Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., filed the Defund Government Sponsored Propaganda Act on Tuesday in a bid to end federal funding for NPR and PBS. The measure would also claw back CPB’s advance funding for fiscal years 2025, 2026 and 2027 “to reduce the public debt.” The legislation’s filing follows FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s January call for the Enforcement and Media bureaus to investigate PBS and NPR member stations over possible underwriting violations (see 2501300065). The House Oversight Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee is eyeing a March hearing on public broadcasting (see 2502030064). House Appropriations Committee Republicans attempted to end CPB's advance funding in 2023 and 2024 (see 2407100060). “Americans have hundreds of sources of news and commentary, and they don’t need politically biased, taxpayer-funded media choosing what they should see and hear,” Lee said. “PBS and NPR are free to compete in the marketplace of ideas using donations, but their public subsidy should end.” NPR and PBS “have chosen advocacy over accuracy, using public dollars to promote a political agenda rather than report the facts,” Tenney said. “The Defund Government Sponsored Propaganda Act ensures that federal funding is no longer used to perpetuate the blatant media bias that has overtaken these platforms.” NPR and PBS didn't immediately comment.

Foundation for American Innovation Senior Fellow Evan Swarztrauber, a former FCC policy adviser to Chairman Ajit Pai, urged the Senate on Thursday night to “quickly confirm” Republican FTC nominee Mark Meador. President Donald Trump announced plans in December, before taking office, to nominate Meador, a former antitrust staffer for Senate Antitrust Subcommittee ranking member Mike Lee, R-Utah, to the FTC seat of then-Chairwoman Lina Khan (see 2412100073). For Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress “to succeed in their goals of supercharging the economy and unleashing technological innovation, America needs a strong [FTC, and] Meador’s confirmation would deliver a Republican majority at the agency,” Swarztrauber said in an opinion piece for the Washington Reporter. “Meador’s impressive resume makes him the perfect candidate for the moment,” including his role as a Lee aide in writing legislation “to break Google’s monopoly over the advertising technology market.” Meador “understands well the challenges posed by Big Tech, where consumer harms are often shrouded in opaque terms of service and ‘freemium’ business models that hide monopoly rents behind sleek user interfaces,” Swarztrauber said.

Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Jim Banks, R-Ind., asked the FCC Thursday to investigate foreign entities of concern (FEOC) “that broadcast on U.S. airwaves to determine if those entities pose a significant national security risk to the American public, and use existing FCC authorities to deter future partnerships between FEOCs and television networks.” Banks and Scott cited a trio of ads for Chinese retail application Temu during the 2024 Super Bowl broadcast where the company “offered $15 million worth of giveaways on their questionable products. Temu is known to flood the United States with cheap goods produced by forced labor in [China] while exploiting the de-minimis loophole to avoid enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act.” U.S. broadcasters “should not platform [Chinese Communist Party] -linked companies who actively violate U.S. laws and do not comply with the same standards as U.S. manufacturers,” the senators said in a letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. They noted that the U.S. Trade Representative’s office has repeatedly placed Temu's China-based parent company, Pinduoduo, on its notorious markets list for intellectual property theft, “copyright piracy, and selling counterfeit goods.”

Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar (R) is urging Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to “eliminate” the $42.5 billion, NTIA-administered BEAD program’s requirement that recipients offer a low-cost broadband service option, among other rules, as part of a broader revamp. Cruz said in November that the 119th Congress would review the program and requirements that have drawn GOP ire (see 2411220035). Hegar said in a letter to Cruz last week that his recommendations would collectively help the Texas Broadband Development Office better roll out its $3.3 billion BEAD allocation after an “unnecessarily protracted” NTIA approval process. Hegar believes “certain ‘nonessential’ requirements exceed the program's original intent and unnecessarily complicate its implementation.” The low-cost option “requirement is viewed as running counter to [the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s] legislative mandate against rate regulation,” Hegar told Cruz. “Removing this requirement may increase overall provider participation and support efficient deployment of funds.” It “would also reduce the administrative burden placed on [state broadband offices] to identify ‘eligible households’ and monitor subgrantee’s compliance with the requirement.” He also proposed that the federal government jettison other NTIA rules that congressional Republicans have criticized, including ordering that grantees adhere to prevailing wage requirements and “unnecessary” cybersecurity and workforce regulations. Hegar urged lawmakers “loosen or eliminate” requirements that BEAD projects go through National Environmental Policy Act and National Historic Preservation Act reviews. He also said Congress should “relax or eliminate guidelines regarding deployment of alternative technology in additional hard-to-reach areas.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., filed cloture Thursday night on commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick, setting up a potential confirmation vote this week. The Senate divided 52-46, along party lines, on an initial procedural vote to proceed on Lutnick. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, the only Senate Commerce Committee Democrat who backed advancing Lutnick during a meeting last week (see 2502050052), didn’t participate in the procedural vote.

