That wraps up todays white house briefing. We now return to last Thursdays Senate commerce meeting on fcc oversight. The serenity they necertaint build at scale. Capital, talent is scarce. Innovation doesnt have to visit. The more difficult it is, the less likely we hare to get it. And its consistent, i would add, with three years of reforms we have made oven with great heat taken. They have been a proven concept for a regulatory approach. I think the reforms, the ones you championed in the steam line act, would have us close the Digital Divide. The period is a marked contrast from the prior eight years. We wasted a tremendous amount of time chasing around partisan little agendas, rather than focusing on what matters. I think this pandemic has pult Telecom Policy in a crucible. That is what we have to focus on. On closing the Digital Divide. That is where we have been the last three years and its paying off results. We have not raised the mission divide yet. And the u. S. Infrastructure held up better because of the investment that the private sector generated. Quickly. We have seen in south dakota, it will require low band, mid band and high band spectrums. The fcc feared up additional high band. But key to winning the race. Chairman, i appreciate the work often the c band action that will take place this year. Can you speak to the benefits getting it to market quickly . Absolutely. Because of the satellite officers have accepted relocation, it will be available two to four years sooner. That means that American Consumers will be ahead of the curve enjoying 5g services. One of the critical parts of the system. An america will be ahead of the curve con paired to other countries when they look to receive the advantage. Im very proud of the work we have done. Thanks in part to you and senator wicker. Thanks. All of you, for our service. Thank you, senator shotts. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you to the commissioners for being here. I want to start on a followup question, commissioner that huh had with commissioner rosenworseel. She said that 16 billion for broadband that is going to be deployed over the next ten years will be decided upon this october. And that it has a 40 error rate. Do you you an agree those are the facts . Those are not the facts. We first, with respect to 80 , that is the estimated cost to phase one areas. If the budget is not melt, the funds go to stage two. It will roll over in stage two. Secondly, the 38 shes talking about how nothing whatsoever to do with the unserved areas in phase one. Whats the number . In terms of the error rates . Yeah. Again, the error rate has to do with parentally served areas. Phase one is a different served area. We are talking about apples and oranges here. What is the error rate . I know you can go five minutes on your own. I want to make sure i get my questions in. You dont know what the error rate is. We are asking to you get better fidelity on what the error rate is. And the point we are making, measure twice, cut once. That this is a significant investment. That maybe its not 80 of the 16 billion, maybe its less than that. But its certainly a significant chunk. And certainly its an incomplete picture as we deploy billions and billions of dwlars. Commissioner, i want to give you a chance to respond here. Thank you for the question. Again, swhe have a policy that involves both speed and accuracy. That is how we should spend federal dollars. And i think the record reflects we dont have accurate data. We say 18 billion people dont have broadband . Other studies say its 14 billion or 162. We dont know enough to give out 80 of our funds in the next ten years in october. Thank you. Commissioner, i want to follow up on senator bloomenthals question, the definition of a classroom. We had a question about this. It seems to me, and i consulted lawyers about this, the definition of a classroom certainly could be captured on an online classroom. Im just wondering why you have chosen to interpret this in the middle of a pandemic, so narrowly, because the consequences are so dire here. Why not allow the erate dollars to be used to provide connectivity when they close. I share your frustration. Three months guy, the cares act, i urged congress for the authority in funding. I got it. I got it. You wanted a statue to make it clear. Now you have a student to interpret the existing statute that doesnt run on the law but provides more broadband. Do you have can i get a commitment you will relook at this and consider the bossiblety that you have a maybe a more narrow legal path. But a path nonetheless to get it done . Im always happy to look at new legal arguments about the issue. Okay, well send that in. Finally, the cares act appropriate reyated 42 million for telehealth. Why has hawaii, fld nd, montana and alaska not received an afloriaward at automobile . Thank you for the question. We have been applying county data from Johns Hopkins university. And we consider an area to be hard hit if the county where the lead applicant is in the 75th percentile. So the highest counties hold on. The only criteria youre using are current covid rates in the time you consider the application. I want to you know how absurd that is. Number one, obviously the virus moves across the country in unpredictable ways. You might be a highly impacted county one month and a low impact county the next month. The next thing, this is telehealth. This is about providing health care generally speaking. Not just covid related health care. And every single part of this entire country has been impacted as every single hospital was told to use telehealth for noncovid related services. On the idea that only a county hospital can be hit if it has a covid rate is based on nothing at all other than to one set of data. That is not the intention of the statue and that is not far to states and counties that have done a good job in managing this pandemic. Senator, i understand your frustration. Again, we adopted objective criteria that are flexible its not its an emerging hot spotd and they demonstrated that. If there are areas of hawaii that meet