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For Immediate Release
July, 24 2018, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Josh Tabish, +1-778-990-1218, press@fightforthefuture.org
Founder of Anchorage-based Company CustomMousePad.com Goes Public After Silence From Congressman's Office on Pledge to Help Restore Net Neutrality
Local entrepreneur Jennie Stewart of CustomMousePad.com has decided to go public about a bombshell promise from Republican Congressman Don Young (AK-0) to sign the Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution discharge petition to help restore net neutrality. The Congressman pledged to sign the CRA during a meeting with Stewart on Capitol Hill in June.If he follows through, he would become the second GOP House representative to sign the CRA to overturn the FCC's repeal.
WASHINGTON
Local entrepreneur Jennie Stewart of CustomMousePad.com has decided to go public about a bombshell promise from Republican Congressman Don Young (AK-0) to sign the Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution discharge petition to help restore net neutrality. The Congressman pledged to sign the CRA during a meeting with Stewart on Capitol Hill in June.If he follows through, he would become the second GOP House representative to sign the CRA to overturn the FCC's repeal.
The promise came during a visit at the Congressman's DC office during a "Day of Advocacy For Net Neutrality" hosted by a coalition of public interest organizations. Despite productive correspondence between Ms. Stewart and Rep Young's office following the meeting, the Congressman's team has since gone quiet and has yet to deliver on their commitment to sign the CRA. His office has not responded to calls from several journalists inquiring about the CRA.
Ms. Stewart then notified digital rights group Fight for the Future, who is today helping her go public with her story.
"The radio silence from Congressman Young's office has made me pretty anxious. But he promised he would sign the CRA to restore net neutrality protections for Alaska businesses like mine, so I'm confident he'll follow through," said Jennie Stewart, founder of Custom Everything Inc. and CustomMousePad.com, "When he first said he'd sign the CRA I was thrilled. It was amazing to hear such a high-ranking member of Congress take such a strong, independent stance on this, and put the needs of his constituents ahead of giants like GCI and AT&T. But I'm afraid his silence means the telecom lobby got to him - and I really hope I'm wrong about that."
"For Congressman Young, following his pledge to sign the net neutrality CRA is a no-brainer," said Fight for the Future Executive Director, Sarah Roth-Gaudette, "He has the safest seat in the country, and can afford to stand up to the telecoms on this. Alaska businesses rely on net neutrality to reach customers for everything from sales to telemedicine and education, but they're paying more money for less Internet than anywhere in the country. They simply cannot afford to be blocked, throttled, or charged new fees by ISPs. We hope Representative Young decides to follow through on his promise before Congress breaks for the August recess so he can be welcomed back to his district as an Internet hero."
The CRA was recently passed in the Senate with a historic bipartisan vote of 52-47. The discharge petition currently has 175 co-signers including one other Republican. If 215 House reps sign the discharge petition, it will force a vote to restore strong net neutrality rules preventing blocking, throttling, and new fees online.
Fight for the Future is a group of artists, engineers, activists, and technologists who have been behind the largest online protests in human history, channeling Internet outrage into political power to win public interest victories previously thought to be impossible. We fight for a future where technology liberates -- not oppresses -- us.
(508) 368-3026LATEST NEWS
Trump Says US Fighting Iran War ‘To Help Israel... Saudi Arabia... Qatar... UAE... Kuwait’—China Too
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During his campaign for reelection, one of President Donald Trump's central pitches was that the US needed to stay out of foreign wars in order to prioritize "America first."
But his decision to join Israel and launch a massive war with Iran, which has caused turmoil across the American economy, has left many voters rather skeptical of these motivations, believing the war benefits other nations—particularly Israel—more than the US.
That perception has not been assuaged by statements from officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who acknowledged in the early days of the war that a so-called "imminent threat" to the US only existed because Israel had planned to attack, or by the president's recent comment that he doesn't "think about Americans' financial situation" regarding the war.
In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News on Thursday, Trump appeared to further affirm that the Iran invasion's impact on his own country is far from top-of-mind.
Trump was asked by Hannity about his weekslong effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran closed in response to the war's launch, causing a spike in global oil prices that has hit the US. Reopening the strait has become one of Trump's main demands as he pushes for a deal with Iran, even though it was open before the war began.
But Trump said on Thursday that other countries "need the strait more than we need it open." He cited his administration's aggressive expansion of oil drilling, which he has claimed would make the US more resilient to the oil shock, although it hasn't been enough to stop gas prices from soaring above $4.50/gallon on average.
