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For Immediate Release
April, 07 2017, 11:00am EDT
Contact:
Timothy Karr: 201-533-8838,,tkarr@freepress.net
Trump's FCC Chairman Meets with Phone and Cable Lobbyists to Unveil Plan to Destroy the Open Internet
President Trump's FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, met with phone- and cable-industry lobbyists this week to unveil his plan to undermine the landmark Net Neutrality protections that were passed in 2015.
According to media reports, Pai intends to repeal the Open Internet Order and replace it with voluntary agreements by internet service providers to maintain a yet-to-be-determined set of conditions.
WASHINGTON
President Trump's FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, met with phone- and cable-industry lobbyists this week to unveil his plan to undermine the landmark Net Neutrality protections that were passed in 2015.
According to media reports, Pai intends to repeal the Open Internet Order and replace it with voluntary agreements by internet service providers to maintain a yet-to-be-determined set of conditions.
In 2015, millions of internet users pushed the FCC to defend Net Neutrality on the strongest legal grounds. The FCC responded by reclassifying broadband internet access, allowing the agency to use its Title II authority to prevent internet service providers from blocking, censoring, throttling or degrading online content, services and applications.
In the two years since the rules were passed, investment by Title II broadband providers has increased by more than 5 percent compared to the two years prior to the ruling.
Free Press President and CEO Craig Aaron made the following statement:
"Ajit Pai is conspiring with cable and phone lobbyists to take away fundamental safeguards that keep the internet open and free. The idea of replacing landmark Net Neutrality rules with voluntary conditions is an outrage and an insult to the millions who fought for them. It's clear Pai thinks his real constituents are Comcast and Verizon, not the American people.
"Nothing Pai says about the harms of Net Neutrality rules has come to pass. And none of his alternative facts or empty promises should be believed now. He's set on destroying the open internet and all of the things it makes possible: free expression, economic innovation, popular organizing and so much more.
"Ajit Pai is carrying out Donald Trump and Steve Bannon's orders to destroy public protections and unleash corporations to do whatever they want without consequences. Millions of people will need to speak out to rescue the internet from Trump and Pai's reactionary agenda. They must be stopped."
Free Press was created to give people a voice in the crucial decisions that shape our media. We believe that positive social change, racial justice and meaningful engagement in public life require equitable access to technology, diverse and independent ownership of media platforms, and journalism that holds leaders accountable and tells people what's actually happening in their communities.
(202) 265-1490LATEST NEWS
Anthropic Sues Trump Pentagon Over 'Supply Chain Risk' Designation
“These actions are unprecedented and unlawful,” the lawsuit said after the Pentagon punished the AI company for refusing to lift restrictions on using their products for autonomous killer robots or mass surveillance.
Mar 09, 2026
Anthropic is suing the Trump administration over its unprecedented attempt to coerce the company into allowing the military to use its artificial intelligence technology without ethical restrictions.
After the company refused to bend to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's demands that it drop limits on the use of its product for specific purposes—including to create autonomous weapons and for the mass surveillance of Americans—the Pentagon formally designated Anthropic as a “supply chain risk" on Thursday.
The designation under the Federal Acquisition Supply Chain Security Act (FASCSA) imposes a sweeping prohibition on contractors using the company's technology, including its highly advanced language model Claude.
Hegseth said that effective immediately, "no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic."
The "supply chain risk" designation has typically only been used against foreign companies with ties to adversaries of the United States. According to the Associated Press, Anthropic is the first American firm to be slapped with the label.
On Monday, the San Francisco-based company filed two lawsuits—one in California federal court and another in the federal appeals court in Washington, DC—each challenging different aspects of the designation.
“These actions are unprecedented and unlawful,” Anthropic’s lawsuit says. “The Constitution does not allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech. No federal statute authorizes the actions taken here. Anthropic turns to the judiciary as a last resort to vindicate its rights and halt the executive’s unlawful campaign of retaliation.”
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned about the dangers of "AI-enabled autocracies" that use their technology to more efficiently invade and dominate less powerful countries and stamp out anti-government sentimet.
