By deciding to allow back content makers who had been deplatformed due to uploading material related to such topics as COVID-19 and elections, YouTube is "mak[ing] amends to the American people," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, wrote Tuesday in a thread on X.

The FCC is demanding that Boomerang Wireless and Assist Wireless repay $1.18 million in what the agency says were overpayments for connected devices as part of the affordable connectivity program (ACP) and emergency broadband benefit (EBB) program. In a statement Tuesday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr called the companies "unscrupulous providers." Some companies saw the pandemic-era programs "as a target for overfilling and padded their reimbursement requests."

The U.S. Secret Service stopped an "imminent telecommunications threat" near the United Nations and throughout the surrounding New York area, the agency said Tuesday. The threats targeted senior U.S. government officials and were capable of potentially disabling cell towers, initiating denial-of-service attacks and "facilitating anonymous, encrypted communication between potential threat actors and criminal enterprises."

Daniel Lyons is a professor and associate dean of academic affairs at Boston College Law School (see 2509180066).

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday stayed the reinstatement of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter on a 6-3 vote and scheduled the case for December argument (see 2509160057). Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

The U.S. and U.K. governments announced Thursday that they signed a memorandum of understanding on technology issues tied to President Donald Trump’s trip to England, including a focus on 6G, AI and positioning, navigation and timing (PNT). The memorandum calls for further “Ministerial-Level” meetings to flesh out details.

NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield said Tuesday she will retire in March. She began leading the group in July 2010. Starting at the rural communications association in 1986, Bloomfield was serving as vice president of government affairs there when she left in 2007 for jobs at Qwest and then Verizon. "This is the right time for our industry to make that change," now that USF's survival is less in doubt, she said. "Now that the debate is shifting to a new phase of challenges, it’s the perfect time ... for that next leader to take you all over the next mountain!"

Consumers’ Research and other challengers of the USF contribution factor in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to end their current challenge there. The government and challengers said in a filing with the court that they “hereby stipulate to the dismissal of the petitions in the above proceedings, with each side to bear its own costs and fees.”

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr thanked EchoStar and Chairman Charlie Ergen on Tuesday for addressing the FCC’s concerns in a series of spectrum deals announced in recent weeks. EchoStar officials said Monday that selling the spectrum wasn’t their first choice (see 2509150003). “There were a lot of questions raised, including by us in May, about whether they met their buildout obligations,” Carr said at a Politico event (see 2509160040). “We had a lot of good discussions with them.”

The U.S. Supreme Court should refrain from overturning judicial precedent on the firing of independent agency commissioners as “a matter of judicial restraint -- of respect for precedent and continuity in the law,” said TechFreedom in an amicus brief filed Monday in Trump v. Slaughter. The case concerns President Donald Trump’s firing of FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and could bear on whether Trump can fire FCC commissioners. The White House wants SCOTUS to vacate a lower court order that blocked Slaughter’s firing.