Policymakers

As former Vice President Joe Biden (D-DE) continues to rise in the polls, DC handicappers are seriously pondering who might be tapped for Federal Communications Commission chair in a Biden administration. Candidate Biden has already signaled his FCC will be restoring network neutrality rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization, but since it is an independent agency, he will need to pick an FCC chief who “independently” shares that philosophy. Biden has already signaled his vice president will be a woman. Odds are good his FCC chair could be as well.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-OK) announced he has placed a hold on the nomination of Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O'Rielly for another term until Commissioner O’Rielly publically commits to vote to overturn the current Ligado Order. Chairman Inhofe said, "Over the past few months, I have sent letters, held hearings and called countless officials to highlight what we all know to be true: the FCC’s Ligado Order is flawed and will lead to significant harm to our military and the thousands of individuals and businesses that rely on GPS.

The nomination of Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O'Rielly for a new, five-year term on the FCC has been favorably reported out of the Senate Commerce Committee and now moves to the full Senate for a vote. Commissioner O'Rielly's term expired at the end of June 2019, but commissioners can continue to serve until the close of the next Congress. The new term would date from July 1, 2019. Wednesday's action came by voice vote, but with Committee Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-WA) voting no, even though, procedurally, she was the one to propose that it be reported favorably.

The Senate Commerce Committee approved a number of bills and nominations including the following:

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit issued a rare emergency injunction July 21, blocking staffing changes that the Trump Administration’s new head of the Voice of America made to a US organization that protects digital speech worldwide. In a bluntly worded two-page order, the panel warned that actions taken by Michael Pack, a conservative filmmaker and associate of former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, could endanger activists under repressive governments who rely on the Open Technology Fund to combat Internet censorship and surveillance.

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society announced the appointment of two new board members, Denise Linn Riedl and Leon Wilson. Mayor Pete Buttigieg named Denise Linn Riedl the Chief Innovation Officer for the City of South Bend (IN) at the end of January 2019. Previously, Linn Riedl was in charge of Ecosystem Development at Chicago’s City Tech Collaborative.

Representative John Lewis (D-GA), a son of sharecroppers and an apostle of nonviolence who was bloodied at Selma and across the Jim Crow South in the historic struggle for racial equality, and who then carried a mantle of moral authority into Congress, died on July 17. He was 80. On the front lines of the bloody campaign to end Jim Crow laws, with blows to his body and a fractured skull to prove it, Lewis was a valiant stalwart of the civil rights movement and the last surviving speaker from the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. 

The Internet Infrastructure Coalition (“i2Coalition”), the leading voice for web hosting companies, data centers, domain registrars and registries, cloud infrastructure providers, managed services providers and related tech, and The Domain Name Association (“DNA”), a nonprofit global business association that represents the interests of the domain name industry, have announced their intent to merge, forming the largest Internet infrastructure advocacy group in North America.

By this Public Notice, the Federal Communications Commission announces the anticipated renewal of its Disability Advisory Committee and solicits applications for membership on the Committee, subject to renewal of the Committee’s charter. Applications for membership are due by 11:59 P.M. EST on August 13, 2020. The mission of the Committee is to make recommendations to the FCC regarding disability issues specified by the FCC.

Michael Pack, the alt-right filmmaker installed by President Donald Trump to run US foreign broadcasting operations, remains on course to dismantle the independent journalism that has been their calling card. Apparently, Voice of America sources say Pack is refusing to renew the visas of foreign-born journalists who are vital to its mission of producing news reports in 47 languages. Pack has also frozen all VOA contracts, under which some 40 percent of its staff are employed.