The FCC Public Safety Bureau on Wednesday denied a petition for reconsideration by China Unicom Americas, which asked the agency to rethink its 2022 decision revoking the company’s Section 214 authority to operate in the U.S. (see 2201270030). The order rejected each of CUA’s arguments. In December, the 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court turned down a petition for review from CUA that sought to overturn the 2022 decision (see 2412240032).
Members of the House this week asked FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to send to the Federal Register for publication rules for new multilingual templates for wireless emergency alerts (WEA), which the Public Safety Bureau released in January (see 2501080029).
Efforts by the White House and FCC to chill speech are succeeding, Commissioner Anna Gomez said at an event Wednesday afternoon in Los Angeles, hosted by Free Press. It marked the first stop outside Washington, D.C., for Gomez’s “First Amendment Tour.” She said broadcasters have told her that they're warning reporters to tread carefully when covering the current administration. “That’s exactly what I don’t want to see." Using “the raised eyebrow,” the FCC is intimidating the corporate parents of journalistic organizations, she said. “It is so dangerous. We all need to understand what is happening.” The government telling private companies how to moderate their websites doesn’t comport with the First Amendment, she added. Gomez called for the FCC to pivot away from “sham investigations” and focus on actions that can help Americans, noting that Congress hasn’t given the FCC authority over Section 230 of the Communications Act.
A U.S. district court judge ruled Friday that a White House executive order targeting Jenner & Block was “doubly violative of the Constitution” and granted a motion for summary judgment and a preliminary injunction blocking it (see 2504280022). “Retaliating against firms for the views embodied in their legal work -- and thereby seeking to muzzle them going forward -- violates the First Amendment’s central command that government may not ‘use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression,’” U.S. District Court Judge John Bates wrote in the opinion. The executive order “casts a chill over the whole of the legal profession, leaving lawyers around the country weighing the necessity of vigorous representation against the peril of crossing the federal government.” Bates ordered the White House and federal agencies to rescind all guidance and direction on barring Jenner attorneys from federal facilities, reviewing security clearances and requiring federal contractors to disclose relationships with the firm. DOJ and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission must also cease any related investigations of Jenner. The White House is expected to appeal the ruling.
Rather than focusing on deleting certain regulations, the Trump administration should consider shuttering the FCC, wrote Thomas Lenard, a senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute. “The White House is closing and shrinking other agencies, and it should consider doing the same to the FCC -- as the administration has a responsibility to evaluate whether the agency has outlived its raison d’etre,” Lenard said this week in The Wall Street Journal.
The FCC made limited changes to an NPRM on foreign-ownership rules, as agency officials indicated at last week's meeting, where commissioners approved the item 4-0 (see 2505220056). The FCC posted the NPRM on Tuesday.
The FCC questioning the progress of EchoStar's 5G network deployment (see 2505120074) could set the stage for a clash with White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Director Michael Kratsios, analyst Tim McDonald wrote Thursday in a blog post. Kratsios could interpret the FCC action as a direct challenge to his strategy of promoting and protecting emerging technologies in which the U.S. could be preeminent, McDonald said. While the FCC might see what it's doing as providing market certainty by enforcing its rules, he added, OSTP very well could view the FCC action as jeopardizing the idea that EchoStar's open radio access network deployment shows that the U.S. can build telecom infrastructure without Chinese vendors.
FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez on Thursday called the FCC’s actions against regulated companies that force them to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs “sinister.” She was particularly critical of the Wireline Bureau’s order last week approving Verizon’s $20 billion acquisition of Frontier (see 2505160050) after Verizon agreed to get rid of DEI programs, which she said were “meant to increase fairness in hiring in the workforce.”
President Donald Trump’s recent firings at the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board were illegal based on congressional intent and the Constitution, a federal judge ruled Wednesday (see 2502250052). Fired PCLOB members Travis LeBlanc and Ed Felten sued Trump, the PCLOB, PCLOB board member Beth Williams, PCLOB Executive Director Jenny Fitzpatrick and White House Deputy Director of Presidential Personnel Trent Morse in February. Fired FTC Commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya are seeking an expedited decision and reinstatement from the same court, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (see 2504110049). The firings of LeBlanc and Felton were illegal “because although the plain text of the PCLOB’s organic statute does not include an express textual removal restriction, the Board’s structure and function clearly indicate that Congress intended to create such a restriction on the President’s removal power,” wrote U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton.
Verizon, which last year urged the FCC to impose broadband handset unlocking rules on wireless carriers, is now asking the commission to zero out the unlocking commitment it adopted as a condition of approving the company’s purchase of Tracfone.