Now with a Republican majority, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on Wednesday laid out policy priorities that range from accelerating and easing broadband infrastructure deployment to tackling blue-collar workforce issues.

Communications Daily is tracking the lawsuits below involving appeals of FCC actions.

The U.S. is expected to push to get the full ITU to overturn an ITU Council decision last week to hold the 2027 World Radiocommunication Conference in China (see 2506260058). It’s unclear how likely it is to succeed, industry observers said. The Trump administration made a late push to get the council to agree to hold the meeting in the U.S. (see 2506250005). Rwanda also submitted a bid to host the conference but later dropped it.

Last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Trump v. CASA limiting nationwide injunctions doesn’t directly affect the judiciary’s power to set aside national regulations from federal agencies like the FCC, but it could prompt future challenges to that authority, according to attorneys and academics.

The Senate narrowly passed an amended version Tuesday of the HR-1 budget reconciliation package, formerly named the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, with a proposal for an 800 MHz spectrum auction pipeline but without a controversial Commerce Committee proposal for a voluntary freeze on enforcing state-level AI rules. The chamber voted 99-1 to strip out that language after a deal between Commerce Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. (see 2506300072), collapsed Monday night.

The Senate was still slogging through a vote-a-rama Monday afternoon of mostly Democratic amendments -- including a proposal for an 800 MHz spectrum auction pipeline (see 2506060029) -- to the chamber’s revised reconciliation package, which will supersede the House-passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act (HR-1). Senate Republicans appeared closer to retaining a modified proposal for a voluntary freeze on enforcing state-level AI rules after Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz of Texas struck a deal with Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, a leading GOP critic of the plan, to shorten the pause’s timeline. Meanwhile, Senate Commerce ranking member Maria Cantwell of Washington and other Democrats continued insisting the AI proposal threatened states’ eligibility for funding from the $42.5 billion BEAD program.

The Consumer Technology Association, CTIA and other groups opposed an FCC proposal to update its “covered list” of unsecure companies to reflect a January finding by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security on connected vehicles (see 2505270059). Commenters said the FCC should let BIS complete its work before considering revising regulations. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has long raised concerns about Chinese involvement in U.S. networks and in March launched a Council for National Security at the agency (see 2503130012).

Sinclair Broadcasting has reached an agreement with the FCC to pay $500,000 to resolve what was originally a $2.6 million forfeiture against the company over children's programming violations and to renew the licenses of numerous stations, said a consent decree Friday. Together with a Media Bureau order dismissing a petition to deny against several Sinclair-controlled stations, the agreement resolved a yearslong holdup in the license renewals of nearly all Sinclair stations. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr has pointed to the lack of Sinclair license renewals under the previous FCC as the precedent for his actions against CBS and other networks (see 2502270076).

In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld a Texas law requiring age verification for access to porn sites (see 2506270015 and 2501130012). The majority in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton sided with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) in support of HB-1181, which the adult industry trade association Free Speech Coalition said violates the First Amendment (see 2409170012).

The elimination of federal funding for PBS stations would be a blow to the ATSC 3.0 transition, said commercial and noncommercial broadcasters and advocates for public TV stations and 3.0. The transition would survive the loss of PBS station participation, but removing it from the equation would affect the reach of 3.0 datacasting, emergency communications and the broadcast positioning system (BPS), commercial broadcasters told us.