Former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler slammed current Chairman Brendan Carr’s handling of the Skydance/Paramount deal in an op-ed piece published Saturday by The Guardian. Wheeler said he expects the FCC to cease “slow-walking” the deal after CBS agreed last week to a $16 million settlement in President Donald Trump’s personal lawsuit against the network (see 2507020053). By holding up the deal over a news distortion complaint against CBS, Carr exceeded the FCC’s traditional authority, Wheeler said, adding that the chairman “has not been shy” about using FCC authority to achieve political goals. “It is time to unfurl the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner at the Federal Communications Commission,” Wheeler wrote. “What was once an independent, policy-based agency has been transformed into a performance-based agency, using any leverage it can discover or invent to further the Trump Maga message.”
The FCC on Thursday released draft items scheduled for votes at its July 24 open meeting, the second with a Republican majority in this Trump administration. Chairman Brendan Carr sketched out details of the meeting in a wide-ranging speech Wednesday (see 2507020036). The main focus will be cutting regulations and streamlining copper retirements and the pole attachment process. Among other items, the FCC would decline to adopt a tribal priority window prior to the AWS-3 reauction. Another draft order requires text providers to support a text-to-988 georouting requirement.
House action on the Senate-cleared version of the HR-1 budget reconciliation package, previously known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, appeared in doubt Wednesday afternoon amid resistance from several GOP lawmakers. Critics of Senate Commerce Committee Republicans’ HR-1 spectrum language held out hope amid the ruckus that lawmakers would make additional bands ineligible for potential reallocation. The Senate narrowly passed its HR-1 language Tuesday (see 2507010070).
The Wireline Bureau has extended several incarcerated people’s communications service (IPCS) deadlines until April 1, 2027, and the FCC could reevaluate aspects of the 2024 IPCS order, said an order and news release Monday. The new order waived the deadlines for complying with the rate cap, site commission, and per-minute pricing rules adopted in 2024 “to ensure sufficient funding for safety and security tools, while IPCS providers and the facilities they serve address the challenges of implementing these requirements.” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a release that the 2024 order “is leading to negative, unintended consequences” where prisons limit the availability of IPCS, and it “does not allow providers and institutions to properly consider public safety and security interests when facilitating these services.”
As the FCC commissioners voted up a trio of regulatory items Thursday, Chairman Brendan Carr was predicting "a very, very busy" July and August, with a greater focus on accelerating infrastructure buildouts and freeing up spectrum. Approved at the agency's June meeting were orders streamlining cable TV rate regulation and axing the professional engineer certification requirement for the biannual broadband data collection filings, as well as an NPRM proposing to end the requirement that telecommunications relay services providers support the now-obsolete ASCII transmission format. Thursday's meeting was the first for Republican Commissioner Olivia Trusty, who was sworn in Monday (see 2506230057). With Carr now having a two-person Republican majority, agency watchers anticipate that it will ramp up more substantive work aligned with his agenda (see 2506200052).
The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling Friday that likely means less certainty for FCC actions and those of other federal agencies under the Hobbs Act. The decision comes a year after SCOTUS overruled the Chevron doctrine, which had required courts to give deference to agency decisions, in the Loper Bright case (see 2406280043). The latest from the court was Friday's 6-3 decision in McLaughlin Chiropractic Associates v. McKesson, a much-watched case on the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (see 2506200011).
Californians can't combine their state and federal Lifeline subsidies for stand-alone wireline broadband service, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) said in a decision published Tuesday (docket 20-02-008). The commission's Public Advocate Office and the Utility Reform Network petitioned the CPUC in April 2024 while the FCC was sunsetting the Affordable Connectivity Program. Residents were eligible during the program to combine their subsidies. Several ISPs, including AT&T, Charter, Cox, Consolidated Communications and Frontier, opposed the petition and cited legal, policy and procedural issues. "While we deny the petition based on these procedural flaws, we agree with the petitioners that the commission should explore ways to make broadband more affordable to Californians," the decision said.
Two Texas associations this week petitioned the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals asking it to overturn a January declaratory ruling by the FCC in response to the Salt Typhoon cyberattacks. CTIA, NCTA and USTelecom previously asked the FCC to reconsider the ruling (see 2502190081), which now-Chairman Brendan Carr had opposed (see 2501160041). Commissioners approved it 3-2 in the final days of the Biden administration.
Increased crowding of low earth orbit and greater competition for lunar resources could drive multinational agreements on approaching space and assets there -- but not imminently -- according to a China space program expert. Kevin Pollpeter, the China Aerospace Studies Institute's research director, told the American Bar Association's space law symposium in Washington Thursday that such space resource agreements are a long way off. Space law experts said international harmonization of space regulations faces growing hurdles.
Major communications industry trade associations complained about state broadband regulations in a joint filing at the DOJ in response to a request for comments by the department’s new Anticompetitive Regulations Task Force. Like the FCC’s “Delete” proceeding, the initiative is part of the Trump administration’s push to cut regulation.