Most, if not all, of the money left over from BEAD after deployment work is done should go back to the U.S. Treasury, former FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly wrote Tuesday. States' BEAD plans ultimately could come in 30%-50% below budget, said O'Rielly, an adjunct senior fellow at the Free State Foundation. "Even in D.C.," the $20 billion or so that it would save "is real money." By returning the excess money, which resulted from the "Benefit of the Bargain" reforms to BEAD, the Commerce Department would show "that the Trump Administration is indeed giving American taxpayers a real 'Benefit,'" he said. It's also "the most reasonable course," given the national debt. However, O'Rielly added that there's a valid argument that some funds should be held back for inevitable, unforeseen deployment needs, as some BEAD funding winners "will fumble."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Tuesday agreed to stay filings on a T-Mobile request asking the court to rehear en banc its challenge of an FCC data fine (see 2509220056). The government sought the stay citing the ongoing shutdown (see 2510010044). “This proceeding is stayed until funding to FCC and DOJ is restored, and all pending and potential deadlines are tolled,” said a one-page order from the court.

NTIA appeared to be among the Commerce Department agencies that the White House OMB targeted Friday with staff firings as part of the Trump administration’s previously threatened reduction-in-force plans during the federal government shutdown, communications industry officials and lobbyists told us. It was unclear how many NTIA employees OMB fired or whether anybody at the FCC was affected. Spokespeople for both agencies didn’t immediately comment.

Lawsuits blaming social media platforms for injuries and deaths are part of a long tradition of faulting speech for human conduct and suffering, the American Enterprise Institute's Clay Calvert wrote Tuesday. Theories that the platforms create social media addiction make it easy to shift blame for injuries and actions "by clouding causal, human-agency questions," said Calvert, a nonresident senior fellow of technology policy studies. Such cases ultimately try to put responsibility "on innovative technology companies whose lawful-speech services millions of adults and minors enjoy daily without sustaining or causing harm."

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), represented by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, sued the Trump administration Wednesday for canceling the Digital Equity Act competitive grant program, which had been approved by Congress. NDIA said it asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to order the administration to restore the program and “allow NDIA to resume shovel-ready projects aimed at providing digital navigator services to 30,000 people in 11 states.”

NBC's Saturday Night Live roasted FCC Chairman Brendan Carr on its latest episode, with cast member Mikey Day portraying the commission head. The sketch showed President Donald Trump, played by James Austin Johnson, summoning Day's Carr, who danced on screen to the 1983 pop song "Somebody's Watching Me" by Rockwell. When Day's Carr corrected the president that his first name is Brendan, not Brandon, Johnson's Trump replied that "it's crazy you think I care." Johnson's Trump also admonished Day's Carr for hugging him: "You gotta stop."

Dan Schulman, a Verizon board member and the former CEO of PayPal, is replacing Hans Vestberg as Verizon CEO, effective immediately, the company announced Monday. Unlike T-Mobile, which is also going through a CEO transition (see 2509220029), Verizon hadn’t indicated in recent months that change was coming. Mark Bertolini, a Verizon director and the CEO of Oscar Health, was named chairman. Vestberg will stay on as a special adviser for a year, Verizon said.

The FCC "has become a convenient political tool [that] too often abandons its independence," and Chairman Brendan Carr should front efforts to dismantle it, wrote Mark Jamison, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The reasons it was created in 1934 "have disappeared," he said Friday, including regulation of the old Bell telephone monopoly and oversight of public airwaves. The agency's increased politicization is hurting investment, Jamison argued. Meanwhile, the Bell monopoly no longer exists, and many of the commission's consumer protection and equipment authorization functions could be done by other agencies, he said, adding that many of its jobs already overlap with other federal departments.

The FCC added a section to its Further NPRM seeking comment on whether correctional facilities should be allowed to jam cell signals, with an eye to preventing the use of contraband phones. Commissioners approved the NPRM Tuesday 3-0, with questions on a potential pilot program added at the request of Commissioner Anna Gomez (see 2509300063).

An NTIA spokesperson confirmed in an emailed statement Wednesday that the administration has terminated the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee, effective Tuesday (see 2509300065). “NTIA has determined that its limited resources must be focused on speedy and effective implementation of the spectrum provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and other NTIA priorities,” the spokesperson said. “NTIA appreciates the valuable contributions of the many dedicated experts who served on the committee over the past two decades.”