Presented by Charter Communications
With help from John Hendel, Cristiano Lima and Leah Nylen
Editor’s Note: Morning Tech is a free version of POLITICO Pro Technology's morning newsletter, which is delivered to our subscribers each morning at 6 a.m. The POLITICO Pro platform combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day’s biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro.
Quick Fix
— Simington decision on tap: The Senate will vote today on whether to green-light President Donald Trump’s FCC pick Nathan Simington, despite Democrats and civil society groups calling him “a deeply dangerous nominee.”
— Going, going to the highest bidder: Telecom giants Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile are among the dozens of firms hungry — and fighting — for the 5G spectrum up for grabs today at the FCC’s long-awaited auction of the coveted C-band airwaves.
— MT exclusive: Democratic senators fear that tech bias will worsen racial disparities in hiring in the post-Covid world, and a group led by Sen. Michael Bennet is demanding that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission share its findings on the issue.
GREETINGS, TECHLINGS: IT’S TUESDAY. WELCOME TO MORNING TECH! I’m your host, Alexandra Levine.
Got a news tip? Write me at [email protected], and follow @Ali_Lev on Twitter and @alexandra.levine on Instagram. An event for our calendar? Send details to [email protected]. Anything else? Team info below. And don't forget: Add @MorningTech and @PoliticoPro on Twitter.
Tech of the Town
FCC NOMINEE HITS THE SENATE FLOOR — The full chamber is voting today on Simington, which has prompted Democrats and advocacy groups to plead for lawmakers to pump the brakes. Their case: Hold off, and wait to pair a Republican nominee for the five-member agency with a Democratic nominee next year, when President-elect Joe Biden will be making multiple Democratic FCC nominations.
— Senators will vote to cut off debate at noon, and then if cloture is invoked, on whether to confirm Simington during a 4 p.m. vote series.
— “Nathan Simington is a deeply dangerous nominee,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) cautioned during a virtual event protesting the nominee on Monday. “He is conflicted, unprepared and unqualified.” Blumenthal joined advocacy groups including Public Knowledge, Fight for the Future and MediaJustice in slamming the nominee. Democrats suggest Simington, a Commerce Department staffer, has been less than forthright about his role in Trump’s attempts to go after social media companies.
— Predictions: Simington’s exact support is unclear, but many expect he may be able to clear the GOP-controlled Senate despite Democratic outcry. If he’s confirmed, Biden’s FCC would be deadlocked with two Republicans and two Democrats at the outset, hampering the incoming administration’s agenda.
AND TODAY’S THE DAY: FCC KICKS OFF LONG-AWAITED 5G AUCTION — It’s finally time to play the C-band after more than a year of wrangling both on the commission and off. Wireless carriers are ravenous to buy these prime 5G airwaves, which FCC Chair Ajit Pai persuaded satellite companies to give up as part of a deal negotiated earlier this year. Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile are all expected to be active bidders given this spectrum is likely to boost the 5G service they’re able to offer. Here are the 57 qualified bidders.
— Key detail to watch: There was bipartisan appetite this year for crafting legislation to tap the auction’s proceeds — which could total billions of dollars — for purposes like rural broadband buildout rather than simply dumping that cash into the Treasury. Although the auction is happening now, Congress could still move to direct where the revenue goes.
— Speaking of 5G: The wireless industry is likely pleased to see Biden picking retired Gen. Lloyd Austin to head the Pentagon instead of longtime rumored contender Michèle Flournoy. She had close ties to former Google CEO Eric Schmidt (they co-hosted a fundraiser for Biden in September, per Recode), who unsettled some telecom executives late this year with his talk of shaking up the 5G wireless marketplace by assigning a third-party wholesaler to dole out the Pentagon’s prime airwaves.
FIRST IN MT: SENATE DEMOCRATS FEAR TECH BIAS COULD HARM POST-PANDEMIC HIRING — A group of Senate Democrats is voicing concern today that biases in hiring technologies could exacerbate racial and ethnic inequalities as businesses look ahead to reopening in the latter stages of the pandemic. In a letter led by Bennet to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the lawmakers press the agency to offer a full accounting of whether it’s investigated or studied discrimination related to the use of hiring tech — findings they say could be crucial as companies staff back up. The missive also offers a preview of one of the issues Democrats in Washington will be tracking in the tech space as the Covid-19 crisis winds down.
— What they’re asking: “It is essential that these hiring processes advance equity in hiring, rather than erect artificial and discriminatory barriers to employment,” the lawmakers write. They request information on the Commission’s ability to carry out “the necessary research and oversight to ensure equitable hiring throughout the economic recovery and beyond.”
— Signees include: Cory Booker, Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren, Catherine Cortez Masto, Chris Coons, Ron Wyden, Tina Smith, Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley.
MORE FLOOR WATCH: HOUSE TO VOTE ON SECTION 230-LESS NDAA — The chamber is slated to vote today on a version of the annual defense spending bill that doesn’t include any provisions targeting the tech industry’s liability shield, despite Trump’s threat to veto the package if it doesn’t repeal the statute. While some Republicans have called for the package to include language to amend Section 230, the push has been rebuffed by congressional leaders and the chairs of the key committees overseeing the bill.