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Hannity interjected: "It also helps China."
Speaking of his summit this week with Chinese leaders, including President Xi Jinping, Trump said: "Actually, I told him today, I said, 'You know, we're helping you, and we're helping you in another way,' because I don't think they want, I don't think China wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon either.'"
Trump's director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified in a written statement to Congress in March that Iran had not tried to rebuild its nuclear enrichment capability after earlier US and Israeli attacks last June, which undercut one of the administration's primary rationales for war.
Trump's former National Counterterrorism Center director, Joe Kent, said last week that the US intelligence community agreed in the days leading up to the war that "Iran wasn’t developing a nuclear weapon,” but said that these assessments were undermined by persuasion from "a foreign government—Israel," which "won the argument and forced us into this war."
Many of the US's Persian Gulf allies have publicly tried to distance themselves from the war, especially in the face of retaliation from Iran. But The Associated Press has reported that countries like the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain have pushed Trump behind the scenes to continue escalating the war in an effort to weaken Iran militarily and force more permanent changes to the regime.
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Independent journalist Borzou Daragahi said that with his latest comments, "Trump again says the quiet part out loud—America entered the Iran war to support a genocidal ethno-state and brutal absolute autocracies, all of whom are his political and commercial financiers."
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The CIA's X account posted photos of some of Director John Ratcliffe's meetings, blurring the faces of US intelligence officials who accompanied the agency chief. In a statement, the CIA said it met with Raúl Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of former Cuban President Raúl Castro; Interior Minister Lázaro Álvarez Casas; and the head of Cuba's intelligence services.
Havana, Cuba pic.twitter.com/7S7TtJPyf5
— CIA (@CIA) May 14, 2026
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Ratcliffe, the highest-ranking Trump administration official to visit Cuba, decided to visit "to personally deliver President Donald Trump's message that the United States is prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes," the CIA said.
A CIA official told NewsNation that "while the director emphasized that President Trump prefers dialogue, the Cubans should have no illusions that the President will not enforce red lines."
Trump has repeatedly threatened to seize Cuba by force, describing the island country as his next military target after Venezuela and Iran. Fears of an imminent military attack have grown in recent weeks amid Trump's belligerent rhetoric and surging US surveillance flights off Cuba's coast.
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The spy chief's trip came a day after Cuba's energy minister announced that months after Trump imposed an oil blockade on the island, "we have absolutely no fuel oil, absolutely no diesel."
The same day, the US State Department dangled "$100 million in direct humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people." Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said Cuba's leadership is "willing to hear the details of the offer and the manner in which it would be implemented."
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Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel echoed that sentiment, writing in a Thursday social media post that "the damage could be alleviated in a much easier and more expeditious way by lifting or easing the blockade, as it is well known that the humanitarian situation is coldly calculated and induced."
Progressive lawmakers in the US are imploring the Trump administration to end US economic warfare against Cuba, engage diplomatically with the country, and drop any plans for a military assault.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who has come under attack from Republican lawmakers for visiting Cuba in April, said Thursday that "Cuba has run out of diesel and fuel oil and is enduring some of the worst blackouts in decades because of the US’ cruel oil blockade."
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The global energy crisis caused by President Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran is set to worsen in the coming months, as The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the world is "burning through its oil safety net."
Even though oil prices surged at the start of the war, which led Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz to commercial ships, that increase was temporarily mitigated by crude surpluses that allowed countries to add more petroleum to the market.
However, the Journal reported that those reserve stocks are being depleted at an unprecedented pace, with inventories declining by nearly 250 million barrels in just the first two months of the conflict.
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The Journal cited a report from consulting firm Eurasia Group estimating that, at the current rate of depletion, US diesel reserves are set to fall below 100 million barrels for the first time in 23 years by the end of this month.
Ellen Wald, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center, told the Journal that while the increased price of oil would be partially offset by a decrease in consumption, the sheer scale of the coming supply crunch is so big that prices will continue to spiral upward.
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This problem could be exacerbated further if Trump decides to renew attacks on Iran, which could lead to devastating Iranian counterstrikes on oil production facilities throughout the region.
Zeteo reported on Thursday that "preparations for an imminent new phase of Trump’s Iran war have accelerated," as the president "has grown increasingly frustrated by the state of peace talks."
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