Reporting

Gov Terry McAuliffe (D-VA) has signed a bill to advance the deployment of the small cell infrastructure needed for next-gen 5G wireless broadband.

According to a summary, the bill (SB 1282): "Provides a uniform procedure for the way in which small cell facilities on existing structures are approved by localities and approved and installed in public rights-of-way. The measure includes provisions that establish requirements applicable to the location of micro-wireless facilities. The measure also addresses restrictions by localities and the Department of Transportation regarding the use of public rights-of-way or easements and specifies when a permittee may be required to relocate wireless support structures."

Network neutrality continues to make headlines and draw millions of Federal Communications Commission comments, but the top organizations and companies lobbying the FCC have also been focused on other issues, such as the video relay service and fund for rural deployment. In recent weeks, the agency has received over 170 ex parte filings, or lobbying communications companies and associations make with agency staff and commissioners by phone, in person, or in writing. Here are the top five groups lobbying the FCC between May 8 and June 2:

• 1. Sorenson Communications and 2. ZVRS Holding Company: two providers of video relay services, which allow people with hearing disabilities to communicate by phone using sign language.
• 3. NCTA – The Rural Broadband Association submitted eight filings to the FCC, focused mainly on issues related to the Connect America Fund.
• 4. Benton Foundation submitted five filings focused on the net neutrality proceeding.
• 5. NCTA – The Internet and Television Association also submitted five filings on several topics including spectrum policy issues and paper versus electronic notice requirements for consumers.

House Republicans are tying an ongoing process to roll back Obama-era network neutrality rules with their efforts to expand broadband internet access in rural areas. House Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) offered legislation earlier in 2017 to exempt Internet service providers with fewer than 250,000 subscribers from transparency requirements that were mandated under the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order. Sen Steve Daines (R-MT) has proposed a similar bill on his side of the Capitol.

“While I applaud strongly and enthusiastically what [FCC] Chairman [Ajit] Pai and the commission approved, it does not cover everything that needs to be covered,” Chairman Walden said. “And so I’m hopeful that we can move forward with the legislation that passed the House by a voice vote in January. Hopefully, the Senate would be able to take that up and move it forward.” Chairman Walden, whose 2nd District in eastern Oregon is nearly 70,000-square-miles in size and largely rural, added that high-speed internet access is a particularly important commodity to constituents who lack access to needed services. “I’ve got three counties with no hospitals and no doctors,” he said. “Access for education, access for tele-health, access for the economy and access to high-speed broadband is essential for their way of life in the modern age. And to me, this is the same as saying they need access to water and power and roads.” That’s a similar theme sounded by Chairman Pai during a swing through five northern states to meet with rural broadband providers about the challenges they face in offering internet service to rural communities.

Federal agencies issued just a handful of waivers exempting political appointees from conflict of interest rules in the first three months of the administration, a reflection in part of how President Donald Trump has made it easier for lobbyists to work in agencies they once sought to influence. Documents released by the Office of Government Ethics on June 7 show that through April 30, just 10 Trump appointees who work outside the White House received exemptions from aspects of federal ethics rules.

Although dozens of lobbyists have joined the Trump administration, only one received an ethics waiver addressing his previous lobbying work: Lance Leggitt, the chief of staff for the Department of Health and Human Services. That’s because an executive order that Trump signed in January did away with a rule laid down by former president Barack Obama banning lobbyists from joining agencies they had lobbied in the previous two years. Instead, Trump’s order allows former lobbyists to enter the administration, but prohibits them for two years from working on a specific issue that they lobbied on during the previous two years.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is opening the door to summoning James Comey to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee after the former FBI director declined an invitation. "Under our rules on our committee, if Sen [Dianne] Feinstein [D-CA] would agree to subpoena I would," said Chairman Grassley. Comey is scheduled to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 7, making his first public comments since he was fired by President Donald Trump in May. Sen Richard Burr (R-NC), the chairman of the intelligence panel questioning the ousted FBI chief, said that he anticipated June 7's hearing will be the only time Comey appears before Congress. But members of the Judiciary Committee are continuing to demand that Comey also come before their panel, which has oversight of the FBI.

