In a letter to New Mexico lawmakers, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said that a tribal broadband order approved in 2018 wrongly cuts out certain tribal telecom companies in that state. This exclusion had been a source of concern for representatives like Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM) about the FCC’s order, which allowed telecom companies serving tribal lands to get more funding to cover operational expenses.
During Senate Commerce’s field hearing in South Dakota on 5G wireless technology, Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken raised what he called “the wet blanket” of the coming wide-scale deployment: “I feel we also need to address ... what health impacts micro millimeter waves have because it’s so new,” TenHaken told Senate Commerce Chairman John Thune (R-SD). “I’m going to get asked this 20 times yet this evening about the health ramifications of 5G ...
Sinclair is the largest owner of television stations in the United States, with a hundred and ninety-two stations in eighty-nine markets. It reaches thirty-nine percent of American viewers. It’s unclear whether Sinclair is attempting to influence the politics of its viewers or simply appealing to positions that viewers may already have—or both.
Voters in elections tend to focus on topline policy issues such as the economy and health care, not tech policy, which enjoys considerable bipartisan agreement and offers little opportunity to highlight differences with opponents. Network neutrality internet regulation is an exception, as Democratic lawmakers use it both as symbolic politics at the federal and state level and as a wedge issue to bring millennial voters, a group with historically low turnout in midterms, to the polls.
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