Former President Donald Trump’s selection of Senate Commerce Committee member Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, as his running mate puts a backer of additional funding for the FCC’s lapsed affordable connectivity program on the presidential ticket of a party that has many members who criticized the initiative. Vance is lead Senate GOP co-sponsor of the ACP Extension Act (HR-6929/S-3565) and subsequent Secure and Affordable Broadband Extension Act (S-4317). Both propose giving the affordability program billions of dollars in stopgap funding for FY 2024 (see 2401100056). Vance also helped lead an unsuccessful bid to include $6 billion in ACP funding in May as part of the 2024 FAA Reauthorization Act (see 2405090052). Vance, a freshman senator, opposed former-FCC nominee Gigi Sohn and Commissioner Anna Gomez during their confirmation processes last year (see 2307120073).
FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington, reacting to Saturday's assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, said Americans should “renounce the abuse of the vast reach of telecommunications to falsely describe political adversaries as threats to democracy, fascists, and by other false and hate-filled terms.” In a two-page statement Monday, Simington wrote that the FCC “has few or no powers to compel or limit political speech.” As such, he was making the request “not as an officer of the US government, but as a concerned citizen.” However, his remarks used the same letterhead as FCC news releases. They were released in the manner of official FCC commissioner statements. “It is no more than the truth to say that President Trump’s survival also saved the election’s legitimacy by preserving the political choices of tens of millions of Americans,” Simington wrote. "The image of President Trump, blood streaming down his face, on his feet and shaking his fist in regal defiance, became an instant classic of American history." FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr also reacted, posting on X that it's “past time for politicians that know better to stop fanning the false flames of fear.” Carr said he was “Praying for President Trump tonight and for any innocent loss of life in Butler, Pennsylvania.” The FCC's Democratic commissioners didn't release statements on the shooting.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- A California rulemaking on modernizing carrier of last resort rules could inspire similar proceedings elsewhere, state and industry officials signaled at the NARUC conference Monday. The California Public Utilities Commission last month opened a rulemaking that took a fresh look at COLR rules after rejecting regulatory relief for AT&T (see 2406200065).
Republican FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington appears likely to win renomination regardless of which party takes the White House in November, lawmakers and lobbyists said in interviews. Some observers believe it's unlikely Democrats will use Simington's 2025 confirmation process to strike back against any FCC structural changes Republican Commissioner Brendan Carr may propose if former President Donald Trump wins and nominates him as chairman, as expected (see 2407120002). Carr’s reconfirmation last year (see 2310020043) means his term doesn’t expire until 2028, so he wouldn't face a new round of Senate scrutiny.
States hope they can increase federal engagement on telecom no matter who is president in 2025, current and former state utility commissioners said in interviews. In a possible second Donald Trump presidency, “the states and localities are really going to be where broadband policy is made,” predicted Gigi Sohn, Benton Institute for Broadband & Society senior fellow. Some said there is a lot of uncertainty about how a Trump administration might change rules for state grants under NTIA’s $42.5 billion broadband equity, access and deployment (BEAD) program.
Donald Trump recently has distanced himself from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 manifesto (see 2407050015), but its authors are his close policy advisors. Accordingly, his election would likely mean chaos for the federal bureaucracy, including agencies like the FCC, FTC and the NTIA, experts said. As many as 50,000 federal employees could lose their jobs if a Trump administration cleans house, experts told us. Project 2025 includes a chapter on the FCC that Commissioner Brendan Carr wrote. Carr is considered the favorite to become FCC chair if Trump wins (see 2407120002).
Expect a Donald Trump White House and FCC to focus on deregulation and undoing the agency's net neutrality and digital discrimination rules, telecom policy experts and FCC watchers tell us. Brendan Carr, one of the two GOP minority commissioners, remains the seeming front-runner to head the agency if Trump wins the White House in November (see 2407120002). Despite repeated comments from Trump as a candidate and president calling for FCC action against companies such as CNN and MSNBC over their news content, many FCC watchers on both sides of the aisle told us they don’t expect the agency to actually act against cable networks or broadcast licenses under a second Trump administration.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr is widely seen as the favorite to become FCC chair in a second Donald Trump presidency, and former FCC staffers and communications industry officials told us they expect a Carr-led FCC would prioritize policies he wrote about in the telecom chapter of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025. For example, the chapter lays out plans for rolling back Section 230 protections for tech companies, deregulating broadband infrastructure and restricting Chinese companies.
Former President Donald Trump famously doesn't do policy detail, but this time around his senior advisers and self-described MAGA revolutionaries are doing it for him. Trump himself has repeatedly called for punishment of disfavored media, including FCC-licensed "fake news" outlets. But the specifics of the disruptions planned for policy and governance of telecom (along with many other sectors) are most explicitly framed in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, the massive policy prescription directed in part by Trump's past and presumably future advisers and appointees. Among contributors is FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, author of the chapter on the future of the agency and telecom policy as a whole. In this Comm Daily Special Report, published on the eve of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, our award-winning editorial team looks at the ideas and the people that would transform telecom in America if Donald Trump is returned to office. (Our counterpart examination of Democratic plans -- whether under a reelected President Joe Biden or someone else -- will appear in August.)
Republican ex-FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly marked the death of former Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., noting he respected the lawmaker's opposition to the commission approving Ligado’s L-band plan even though it prompted Inhofe placing a July 2020 hold on O'Rielly's reconfirmation (see 2007280039). Then-President Donald Trump withdrew O’Rielly’s renomination less than a week later for unrelated reasons (see 2008040061). “People suspect I was angered by his hold on my nomination years ago,” O’Rielly said. “To the contrary, I respected his engagement and views on a tough issue.” Inhofe, 89, died Tuesday.