As Congress races to pass President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” it’s also sprinting to placate the many haters of the bill’s “AI moratorium” provision which originally required a 10-year pause on state AI regulations. The provision, which was championed by White House AI czar and venture capitalist David Sacks, has proved remarkably unpopular with a diverse contingent of lawmakers ranging from 40 state attorneys general to the ultra-MAGA Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. On June 29, Sens Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) announced a new version of the AI moratorium, knocking the pause from a full decade down to five years and adding a variety of carve-outs. But after critics attacked the watered-down version of the bill as a “get-out-of-jail free card” for Big Tech, Sen Blackburn reversed course. (For those keeping track at home, Sen Blackburn initially opposed the moratorium, then worked with Sen Cruz on the five-year version of the provision, then changed her mind again to oppose her own compromised version of the law.)
 

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr announced that the agency’s Wireline Competition Bureau has taken action to address the consequences stemming from the Commission’s 2024 decision on Incarcerated People’s Communications Services. The order extends the deadlines by which IPCS providers must comply with certain rules adopted in the 2024 IPCS Order until April 1, 2027 or any alternative date the FCC sets as part of further action. The 2024 IPCS Order expanded the Commission’s regulation of IPCS in response to the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act of 2022. The Martha Wright-Reed Act amended the Communications Act of 1934 to require that the Commission “establish a compensation plan to ensure that all [IPCS] providers are fairly compensated, and all rates and charges are just and reasonable, for completed” IPCS communications.

Not only did Congress unanimously pass the Martha Wright Reed Act, but the Federal Communications Commission unanimously adopted the decision. And the Federal Communications Commission’s newly appointed General Counsel vigorously and persuasively defended the decision in April 2025. The decision to delay these rules is factually and legally wrong. No legal request for this decision was made, no public comment was sought. The decision points to claims of strain in the industry, when many prisons and jails have been complying since the rules became effective in January. The FCC points to filings from Securus, which is currently the beneficiary of a waiver of the rules it requested and received in December 2024. Incarcerated people deserve the protections adopted by the FCC as directed by Congress. This decision is another lawless decision by the Trump Administration and this Federal Communications Commission.

Continuing his crusade against diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, President Donald Trump announced he was shutting down the Digital Equity Act in May 2025. He took to his Truth Social social media platform to accuse the bipartisan legislation passed in 2021, designed to steer grant funding to organizations working to bridge digital divides, of giving out “woke handouts based on race.” It didn’t matter that the Digital Equity Act was set to pour investments into rural areas, where residents overwhelmingly voted for him; President Trump declared it “racist and illegal,” in all caps. Though the President claimed to save $2.5 billion in taxpayer dollars by scrapping the act (it was actually funded for $2.75 billion), it comes at the cost of hurting rural residents. Many of the projects that lost funding had a rural focus, including:

• Pennsylvania’s Department of Human Services was set to put portions of $10.8 million into distributing telehealth devices and reliable internet to the state’s most rural and underserved counties. 
• Louisiana’s Public Health Institute had $5 million earmarked in part for portable internet devices for rural farmers and agricultural workers.  
• Alabama’s Dannon Project wanted to use its $10.8 million on telemedicine stations for rural and isolated communities and virtual reality workforce training simulations for veterans and rural residents.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr circulated an order that would save the American public millions of dollars by rejecting a request to expand a COVID-era waiver. Specifically, the circulated order denies a request by Lifeline providers to extend the FCC’s waiver of the program’s non-usage rules. In their requests, petitioners wanted the FCC to interpret the COVID-era waiver as extending one additional day because doing so would allow them to receive federal subsidies for an entire additional month, notwithstanding the continued non-usage of the service. Assist Wireless, Boomerang Wireless, Easy Wireless and i-wireless formally challenged a decision by the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau rejecting the petitioners’ interpretation of the end date of the COVID-19 relief waiver period for non-usage, which would allow them to make upward revisions of reimbursements. Chairman Carr's proposal would, if adopted by a vote of the full Commission, affirm the Bureau’s decision that the COVID-19 relief waiver period for nonusage ended on April 30, 2021, and that the petitioners are not entitled to an extra month of support for unused services.