Li Zhou

Federal Election Commission member Ellen Weintraub issued personal requests to Facebook, Google and Twitter to submit a comment aimed at helping inform a rulemaking the FEC is doing on internet ad disclosures. Commissioner Weintraub notes the urgency, since the comment deadline is Nov 9.

The Senate Commerce Committee is adding a few new Democratic faces, according to a list released by incoming-Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Here’s a rundown of who’s staying and going, assuming the full Democratic Caucus ratifies the moves next month:
Staying : Ranking Member Bill Nelson (FL), Maria Cantwell (WA), Amy Klobuchar (MN), Richard Blumenthal (CT), Brian Schatz (HI), Ed Markey (MA), Cory Booker (NJ), Tom Udall (NM) and Gary Peters (MI).
Leaving: Joe Manchin (WV) and Claire McCaskill (MO).
New: Tammy Baldwin (WI) and Sens.-elect Tammy Duckworth (IL), Maggie Hassan (NH) and Catherine Cortez Masto (NV).

House Commerce Committee Chairman-to-be Greg Walden (R-OR) is losing his longtime chief of staff. Brian MacDonald, Walden's top aide for the last 18 years, announced that he's set to start a new chapter and relinquish his role by the end of December 2016. MacDonald was a key architect of Walden's bid for the Commerce Committee gavel. "He is one of the hardest-working, most professional, and loyal chiefs on the Hill," Chairman Walden said. MacDonald's goodbye announcement said that Lorissa Bounds will be his replacement in Walden's personal office. No word yet on his next steps.

President-elect Donald Trump tweeted his critique of the newest “Saturday Night Live” sketch about him, calling out the show for being "biased" — and for not dedicating enough time to skewering both sides (presumably) of the political spectrum. “I watched parts of @nbcsnl Saturday Night Live last night. It is a totally one-sided, biased show — nothing funny at all,” he wrote, adding, “Equal time for us?"

If that sentiment sounds familiar, it’s because the idea of requiring television programs to provide “equal time” for opposing political viewpoints was a key tenet of the Fairness Doctrine, an extinct Federal Communications Commission policy introduced in 1949. It held that television and radio stations with FCC-issued licenses needed to air both perspectives when shows addressed controversial issues like politics. The Fairness Doctrine was discontinued in 1987 and its language was officially erased from the books in 2011. The push against resurrecting the policy has come from both sides of the aisle, with former FCC Commissioner Julius Genachowski arguing that it could “chill” free speech and Republicans expressing concerns that such regulations would put an end to programs like right-wing talk radio. The FCC continues to have an Equal Time rule, which ensures that a competing political candidate can get even exposure on a radio or television program if they want it. As Alec Baldwin pointed out in a response to Trump’s tweet, that rule does not apply to elected officials.

We're learning more about Jeffrey Eisenach, the Trump transition team's point man on telecommunications. In 2014 he co-authored a pitch for Congress to curtail much of the Federal Communications Commission's jurisdiction and responsibilities. Submitted as part of comments to the House communications subcommittee's work on updating the Communications Act, Eisenach and colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute argue that much of the agency's current function is duplicative of agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and National Telecommunications and Information Administration. "Congress should rationalize the commission, apportioning the majority of its functions and resources to its sister agencies. In particular, Congress should consider merging the FCC's competition and consumer protection functions with those of the [FTC] thus combining the FCC's industry expertise and capabilities with the generic statutory authority of the FTC," they write.

Eisenach's thinking takes on a new importance as he helps shape Trump's telecom policy and who will carry it out. He declined to elaborate on the 2014 comments, but the full filing is worth a read. While the authors say they don't want to eliminate "important functions" that the FCC should play in the communications world, those responsibilities "would be preserved under the auspices of a new agency with limited jurisdiction and discretion."

The Trump transition's new website features pages copied whole-cloth from the site of the nonpartisan and nonprofit Partnership for Public Service's Center for Presidential Transitions, with minimal attribution and no editing. The seemingly rushed copy-and-paste job leaves the site with references to materials that don't exist on the platform -- like a paragraph that points to a "chart below," with no chart below - and a pointer to "our own Center library," which links instead to a resource on the nonprofit's site.

Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante submitted her resignation to Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, a Library spokesperson confirmed. Pallante had been removed as head of the Copyright Office and was reassigned to be a senior adviser for digital strategy -- but she's not taking the job. In a statement, House Judiciary Committee leaders Bob Goodlatte and John Conyers called her departure "a tremendous loss" for the office and for American creators. The lawmakers, who are in the middle of a broad review of copyright law, also suggested it might be time for a reassessment of how the register of copyrights is selected -- right now, the decision is up to the Librarian of Congress.

Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and her progressive allies are pushing Hillary Clinton to curb the market power of tech giants like Apple, Amazon and Google - putting the Democratic nominee in a bind over how hard to police an industry that's showered her with money and support in 2016. If she wins in November, Clinton would have to fill a raft of positions at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, the government's twin cops on the competition beat.

The tech industry - which has largely avoided major showdowns with Washington's antitrust regulators during the Obama Administration - could easily face new scrutiny if Clinton bows to the Sen Warren wing and appoints people with a tougher eye for enforcement." Another name being circulated for a Clinton antitrust position is Daniel Weitzner, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who served in key roles at the Commerce Department and the White House during Obama's presidency. There's also chatter about whether Sharis Pozen, now the vice president for competition at GE, could return to government. During her tenure as acting assistant attorney general at DOJ, she oversaw the agency's landmark effort to block AT&T's proposed purchase of T-Mobile - and she also brought DOJ's successful case against Apple for the way it priced its ebooks. Two Federal Communications Commission aides - Gigi Sohn , an adviser to Chairman Tom Wheeler, and Travis LeBlanc, the agency's enforcement chief - are also seen as contenders for an FTC commissioner post.

A new letter to the Federal Trade Commission by Rep Hank Johnson (D-GA) and friends asks the agency to probe the “increasing difficulty that app developers have in reaching and communicating with customers in some app ecosystems.” But the note has a pretty clear target: the war between Apple and Spotify. The letter appears to side with Spotify, which has fiercely opposed Apple’s practice of collecting 30 percent of all new subscriptions to services that are sold through the Apple App Store. The two companies have clashed repeatedly over the issue since Apple began making plans to enter the music-streaming business — with Spotify arguing that Apple is acting anti-competitively.

The early contenders to run the Federal Communications Commission in a Hillary Clinton administration include longtime Clinton allies and donors, say sources close to the campaign.

Among the names are Susan Ness, a top Clinton fundraiser who previously served as an FCC commissioner under President Bill Clinton; Karen Kornbluh, an executive at audience measurement firm Nielsen who has deep Democratic Party ties; and Phil Verveer, an FCC official and longtime friend of the Clintons. Of course, it’s still early for a formal list, but that hasn’t stopped telecom types from coalescing around those perceived to be front-runners for a commission spot. Nearly everyone on the list is part of the Clinton campaign's network of tech advisers, which helped draft the Democratic nominee's tech policy platform.