InsideSources

Republicans shaping up to have influential roles in the Federal Communications Commission next year outlined a lengthy list of changes coming to the agency under the Trump administration this week that go beyond a rollback of net neutrality.

Trump’s FCC transition team, Republicans in Congress and at the agency itself wasted no time making clear their intention to dismantle the order reclassifying internet providers as public utilities, the designation shared by more heavily regulated telephone providers. But changes will go beyond divisive rules passed along partisan votes to the agency itself.

“It is time to bring more openness and transparency to the FCC,” Commissioner Ajit Pai, one of the FCC’s two Republicans, told the conservative policy think-tank Free State Foundation Wednesday. “From publicly releasing the text of documents we vote on at public meetings to establishing an FCC Dashboard with key performance metrics, we can better enable the public to know what and how we are doing.”

Pai said it’s time for a reversal of the FCC culture of the last three years under Chairman Tom Wheeler. The Democrat routinely left Republican commissioners in the dark on drafting big proposals and passed more rules along partisan lines than any chairman in the last 20 years.

He may get a chance to steer those changes himself. Trump FCC transition team adviser Jeffrey Eisenach told CNBC Tuesday Pai or his Republican colleague Commissioner Michael O’Rielly will take over as chairman. That chairmanship, though more inclusive according to Pai, won’t be shy about a conservative brush fire of the regulatory landscape.

“I’m optimistic that last month’s election will prove to be an inflection point — and that during the Trump administration, we will shift from playing defense at the FCC to going on offense,” Pai said. “The regulatory underbrush at the FCC is thick. We need to fire up the weed whacker and remove those rules that are holding back investment, innovation, and job creation.”

Eisenach echoed the sentiment, saying of the deregulatory agenda he took part in under the Reagan administration, “absolutely, it can happen again.”

“The power of the state — there’s a market for that,” Eisenach said referring to the win edge providers secured over internet providers via net neutrality. “And people spend money to use the power of the state to make money themselves and invest in it. If you take that power away from the state, then people go off an invest the resources in entrepreneurship and other things.”

Congress will play a large role in reshaping the agency according to Pai, who said he was “optimistic that the FCC will once again respect the limits that Congress has placed on our authority.”

Tennessee Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn, another Trump transition adviser and contender for chair of the Communications and Technology Subcommittee charged with overseeing the FCC, said Congress would ensure that with a rewrite of the 1934 Telecommunications Act to better reflect the digital era. The last rewrite took place in 1996.

While the agency could reign in net neutrality itself, Blackburn said it was a job better left to Congress. She suggested taking up legislation by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune and House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton to cement net neutrality protections from blocking and throttling internet traffic, but stops short of reclassifying internet providers as common carriers.

“I think you will see us address a net neutrality fix early in the next Congress,” Blackburn said at the same event Pai attended Wednesday. “A legislative fix is going to give you in the industry the certainty that you need so that you know what the rules of the road are for standards for internet conduct.”

An appeal of the rules by internet providers likely headed to the Supreme Court could do the job for them, according to Eisenach.

“There’s an appeals court decision that’s expected any day now that likely will hold up the FCC’s order, likely that goes to the Supremes and then there are a number of things the commission could do and people are looking at all those,” Eisenach said.

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One of the Federal Communications Commission’s three Democratic commissioners broke ranks from the majority Tuesday to side with its two Republican commissioners on possibly the hottest issue pending before the agency — set-top boxes.

During a congressional oversight hearing Tuesday FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel agreed there are flaws in Chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposal to mandate pay-TV providers make their content available on third-party set-top boxes.

“I’ll make it easy — yes,” Rosenworcel said in response to a yes or no question from Tennessee Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn about whether the commissioners thought the initial proposal was flawed.

Though such bipartisan consensus has become increasingly rare at the FCC, Rosenworcel wasn’t the only Democrat to imply there are flaws with the pitch. Commissioner Mignon Clyburn declined to answer the question, while Wheeler said “everything is designed to seek improvement.”

“That’s what we’re trying to do right now,” Wheeler said when asked about taking a different approach from the original Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. “We’re working with the industry.”

All four fellow commissioners agreed on the need for another approach, and that the one recently pitched by Comcast, DirecTV, and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association to offer their content on apps shows promise.

“One page. It’s not a proposal, it’s a press release,” Wheeler said. “The great thing is that it lowered the temperature and we can talk together.”

While Wheeler and Clyburn disagreed the original plan rendered copyright worthless, Rosenworcel again diverged from her colleagues, and said after a meeting with the copyright office she agreed the original plan puts the content that pay-TV providers pay for at risk of manipulation or theft on third-party devices.

“I think that more work is necessary on our part,” Rosenworcel said.

Since the proposal was announced earlier this year content, providers have expressed concern the plan will make their property vulnerable to pirating both nationally and internationally.

“I think that you’ve got a long way to go on set-top boxes,” Blackburn said.

The bipartisan atmosphere didn’t last long. Questions aimed at Pai concerning his ongoing investigation into Lifeline fraud led to bickering between Republicans and Democrats on the Communications and Technology Subcommittee and at the witness table.

While Pai said he believes he’s “uncovered potential fraud,” California Democrat Rep. Anna Eshoo pressed Pai on whether he had any evidence, and warned the commissioner to “be very careful” in making such allegations.

