May, 09 2022, 01:03pm EDT
White House to Praise ISPs for Offering Cheaper Internet Options, Even While These Same Companies Are Sabotaging Biden's FCC Nominee
WASHINGTON
On Monday, the White House will announce that many major internet service providers are offering lower-cost high-speed internet services to low-income people. Combined with the $30 monthly internet service discount provided through the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) that Congress created in 2021, these plans would effectively provide free access to everyone who is eligible for that program.
President Joe Biden will join Vice President Kamala Harris at a White House event Monday afternoon to discuss these internet offerings, including plans from AT&T and Comcast as well as other large ISPs.
The announcement marks welcome efforts to lower the cost of this essential service. But it comes at a time when the FCC -- the agency that oversees the country's communications industry -- remains deadlocked thanks to these very same internet service providers' stall tactics. Though Biden nominated Gigi Sohn to the FCC more than six months ago, Democratic leaders have thus far failed to call a vote to confirm her, leaving the agency without the 3-2 Democratic majority it needs to rule on a number of critical matters, including oversight of the ACP program. An industry-financed smear campaign geared at hobbling the FCC has blocked progress on Sohn's nomination.
Free Press Action VP of Policy and General Counsel Matt Wood said:
"We're grateful that the White House continues to prioritize internet affordability and we welcome its focus on the ACP initiative that the FCC successfully launched several months ago. That program is already helping tens of millions of people in the United States get and stay online. The biggest barrier to internet access is high prices, and we value any effort that will enable more people to sign up for the ACP program.
"Yet some of the internet service providers appearing at this White House event are sabotaging President Biden's FCC even as they pose for today's photo op. It will be hard to watch the president and vice president stand shoulder to shoulder with the leaders of the same companies orchestrating a smear campaign against Gigi Sohn -- Biden's nominee to the agency charged with overseeing the ACP and making sure the likes of AT&T and Comcast actually live up to their promises.
"We've now been waiting 474 days for President Biden and the Senate to give the nation a fully functional FCC. They have utterly failed to fully staff this vital agency, doing little as Senate Republicans and industry lobbyists blatantly block Sohn and repeatedly delay a vote on her nomination. The failure of the Democratic administration and Senate majority to see beyond this cynical effort and expediently confirm Sohn is undermining the FCC's ability to close the digital divide, protect the open internet and fulfill many other commitments Biden himself has made.
"Sohn is a longtime advocate who's devoted her career to defending the public interest and supporting policies that make broadband more ubiquitous, competitive, affordable, open and secure. She has widespread and nonpartisan support from a broad coalition of civil-society organizations, consumer watchdogs, privacy advocates and even some industry groups.
"The politics of delay and obfuscation have stalled progress on Sohn for months. Industry lobbyists and Republican obstructionists have done everything they can to frustrate this process -- and Democrats have been completely ineffective at stopping them. Continued inaction has squandered the FCC's best chance to address the many crucial communications issues before the nation.
"The leaders of the Democratic Party must stop dragging their feet, and any senator who claims to care about internet access and affordability needs to declare their support for this stellar FCC choice. Senators must reject and denounce the dishonest industry-funded campaign against Sohn, defend this incredibly accomplished nominee and vote to confirm her as soon as possible."
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
Billionaire Palantir Co-Founder Pushes Return of Public Hangings as Part of 'Masculine Leadership' Initiative
"Immaturity masquerading as strength is the defining personal characteristic of our age," said one critic in response.
Dec 07, 2025
Venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of data platform company Palantir, is calling for the return of public hangings as part of a broader push to restore what he describes as "masculine leadership" to the US.
In a statement posted on X Friday, Lonsdale said that he supported changing the so-called "three strikes" anti-crime law to ensure that anyone who is convicted of three violent crimes gets publicly executed, rather than simply sent to prison for life.
"If I’m in charge later, we won’t just have a three strikes law," he wrote. "We will quickly try and hang men after three violent crimes. And yes, we will do it in public to deter others."
Lonsdale then added that "our society needs balance," and said that "it's time to bring back masculine leadership to protect our most vulnerable."
Lonsdale's views on public hangings being necessary to restore "masculine leadership" drew swift criticism.
Gil Durán, a journalist who documents the increasingly authoritarian politics of Silicon Valley in his newsletter "The Nerd Reich," argued in a Saturday post that Lonsdale's call for public hangings showed that US tech elites are "entering a more dangerous and desperate phase of radicalization."
"For months, Peter Thiel guru Curtis Yarvin has been squawking about the need for more severe measures to cement Trump's authoritarian rule," Durán explained. "Peter Thiel is ranting about the Antichrist in a global tour. And now Lonsdale—a Thiel protégé—is fantasizing about a future in which he will have the power to unleash state violence at mass scale."
Taulby Edmondson, an adjunct professor of history, religion, and culture at Virginia Tech, wrote in a post on Bluesky that the rhetoric Lonsdale uses to justify the return of public hangings has even darker intonations than calls for state-backed violence.
"A point of nuance here: 'masculine leadership to protect our most vulnerable' is how lynch mobs are described, not state-sanctioned executions," he observed.