Jones Day’s Yaakov Roth, husband of NTIA nominee Arielle Roth (see 2502040056), also represents Maurine and Matthew Molak in their challenge in the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals of a 2023 FCC declaratory ruling (docket 23-60641) clarifying that Wi-Fi on school buses is an educational purpose eligible for E-rate funding (see 2411040061).

NAB pushed back Tuesday night against claims from Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., that broadcasters are using demands for free concerts to circumvent the FCC’s sponsorship identification rules ban on payola. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Monday he asked the Enforcement Bureau to “examine” Blackburn’s claims (see 2502040062). NAB is “not aware of any specific complaint against any station or stations along” the lines of what Blackburn is describing, a spokesperson told us. “Those complaints are what trigger enforcement investigations. If anything, the most notable aspect of [Blackburn’s] letter is that it confirms the enduring promotional value of local radio, which listeners value greatly. We look forward to working with the Senator should any concrete issues arise.”

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said Monday night that he has asked the Enforcement Bureau to “examine” claims made by Senate Commerce Committee member Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., last week about broadcasters circumventing the commission’s sponsorship identification rules ban on payola. Blackburn wrote Carr that “we have learned” broadcasters are pressuring musical artists to “perform ‘free radio shows’ -- also referred to as ‘listener appreciation shows’ or ‘charitable concert events’” in exchange for airtime. “There is often an implicit suggestion that declining to perform could result in reduced airplay,” Blackburn said. “This forced quid pro quo applies to essentially all artists,” and some “have told me that it is not unusual for them to perform anywhere from 10 to 50 such shows in any given year.” That “practice is exploitative and should not be tolerated,” she said: “Artists should not be extorted into providing free labor in exchange for airplay.” Carr said this “conduct hurts America’s songwriters [and] musicians,” and he plans to “provide an update” on the probe this week.

Rep. Pat Ryan, D-N.Y., and Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., filed the Stop Sports Blackouts Act on Friday in a bid to force cable companies to make refunds to “customers who aren’t able to watch the channels they already pay for during television blackouts,” Ryan’s office said. The measure would direct the FCC to require cable distributors to provide rebates to subscribers for blackouts that occur as a result of carriage disputes. The lawmakers cited MSG Network's recent blackout, which left more than a million subscribers in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey unable to watch local sporting events. Altice USA and some Republican lawmakers previously proposed refunds from MSG (see 2501160072). “On behalf of fans across the country, we’re putting down a marker: everyone will get their money back when a blackout stops them from watching TV, no questions asked,” Ryan said. “That means dollars back in your pockets, and, equally importantly, it provides a hell of an incentive to these billion dollar corporations to make sure these blackouts don’t happen in the future.” It’s “ridiculous the rest of us get stuck in the crossfire of negotiations between cable and broadcast companies,” he said. “Our bill is simple: if cable companies can’t provide the service you’re paying for, they owe you a refund.” ACA Connects CEO Grant Spellmeyer criticized the Stop Sports Blackouts Act, saying Friday that it “gives billion-dollar broadcast corporations a complete free pass. If we don’t address the root of the problem [with] reforms to the retrans consent regime, insatiable broadcasters will continue to abuse market power to extract higher fees, jack up prices [and] force blackouts.”

Former House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Bob Latta, R-Ohio, said Friday that he and Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., refiled the Removing Our Unsecure Technologies to Ensure Reliability and Security (Routers) Act. The measure would require the Commerce Department to “specify what transactions involving routers, modems, or devices that combine a modem and a router are prohibited” under President Donald Trump’s 2019 executive order (see 1905150066), which bars transactions involving information and communications technologies that pose an “undue risk of sabotage to or subversion of” U.S.-based communications services. The House approved the measure last year, and it was part of a package of telecom measures in a scuttled December version of the continuing resolution that extended appropriations through March 14 (see 2412170081). Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and likely Senate Communications Subcommittee ranking member Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., recently filed a Senate companion version of the bill (S-244). “We are going to continue our efforts to make sure communist China cannot surveil, manipulate, and undermine the American people,” Latta said. The Routers Act “is a good step toward that worthwhile goal.”