“Just answer me yes or no, have you uncovered any fraud so far?” Eshoo asked.

“To date, I have not reached that conclusion,” Pai conceded.

Pai’s investigation into Lifeline has focused on providers overriding a database meant to flag and prevent multiple enrollments, a practice the agency has fined numerous providers over including the largest in history recently levied against Total Call Mobile.

As was the case with Total Call Mobile, Pai suspects the overrides — which presently account for 48 percent of enrollments — represent the latest trend in provider fraud, while Democrats allege the majority are legitimate overrides for independent subscribers sharing an address like a homeless shelter.

Wheeler said there are 2.2 million Lifeline subscribers today that live in 890,000 multiple resident addresses, and according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 20 to 50 percent of American households are “doubled up” households, putting the 16 percent of Lifeline subscribers on the low end.

“So you’re going to say there is no fraud then? Yes or no?” subcommittee chairman and Oregon Republican Rep. Greg Walden asked, coming to Pai’s defense.

“I’m going to say to you sir that we are vigilantly working, and the reason that we know this is because we have been out making these kinds of investigations,” Wheeler said. “As is the case with most of Commissioner Pai’s so-called statistics, he’s reading from yesterday’s newspaper. These things were shut down in 2015.”

Eshoo said the Lifeline fraud the FCC has taken action on was perpetrated by providers, not subscribers. Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Michael Doyle said that while the program is assuredly not free of fraud, it’s likely “committed by companies, not the poor.”

Wheeler added his FCC inherited the problem of “the fox guarding the henhouse” from the Bush administration’s FCC, and the National Eligibility Verifier system included in his recent Lifeline expansion adding broadband internet will correct the issue when it goes live in 2019.

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In a debate dominated by female voices from both parties, Republican and Democratic lawmakers sparred Wednesday over the ethics surrounding the procurement for medical research of fetal tissue from abortions.

The first public hearing of the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives, created by House Republicans in response to last year’s undercover videos of abortion providers discussing the harvesting of tissue, offered a glimpse into how the issue will play out on the campaign trail this year.

For pro-life Republicans, the lengthy, four-hour hearing presented an opportunity again to put a spotlight on Planned Parenthood, the nation’s top abortion provider, and the processes associated with procuring fetal hearts, brains, lungs and other organs for medical research.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who chairs the panel, opened the hearing with an attempt to head off Democratic criticism, telling colleagues, “We did not invite our guests here to debate election-year politics or journalism ethics.”

The videos that prompted the hearing, she said, “revealed that something very troubling is going on related to fetal tissue and research.”

But Democrats focused their questioning on Blackburn’s handling of the panel and on the ethics of the undercover sting operation that brought some of the Planned Parenthood practices to light.

The self-described “citizen-journalist” behind the videos faces charges in Houston and is under investigation in California, accused of using falsified documents to pull off his anti-abortion group’s investigation.

The ranking Democrat on the panel, Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky, dismissed Wednesday’s hearing as a “partisan and dangerous witch-hunt” and compared Blackburn to Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

California’s Jackie Speier picked up on the McCarthyism theme: “I feel like a time-traveler, not a member of Congress … maybe we’ve been transported back to the Red Scare.”

But first-term congresswoman Mia Love, a black Republican from Utah, rebuffed Democrats who accused Republicans of attempting to overturn established law regarding abortion.

“There are times in our history in this country that we thought … the terrible treatment of some human beings OK. I am here because we’ve looked back at behavior that we thought was unethical and we’ve changed it. I hope that we live in a country where we are able stand up and say, ‘The treatment is unethical and we are going to change it.’”

The four witnesses invited to appear before the committee by Republicans were critical of the use of tissue from aborted fetuses for medical research, while the two witnesses called by Democrats credited advancements in the treatments of disease to research based on fetal tissues and stem cells.

“We gain nothing when we turn our backs on the benefits of this research for people who are sick today, or will be sick tomorrow,” testified R. Alta Charo, a University of Wisconsin professor of law and bioethics.

Democrats, who called for the panel to be disbanded after the indictment last month of anti-abortion activists David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, criticized Blackburn’s decision to issue subpoenas recently against three organizations — StemExpress, the University of New Mexico and Southwestern Women’s Options — as heavy-handed.

But Democrats are also gearing up for a prolonged fight, hiring former Planned Parenthood staffer Vanessa Cramer to help plan their defense of the organization, according to LegiStorm.

Asked if hiring a former Planned Parenthood staffer to work on a congressional investigation into the organization’s practices might constitute a conflict of interest, Blackburn’s office told InsideSources the Tennessee Republican would not comment on staffing decisions of other offices.

The clash between House lawmakers on fetal tissue came as hundreds of protesters on either side of the abortion debate gathered across the street at the Supreme Court Building where eight justices heard arguments on restrictive new laws in Texas.

The vacancy on the Supreme Court left by the death of Antonin Scalia has already become a key issue in the presidential race, with Donald Trump’s top GOP rivals questioning the New York billionaire’s commitment to conservative justices – particularly on the issue of abortion.

With Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowing to leave the opening to the next president, the Supreme Court and the abortion issue are expected to figure heavily in this year’s Senate races as well, especially in states where moderate Republicans are seen as vulnerable.