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internet
Trump FCC Chair Accused of 'Political Theater' to Please Net Neutrality's Foes
"The only reason" to take the rules off the books now, said one critic, "is to score points with broadband monopolies and their lobbyists, who've fought against essential and popular safeguards for the past two decades straight."
Jul 11, 2025
The advocacy group Free Press on Friday blasted U.S. President Donald Trump's Federal Communications Commission chief for an order that rips net neutrality rules off the books, without any time for public comment, following an unfavorable court ruling.
A panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled in January that broadband is an "information service" instead of a "telecommunications service" under federal law, and the FCC did not have the authority to prohibit internet service providers (ISPs) from creating online "fast lanes" and blocking or throttling web content.
Trump-appointed FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in a Friday statement that as part of his "Delete, Delete, Delete" initiative, "we're continuing to clean house at the FCC, working to identify and eliminate rules that no longer serve a purpose, have been on our books for decades, and have no place in the current Code of Federal Regulations."
"Today's action is just the latest step the FCC is taking to follow the Trump administration's effort to usher in prosperity through deregulation," he said of the order that scraps the net neutrality rules. "And it's just one of many, with more on the horizon, so stay tuned."
Responding in a lengthy statement, Free Press vice president of policy and general counsel Matt Wood said that "the FCC's so-called deletion today is little more than political grandstanding. It's true that the rules in question were first stayed by the 6th Circuit and then struck down by that appellate court—in a poorly reasoned opinion. So today's bookkeeping maneuver changes very little in reality."
"What's sad about it is Brendan Carr, as usual, prioritizing political theater and ideological obeisance over actual legal reasoning and policy impacts," Wood continued. "There's no need to delete currently inoperative rules, much less to announce it in a summer Friday order. The only reason to do that is to score points with broadband monopolies and their lobbyists, who've fought against essential and popular safeguards for the past two decades straight."
"It also shows subservience to Elon Musk's incredibly destructive government-by-chainsaw attitude—which seems to have outlived Musk himself in some corners of the Trump administration," he argued, referring to the tech billionaire who initially spearheaded the president's Department of Government Efficiency but has since had a public breakup with Trump.
Wood noted that "the appeals process for this case has not even concluded yet, as Free Press and allies sought and got more time to consider our options at the Supreme Court."
"Today's FCC order doesn't impact either our ability to press the case there or our strategic considerations about whether to do so," he added. "It's little more than a premature housekeeping step, with Brendan Carr deciding to get out ahead of the Supreme Court in ways that someone with so-called regulatory humility might typically avoid."
The fight for net neutrality has been strongly influenced by Trump's time in office. During his first term, the FCC—led by the president's first chair, Ajit Pai—repealed the Obama administration's policies. Under former President Joe Biden, the agency voted to restore the rules, sparking a fresh legal battle with ISPs, which led to the appellate court's decision earlier this year.
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Supreme Court Porn ID Ruling 'A Blow to Freedom of Speech and Privacy,' Says ACLU
"The legislature claims to be protecting children from sexually explicit materials, but the law will do little to block their access, and instead deters adults from viewing vast amounts of First Amendment-protected content," said Cecillia Wang, national legal director of the ACLU.
Jun 27, 2025
Free speech advocates are sounding the alarm after the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld a Texas law requiring users to share personal identification to view adult material online.
The law, which mandates websites that host sexual content to require users to provide photo IDs or biometric scans to verify that they are over 18, was challenged by several adult websites and free speech organizations. They argued that it violated adult users' First Amendment rights.In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines siding with Texas, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the majority opinion that the law "only incidentally burdens the protected speech of adults," and therefore did not require "strict scrutiny" from the Court.
But advocates for free speech and online security have warned that such laws—which have passed in 24 states—have the potential to be much more invasive, both to personal expression and privacy.
Following the ruling, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) decried the Court's decision as "a blow to freedom of speech and privacy."
"The Supreme Court has departed from decades of settled precedents that ensured that sweeping laws purportedly for the benefit of minors do not limit adults' access to First Amendment-protected materials," said Cecillia Wang, national legal director of the ACLU. "The legislature claims to be protecting children from sexually explicit materials, but the law will do little to block their access, and instead deters adults from viewing vast amounts of First Amendment-protected content."
The ACLU's concerns echoed those expressed in Justice Elena Kagan's dissenting opinion, in which she said the court should have applied "strict scrutiny," which would have required the bill to use the least restrictive means possible to meet its goal. Applying strict scrutiny is standard in cases involving content related restrictions on expression, and has been used in past cases related to obscenity.
"No one doubts that the distribution of sexually explicit speech to children, of the sort involved here, can cause great harm," she added. "But the First Amendment protects those sexually explicit materials, for every adult. So a state cannot target that expression, as Texas has here, any more than is necessary to prevent it from reaching children."
During oral arguments in January, Kagan warned of the potential "spillover danger" if the court were to weaken strict scrutiny for free expression cases.
