EFF: members of Trumps transition team have long sought to undermine net neutrality
Trump and His Advisors on Net Neutrality
KERRY SHEEHAN
EFF
Several key members of Trump’s transition team belong to a block of Republicans in Congress that have long sought to undermine net neutrality. Vice-President-elect Pence, the chair of Trump’s transition team, co-sponsored a 2011 bill that would have stripped the FCC of authority to govern Internet access services, as it did in the Open Internet Order. That bill, the Internet Freedom Act, was sponsored by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, and co-sponsored by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Rep. Tom Reed, and Rep. Cynthia Lummis, all vice-chairs on Trump’s transition team. Pence (along with vice-chair Rep. Marsha Blackburn, and other members of the transition team) also voted against net neutrality as early as 2006.
Vice-chair Rep. Marsha Blackburn has routinely introduced bills that attempt to block effective net neutrality from every angle. In 2011, she sponsored the Internet Freedom Act, discussed above. She re-introduced it in 2014—this time, the bill would have prohibited the FCC’s proposed net neutrality rules from coming into effect and kept the agency from re-issuing such rules in the future, unless explicitly authorized by Congress. That bill was re-introduced again in 2015, this time seeking to nullify the FCC’s Open Internet Order and prevent the agency from re-issuing them, unless authorized by Congress. In 2016, Rep. Blackburn sponsored an amendment to the annual budget authorization that would prohibit the use of federal funds to implement any of the FCC's proposed broadband privacy rules. Rep. Blackburn also co-sponsored bills aimed at altering the process through which the FCC can pass rules like the Open Internet order, and further limiting the FCC’s ability to do so.
Several members of the transition team’s executive committee also oppose net neutrality. Rep. Tom Marino disagreed with the commission’s Open Internet rules and called the decision a “slippery slope which ultimately endangers our liberty… regulating the internet is just another way this Administration uses the bureaucracy to allow and condone more regulation and government control.” Rep. Chris Collins also opposed the decision, saying “[t]he FCC’s actions threaten the innovative culture that makes the Internet one of the world’s greatest technologies.” He called the decision “a direct threat to Internet freedom” and a “foreshadowing of the big government overregulation that will stem from Title II classification.” And Rep. Devin Nunes also objected to the rules.