John Hendel

Democrats said they will object if Republicans seek to advance President Donald Trump’s GOP pick for the Federal Communications Commission without any attempt at bipartisan balance. “That will be a problem,” said Senate Commerce ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-WA).

The United States is about to make a big bet on high-speed satellite internet that promises a new model for how space technology could digitally connect the most remote parts of the country—assuming it works. Clusters of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites have provided internet access in areas across the globe. But the technology is relatively new and unproven, even as it promises to bring high-speed internet to rural and isolated parts of the U.S.

Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr’s newest fight with Disney is starting to raise alarms among some members of the GOP and on K Street—though many Republicans appear ready to give him a pass.

The House Commerce Committee voted 29-24 to advance the communications title of the GOP megabill.

Key Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee say there’s been headway in recent weeks on reaching an agreement to auction off wireless spectrum, expressing renewed hopes for attaching a telecommunications deal to the party’s massive bill to enact swaths of President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda. “There’s progress, we’re almost there,” said Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-MS).

Evan Feinman, a top Commerce Department official sent a blistering email to his former colleagues on his way out the door warning that the Trump administration is poised to unduly enrich Elon Musk’s satellite internet company with money for rural broadband. The technology offered by Starlink, Musk’s company, is inferior, Feinman warned.

President-elect Donald Trump is taking Washington’s war against Big Tech in a sharp new direction, naming a trio of federal leaders expected to bring conservative culture-war issues to the center of the debate over tech monopoly power. Federal Trade Commissioner Andrew Ferguson joins Gail Slater, a JD Vance adviser whom Trump recently nominated to the top antitrust job at the Department of Justice.

One looming question in telecom land is what happens to President Joe Biden’s mammoth $42.45 billion internet expansion effort — known as the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program — if former President Donald Trump wins the White House in November 2024. The big-ticket broadband program is at an inflection point. While the Biden administration has signed off spending plans from most states and territories, it will be many months before any internet construction projects begin — the first groundbreaking won’t start until 2025, under the next president.

President Joe Biden’s 2021 infrastructure law promised to help Virginia expand broadband internet to hard-to-reach corners of the commonwealth—investing nearly $1.5 billion to improve a key service across a swing state crucial to Democrats’ hopes in the November election. The program, known officially as the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program (or BEAD) and embedded in Biden’s mammoth infrastructure law, was meant to bring a vital service to communities across America.

The telecommunications industry has unleashed a barrage of lawsuits designed to block a major policy goal of the Biden administration, a new internet-fairness regime it hopes to lock down ahead of the November election. The conflict is likely to drag on through the rest of 2024, showcasing the kind of behind-the-scenes Washington fight that can flare in an election year as a White House tries to cement its legacy. The suits opened a new front in the battle over “net neutrality,” a policy the Federal Communications Commission voted to adopt in April.