The nomination of Republican FCC commissioner Michael O'Rielly for a new, five-year, term on the FCC has been favorably reported out of the Senate Commerce Committee and now moves to the full Senate for a vote.  

That came by voice vote Wednesday (July 22), but with ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) voting no, even though, procedural, she was the one to propose that it be reported favorably. Also asked to be recorded as "no" on the O'Rielly nomination were Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii). 

Related: O'Rielly Nomination Vote Scheduled 

In explaining her no vote, Cantwell pointed out that in 2018, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel concluded that O'Rielly had violated the Hatch Act with political comments made at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) conference.*

O'Rielly was issued a warning letter that a repeat of such statements could incur more than a warning. O'Rielly countered that he disagreed that an offhand remark was a violation, but said he took the warning seriously.

Cantwell also said that O'Rielly "had recently injected, I believe, politics into part of the spectrum issue," which she said she found "disturbing." She did not elaborate. 

In contrast, Committee chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said he looked forward to advancing O'Rielly's nomination. He said he appreciated O'Rielly's commitment to the speedy deployment of broadband, particularly given the pandemic and the greater reliance on connectivity, as well as his commitment to insuring it was targeted to areas that need it most.  

Like his fellow Republicans, O'Rielly wants the FCC to focus on the unserved first, rather than overbuilding existing service. 

O'Rielly's term expired at the end of June 2019, but commissioners can continue to serve until the close of the next Congress. The new term would date from July 1, 2019.  

O'Rielly, who has been on the FCC since 2013, is a conservative former Hill staffer who generally favors deregulation, including of ISPs, and lifting media ownership rules given the rise of competition from cable and broadband and satellite, and was instrumental in loosening KidVid regs on TV stations.    

He has also pushed for the FCC to collect better data on broadband availability before handing out billions for 5G buildouts. 

“Charter congratulates Commissioner Mike O’Rielly on his confirmation by the Senate Commerce Committee for another term at the Federal Communications Commission," said the company in a statement. "During his time at the FCC, Commissioner O’Rielly has demonstrated a strong commitment to creating a regulatory environment that encourages broadband buildout and has consistently promoted balanced spectrum policies that drive American innovation forward. As people across the country have become increasingly reliant on connectivity in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Commissioner O’Rielly has pushed to significantly expand broadband to those who still lack access. We look forward seeing Commissioner O’Rielly’s re-nomination confirmed by the full Senate.”

* Asked at a CPAC panel session how to avoid the regulatory issue ping-pong of changing administrations, O'Rielly said: "I think what we can do is make sure as conservatives that we elect good people to both the House, the Senate, and make sure that President Trump gets reelected." O'Rielly told the special counsel he was not advocating for the President's election but meant to relay the point that "the only way to retain that current outcome was to maintain the current leaders in government. In other words, retaining the current Administration is the only sure way to prevent regulatory ping-ponging.”

The American Conservative Union said Saturday that one of the attendees at its CPAC conference in Washington last week has tested positive for the coronavirus. 

ACU tweeted the news: 

[embed]https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1236417298497495040[/embed]

Among the speakers at the conference was President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and FCC commissioners Michael O'Rielly and Brendan Carr. 

Related: Carr, O'Rielly Raise Big Tech Red Flags at CPAC 

ACU said the attendee was not at any events in the main hall, where the President spoke. 

Republican FCC commissioners Brendan Carr and Michael O'Rielly echoed shared about Big Tech and Silicon Valley at the America Conservative Union's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) conference outside Washington Saturday (Feb. 29). 

Addressing allegations of conservative bias on online platforms, Carr said he did not think the answer was "to do nothing." He cited what he said was a leaked document from Twitter "that it would soon be able to allow political ideologues to stamp tweets as misinformation based on their perspective," saying: "I don't think that's the right thing." 

"If you don't want MSNBC fact-checking the information you see on Twitter," he said, "I think you should be empowered to make that decision and turn those types of bias filters off. That comment drew applause from moderator Gordon Chang and the audience. 

Asked to weigh in on the charge that Google is helping China spy on its own people, Carr conceded there was little the FCC could do from a jurisdiction standpoint, but he weighed in regardless. "I'll say this. The hypocrisy here is stunning. Those in Silicon Valley have no problem telling the rest of the country what we should think; what we should believe; what our values are. The second it comes to getting into a country with nearly two billion people, all of a sudden those values they preach to us kind of go by the wayside." 

Carr is hardly alone in that assessment. Silicon Valley has drawn criticism from both sides of the political spectrum. 

But Carr conceded it was a tough decision for a company like Google to make, whether to bring those countries a taste of freedom, or stay out. 

O'Rielly said he was sympathetic to the arguments that have been made "in terms of the harms high-tech companies present in terms of their censoring of American conservatives, the work they are trying to do internationally in the most harmful countries in the world and how that has built up those networks to cause harm to people throughout the world. So we are mindful of that. We use our voice to help amplify the need to address those matters but there is only so much we can do directly. 

On the issue 5G supremacy, Carr gave President Trump credit for "flipping the script" when, under the previous Democratic Administration, Carr said the U.S. was under serious risk of ceding leadership in 5G to China and others. 

