Day: September 26, 2023

The United States says the Biden administration will seek to secure $100 million in funding for a U.N. mission to Haiti. Thousands of ethnic Armenians have fled Nagorno-Karabakh; what does it mean for the region? Emergency services worldwide are racing to recruit thousands of new volunteers.

U.S. Federal Communications Commission chair Jessica Rosenworcel plans to begin an effort to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules rescinded under then-President Donald Trump, sources briefed on the matter said Monday.

The move comes after Democrats took majority control of the five-member FCC on Monday for the first time since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021 when new FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez was sworn in.

The FCC is set to take an initial vote on the net neutrality proposal in October, the sources added.

In July 2021, Biden signed an executive order encouraging the FCC to reinstate net neutrality rules adopted under Democratic then-President Barack Obama in 2015.

The FCC voted in 2017 to reverse the rules that barred internet service providers from blocking or throttling traffic, or offering paid fast lanes, also known as paid prioritization. Days before the 2020 presidential election, the FCC voted to maintain the reversal.

Rosenworcel denounced the repeal in 2017 saying it put the FCC “on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of the law, and the wrong side of the American public.”

She plans a speech to outline her plans on Tuesday, the sources added. A spokesperson for Rosenworcel declined to comment.

In 2022, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 3-0 that the 2017 decision by the FCC to reverse federal net neutrality protections could not bar state action, rejecting a challenge from telecom and broad industry groups to block California’s net neutrality law. Industry groups abandoned further legal challenges in May 2022.

The appeals court said that since the FCC reclassified internet services in 2017 as more lightly regulated information services, the commission “no longer has the authority to regulate in the same manner that it had when these services were classified as telecommunications services.”

Days after Biden took office, the U.S. Justice Department withdrew its Trump-era legal challenge to California’s state net neutrality law.

Donald Trump pushed back at U.S. prosecutors’ request to curb some of his public statements about people involved in the federal court case accusing him of attempting to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election.

The former U.S. president’s lawyers sharply opposed the request from Special Counsel Jack Smith for a court order limiting Trump’s out-of-court statements about potential witnesses in the case and barring disparaging or intimidating remarks about the judge, prosecutors and potential jurors.

Trump’s defense team said in a court filing late on Monday that such restrictions would violate his free speech rights as he runs for president as the clear front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2024.

Trump had already publicly attacked Smith’s request, arguing it was an attempt to limit his criticism of the President Joe Biden, his likely opponent in the 2024 election.

“At bottom, the Proposed Gag Order is nothing more than an obvious attempt by the Biden Administration to unlawfully silence its most prominent political opponent,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in the filing.

Trump was indicted in August on four felony counts for allegedly attempting to intervene in the counting of votes and block the certification of the 2020 election, one of four criminal cases he faces. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Smith’s office said in a court filing this month that Trump threatened to undermine public confidence in the case and influence potential jurors with “near daily” social media attacks on prosecutors, U.S. Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding over the case, and residents of Washington, D.C. who will serve as jurors.

Prosecutors said Trump has a history of inspiring his supporters to harass and threaten people he singles out for public criticism.

Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, fighting with police and sending lawmakers fleeing for their lives, in a failed bid to overturn Trump’s election defeat. Trump continues to make the false claim that his loss was the result of fraud.

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