As the longest federal government shutdown in history likely nears an end, industry lawyers who depend on FCC decisions said there’s no question the companies they represent have taken a hit. Among the biggest problems, they said, are that everything the FCC has done has taken longer, while some transactions and license applications aren’t being processed with key systems offline.

Florida "finds itself at ground zero" on the question of whether do not call registry protections extend to sending text messages, with three different federal courts disagreeing, Bradley lawyers Alexis Buese and Stephen Parsley blogged last week. That raises the odds that the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will have to weigh in on the issue, they said. This year saw the Northern and Middle districts of Florida finding in separate decisions that texts aren't calls within the meaning of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act's DNC sections, but the Southern District decided the opposite, the lawyers wrote. Businesses shouldn't assume uniform protection across districts, and compliance strategies "should remain conservative until appellate clarity emerges."

There are probably five justices who will find that the reciprocal tariffs were not permissible under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act that the president used to impose them, according to Georgetown University Law Center Professor Marty Lederman. Lederman, a senior fellow in the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown, was one of two guests on the weekly Washington International Trade Association podcast that aired Nov. 7.

Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Indian Affairs Committee Vice Chairman Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, pressed top Commerce Department officials late Thursday to explain why the Trump administration has frozen $980 million in unobligated Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP) funding and halted an additional $294 million allocated in December 2024. Meanwhile, Senate Small Business Committee Chair Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, is circulating a draft bill, called the Recovering Excess Communications Appropriations While Protecting Telecommunications Upgrades, Reinvestment and Expansion (Recapture) Act, in a bid to claw back states’ non-deployment BEAD funding.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, blocked a vote on a bill that would end tariffs on imported coffee.

Five Senate Democrats led by Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., urged the Treasury Department Nov. 5 to provide more information about how it is implementing new restrictions on U.S. outbound investment in China.

California Privacy Protection Agency legislative staff is closely watching potential preemption efforts on Capitol Hill while developing possible bills to tighten the California Consumer Privacy Act in its home state’s legislature, said an agency official during the CalPrivacy Board’s meeting Friday. The proposed bills would add whistleblower protections, require alternative methods for submitting consumer privacy requests and expand California’s deletion right to cover all personal information collected about a consumer.

There are probably five justices who will find that the reciprocal tariffs were not permissible under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act that the president used to impose them, according to Georgetown University Law Center Professor Marty Lederman. Lederman, a senior fellow in the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown, was one of two guests on the weekly Washington International Trade Association podcast that aired Nov. 7.

Various members of the trade bar speculated that the president's tariff authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act may face serious limits once the Supreme Court issues a decision in the lead cases on President Donald Trump's IEEPA tariffs. Following a Nov. 5 oral argument in which many of the justices appeared skeptical of Trump's sweeping use of the IEEPA to impose tariffs, many lawyers have said change may be coming in the world of trade.

The Court of International Trade assigned on Nov. 4 another International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs case to a three-judge panel consisting of Judges Gary Katzmann, Timothy Reif and Jane Restani (PGN International Group v. Donald J. Trump, CIT # 25-00240).