Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Thursday filed a $10 billion lawsuit complaint against CBS that quotes FCC Commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington supporting allegations that the network deceived its audience when it edited an answer in an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats' presidential nominee. Meanwhile, former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler on Friday said a future FCC chair in a second Trump administration would likely face considerable pressure to act against media outlets. During a Center for American Progress webinar, Wheeler said a Trump appointee could encounter a situation that no FCC chairman has "faced in the 90-year history of the commission.”

FTC Chair Lina Khan has “undermined the FTC’s bipartisan, independent mission through a relentless violation of legal, procedural, historical, and management norms,” the House Oversight Committee said Thursday, releasing a staff report on her tenure. Khan helped spearhead President Joe Biden’s executive order on competition, which ignores the pro-competitive and pro-consumer benefits of acquisitions, the report said. The agency’s decision to withdraw from its merger guidelines has expanded market uncertainty that deters pro-competitive deals, the committee said. Khan's approach is ultimately a “tax” on mergers and acquisitions, the report said. She has led several rulemaking efforts that follow the same pattern, staff said, “bulldozing agency norms, going beyond statutory authority, and regulating based on Biden-Harris ideology, not the facts.” If Khan’s policy and enforcement approach continues, “it will further undermine Americans’ confidence in the FTC’s role in protecting American consumers and the U.S. marketplace,” said Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., in a statement. Her “term expired last month, and she should not be permitted to continue leading an independent agency.” Elon Musk posted Thursday on X: “She will be fired soon.” Progressive Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have defended Khan's time in office (see 2410160030). The FTC didn’t comment Thursday.

Ericsson’s Chief People Officer MajBritt Arfert stepping down at end of May ... Urban One promotes Eddie Harrell and Deon Levingston to co-presidents-audio division, succeeding audio division CEO David Kantor, retiring Jan. 5 ... Distributed cloud services platform Storj promotes Colby Winegar to CEO, succeeding Ben Golub, remaining as executive chair ... High altitude platform station manufacturer Aalto promotes Hughes Boulnois to CEO, succeeding Samer Halawi, now senior adviser.

The FTC should investigate whether OpenAI violated federal law when it offers unfair and deceptive services, the Electronic Privacy Information Center said in a complaint filed with the agency Tuesday. EPIC argued that OpenAI directly and indirectly enabled unfair and deceptive trade practices, a violation of the FTC Act, through application programming interface integrations and its GPT Store, where customers can buy custom versions of ChatGPT. In addition, OpenAI has not shown its AI products “meet established public policy standards for responsible development and use of AI systems,” including standards detailed in President Joe Biden’s executive order on AI, said EPIC. The lack of review and curation associated with its “mass data scraping often leads to false, offensive, biased, and discriminatory data being included in the training dataset,” said EPIC: This means biases and negative stereotypes “are baked into their models and difficult to effectively remove without retraining the models.” OpenAI didn’t comment. The FTC confirmed receiving the complaint.

Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform president, and James Erwin, executive director-ATF subsidiary Digital Liberty, led a Tuesday letter with 24 other mostly conservative-leaning leaders urging that congressional lawmakers “oppose any attempts to impose new taxes on broadband service, including by assessing broadband for contributions to the Universal Service Fund.” A bipartisan congressional working group has been eyeing a potential USF revamp, while Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, wants Congress to make the program subject to the federal appropriations process (see 2403060090). “While USF faces fiscal challenges, these should ideally be addressed through distribution reform,” Norquist and the other leaders said in the letter, which we obtained before its public release. “If the contribution base for USF is expanded to include mass-market broadband providers, it will be American households that foot the bill to keep this program on life support.”

The FCC will coordinate with the California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) on privacy efforts, the federal agency said Tuesday. The FCC’s privacy and data protection task force signed a memorandum of understanding with the CPPA, which is charged with rulemaking and enforcement related to California privacy laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act. Under the pact, the two agencies will “share close and common legal interests in working cooperatively to investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute or otherwise take enforcement action in relation to privacy, data protection, or cybersecurity issues.” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said, “Coordinated state and federal partnerships like this are essential to our privacy work.” CPPA Executive Director Ashkan Soltani said the partnership will “help increase trust and security in the digital marketplace.” CPPA Enforcement Head Michael Macko added, “collaboration is key to vigorous enforcement.” Also Tuesday, the CPPA released an agenda for its Nov. 8 board meeting. The agency may vote to advance draft rules, including on automated decision-making technology, risk assessments, and cybersecurity audits, to a formal rulemaking, it said. The board also has plans for considering possible changes to data broker registration requirements.

USTelecom elects Jennifer Prather, Totelcom Communications, as chair, Josh Descant, REV, vice-chair, and Brad Welch, CentraCom, secretary; Chris Lovell, CL Tel., added to leadership committee...

T-Mobile’s Q3 2024 was the company’s “best Q3 in a decade,” said CEO Mike Sievert on an earnings call Wednesday. The company recorded the highest number of new postpaid phone subscribers for Q3 in 10 years, and also showed the lowest Q3 postpaid phone churn in T-Mobile’s history, executives said on the call. The company reported $16.7 billion in total service revenue in Q3, a 5% increase over the same quarter in 2023. CFO Peter Osvaldik said the carrier expects a “trough” in 2025 from the loss of the affordable connectivity program and Tracfone's transition to Verizon. However, he also said Q4 sales will likely top Q3's due to “holiday seasonality.” Asked about T-Mobile’s plans for supplemental coverage from space, Sievert said the company tested the service through a grant of special temporary authority during the recent hurricanes in Florida and North Carolina. The tech will be “off to the races soon,” Sievert said. Executives said the company had “optionality” for its 800 MHz spectrum. T-Mobile sought to auction off that spectrum earlier this year but didn’t receive qualifying bids. The spectrum isn’t currently part of its financial predictions or spectrum plan, Sievert said. DOJ gave T-Mobile’s proposed purchases of Lumos and Metronet the nod, but it awaits FCC approval, said General Counsel Mark Nelson. T-Mobile’s purchase of U.S. Cellular isn’t as far along, but Nelson said all three deals are expected to close in 2025.

More than a dozen states told the U.S. Supreme Court that they were "right to be worried" about the FCC's Universal Service Fund's contribution mechanism in an amicus curiae filed Wednesday (No. 24-254). The states -- West Virginia, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia -- agreed with the en banc 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals' decision that the fund’s "problematic blend of standardless decision-making and missing executive oversight violates Article I of the Constitution" (see 2410010024). The Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition, NTCA, USTelecom, Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, National Digital Inclusion Alliance and MediaJustice also wrote SCOTUS in a separate letter maintaining their interest in the outcome of the case as intervenors. The groups said they have interests that are "distinct from those of the government."

Digital First Project Executive Director Nathan Leamer on Wednesday said whoever chairs the FCC during the next administration should take on a more forceful role in advocating for Congress to renew the commission’s lapsed spectrum auction authority. Leamer, who served as an aide to former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, said during a Georgetown University Center for Business and Public Policy webcast that whichever party wins the White House Nov. 5 will reexamine broadband affordability issues. He believes the FCC will have to brace for the impact of potential federal court rulings striking down its recent orders reclassifying broadband as a Communications Act Title II service and instituting anti-digital discrimination rules.