ballots for Republicans in the 2022 midterm elections, making the kind of explicit endorsement his fellow tech CEOs have avoided in the past. “To independent-minded voters: Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend voting for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic,” Musk wrote on Twitter. The tweet garnered over 43,000 retweets and over 279,000 likes after it was posted.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk led a call with civil rights groups in an effort to assure them that he would curtail hate speech — and stop the spread of misinformation ahead of the midterm elections. Musk said that Twitter employees responsible for election integrity who had been locked out of their moderation tools during the company’s acquisition will have their access reinstated soon. Musk also said that users banned by the platform — including former President Donald Trump — will remain off the site “for at least a few more weeks.” The gathering was part of Musk’s effort to set up a “content mo

Amid the usual checks for close Senate races, tech is giving to spread crypto, help out VC, and bring more tech talent to politics. GMI PAC has been one of the biggest recipients of Silicon Valley's largesse in the leadup to the midterm election.

On November 8, America could accomplish another political first: Electing two US senators from the idiosyncratic, increasingly ideological world of Silicon Valley venture capital.

Although Rep Ro Khanna (D-CA)'s district includes a wide swath of the tech industry's homes in towns like Sunnyvale, Cupertino, Santa Clara, and Fremont, he is an advocate for laws that would curb Big Tech's power. Among the restrictions Rep Khanna favors would expand privacy protections beyond California's existing law as well as a change in antitrust law that would shift the burden of proof in large deals, requiring the acquiring company to prove a deal won't hurt competition. Members of Congress have proposed new bills around privacy and antitrust and children's online safety, but so far

Conflicting lower court rulings about removing controversial material from social media platforms point toward a landmark Supreme Court decision on whether the First Amendment protects Big Tech’s editorial discretion or forbids its censorship of unpopular views.

It’s been nearly a year since President Joe Biden named Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society] as his pick to become the fifth member of the Federal Communications Commission, but the nominee’s prospects of actually being installed are as unclear as ever. A fresh report from The Deal tipped Sohn to squeak through the Senate confirmation process during a lame duck session in the coming months. But New Street Research analyst Blair Levin warned it’s extremely difficult to predict what will happen.

An impending vote by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) could drastically change access to state and federal communications subsidies, the kind often relied upon by low-income households for Internet and telephone services. Proposed Decision 20-02-008 addresses whether recipients of federal subsidies through the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) and similar federal subsidy programs would also be able to receive maximum subsidies through the California LifeLine program.

According to publicly available information on state and local ballot initiatives up for a vote in 2022 elections, broadband is on the ballot statewide for voters in Alabama and New Mexico, as well as for some voters in Colorado. Voters in Alabama will weigh in on the "Broadband Internet Infrastructure Funding Amendment," which, if approved, will amend the state's constitution "to allow local governments to use funding provided for broadband internet infrastructure under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and award such funds to public or private entities." Voters in New Mexico have a simi