Senate Republicans elected Communications Subcommittee ranking member John Thune of South Dakota as their chamber lead for the next Congress, meaning he will become majority leader when the party regains control in January. The caucus’ members for the next Congress voted 29-24 for Thune over former GOP Whip John Cornyn of Texas. Thune, currently GOP whip, was a previous Commerce Committee chairman. He is likely to continue influencing Republicans’ trajectory on communications and tech policy issues, but his elevation to Senate GOP leader revives questions about who will lead Communications in the next Congress (see 2402290057). NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield and USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter praised Senate Republicans for electing Thune. He “is a champion of our broadband future, recognizing reliable high-speed internet access is essential for education and economic growth, especially in rural areas,” Spalter said: The group hopes to work with Thune “and the new Congress to remove barriers to deployment and investment, expand broadband infrastructure and build a more connected America.” Thune “has been a champion of rural broadband policies throughout his tenure in Congress, and he understands the unique and essential role that small, community-based broadband providers play in connecting rural areas—including by serving nearly 90% of the geography in his home state of South Dakota,” Bloomfield said.

President-elect Donald Trump plans to nominate a trio of current and former congressional Republicans with some telecom policy record to posts in his incoming administration. Trump appeared likely to nominate Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Marco Rubio, R-Fla., as secretary of state. Rubio has been a leading supporter of restricting Huawei and other Chinese telecom vendors’ access to U.S. infrastructure, including by pressing for more funding for the FCC’s Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program (see 2211070059). In addition, he has led some legislative efforts that would limit TikTok in the U.S. Trump said he will nominate South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) as secretary of homeland security. A former House member, Noem as South Dakota governor agreed to ban TikTok for state government agencies, employees and contractors using state devices (see 2211290083). Trump selected Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., as national security adviser. Waltz last year unsuccessfully proposed requiring the FCC to issue a final order establishing “a coordinated nationwide approach to managing the 4.9 GHz band” (see 2307190071).

AT&T CEO John Stankey urged lawmakers and the incoming Trump administration in a Tuesday Fortune opinion essay “to act in favor of broader coverage and lower prices by moving past” conducting more studies on reallocating midband spectrum bands, as the Biden administration has emphasized. The government should instead release those frequencies, Stankey wrote. He also endorsed the 2024 Spectrum Pipeline Act (S-3909), which “reauthorizes the FCC’s auction authority and directs the agency to license mid-band airwaves for full-power mobile broadband services. And because auctions, spectrum clearing, and development of sharing mechanisms can take years, it’s important that Congress act expeditiously next year to make it law.” The proposal, led by Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, “is a smart spectrum policy that will stimulate investment, and deliver better mobile coverage and capacity, including in underserved areas,” Stankey said: “It’ll also mean more competition in home broadband by facilitating fixed wireless services in geographically remote places that have been historically harder to reach with wired connections.” Should he becomes Senate Commerce chairman in the next Congress, as observers expect, Cruz will likely prioritize the Spectrum Pipeline Act rather than pursue legislation resembling the rival Spectrum and National Security Act (S-4207) Democrats back (see 2410290039). Stankey acknowledged DOD concerns about repurposing midband frequencies that currently include military incumbents but said “true national security requires the soft power that comes with a vibrant, competitive economy that makes America the world’s best place to develop cutting-edge technology and enables robust networks that can carry the essential load during unplanned events.” It’s “in the Pentagon’s interest to make an earnest effort to balance the legitimate needs of the military with those of American consumers and businesses to have access to world-class mobile infrastructure."

Former Deputy NTIA Administrator April McClain-Delaney, D-Md., claimed victory Friday in her bid for an open House seat against former state Del. Neil Parrott (R). Some news organizations had not called the race Friday afternoon, though McClain led Parrott at the time by more than 8,700 votes after 91% of the tally was counted. “I am deeply honored and humbled by the trust the people” in the western Maryland district “have placed in me,” said McClain-Delaney, who was at NTIA during part of the Biden administration. Parrott refused to concede, saying in a statement that his campaign “will wait until all the votes are counted before declaring victory or defeat.” The battle for House control remained unresolved Friday, with Republicans having won 213 seats and the Democrats 202.

Senate Communications Subcommittee ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., a candidate to become the chamber's majority leader in the next Congress, said Thursday he thinks President-elect Donald Trump shouldn’t endorse a candidate in that race. “It's probably in his best interest to stay out of that,” Thune said during an appearance on CNBC's Squawk Box. Thune, the Senate Republican whip, is seen as having an edge in the GOP leader race against former Whip John Cornyn of Texas and Sen. Rick Scott of Florida. Senate Republicans were guaranteed to have at least 52 seats in the chamber Thursday. News organizations still hadn’t projected a winner Thursday in the Nevada Senate race between Democratic Senate Commerce Committee member Jacky Rosen and Republican challenger Sam Brown (see 2411060043), but the incumbent had a lead of almost 13,000 votes, with 93% of the tally counted. The battle for control of the House remained unresolved Thursday, with Republicans having 210 seats and Democrats 195. Some news organizations declared House Communications Subcommittee member Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, the winner Thursday in her reelection bid against Democrat Christina Bohannan, but the Associated Press and CNN were among those not yet declaring the vote count final. Miller-Meeks continued to lead Bohannan by 799 votes as of Thursday, with 99% of the tally finished.

Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz of Texas and two other panel Republicans are claiming that the Commerce Department’s Project Local Estimates of Internet Adoption is “manipulating census data to suppress the number of American households connected to high-speed internet via wireless and satellite technologies,” an omission that appears “politically motivated to disenfranchise alternative satellite broadband providers.” The Project LEIA website “claims its estimates offer reliable data on internet adoption for all U.S. counties,” but “it fails to mention the exclusion of millions of American households who rely on wireless and satellite technologies for internet access,” Cruz and the other GOP senators said in a Thursday letter to NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson and Census Bureau Director Robert Santos. Cruz and the other senators, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, said the Project LEIA omissions are aimed at hurting SpaceX’s Starlink. They compare the act to an earlier FCC decision to bar Starlink from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program (see 2312140048) to punish CEO Elon Musk. “This omission results in systemic undercounting and data bias. When the data are wrong, policy outcomes will inevitably suffer.” It “underscores the current administration’s prioritization of politics over sound policy -- an approach that has sabotaged” the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program “and perpetuates misinformation about broadband in America,” the senators said in the letter, released Friday. They want Davidson and Santos to respond by Nov. 14. NTIA has “received the letter and will respond through the proper channels," a spokesperson emailed. The Census Bureau didn’t comment.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., noted interest Friday in having the chamber repeal the 2022 Chips and Science Act before quickly reversing course following a bipartisan outcry against the idea. During a campaign appearance Friday in Syracuse, New York, Johnson said that a GOP-led House next year “probably will” try repealing the Chips and Science Act, but “we haven't developed that part of the agenda yet.” The statute allocated $52 billion for domestic semiconductor manufacturing (see 2207280060). “What we oppose to in that bill is that it had too much crammed into it,” Johnson said: “When you take the Green New Deal out of the equation you will save trillions of dollars in the long run.” Johnson later clarified that instead there “could be legislation to further streamline and improve the primary purpose of” the Chips and Science Act by eliminating “its costly regulation and Green New Deal requirements.” Rep. Brandon Williams of New York, a Republican facing a tough reelection fight whom Johnson was campaigning for, issued a statement that he “spoke privately with the Speaker immediately after the event. He apologized profusely, saying he misheard the question. He clarified his comments on the spot and I trust local media to play his full comments on supporting repatriation of chips manufacturing to America.” Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ presidential nominee against former President Donald Trump, criticized Johnson Saturday. “Let's be clear why he walked it back: because it's not popular,” Harris said during a campaign appearance in Milwaukee. “It is my plan and intention to continue to invest in American manufacturing, the work being done by American workers” to invest “in American industries, including our industries of the future. That is the way we are going to win the competition with China for the 21st Century.”

Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform president, and James Erwin, executive director-ATF subsidiary Digital Liberty, led a Tuesday letter with 24 other mostly conservative-leaning leaders urging that congressional lawmakers “oppose any attempts to impose new taxes on broadband service, including by assessing broadband for contributions to the Universal Service Fund.” A bipartisan congressional working group has been eyeing a potential USF revamp, while Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wants Congress to make the program subject to the federal appropriations process (see 2403060090). “While USF faces fiscal challenges, these should ideally be addressed through distribution reform,” Norquist and the other leaders said in the letter, which we obtained before its public release. “If the contribution base for USF is expanded to include mass-market broadband providers, it will be American households that foot the bill to keep this program on life support.”

Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., is urging the FCC to update its horizontal location (Y-axis) enhanced 911 location accuracy standard to “reflect advances in technology to ensure that” public safety answering points and first responders “can more accurately locate” callers. The existing Y-axis standard the FCC adopted in 2015 “represented a dramatic improvement in E911 accuracy and effectiveness and reflected the technology available at the time,” Eshoo said in a Friday letter to Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel we obtained. “But this standard can still lead to mispositioning of E911 callers and compromise the response times of first responders, placing callers on the wrong side of the street, in the wrong building, or even on the wrong block.” Improvements to the global navigation satellite system and other technologies have “advanced significantly” since 2015 and “provide greater horizontal location accuracy and improve emergency response times,” Eshoo said: Any changes to the standard “should be technologically feasible and technologically neutral so that providers can choose the most effective solution from a range of options.” A “lot of new and powerful technologies have been deployed in the decade since the FCC last updated the location accuracy framework,” emailed Cooley’s Robert McDowell, a former FCC commissioner. “They could power devices to locate users with great precision. Uncountable lives could be saved by using modern technology and the Commission could help get us there.”

Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., asked that the Commerce Department Friday “provide more transparency on key issues” involved in contracts on Chips and Science Act funding. With more than $50 billion in funding for the measure, “the public deserves to know that semiconductor manufacturers have committed to upholding high standards in developing new plants,” including on “health, safety, labor, and environmental provisions subject to transparent company-specific public progress reporting,” the lawmakers said in a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Commerce “should use its role in the grant-making process to ensure that the U.S. semiconductor industry is safe and sustainable, creates high-quality jobs, and does not simply enrich shareholders and executives through stock buybacks.” The lawmakers scolded the department for withholding “important terms” of its first chip manufacturing plant agreement, worth $123 million, when it announced the deal last month. Commerce has also “not articulated how it will hold grant recipients accountable if they fail to meet their contractual terms,” the senators said: “Communities near manufacturing facilities and American chip manufacturing workers deserve -- and need -- more transparency around these federal contracts to ensure manufacturers are held accountable to meaningful commitments.”