President Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has rubberstamped the elimination of several policies and protections that are critical to closing the digital divide. Among these now-battered policies is an item that will be decided on in November and will give telecom giants a green light to abandon their rural customers.
[Commentary] The latest news in the saga of Steve Bannon is that the former White House senior adviser has reportedly been pushing President Donald Trump to be more forceful against special counsel Robert Mueller. Bannon’s ideas allegedly include urging President Trump to cut funding for the probe, telling Trump to withhold documents and pressing Trump to bring in more aggressive lawyers. These latest alleged Bannon-Trump communications come on top of other reported contacts between the two since Bannon left the White House.
President Donald Trump boasted Nov 3 of his social media influence after his personal Twitter account was briefly deactivated by a departing company employee, raising serious questions about the security of tweets the president wields to set major policy agendas, connect with his voter base and lash out at his adversaries. The deactivation Nov 2 sparked deep and troubling questions about who has access to the president's personal account, @realDonaldTrump, and the power that access holds.
Yes, we're making changes. We'd love to hear what you think. Hit reply and share your comments with us at headlines@benton.org
Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) led a bipartisan group of thirty-nine Sens in a letter urging the Federal Communications Commission to ensure its commitment to affordable and reliable broadband for consumers in hardest to reach communities across rural America. “A lack of resources to meet our [shared national broadband] goals is undermining investment and consumer access to affordable broadband across much of rural America. For this reason, we write to encourage the FCC to take the much-needed step of addressing the High-Cost Universal Service Fund budget shortfall,” the senators wrote.
American tech giants need to rethink their relationship with China. Now. The need to do so was evident on Oct 30 when Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, and a bevy of other leaders in the worlds of technology, finance and industry were whisked to the Great Hall of the People to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping. President Xi was fresh off a Communist Party congress that anointed him as China’s paramount leader.
© 1994-2026 Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. All Rights Reserved.