— What to watch for: Will the House advance the bill with a veto-proof supermajority? Even if Trump follows through on his threat to veto the defense package, which has passed for 59 years straight, Congress can still override it with a two-thirds majority vote in each chamber. We’ll be tracking today to see if the House clears that 290-vote threshold in its initial attempt to get the package signed into law, and if so, by how wide a margin — or, if Trump succeeds in peeling off enough allies to cause more headaches for leaders on Capitol Hill.
Supreme Court
SUPREME COURT PUTS EAR TO ROBOCALLS, WITH FACEBOOK AS THE BACKDROP — The high court this morning is hearing another case about the 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which has shielded consumers from unwanted calls for years. (The Supreme Court not long ago heard a separate case on the topic and upheld the robocall ban.)
— At issue in Facebook v. Duguid, the current case before the court: what, exactly, amounts to a so-called auto-dialer? That key concept in the law is still a source of debate between litigation-wary business interests including Facebook and consumer advocates, who worry that a narrow reading of the law could unleash the robocall floodgates (above and beyond the several billion Americans already receive every month). Here’s a primer on the case, from John.
SUPREMES SEEK DOJ ADVICE ON COMCAST ANTITRUST CASE — The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Justice Department to weigh in on an antitrust suit between Comcast and digital ad company Viamedia. Comcast asked the high court to take up the suit after an appeals court reinstated Viamedia’s allegations that the cable giant illegally cut off access to its infrastructure that lets ad representatives pay to have advertising shown across cable companies. The case concerns a tricky area of antitrust law: when a company can sue a monopolist over refusing to do business.
— Timing is everything: The Justice Department’s brief won’t be due for several months, meaning Biden’s team will get to make the call on what to tell the justices. Biden’s DOJ could opt to take a position more favorable to Viamedia, particularly given recent scrutiny on antitrust issues by House Democrats. A recent House Judiciary report on antitrust and tech called for overriding some Supreme Court decisions to make it easier for antitrust suits involving so-called refusal-to-deal claims.
MORE SCOTUS FOR YA: STATES, ADVOCATES DEFEND FTC BEFORE HIGH COURT — A bipartisan group of 30 states plus D.C., along with advocacy groups like Public Citizen and Open Markets Institute, urged the Supreme Court on Monday to uphold the FTC’s ability to make companies pay back consumers or give up ill-gotten gains for illegal conduct. In briefs submitted Friday and Monday, the groups and other consumer protection advocates said the FTC needs to ensure lawbreakers don’t profit off illegal schemes. The justices are set to hear the case on Jan. 13.
BIDEN TRANSITION WATCH — Maya Harris, who is the sister of the vice-president elect and has no formal role in the Biden transition, “has participated in conversations with allies aimed at boosting her husband’s candidacy for attorney general,” POLITICO reports.
Transitions
Nate Hodson, chief of staff to Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), will become Republican staff director of the House Energy and Commerce Committee for the 117th Congress, when McMorris Rodgers will serve as ranking member. … Yahoo Finance named Zoom the 2020 Company of the Year.
Silicon Valley Must Reads
Pornhub probe: Following Nick Kristof’s New York Times report detailing how videos on Pornhub depict child abuse, Visa and Mastercard said they would investigate their financial ties to the adult website, NYT reports.
Uber quits the AV game: “Uber is selling its self-driving car unit to Aurora Innovations, an autonomous vehicle tech company founded by the former head engineer of Google’s self-driving car project,” my colleague Tanya Snyder reports for Pros in Morning Transportation. “Uber’s sale to Aurora closes the fraught chapter of Uber’s attempts to create its own self-driving car, marred by a high-profile pedestrian death and revelations of a lax corporate safety culture, not to mention allegations of stealing Google’s company secrets.”
Quick Downloads
Another wrinkle in vaccine rollout: A new smartphone tool designed to track side effects in the Covid vaccines that will soon be distributed to essential workers in the U.S. could be vulnerable to manipulation, WaPo reports, “raising concerns malicious actors could gain access to the system to undermine confidence in the shots.”
DOL denial: The Labor Department is denying claims that Secretary Eugene Scalia politically interfered in a pay discrimination lawsuit against Oracle Corp. and that it moved to ensure a whistleblower involved in the case would be ousted from the department before Joe Biden becomes president, POLITICO reports.
Revisiting pandemic pledge: The FCC pushed internet service providers to promise they wouldn't penalize customers who struggled to pay their internet bills during the pandemic, but a Law360 analysis of found that the pledge wasn't as broadly effective as the agency claimed.
Record-setting settlement: Dish Network will pay $210 million for telemarketing violations, the Justice Department announced.
Tips, comments, suggestions? Send them along via email to our team: Bob King ([email protected], @bkingdc), Heidi Vogt ([email protected], @HeidiVogt), Nancy Scola ([email protected], @nancyscola), Steven Overly ([email protected]m, @stevenoverly), John Hendel ([email protected], @JohnHendel), Cristiano Lima ([email protected], @viaCristiano), Alexandra S. Levine ([email protected], @Ali_Lev), and Leah Nylen ([email protected], @leah_nylen).
TTYL.
"seal" - Google News
December 08, 2020 at 10:00PM
https://ift.tt/33TOMoy
Will the Senate seal the Simington deal? - POLITICO - Politico
"seal" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3c1qdrW
https://ift.tt/2SzWv5y
No comments:
Post a Comment