Biden’s FCC Opens a New Front in the Administration’s War on Elon Musk

The Federal Communications Commission might be turning into the Federal Collusion Commission. The Biden administration appears to be ramping up its campaign against Elon Musk as the agency launches yet another attack on his business dealings. On Tuesday, the commission scrapped funding for one of Mr. Musk’s companies, Starlink, arguing that the company failed to expand its satellite broadband service two years ahead of schedule. The agency has never before demanded that a funding recipient meet its commitment that early, and the law only asks that Starlink show it is “reasonably capable” of granting high-speed internet to 40 percent of roughly 640,000 rural Americans by the end of 2025. Critics say this move was made on suspicious grounds as part of a broader regulatory crusade against Mr. Musk ever since he bought the social media platform Twitter, which he renamed X, in October of 2022. As a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist,” the chief executive has welcomed onto the network previously censored right-wing users and criticized President Biden. Now, he’s a favorite target of Capitol Hill, or what the Wall Street Journal editorial board calls “Progressive Enemy No. 1.”The FCC’s three to two decision to deny Starlink a $885 million award “doesn’t make sense,” Mr. Musk declared in a post on X Tuesday. “Starlink is the only company actually solving rural broadband at scale!” Mr. Musk’s “goal is to make this world a better place,” his mother, Maye Musk, wrote on X. “POTUS wants to stop him. Have you any idea how furious I am?”The FCC purports to be “an independent U.S. government agency” tasked with “implementing and enforcing America’s communications law and regulations.” It conducted “a careful legal, technical and policy review,” chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement, to determine whether Starlink deserved its funding award as it works to alleviate the issue of unreliable and unaffordable internet across the country. With a new democratic majority, though, the commission appears to be anything but “independent.” Its latest attack on Mr. Musk is a “political misdirection” or “ambush,” the Wall Street Journal wrote in an editorial this week. Rejecting Starlink’s funding request, wrote Republican FCC commissioner Brendan Carr in a dissenting statement, “certainly fits the Biden Administration’s pattern of regulatory harassment.”“If this is what passes for due process and the rule of law at the FCC,” asserted commissioner Nathan Simington in another dissenting opinion, “then this agency ought not to be trusted with the adjudicatory powers Congress has granted it and the deference that the courts have given it.”The “green light” to probe Mr. Musk came from the president himself, said Mr. Carr. “I think that Elon Musk’s cooperation and/or technical relationships with other countries,” Mr. Biden said in November 2022, a month after X got its new owner, “is worthy of being looked at…” Several federal agencies took up their boss’s suggestion with gusto. In September, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York launched an inquiry into transactions between Mr. Musk’s businesses and personal benefits he might have received from Tesla. The Justice Department is also investigating the company for abusing its resources, which Mr. Musk has denied, and probing SpaceX for allegedly discriminatory hiring policies.These are just a few of the federal complaints amounting to what the Sun has called a “Relentless Campaign To Hobble Elon Musk.” It’s not that “the whole administration has it out for me,” the business titan said on the All-In podcast in September, “but I think there’s probably aspects of the administration … who probably do not wish good things for me.”Mr. Musk expressed concern over the injection of partisan politics into government agencies, which, he said, reflects a “significant increase in the weaponization of government” and a “misuse of prosecutorial discretion in many areas.” The FCC, X, SpaceX, and Tesla did not immediately respond to the Sun’s requests for comment. Despite the Commission’s “erroneous decisions,” Starlink is dedicated “to bringing high-speed, low-latency broadband service to Americans no matter where they live, work, or go to school,” the vice president of legal at SpaceX, Christopher Cardaci, wrote in a letter to the FCC on Tuesday. This commitment, he asserted, is a “critically important national goal.”

Biden’s FCC Opens a New Front in the Administration’s War on Elon Musk

Biden’s FCC Opens a New Front in the Administration’s War on Elon Musk

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