that criteria, let me know. We cannot just give it out on a whim. Im saying its not an objective criteria to tie it to a covid rate in a particular county. That is not what the statute is for. I want to you understand just because you are tied to one data set doesnt make it objective. We are relying on data. I got your talking point. Every heard the talking point. What im saying is what im saying is that what you need to do is consider the possibility that the sta chutute was not ab serving places with a high covid rate. If i didnt use objective cry tier yarks i would be criticized for picking winners and loser. We are dwroing to base it on the Expert Opinion to use the Johns Hopkins county data across the country and be flexible to meet the sirkss. I apologize to the chairman for exceeding my time. I will send a letter. Yeah, we will take other rounds and submit questions. Let me ask you, mr. Chairman, was this decision made administratively, by the commission . The hell health is by the commission. The criteria relies on the county data from Johns Hopkins university to reach the benchmark. If the commit will endulge me in a minute. I want to make sure, you are not proposing that the rdocs are postponed . Im proposing we consider the sheer number of dollars that are headed out the door. Lets calibrate so we have funds the next ten years to reach everybody. I think that should be our goal. Would you change the scheduled rdof . A way . I could support us having a rule digital student fund, fund in october. But i think giving out 80 of the funds for the next ten years before we have before we have better data is a mistake. I think we should identify how we can preserve some of the funds when we have better data. Leaving 20 for the next ten years is going to leaf communities behind. Chairman, do you understand the proposal that commissioner rosen yeah, the answer to the question is yes. That is the argument. We shouldnt do phase one until the maps are perfect. Thats not going to happen immediately. That is not going to happen in 2020. And people with that view should own it. We want to keep work on the wrong side of the Digital Divide. And number two, the distinction in phase one and two is false. If the budget is lower, they are lowered to phase two. And they can increase phase two to meet the circumstances. That is a decision for a future team to make. Why dont give you commissioner rosenworsel 20 seconds. Yeah, at the end of the day, i think you need to have speed and accuracy together. For two years, you told us to improve our broadband data and not give out funds until we know with clarity where people have service and where they dont. We have high error rates in the data we have. We have to make sure the bulk go out when we have accurate maps. See if you can supplement the answer. You have at least five minutes. Thank you. Thank you for being here. I want to talk about the topic of censorship. Its a difficult topic. Er believe its an incredibly important topic. We had been seeing in recent years and recent months and even recent weeks growing assertions of power from big tech. To sensor, to shadow ban to violence views with which they disagree. Just within the last two weeks, we saw google at the behest of a foreigned Foreign Advocacy Group tletden to the journistic outlets. The federalist was told the reason they faced the threat of being demonitized is because of comments in the comments section. And Third Party Users had put some as far as i know unidentifies comments that google found objectionable. That is not a policy that google applies and a quick search can show dozens of progressive journalistic outlets that have comment sections and all sorts of nasty things being said that are not facing the threat of demonatization. Youtube, that is owned by google. Any one of us to go on youtube kmentds right now and read a host of propane and racist and offense you offensive comments on youtube. If google is not applying that to its subsidiary and instead to the federalist to force them to demonitize now, they ended up pulling the comments section down. Because googles power is such that challenging the star chamber is almost impossible. Yesterday, we saw twitter decide to sensor and block a tweet from the president of the United States that said that an autonomous zone, a lawless autonomous zone, will not be allowed to be create fld washington, d. C. In if anyone attempts to do so, Law Enforcement will stop them. Google deemed the president pledging to protect public safety, and twitter deemed that abusive and so put a content block on it. Something else, there is an utter lack of transparency. If one asked i have asked represe representatives from google, facebook, youtube, how many posts are you blocking . How many posts are you reducing the number of people who see it . They are not answering. There are zero data that exists and comparative blocking, bias. I have asked the simple, a simple question, we have two Major Political parties. I have asked, how many posts from republican candidates for sfigs have you blocked in how many poegss from Democratic Candidates do you block . We know that twitter blocked my colleague senator blackburn. A sitting member of the house running for senate, and twitter deemed her launch video unacceptable. They refuse to answer the questions. They then respond well, there are no data shows the bias. Because the only source of the data is the black box of their internal files. No one has that information but google and facebook and youtube and twitter. Much like the individual who kills his parents and pleads mercy of the court because hes an orphan, they refuse to answer the questions. The fcc has recently been brought districtly in the issue with an executive order from the penalty. I understand from comments earlier, some of you have concerns with Legal Authority to address this. This is a topic i have been deeply engaged in in a long time. And i will readily admit part of it is complicated. It cuts across so many lines it doesnt fit neatly in one silo. It doesnt fit legally in dcc or Civil Division or protection. It cuttings across