FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a post on X Wednesday that the agency will soon be issuing more information on post-shutdown filing deadlines. “Particularly since the shutdown has stretched on for an unprecedented length of time, the agency will be putting additional guidance out at an appropriate time on the reopening process,” Carr said. “FCC staff is going to work in good faith with stakeholders to address the range of questions that will arise and the potential high volume of filings that folks will be seeking to make.”
The public interest standard “grants FCC officials too much unconstrained discretion in today's competitive media and telecommunications environment,” wrote Free State Foundation President Randolph May in a blog post Friday. Congress should update the Communications Act and “jettison” the public interest standard, he said, arguing that the economic circumstances and viewpoint diversity concerns that were used to justify the standard no longer apply. “Today, reliance on the dictates of competitive marketplace forces is much more likely to enhance consumer welfare -- and to be consistent with constitutional free speech and due process dictates -- than reliance on immodest bureaucratic diktats.”
Consumers’ Research and other parties challenging the legality of the USF contribution factor at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals urged the court not to allow various public interest groups to intervene. Motions to intervene were filed last month by the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition and jointly by the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance and the Center for Media Justice (see 2510300042). The 5th Circuit stayed the case Tuesday because of the federal shutdown (see 2511040071).
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the USF in Consumers’ Research v. FCC could prove critical as justices hear argument Wednesday on President Donald Trump’s legal authority to impose tariffs, said Adam White, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, in a blog post Monday. The case turns on how justices view presidential authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, White wrote. “If justices see the Trump tariffs as mainly a matter of foreign policy, and if they see IEEPA’s ‘regulate’ provision as ambiguous, then perhaps they will give substantial deference to the president’s interpretation.”
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Tuesday agreed to stay Consumers’ Research’s latest challenge to the USF because of the federal government shutdown, as requested by the FCC (see 2510310043), said an order in docket 25-60535. The request wasn’t opposed by any of the parties in the case. A lawyer involved in the proceeding said the order was “no big deal” and responds to a motion that the government is filing in almost all new non-urgent cases.
Paramount Skydance reportedly is set to announce Wednesday that it will cut about 1,000 employees, less than three months after its merger with Skydance Media closed (see 2508070027). The combined company is also reportedly trying to buy Warner Bros. Discovery (see 2509110067). The cuts will affect mostly U.S. employees, and additional layoffs are planned later, reports said.
Comcast, Google and T-Mobile are among at least 10 tech and telecom companies that the White House said Thursday have donated to President Donald Trump’s proposed 90,000-square-foot ballroom. Trump on Wednesday estimated the ballroom’s construction will cost $300 million, up from the administration’s initial projection of $200 million. Other donating companies include Amazon, Apple, HP, Facebook parent Meta, Microsoft, Micron and Palantir. The family of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is also a donor, the White House said.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr reacted Saturday to the nationwide No Kings protests, saying in a post on X that the demonstrations “were more effective than they appeared,” because the U.S. has a president “with a mandate to make his country great” instead of a king. “We have a President, elected by an historic and overwhelming vote of the American people -- an election won in the face of lawfare, media opposition, and multiple attempts to take away the choice that rightly resides in the hands of our electorate,” Carr wrote, with a photo of President Donald Trump’s face accompanying the post.
Some Chinese testing labs are urging the FCC to reconsider its revocation of their recognition. The agency started proceedings in September to remove the recognition from some labs it said were controlled by the Chinese government (see 2509080058), and it denied recognition renewal applications for others (see 2509260036). In filings posted Friday, several argued that there's no ground for them to lose recognition.
A new study by the Computer & Communications Industry Association questions whether European carriers really have been hampered by EU regulation. European providers “have promoted this narrative to justify radical changes in European regulation,” it argued. “Europe, they say, is lagging behind in digital investment even though telecom operators, and particularly incumbents, have been investing heavily in 5G and FTTP [fiber-to-the-premises] coverage.”