Carr said the new script is that the FCC has the strongest 5G network. 

Chang, author of "The Coming Collapse of China," came out firing at Chinese telecom Huawei, which he said is wiring up most of the world. He even led the audience in a brief chant: "Stop Huawei, Stop China," a chant that Carr and O'Rielly did not join, but stood and applauded as the session ended.  

The FCC recently excluded Huawei tech from broadband subsidy money and the Trump Administration has signaled it is an untrustworthy supplier and national security threat, though it also sent the signal that that status could be a chip in trade talks. 

Carr suggested the President had sent a "clear message" that "we are going to do whatever it takes to secure our nation's networks from that threat." 

Carr said that the FCC was doing its part by prohibiting subsidized Huawei gear from U.S. networks and looking to rip and replace it in existing networks. He also cited cracking down on IP theft, including by Huawei, in trade talks, again giving the President credit. 

Carr said the U.S. Can't treat Huawei as "anything other than a threat to our collective security." He said that China and Huawei, which "does their bidding," has a list of malign conduct--bribery, corruption--"longer than a CVS receipt,"  

Chang asked how moving to virtualized networks--software rather than hardware-centric--could help secure U.S. networks and decrease reliance on foreign companies like Huawei, Nokia and Ericksson--the Big Three in 5G tech. 

O'Rielly said moving to cloud-based networks would be a U.S. sweetspot. "In a virtualized world we are talking about moving most of the software to the cloud where the U.S. companies are dominating and will continue to dominate for decades to come." 

He said that will allow the country to move away from the end-to-end architecture Huawei has been pushing. O'Rielly said that move was not something the government was not having to force on companies because they were moving to virtualized networks on their own. "It is in their best interests to gain the efficiencies of the cloud. So it is not about forcing anyone, he said, but instead about market forces meeting the demand for networks that are better protected from the "harmful things" the Chinese network is trying to do. 

Carr seconded that, agreeing that it was a triumph of the free market.  

Republican FCC Commissioners Michael O'Rielly and Brendan Carr will be interviewed this weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC2020) at the National Harbor, Md., Gaylord National Resort and Conference Center.

The "conversation" with the commissioners will be Saturday (Feb. 29) at 1:40 p.m. moderated by Gordon Chang, author of "The Coming Collapse of China."

One big issue both commissioners have been dealing with is the threat of Chinese telecoms to 5G network security. Chang is no fan of Huawei, one of the telecoms the FCC is scrubbing from government-funded broadband buildouts.

[embed]https://twitter.com/GordonGChang/status/1186653020978909184[/embed]

The conversation will be over by 3 p.m., when another D.C. Republican is scheduled to take the CPAC center-stage: President Trump.

This will not be the first CPAC rodeo for either Carr or O'Rielly. In fact, O'Rielly's 2018 conversation caused quite a stir.

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel concluded that O'Rielly violated the Hatch Act prohibitions on certain political activities by federal branch employees by calling for the re-election of President Trump at the conference. The office issued a warning to O'Rielly that there would be consequences for a future violation. O'Rielly said he still believed he did not violate any rules, but also said he took the warning seriously.

At the time, the FCC's Office of General Counsel concluded that there was nothing ethically wrong with the appearance of the commissioners at CPAC, a separate issue from what they said while appearing.

House Dems at the time were not pleased with the appearance of any of the FCC commissioners.

FCC Chairman Pai has appeared at the conference in the past, including to pick up an award from the conservative group, but he was not listed on this year's agenda and a spokesperson for the chairman confirmed he would not be attending.

Herring Networks said its One America News Network has reached a deal to be launched by AT&T U-verse TV across the country. 

One America News Network will soon join the U-verse channel lineup in the cable news neighborhood on channel 208 in standard definition and on channel 1208 in high definition, the channel said. The broad carriage by AT&T U-Verse will give the independent, conservative news network more than 5 million additional subscribers, the programmer said. 

The startup, conservative-leaning news network (which launched July 4, 2013, and extensively covered the Conservative Political Action Conference this past spring under a sponsorship pact with American Conservative Union), had already obtained a carriage deal with the other big telco-TV provider, Verizon FiOS TV, though the U-verse distribution appears to be wider than the FiOS launch, which has the HD channel in the Ultimate HD package.

“We’re thrilled to give U-verse TV customers more choices by adding One America News Network to our channel lineup,” Ryan Smith, vice president of content acquisition at AT&T, said in a release. “The network is devoted to providing an independent and dependable source for news reporting around the clock along with commentary, programming and documentaries.”

“We’re extremely pleased for the support extended by AT&T U-verse in providing carriage to One America News Network. We’re grateful for the broad distribution and the channel placement within the cable news neighborhood next to other leading cable news networks,” Robert Herring senior, CEO of One America News Network, said in the release. “U-verse TV customers will be able to easily find our news channel and we’re confident that our programming lineup of national and international news, interactive talk shows, and current affairs programs will resonate well with U-verse TV customers.”

U-verse also carries Herring's Wealth of Entertainment, “AWE,” formerly WealthTV, on channel 470 in SD and 1470 in HD.