Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) introduced two bills addressing broadband issues facing many in our country: The Connecting Minority Communities Act and the Governors Broadband Development Fund. The Connecting Minority Communities Act, authored by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS), would create a pilot program to provide grants to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) to expand access to broadband and digital opportunity in their communities. The Governors Broadband Development Fund, joined by Sens Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Mark Warner (D-VA), prioritizes funding for areas that currently lack service, supports the deployment of advanced technologies, and encourages projects that can provide internet service quickly.

The Clean Network program is the Trump Administration’s comprehensive approach to guarding our citizens’ privacy and our companies’ most sensitive information from aggressive intrusions by malign actors, such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). I am announcing the launch of five new lines of effort to protect America’s critical telecommunications and technology infrastructure. These programs are rooted in internationally accepted digital trust standards and built upon the 5G Clean Path initiative, announced on April 29, 2020, to secure data traveling on 5G networks into US diplomatic facilities overseas and within the United States.

The five new lines of effort for the Clean Network are as follows:

• Clean Carrier: To ensure untrusted People’s Republic of China (PRC) carriers are not connected with US telecommunications networks. Such companies pose a danger to US national security and should not provide international telecommunications services to and from the United States.
• Clean Store: To remove untrusted applications from US mobile app stores. PRC apps threaten our privacy, proliferate viruses, and spread propaganda and disinformation. American’s most sensitive personal and business information must be protected on their mobile phones from exploitation and theft for the CCP’s benefit.
• Clean Apps: To prevent untrusted PRC smartphone manufacturers from pre-installing –or otherwise making available for download – trusted apps on their apps store. Huawei, an arm of the PRC surveillance state, is trading on the innovations and reputations of leading US and foreign companies. These companies should remove their apps from Huawei’s app store to ensure they are not partnering with a human rights abuser.
• Clean Cloud: To prevent US citizens’ most sensitive personal information and our businesses’ most valuable intellectual property, including COVID-19 vaccine research, from being stored and processed on cloud-based systems accessible to our foreign adversaries through companies such as Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent.
• Clean Cable: To ensure the undersea cables connecting our country to the global internet are not subverted for intelligence gathering by the PRC at hyper scale. We will also work with foreign partners to ensure that undersea cables around the world aren’t similarly subject to compromise.

Twenty state attorneys general called on Facebook to better prevent messages of hate, bias and disinformation from spreading, and said the company needed to provide more help to users facing online abuse. In a letter to the social media giant, the officials said they regularly encountered people facing online intimidation and harassment on Facebook. They outlined seven steps the company should take, including allowing third-party audits of hate content and offering real-time assistance to users.