A proposed merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, the country’s third- and fourth-largest wireless operators, would have a profound impact on Californians. Wireless prices will rise so the merger will be particularly onerous for customers on tight budgets. In California especially, low-income customers tend to be people of color and immigrants. The merger would therefore disproportionately burden this vulnerable group — many of whom rely on cellphones as their only form of internet access. A significant portion of these customers use cellphones to meet basic needs. Taking from the poor (disproportionately people of color) to give to the rich (predominantly white people) is a form of structural racism. If regulators approve this merger, they will further entrench existing inequalities in the telecom sector, where companies are notorious for failing to adequately serve communities of color. The FCC, the Justice Department and the California Public Utilities Commission are considering conditions to mitigate the merger’s many harms. But let’s get real. Mitigations rarely work, and government bodies haven’t been able to enforce them. Regulators should reject this merger outright.

[Jessica J. González is the deputy director and senior counsel for Free Press]

With Sen Kamala Harris (D-CA) joining the field of 2020 hopefuls, all Democratic senators now running for president have pushed for major cyber policy reforms -- from cracking down on election interference to stemming the flood of data breaches. Sen Harris was a co-sponsor of the Secure Elections Act (S 2261) while Sen Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) backed a separate bill that would have launched a 9/11 Commission-style investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), meanwhile, introduced legislation, the Data Breach Prevention and Compensation Act (S 2289), in the wake of the massive Equifax data breach to ratchet up consequences for credit ratings agencies that fail to protect people’s data.

In the 2020 election cycle, cybersecurity could prove an important issue to the Democratic base: Democrats are both more concerned about election security and more skeptical of the government’s ability to manage a major cyberattack than Republicans, according to recent public opinion polls. And the 2020 candidates entering the race with lengthy cyber policy records have the potential to be judged on their accomplishments on this complex topic -- and are likely to face tough questions about Russian hacking and disinformation operations, election security and Chinese intellectual property theft.