Free Press and the other challengers to the Federal Communications Commission's decision to reinstate the UHF discount have told a federal court that it makes no sense for the FCC to reinstate a rule it concedes is obsolete "based on the mere possibility that the Commission will, in the future, open a proceeding to consider something that, as of now, a majority of the Commission believes it cannot or should not do." That came in their filing in support of a request for an emergency stay of the implementation of the UHF discount, which was scheduled to happen June 5 but was delayed by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to allow more time for it to consider that stay request and the FCC's response. The filing was also in response to Sinclair's intervention in support of the FCC and in opposition to Free Press' motion for stay.

In defending the stay to the court, Free Press attorneys pointed out that even in voting for returning the discount, FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly said he did not think the FCC had the authority to adjust the statutorily-set 39% cap on a TV station group owner's national audience reach, the reconsideration of which FCC Chairman Ajit Pai had given as a reason for reinstating the discount he conceded was likely obsolete and instead reviewing the discount along with the 39% cap.

As President Donald Trump faces criticism for blocking users on his Twitter account, people across the country say they, too, have been cut off by elected officials at all levels of government after voicing dissent on social media. In Arizona, a disabled Army veteran grew so angry when her congressman blocked her and others from posting dissenting views on his Facebook page that she began delivering actual blocks to his office. A central Texas congressman has barred so many constituents on Twitter that a local activist group has begun selling T-shirts complaining about it. And in Kentucky, the Democratic Party is using a hashtag, #BevinBlocked, to track those who’ve been blocked on social media by Gov Matt Bevin (R-KY).

The growing combat over social media is igniting a new-age legal debate over whether losing this form of access to public officials violates constituents’ First Amendment rights to free speech and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Those who’ve been blocked say it’s akin to being thrown out of a town hall meeting for holding up a protest sign.

Born in the shadowy reaches of the internet, most fake news stories prove impossible to trace to their origin. But researchers at the Atlantic Council, a think tank, excavated the root of one such fake story, involving an incident in the Black Sea in which a Russian warplane repeatedly buzzed a United States Navy destroyer, the Donald Cook.

Like much fake news, the story was based on a kernel of truth. The brief, tense confrontation happened on April 12, 2014, and the Pentagon issued a statement. Then in April, three years later, the story resurfaced, completely twisted, on one of Russia’s main state-run TV news programs. The new version gloated that the warplane had deployed an electronic weapon to disable all operating systems aboard the Cook. That was false, but it soon spread, showing that even with all the global attention on combating fake news, it could still circulate with alarming speed and ease.

Apparently, President Donald Trump’s top communications staff, and much of his senior White House team, did not know the president was going to make the official announcement for nominating James Comey’s successor early on June 7 via a single tweet. Several observers noted that President Trump’s Christopher Wray announcement did not arrive with any fact sheet or official press release, as would be expected with news of this weight. And it’s just the latest instance of President Trump’s senior staffers, particularly his communications and press shop, being cut out of the loop, undermined, and frazzled by their unpredictable boss and his compulsive tweeting habit.

Two of the nation’s top intelligence officials said in a hearing they would not discuss specifics of private conversations with President Donald Trump, declining to say whether they had been asked to push back against an FBI probe into possible coordination between his campaign and the Russian government.

Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats refused to say whether it was true that President Trump asked Coats if he could reach out to then-FBI Director James B. Comey and dissuade him from pursuing the Michael Flynn matter. “I don’t believe it’s appropriate for me to address that in a public session,’’ Coats said. “I don’t think this is the appropriate venue to do this in.’’ He added: “I have never felt pressure to intervene or interfere in any way … in an ongoing investigation.’’ Similarly, National Security Agency Director Michael S. Rogers declined to directly answer Sen Mark Warner’s (D-VA) question of whether President Trump sought his aid in downplaying the investigation.