Theoretical physicist Sean Carroll argued that Lonsdale's remarks were symbolic of a kind of performative masculinity that has infected US culture.
"Immaturity masquerading as strength is the defining personal characteristic of our age," he wrote.
Tech entrepreneur Anil Dash warned Lonsdale that his call for public hangings could have unintended consequences for members of the Silicon Valley elite.
"Well, Joe, Mark Zuckerberg has sole control over Facebook, which directly enabled the Rohingya genocide," he wrote. "So let’s have the conversation."
And Columbia Journalism School professor Bill Grueskin noted that Lonsdale has been a major backer of the University of Austin, an unaccredited liberal arts college that has been pitched as an alternative to left-wing university education with the goal of preparing "thoughtful and ethical innovators, builders, leaders, public servants and citizens through open inquiry and civil discourse."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Hegseth Defends Boat Bombings as New Details Further Undermine Administration's Justifications
The boat targeted in the infamous September 2 "double-tap" strike was not even headed for the US, Adm. Frank Bradley revealed to lawmakers.
Dec 07, 2025
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Saturday defended the Trump administration's policy of bombing suspected drug-trafficking vessels even as new details further undermined the administration's stated justifications for the policy.
According to the Guardian, Hegseth told a gathering at the Ronald Reagan presidential library that the boat bombings, which so far have killed at least 87 people, are necessary to protect Americans from illegal drugs being shipped to the US.
"If you’re working for a designated terrorist organization and you bring drugs to this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you," Hegseth said. "Let there be no doubt about it."
However, leaked details about a classified briefing delivered to lawmakers last week by Adm. Frank Bradley about a September 2 boat strike cast new doubts on Hegseth's justifications.
CNN reported on Friday that Bradley told lawmakers that the boat taken out by the September 2 attack was not even headed toward the US, but was going "to link up with another, larger vessel that was bound for Suriname," a small nation in the northeast of South America.
While Bradley acknowledged that the boat was not heading toward the US, he told lawmakers that the strike on it was justified because the drugs it was carrying could have theoretically wound up in the US at some point.
Additionally, NBC News reported on Saturday that Bradley told lawmakers that Hegseth had ordered all 11 men who were on the boat targeted by the September 2 strike to be killed because "they were on an internal list of narco-terrorists who US intelligence and military officials determined could be lethally targeted."
This is relevant because the US military launched a second strike during the September 2 operation to kill two men who had survived the initial strike on their vessel, which many legal experts consider to be either a war crime or an act of murder under domestic law.
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, watched video of the September 2 double-tap attack last week, and he described the footage as “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service.”
“Any American who sees the video that I saw will see its military attacking shipwrecked sailors,” Himes explained. “Now, there’s a whole set of contextual items that the admiral explained. Yes, they were carrying drugs. They were not in position to continue their mission in any way... People will someday see this video and they will see that that video shows, if you don’t have the broader context, an attack on shipwrecked sailors.”
While there has been much discussion about the legality of the September 2 double-tap strike in recent days, some critics have warned that fixating on this particular aspect of the administration's policy risks taking the focus off the illegality of the boat-bombing campaign as a whole.
Daphne Eviatar, director for security and human rights for Amnesty International USA, said on Friday that the entire boat-bombing campaign has been "illegal under both domestic and international law."
"All of them constitute murder because none of the victims, whether or not they were smuggling illegal narcotics, posed an imminent threat to life," she said. "Congress must take action now to stop the US military from murdering more people in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Leaked Memo Shows Pam Bondi Wants List of 'Domestic Terrorism' Groups Who Express 'Anti-American Sentiment'
"Millions of Americans like you and I could be the target," warned journalist Ken Klippenstein of the new memo.
Dec 07, 2025
A leaked memo written by US Attorney General Pam Bondi directs the Department of Justice to compile a list of potential "domestic terrorism" organizations that espouse "extreme viewpoints on immigration, radical gender ideology, and anti-American sentiment."
The memo, which was obtained by journalist Ken Klippenstein, expands upon National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), a directive signed by President Donald Trump in late September that demanded a "national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts."
The new Bondi memo instructs law enforcement agencies to refer "suspected" domestic terrorism cases to the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs), which will then undertake an "exhaustive investigation contemplated by NSPM-7" that will incorporate "a focused strategy to root out all culpable participants—including organizers and funders—in all domestic terrorism activities."
The memo identifies the "domestic terrorism threat" as organizations that use "violence or the threat of violence" to advance political goals such as "opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality."
Commenting on the significance of the memo, Klippenstein criticized mainstream media organizations for largely ignoring the implications of NSPM-7, which was drafted and signed in the wake of the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
"For months, major media outlets have largely blown off the story of NSPM-7, thinking it was all just Trump bluster and too crazy to be serious," he wrote. "But a memo like this one shows you that the administration is absolutely taking this seriously—even if the media are not—and is actively working to operationalize NSPM-7."
Klippenstein also warned that NSPM-7 appeared to be the start of a new "war on terrorism," but "only this time, millions of Americans like you and I could be the target."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular