December 2018

Tech giants sought early inroads with President Trump's FTC

Google, Amazon, and Snap wasted little time in 2018 in trying to cultivate the new crop of enforcers at the Federal Trade Commission, an agency that will play a key role in any Washington crackdown on the tech industry. The companies reached out to schmooze the four FTC commissioners appointed by President Donald Trump soon after they they were sworn into office in May, according to 73 pages of email communications obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The Sneaky Fight to Give Cable Lines Free Speech Rights

It seems counterintuitive that a phone line could be a "speaker." But the cable industry very much wants to ensure that the act of transmitting speech from Point A to Point B is protected by the First Amendment, so that making a cable connection carry any speech it isn’t interested in amounts to unconstitutional “forced speech.” The addition of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court roster gives the industry a significant boost.