Congress

In a strategy shift, the Biden administration is increasingly pointing to Congress to give it more legal power to deal with TikTok and other technology that could expose Americans’ sensitive data to China.

President Biden’s nominee for an open seat on the FCC, Gigi Sohn, appears stalled in committee and is in danger of failing to reach the full Senate floor for a vote, according to Democratic Senate officials. If her nomination falters, the FCC will remain deadlocked with two Republican and two Democratic commissioners — hindering the Biden administration’s effort to implement key parts of the president’s agenda.

House Oversight Committee Members Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) have committed to schedule hearings in the coming months to investigate whether FTC Chair Lina Khan has been following the law, according to sources close to the situation.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) have sent a letter to Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch asking him to stop Fox News personalities from “spreading false election narratives,” warning they could lead to “further acts of political violence.”

A divided House committee on Wednesday advanced a bill that could pave the way for President Biden to ban the popular TikTok app. “TikTok is a modern day trojan horse,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who sponsored the Deterring America’s Foreign Adversaries Act (HR 1553), said at a hearing Tuesday afternoon. He characterized the app, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, as a “national security threat” that allows the Chinese government to manipulate and monitor U.S. users.

DirecTV has responded to GOP senators’ requests to explain its decision to drop the conservative news network Newsmax, saying the cut was part of a “routine” business dispute after criticism that the move was political.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein announced Tuesday that she will not seek reelection in 2024, signaling the end of a groundbreaking political career spanning six decades in which she […]

President Joe Biden’s pick for a key fifth seat on the FCC will tell lawmakers that industry opponents have sought to scuttle her nomination to prevent more lower-priced broadband service. Gigi Sohn, who was nominated in October 2021, will have her third hearing for the job before the Senate Commerce Committee today.

Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) have reintroduced a bill that would reregulate cable franchise fees. The Protecting Community Television Act would “clarify” that the 5% cap on a cable franchise fee applies only to monetary “assessments” and not in-kind contributions.

DirecTV is getting more pressure — this time from a group of Senate Republicans — over its decision to drop the conservative Newsmax network after a carriage agreement expired. In response to the DirecTV move and Newsmax complaints, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee; Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee; Mike Lee (R-Utah); and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote the CEOs of DirecTV and parents AT&T and TPG Capital, voicing concerns and “demanding” answers.

Citing a smear campaign to continue to prevent Gigi Sohn from being seated as the fifth FCC commissioner, former Fox and ABC/Disney executive Preston Padden has written the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee to call out those tactics and advocate for Sohn, with whom he is not aligned politically.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is urging Congress to move the nomination of Gigi Sohn to be the fifth member of the FCC. “It is outrageous that the FCC has gone without a full slate of commissioners while the nomination of the supremely qualified and prepared nominee, Gigi Sohn, languishes amidst lies and homophobia,“ Markey said. He is primarily addressing fellow Democrats since they control the gavel in committees and have the votes to discharge the nomination from the committee and approve her to the commission if they are all on board.

A group of House Democrats introduced a constitutional amendment on Thursday to overturn a Supreme Court ruling that eliminated restrictions on corporate campaign spending. The Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in the Citizens United v. FEC case prohibited the government from restricting political campaign spending by companies, nonprofit organizations and unions. This amendment, if passed, would allow Congress and state governments to enact “reasonable, viewpoint-neutral” limitations on campaign funding, including restricting corporations from spending “unlimited amounts of money to influence elections.”

With House Republicans preparing to take over the committee gavels as soon as Rep. Kevin McCarthy (or someone else) is voted to the speaker’s gavel, the House Energy & Commerce Committee is signaling that holding the “destructive” force of Big Tech to account will be a priority.

The Senate has passed a bill that would give some low-power TV stations the ability to apply for Class A status and its additional interference protections. It must still pass the House to become law. LPTVs haven’t been able to apply to the FCC for such status since 1999.

It appears that Big Tech’s lobbying blitz against including the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act and the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) in the omnibus must-pass bill has succeeded. The bill would have given broadcasters more leverage over online reuse of their content.

The key Democrat’s confirmation remains stuck in committee.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) blocked the Press Freedom Act on the Senate floor on Wednesday as Democrats tried to fast-track passage of the bill that has already been approved by the House. Sponsored by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the legislation would prohibit the government from forcing journalists and telecommunications companies to disclose certain information. Cotton cited the Pentagon Papers, which were leaked to and published by the New York Times and showed the extent to which the government was lying about the Vietnam War, as an example of why the press should be held accountable.

NetChoice, whose members include some of the biggest of Big Tech — Amazon, Google, Meta (Facebook) — is behind a TV ad that sounds and looks more like a Donald Trump attack on his political opponents and the coverage he receives in the media, rather than leading-edge online companies more often allied with the liberals the ad is attacking. The association has been fighting hard against the Journalism Competition & Preservation Act (JCPA), which is designed to give creators of original news content, like local broadcasters, more leverage over compensation for their content’s re-use online.

A bill with at least one Democrat onboard has been introduced in the Senate and House that would ban social-media platform TikTok in the United States. The creatively named Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party Act (ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act) was introduced by a pair of Republicans, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (Wis.), and Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (Ill.).

