Policymakers

House Commerce Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) is getting impatient that — thanks to obstruction from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) over internet governance questions — his committee's telecommunications staffer David Redl still lacks even a Senate Commerce Committee vote to lead the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration.

“The Senate needs to confirm David Redl to head up the NTIA,” said Chairman Walden. “We have these disasters going on in Houston. We have a disaster about to hit Florida. We’ve got communications issues in both locations, and there’s nobody in that position at NTIA from this administration.” NTIA has a role over 911, broadband, and spectrum. Chairman Walden, Redl’s longtime boss at the committee, said he has talked to Trump administration officials about Redl. “I think the administration’s very strongly supportive of moving David forward,” he said. “I hope [Cruz] will come around on this matter.”

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced the appointment of 31 members to the Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment (ACDDE), which will meet for the first time on Monday, September 25, 2017. Chairman Pai has designated Julia Johnson, President, NetCommunications, LLC, to serve as Chair of the ACDDE, and Diane Sutter, President/CEO, ShootingStar Broadcasting, to serve as Vice Chair. A full list of ACDDE members is available in the posted Public Notice.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has named Nicholas Degani as the agency’s Acting General Counsel. Degani will serve in the role on an interim basis following Jennifer Tatel’s departure from the agency. Degani joined the Commission in 2007 through the Attorney Honors Program. During his decade at the Commission, he has served as Senior Counsel to Chairman Pai and Wireline Legal Advisor to then-Commissioner Pai; been detailed to the House Commerce Committee, and worked in the Wireline Competition Bureau and the Office of General Counsel. Earlier in his career, Degani clerked for Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School and magna cum laude from Yale University, where he studied Electrical Engineering/Computer Science and History.

Senate Republicans are trying to lock down a time for a roll call vote for Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s reconfirmation.

“I want to get it done as soon as we can,” said Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD). “I don’t want to push this to the end of the year. I think the [Senate Majority] leader shares that view.” He didn’t rule out a September vote, saying it depends on “how quickly we’re able to dispose of some of the things we have to deal with that are immediate to see if there’s a window there to do it.” Without a vote, Chairman Pai would have to leave the commission at the end of 2017. Chairman Pai likely has all the GOP votes he needs, but Democrats “are going to make it difficult,” Chairman Thune predicted. “They wanted to drag this out or they would have let him go [by voice vote] before the August break when we approved the other package of [nominees]. They intend, I think at least, to use some time to talk about it.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), a frequent Pai critic, said he welcomes the chance: “It’s definitely an opportunity to talk about those issues, and I intend to pursue them.”

Acting Federal Trade Commission Chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen announced that she has selected Ian R. Conner, a partner in the Antitrust & Competition group at the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis LLP, to be an Acting Deputy Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition, effective Sept. 18, 2017. In private practice, Conner represented clients before the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice and various state attorneys general. Prior to entering private practice, Conner was a trial attorney in the Transportation, Energy and Agriculture Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, which he joined through the Attorney General’s Honors Program. He also served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. Conner received his law degree from William & Mary Law School. He served as an adjunct professor from 2008 to 2010 at William & Mary, teaching a course on antitrust and merger review.

The nation's former top consumer-protection official is headed to Hogan Lovells, a top international law firm, to specialize on an increasingly visible area of policy: antitrust and competition law. Edith Ramirez, the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission during President Barack Obama's tenure, will help lead the firm's practice on economic regulation and antitrust. She'll also take on some of its work in cybersecurity and privacy, two issues that were a core part of Ramirez's portfolio at the FTC.

The move highlights the increasing relevance of corporate power to average consumers, as companies such as Google have been penalized in Europe for alleged monopolistic behavior, and members of the two major political parties in the United States question whether major tech platforms such as Facebook and Amazon have become too dominant.

The New America Foundation is facing substantial backlash from Democrats, academics, and journalists — including those within its own ranks — a week after it was revealed that Google pressure led to the firing of a prominent Google critic at the left-leaning think tank. A letter sent Sept 2 by 25 current and former members of the New America Fellows Program criticized the organization’s initial response.

The signatories include journalists such as George Packer and Patrick Radden Keefe of the New Yorker and Nikole Hannah-Jones of the New York Times, and scholars such as Brooklyn Law School’s Sabeel Rahman and Harvard’s Evgeny Morozov. “We are troubled by the initial lack of transparency and communication from New America’s leadership on this topic,” the letter states. “We remain deeply concerned about this sequence of events, and believe that better answers and clarity must be immediately forthcoming to assure us, and the outside world, that New America’s work is truly independent, now and going forward.”

Mobile Future, a wireless advocacy group whose members include AT&T, Verizon and Qualcomm, has named Margaret McCarthy executive director. McCarthy will oversee day-to-day operations. Most recently she was legislative director for Rep Doris Matsui (D-CA), and before that senior staffer on the Communications Subcommittee. She is also former policy advisor to then-FCC Commissioner Michael Copps. She also helped launch the BTOP broadband subsidy program at the Department of Commerce.

“I have had the immense pleasure of working with Margaret both at the FCC and on Capitol Hill," said Mobile Future senior policy advisor and former senior Republican FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, "and I have been consistently impressed by her proficiency as well as her ability to work well with people of all political stripes. Her abilities and expertise will prove invaluable to Mobile Future as we continue the important work of transforming the role of wireless in our society and the nation’s economy.”

Travis LeBlanc, former Federal Communications Commission Enforcement Bureau chief under Democratic Chairman Tom Wheeler, has been tapped to help oversee compliance with the European Union-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework. That is the agreement between the EU and the US over protecting the privacy of cross-border information flows. He will be one of 20 arbitrators—16 have been chosen with four more to come—who will decide claims of violations of the framework obligations. They are a court of last resort if parties fail to resolve issues with the relevant data protection authorities. They are being chosen from a list supplied by both the EU and Commerce.

LeBlanc is a partner in the DC and Palo Alto (CA) offices of law firm Boies Schiller Flexner. The privacy shield replaces the safe harbor agreement that a European Union court invalidated in October 2015 over concerns about the US being able to hold up its end of the agreement given the government surveillance revealed by the Edward Snowden leaks. The framework requires companies to provide notice of what personal information is being collected and stored, the purposes it is used for, and an "opt out" mechanism.

A Q&A with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai.

Asked about Congress' role in the network neutrality debate, Chairman Pai said, "Well a few years ago after one of the court rulings in 2014, I suggested that, you know, I think Congress would be well-positioned to take hold of this issue and just figure out what the rules of the road are going to be long-term. And I think in the past couple of months, we've seen increasingly a desire from all sides of the debate to involve members of Congress. And obviously if Congress sets the rules in statute, then the FCC, the American public, is duty-bound to follow it. And so we'll see what they do in the time to come."