Here’s How President Trump Could Destroy Net Neutrality

Network neutrality can’t be torpedoed overnight. The Federal Communications Commission rules prohibiting online fast lanes and discriminatory broadband practices are now US policy, and they can’t be dismantled at the whim of an authoritarian president. But a Trump-backed, Republican-led FCC could simply stop enforcing the net neutrality policy, rendering it essentially toothless. That could unleash the nation’s largest cable and phone companies, including Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, to expand controversial practices like “zero-rating” that are designed to circumvent net neutrality.

In order to fully kill the FCC’s net neutrality protections, President-elect Trump will most likely have to work with GOP lawmakers like Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) to re-write the Communications Act to strip out the FCC’s Title II authority regulating the nation’s largest broadband companies as “common carriers.” Or the Republican-led Congress could simply remove funding for the FCC’s ability to enforce the net neutrality policy through language in the next must-pass budget bill, which would certainly be signed by President-elect Trump.