The 118th Congress will face some long-standing policy challenges as well as a few new ones but may not get to the finish line on any of them — even the federal data privacy bill that has bipartisan backing in both chambers. Lawmakers have been debating antitrust legislation aimed at the tech industry, social media content moderation policies and the online spread of disinformation for the last two Congresses but have yet to send any legislation to the president’s desk. With Republicans taking the House majority, the hill may become steeper.

Consumer advocacy groups are renewing their call for the House of Representatives to vote this month on a sweeping privacy bill that would outlaw a common form of online ad targeting. “The time is now to pass a comprehensive federal privacy law,” 23 organizations including the Center for Democracy & Technology, Electronic Privacy Information Center and Public Knowledge say in a letter sent Friday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

A bipartisan Senate duo looked this week to put a spotlight on legislation, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) that would crack down on Big Tech. Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) are trying to get the bill passed in the waning, lame-duck days of the current session of Congress.

Republican Reps. Elise Stefanik of New York and Mike Gallagher (Wis.) have introduced a bill, the Foreign Adversary Communications Transparency (FACT) Act, that would require the FCC to maintain a list of all licensees with “sufficient” ties to authoritarian regimes, including the Chinese Communist Party. FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr says such a disclosure is overdue.

The House on Thursday passed a package of antitrust bills aimed at boosting antitrust enforcers’ ability to take on powerful tech firms in a 242-184 vote that split both parties. Thirty-nine Republicans joined most Democrats in voting for the bills.

Some advocates for children and teens are urging Senate leaders to hold a floor vote on two bills that could affect the content that young users can access online, as well as how their data is collected and harnessed. Both measures — the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (S. 1628) and the Kids Online Safety Act (S. 3663) — advanced out of the Senate Commerce Committee in July.

In a move that broadcasters can leverage to make their point about the relative value of their ad platform versus online, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) is slamming Google Ads, saying it has a troubling record of not weeding out fraud and abuse and calling on the company to pony up info in its ad practices and policies. Blumenthal, like many on the Hill, has been a sharp critic of edge provider privacy and marketing practices in general.

Congress is about to head out for summer recess after passing a bill to fund domestic computer chip manufacturing. But several other tech policy priorities, like antitrust reform, digital privacy regulation and net neutrality, remain unfinished. Here’s what Congress has left to do on tech policy later this year, and how likely it is to get done.

Indiana Rep. Jackie Walorski, 58, a former TV reporter in South Bend, Ind., died in a car accident Wednesday. Three others died in the head-on collision, including Walorski’s communications director Emma Thomson, and Zachery Potts, her district director, who were both riding in the car with Walorski. The driver of the other vehicle also died. First elected to House in 2012, she began her career as a TV reporter at WSBT South Bend.

With no progress expected on new network neutrality rules out of a politically tied FCC anytime soon, net neutrality fan Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is introducing net neutrality legislation today (July 28).

Advertising the marijuana business just got a boost. A Senate bill filed July 26 would permit ads for cannabis products on radio and TV in any state tribe or territory where it is legal, without fear of federal penalties. Hemp businesses and products would also be covered under the bill. Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) introduced the “Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Advertising Act.” The recent House spending package has a similar amendment attached.

The Biden administration’s controversial choice of Gigi Sohn to fill an open seat on the FCC has been in Senate confirmation limbo for months.In recent weeks, at the urging of progressive advocates of Sohn, the White House has been discussing possibly pushing the vote until after the midterms, which might give the Dems cover to vote for her confirmation in a lame duck session. But amid that discussion, the White House is also reaching out to other candidates as part of an early-stage vetting process if the administration decides to pull the plug on Sohn, according to one person with direct knowledge of the matter.

Democratic lawmakers’ inability to secure a majority at the FCC has stymied plans for the agency to restore Obama-era net neutrality rules. Amid the impasse, lawmakers are renewing efforts to take the issue into their own hands with a sweeping new bill, according to a copy. Led by Sens. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the Net Neutrality and Broadband Justice Act would reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service and open companies like AT&T and Verizon up to stricter oversight by the FCC.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday voted 53-2 to advance a sweeping bipartisan privacy bill that would outlaw a common form of online behavioral ad targeting. The version of the American Data Privacy and Protection Act approved Wednesday would prohibit companies from collecting or processing data about web users’ online activity across sites and over time for ad purposes. That ban would effectively prevent companies from serving ads to web users based on their browsing activity.

Broadcasters are praising the House of Representatives for telling the FCC to “Keep off the grass”… advertising, that is. The House Wednesday (July 20) passed the 2023 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill, which prevents the FCC from taking any actions against broadcasters who air cannabis advertising if it is not against the law in the state or jurisdiction in which the station is licensed. Broadcasters have been looking for such protections, arguing that without them they cannot air cannabis ads even where the product is legal, which is in most states.

House Republicans may be resisting President Joe Biden’s nominee for a third FCC Democrat, but they are urging the him to nominate an inspector general for the agency as it hands out billions of dollars in broadband subsidy funding under Biden. That came in a letter to the president signed by Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), House Energy & Commerce Committee ranking member; Robert Latta (R-Ohio), House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology ranking member; and Bill Johnson (R-Ohio).