"You relax strict scrutiny in one place," she said, "and all of a sudden, strict scrutiny gets relaxed in other places."
Friday's ruling comes as red states have introduced laws increasingly cracking down on public discussion of sex and gender.
These have included laws banning sexual education or the discussion of LGBTQ+ identities in schools, bans on books containing "divisive" topics including sex and gender, and bans on drag shows in public spaces. Many states have also introduced laws allowing parents to challenge books containing "divisive" concepts, including discussions of sexuality and LGBTQ+ identity.
On Friday, the Supreme Court also ruled on religious liberty grounds in favor of parents' rights to opt their children out from classes with storybooks involving LGBTQ+ characters.
"As it has been throughout history, pornography is once again the canary in the coal mine of free expression," said Alison Boden, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, which was one of the plaintiffs in the Texas case.
Beyond burdening adults' free expression, critics warned that requiring photo identification poses a privacy risk to porn viewers.
The conservative justices defended the law as tantamount to others that require identification to access alcohol or to enter adults-only spaces. In his majority opinion, Thomas wrote that the law is "appropriately tailored because it permits users to verify their ages through the established methods of providing government-issued identification and sharing transactional data."
However, Kagan argued in her dissent that requiring photo ID for online activity is fundamentally different because the user has no idea if their identifying information is being tracked or logged.
"It is turning over information about yourself and your viewing habits—respecting speech many find repulsive—to a website operator, and then to… who knows?" she said.
Evan Greer, founder of the online privacy advocacy group Fight for the Future, wrote on BlueSky that the ruling bodes ill for internet privacy more generally.
"This is bad in a variety of ways that have nothing to do with porn and everything to do with expanding invasive surveillance of every single internet user, including all adults," Greer said.
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Critics Say Cruz Proposal Takes Industry-Friendly AI Rules 'From Ludicrous to Insane'
Under Cruz's proposal, states would be required to swear off all regulations on artificial intelligence in order to get funding to improve their high-speed internet.
Jun 24, 2025
Consumer advocates are criticizing a change made by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in the Republican megabill this week that would stop states from regulating artificial intelligence in order to bring it in line with the reconciliation process.
The House's version of the $4 trillion budget package, passed last month, contained a sneaky provision that would bar states from enforcing any proposed or existing regulations on AI programs for the next 10 years, which a critic called "one of the most radical positions Republicans have taken."
However, that version of the provision was rejected by the Senate parliamentarian, who oversees chamber rules requiring that reconciliation measures have a budgetary impact.
Cruz (R-Texas), the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, proposed a workaround: threatening to withhold federal broadband infrastructure funding to coerce states into abandoning AI regulations.
The Senate bill's revised language would impact states' access to funding from the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. Part of former President Joe Biden's 2021 infrastructure law, BEAD allocated $42.45 billion to expand high-speed, affordable internet access across the United States. On Sunday, the parliamentarian approved Cruz's updated version of the bill.
"This backdoor preemption not only forces states into an impossible choice between protecting their residents and providing broadband access, but also undermines public safety, privacy, and democratic governance just as AI harms are accelerating," the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said in a Tuesday statement.
States around the country have introduced dozens of bills aimed at curbing the potential harms of AI programs.
Many states have passed or introduced bills banning the use of AI to generate fake "revenge porn" or election misinformation. Some have enacted laws regulating AI in hiring and healthcare to prevent discrimination. Others have taken steps to ensure AI algorithms do not violate copyright protections.
Last week, Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) held a press conference in which they spoke out against the provision.
"They have adopted these laws that fill a gap while we are waiting for federal action," Cantwell said. "Now Congress is threatening these laws, which will leave hundreds of millions of Americans vulnerable to AI harm by abolishing those state law protections."
If the Republican moratorium passes, states will be forced either to dump these regulations and or hamstring efforts to update their broadband internet infrastructure.
"High‑speed internet is now a prerequisite for economic participation, education, and healthcare," said Tyler Cooper, editor-in-chief for the research group Broadband Now.
A nationwide audit published by the group earlier this month found that 26 million people across the United States lack access to high-speed internet. Cutting broadband funding to states could hinder efforts to connect them.
The parliamentarian's decision to greenlight this new version of the bill has drawn sharp criticism from consumer advocates.
"This extreme measure is a clear gift to Big Tech at the expense of everyday people,” said Ben Winters, director of AI and data privacy for the Consumer Federation of America.
The push to deregulate AI has big money behind it. Last week, the Financial Times reported that "lobbyists acting on behalf of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are urging the Senate to enact" the moratorium.
According to data from OpenSecrets, these four companies alone spent nearly $19 million on lobbying in just the first three months of 2025.
That avalanche of money has left many doubting that Congress will ever regulate AI. But it also may ensure that states can't either.
"The tipping point from ludicrous to insane is making broadband funding for rural and urban communities contingent on states abandoning their right to protect their citizens—fully knowing Congress has not historically and will likely continue not to regulate Big Tech," said J.B. Branch, Big Tech accountability advocate for Public Citizen.
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