"Anthropic’s Usage Policy has always conveyed its view that Claude should not be used for two specific applications: (1) lethal autonomous warfare and (2) surveillance of Americans en masse. Anthropic has never tested Claude for those uses. Anthropic currently does not have confidence, for example, that Claude would function reliably or safely if used to support lethal autonomous warfare," the lawsuit continued.
"These usage restrictions," it said, "are therefore rooted in Anthropic’s unique understanding of Claude’s risks and limitations—including Claude’s capacity to make mistakes and its unprecedented ability to accelerate and automate the analysis of massive amounts of data, including data about American citizens."
The Trump administration issued its ultimatum to Anthropic just days before the US and Israel launched a massive war with Iran, which has involved the targeting of thousands of civilian sites, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, including schools, hospitals, oil and water facilities, and residential areas.
The war has resulted in the deaths of at least 1,255 Iranians so far as of Monday, according to the country's deputy health minister, Ali Jafarian. Most of those killed have been civilians, Jafarian said, and have included about 200 children and 11 healthcare workers.
Hegseth, who has said the US would follow "no stupid rules of engagement" and boasted that the military was raining down “death and destruction from the sky all day long" upon Iran, has described adopting artificial intelligence as something necessary to make America's military "more lethal."
Last week, the Washington Post reported that in Iran, the US has “leveraged the most advanced artificial intelligence it’s ever used in warfare, a tool that could be difficult for the Pentagon to give up even as it severs ties with the company that created it.”
During the war's first 24 hours, Palantir’s Maven Smart System, which contains Claude, reportedly helped US commanders select 1,000 Iranian targets, according to the Post, which credited the program with "speeding the pace of the campaign."
This is despite the fact that, as SkyNews tech correspondent Rowland Manthorpe recently demonstrated, when presented with "tricky images," AI programs from Claude to ChatGPT to Google's Gemini still "struggle to recognize what is really going on."
"Now," he said, "this very same system is being used for war."
That first day of the war, February 28 saw a massacre in which a Tomahawk missile likely directed by the US obliterated a girls' school in Minab, resulting in at least 175 people killed—mostly children aged 7 to 12—in what was reportedly a "double-tap" strike. Despite video evidence suggesting otherwise, the Trump administration has claimed that Iran was responsible for the massacre.
It is unclear what, if any, role artificial intelligence systems played in the bombing of the Minab school, which was adjacent to an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility. One investigation by Al Jazeera concluded that the bombing of the school was likely "deliberate."
Beyond putting the lives of innocent people at risk through indiscriminate attacks that lack human intervention, media analyst and journalist Adam Johnson has warned that the adoption of AI in warfare will also allow the US, Israel, and other countries to avoid responsibility for atrocities their militaries commit while using the technology.
"One reason these systems are attractive to militaries is that they double as moral laundromats. Offsetting responsibility to AI is a feature, not a bug," Johnson said. "If the decision about what to bomb can be pawned off on some over-eager or sloppy 'AI', then no person, or system even, is responsible. That's a primary selling point of off-setting 'target-choosing' responsibilities to a machine. It's not just speed, it's blanket indemnification."
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‘While No One’s Looking,’ Trump DOJ Settles Antitrust Case With Live Nation-Ticketmaster
"This settlement is the clearest sign yet that this administration serves big business, not the people."
Mar 09, 2026
The Trump Justice Department on Monday reportedly reached a tentative deal with Live Nation—the owner of Ticketmaster—to settle a Biden-era antitrust lawsuit that aimed to break up the company, accusing it of illegally monopolizing the live entertainment industry.
News of the settlement, which would not require a breakup of Live Nation, came days after the trial began, with a lawyer for the Trump Justice Department's decimated antitrust division saying last week that the company abuses its market power and earns its massive profits "through illegal action." The antitrust division's counsel in the case, David Dahlquist, was apparently not made aware of the settlement until he appeared in court Monday morning.
Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project, said it is "highly unorthodox for the Justice Department’s lead litigator to be left out of the loop on the settlement and highly prejudicial to the jury’s deliberations."
“According to every observer, this trial was already going well for the Justice Department and states," said Hepner. "They had just won summary judgment and a jury had already heard evidence of Live Nation’s longstanding pattern of retaliation against venues who had attempted to open the market to competition. State AGs are once again left to clean up the mess left by this Administration’s incompetence.”
Under the settlement, which must be approved by a judge, Live Nation "would pay a fine of up to $280 million and divest itself of at least 13 amphitheaters across the country as it opens up its ticketing processes so that competitors can share in the sale of tickets," the Associated Press reported.
The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA), a trade group representing thousands of independent live entertainment venues, festivals, and promoters, noted in a statement that the reported $280 million settlement amount "is the equivalent of four days of [Live Nation's] 2025 revenue, which means they could potentially make it back by this Friday."
"The reported settlement does not appear to include any specific and explicit protections for fans, artists, or independent venues and festivals," said Stephen Parker, NIVA's executive director. "Reported details also indicate that ticket resale platforms could be further empowered through new requirements for Ticketmaster to host their listings, which would likely exacerbate the price gouging potential for predatory resellers and the platforms that serve them."
"If these facts are true," Parker added, "NIVA views this as a failure of the justice system."
And Trump pardons Ticketmaster while no one’s looking. pic.twitter.com/ZEFcSomb05
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) March 9, 2026
The antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation was filed in 2024 after a nearly two-year investigation launched amid mounting public outrage aimed at Ticketmaster, spurred in part by its botched presale of Taylor Swift concert tickets in 2022. Then-President Joe Biden's Justice Department filed the complaint in partnership with 30 state attorneys general, most of whom vowed Monday to continue the fight without the Trump administration's support.
"For years, Live Nation has made enormous profits by exploiting its illegal monopoly and raising costs for shows," said New York Attorney General Letitia James. "My office has led a bipartisan group of attorneys general in suing Live Nation for taking advantage of fans, venues, and artists, and we are committed to holding Live Nation accountable."
The settlement deal comes weeks after Gail Slater, the former head of the Justice Department's antitrust arm, was pushed out by DOJ leadership. Prior to Slater's removal, Live Nation executives and lobbyists had reportedly been negotiating the terms of a possible settlement with senior Justice Department officials outside of the antitrust office, heightening corruption concerns.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, policy director at the Demand Progress Education Fund, said in a statement that "this settlement amounts to a slap on the wrist that tinkers around the edges of the real problem: Live Nation’s monopoly."
"Instead of breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster, Live Nation will now get to continue forcing the vast majority of live venues to use Ticketmaster," said Peterson-Cassin. "Following the ousting of Gail Slater and the gutting of the government’s antitrust enforcement capabilities, this settlement is the clearest sign yet that this administration serves big business, not the people."
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'10 Classrooms Full of Children': US-Israeli War Kills Hundreds of Iranian, Lebanese Kids
"Classrooms of children in Iran. Hundreds of people in Lebanon. The ongoing genocide in Gaza," said Jeremy Corbyn. "The message from our political and media class is clear: Their lives are less valuable than others."
Mar 09, 2026
US and Israeli airstrikes have killed nearly 300 Iranian and Lebanese children over the past nine days as the attackers target apartment towers, single-family homes, schools, medical facilities, and other civilian infrastructure.
Iran's Health Ministry said Sunday that 198 women and 190 minors have been killed by US and Israeli attacks since February 28, including six children under the age of 5. The youngest reported victim is an 8-month-old girl. Children account for more than 30% of those killed, according to the ministry, which also said that 1,044 women and 638 children have been injured.
Overall, Iran said that more than 1,300 people have been killed by the airstrikes, which are reportedly targeting 30 of the country's 31 provinces.
The Lebanese Health Ministry announced Sunday that 394 people, including 42 women and 83 children, have been killed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attacks after Iran-backed Hezbollah joined the war.
The US-based charity Save the Children noted Monday that the number of slain Iranian and Lebanese minors is the equivalent of "10 classrooms full of children."
“It is devastating that airstrikes in Lebanon have reportedly caused the deaths of 83 children... among nearly 300 children killed in the region," said Save the Children Lebanon director Nora Ingdal. "These are not just numbers—these are young lives cut short and children whose futures have been forever scarred by war."
Israel claims it has killed around 200 Hezbollah fighters. However, the IDF's routine attacks on apartment towers and other residential buildings have drawn widespread condemnation.
On Sunday, an IDF strike massacred 18 people sheltering in an apartment building in Sir El-Gharbiyeh in Nabatieh district. The building was housing some of the nearly 700,000 Lebanese forcibly displaced by Israeli attacks, including around 200,000 children. Local officials said women and children were among the victims.
Israeli airstrikes hit a residential block in Sir Al-Gharbiya, a village in southern Lebanon, early this morning, killing at least 20 civilians, among them women and children.
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— Josep Goded (Backup Account But Still Active) (@josepgoded2.bsky.social) March 8, 2026 at 12:25 AM
Another IDF aerial massacre in the southern Lebanese town of Tafahata killed eight people, including five members of the Ezzedine family, whose home was bombed.
"This time is much worse than the previous war,” Nabatieh Civil Defense chief Hussein Faqih told the National, referring to Israel's 2023-25 attacks on Lebanon that killed more than 4,000 people, including nearly 800 women and over 300 children, in retaliation for Hezbollah's rocket strikes in solidarity with Palestine during the Gaza genocide.
In the worst reported bombing of the war—and possibly the deadliest US massacre since over 400 Iraqis were wiped out in a "precision strike" on a Baghdad bomb shelter during the 1991 Gulf War—around 175 Iranians, most of them young children, were killed in what first responders and victims' relatives said was a so-called double-tap strike on an elementary school in Minab in southern Iran.
US military investigators reportedly believe the strike was carried out by US forces, but President Donald Trump has blamed Iran.
On Monday, a group of Democratic US senators lead by Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire said they were "horrified" by the school strike.
"The killing of school children is appalling and unacceptable under any circumstance," the senators said in a statement. "This incident is particularly concerning in light of [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth’s openly cavalier approach to the use of force, including his statement that US strikes in Iran wouldn’t be bound by ‘stupid rules of engagement,’ in his words."
Multiple members of the UK Parliament have condemned the killing of Iranian and Lebanese children. Leftist Independent Jeremy Corbyn, a former Labour leader, said Monday on Bluesky: "Classrooms of children in Iran. Hundreds of people in Lebanon. The ongoing genocide in Gaza. The message from our political and media class is clear: Their lives are less valuable than others."
"Every human being matters, and every human being deserves a life of peace," Corbyn added.
Zahra Sultana, who quit Labour and started the socialist Your Party with Corbyn last year, mocked US and Israeli pretensions, saying in a BBC interview on Sunday—International Women's Day—that the girls in the Minab school were slaughtered "apparently to liberate women."
The US and Israel are committing war crimes in Iran and Lebanon.Keir Starmer must stop acting as Donald Trump’s poodle and end UK arms sales, military cooperation and the use of British bases.
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— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana.bsky.social) March 8, 2026 at 2:10 PM
Retaliatory attacks by Iran have killed at least 11 Israelis and wounded nearly 2,000 others since February 28, according to Israel's government. No Israeli child deaths have been reported.
While the world's focus is on Iran, Israeli occupation forces have continued killing and wounding people in Gaza and the West Bank of Palestine. Drop Site News reported Monday that eight Palestinians were killed in Gaza over the past 24 hours, including two women and at least as many children.
🚨 An Israeli drone strike in central Khan Younis has critically injured a young girl and killed her father. Julia Al-Qedra was preparing to leave for kindergarten when the strike hit. Her father, Ahmad Al-Qedra, who was accompanying her, was killed. Doctors are now fighting to save Julia’s life.
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— Drop Site (@dropsitenews.com) March 7, 2026 at 12:24 PM
More than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded by Israeli forces since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. More than 20,000 children have been killed and over 44,000 others wounded. More than 1 in 4 fatalities have been children in a war for which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, and Israel is facing a genocide case currently before the International Court of Justice.
Since the 9/11 attacks, US-led wars have left nearly 1 million people dead in more than half a dozen countries in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa—over 400,000 of them civilians, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
"Every war is a war on children, and once again we are seeing them pay the highest price for a conflict they neither started nor had a say in," Ingdal said Monday.
"Wars have laws, and children must be off limits in every conflict," she added. "World leaders must act urgently to prevent further escalation. There must be an immediate cessation of hostilities, and all parties must uphold international humanitarian law and do everything in their power to protect civilians—especially children.”
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