all the lines. So i think our federal government is training to figure out how to address this. I will start with just a question to each of you. Do you agree that it is a problem that a handful of billions have unfettered power to silence speech to which they disagree with no transparency and accountability . Yes. What i agree with you in. The lack of transparency, and also that social media is frustrating. But when it comes to the First Amendment, its there to protect all forms of media from government. Not to protect all forms of government from all forms of media. I suggest you try to revisit this law. As you said, it is complicated. Yeah, i believe the tra transparency is horrible. The prodigy and compuserve have long since shred their cloths. Twitter, facebook, google, they have more control over free speech than any other institution. This is immense concentration of power, and those of us in government cant look at and sit on our hands and do nothing. That is why you are seeing bipart s bipartisan call to take action. I think we have responsibility of the fcc to updating section 230. I think the federal trade commission has to look at the trade practice tigss and the trust issues. Thank you for the question, senator. I do agree this is a Cross Sectional issue. There are a lot of complications and a lot of heavy issues. What i would focus on is the first ameantment, which prohibits the government from focusing on the speech of these companies. But what i also really would like to fixate an here, what we really need to do to make sure this does not cloud our elections, i have encouraged to bring the executive order to the fcc as quickly as possible so that we can have a vote. I am happy to engage that with colleagues. But so that this isnt overhang and have a dark cloud on the online speech. My time has expired. Let me make a quick observation. I look forward to working with you. The need for transparency. If the fcc were able to do one thing and simply provide real transparency, so the American People can see how many people are being silenced, how many people are being shadow banned, who and what the relative ratios are. That would transform the ability to solve the problem. So transparency would be very valuable. Thank you so much, senator cruz. I apologize for my absence. The issues are very important. I made in my opening state a comment about the hall mark gap. I think commissioner, you know because you visited washington state, you look at the esm and the edge and i can see you are a little shocked when you saw the numbers. You were thinking, wait, in washington yeah, that is true. In washington, we can have a gap. Following up on what my snow kbol league brought up, how do you you a dress the major what with the authority you have. We have authority now so all the nations and schools every student connected at home. You have 50 million kids from the classroom. Lets use the program to meet to the you mentioned, the classrooms are online nism lets note get tired up. Lets figure out how to help sufficients so no child is left online. De123450i679 and i know that you are leading on a fleesms and make sthaur every kid 12k3w4re678 and i couldnt agree more clearly, the inequity for not having the Broadband Access for education is one of them. So i can say the same thing. I think commissioner oreilly, you know, i know the chairmans got a tough job. He has to fit all the people in. Last week, we had man, too many people on the panel to get the ti time and questions in. So i will give you a question today. Last year, the International Community rejected the fccs inadequate whether spectrum is on the band. Instead, they adoptded one becaused on sound silence and med sflinl and what is the fcc doing now to ensure that domestic wire rls companies will comply with them . And will you work with nasa and noaa to know that the protections of interappearance are improeed. I work with federal agencies. We have work proceedings. We transferred to the order. Day take a number of years. It takes a little bit of time to put it before us. We were loading on a frooefls and little take a little time bmpl they are adprapted. So you will 1245er78 from the issues we will put it in the item and have an opportunity to consider it at that time. That was the position of the yith and they agreed to it. Commissioner, can i ask you about this and the issue. Why not go back. If so many people are involved now and saying hold up, timeout, you know, this is like all of these issues fighting around. I mean, should isnt we listen to those International Leaders and shouldnt we look and say, wait, lets look at this . To me, aviation safety is critical. It bothers me to think that the system will be hampered if that is not addressed. A lot there. The first is the fesmt and put them in your policy. Py sflim and we have to do that. Because i believe they have the force of law, we should do it in short order. And i respect deeply the work of the fccs inge nears. So many adjustments and changes have been made over time. A 3re678 and i want to respect you and your point. There is a lot of 234r0i67 and the gps. So i think dlantss noems and the charpt was interested zblerks and that would certainly be something i support because we have to iron this stuff out. Fp we literally want to have a 5g future. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, i see my time has expired. I dont know if lotus started. It has not. Chairman thank you very much. Commissioners, thank you for being here. I have a view that we have a solid and impressive fcc. And i appreciate all five of you. Particularly, i believe the fcc is enhonsed by the presence of two of my colleagues from kansas. Chairman, let me start with you. Appropriations process, fsgg, the money for the we take our over site respontsibilities seriously. You have been in front of the Sub Committee fesmt and what are the things i understand, that your yes, maam and with specific information on specific available brond band and efforts. I want to hear from you that this information will be provided to the Sub Committee as soon as poss b8, quickly, as