While acting Federal Communications Commission chair Jessica Rosenworcel was prominently in the picture at President Joe Biden's signing ceremony for an executive order on competition that urged various regulatory steps by the agency to promote high-speed, low-cost broadband, there was another commissioner in attendance: Republican Nathan Simington.

Also Read: Biden Launches Potential Broadband Regulatory Blitz

With the FCC currently at a 2-2 political tie, courting Simington could be key to getting things done if Biden is not yet ready to name a permanent chair and/or pick a third Democrat.

In a statement following the ceremony, the FCC‘s newest member — and still something of a question mark in terms of exactly where he would come down on the re-regulatory effort — praised what he called Biden’s “vociferous commitment to capitalism and competition in service of consumer welfare and innovation,” and said he was confident the executive order, which drew lots of pushback from USTelecom and NCTA-The Internet & Television Association, would be “thoughtfully implemented with due consideration of costs, risks and harms balanced against vital consumer interests.”

Also Read: Nathan Simington's Unlikely Path to FCC

That certainly leaves Simington free to criticize any effort he feels did not sufficiently take into account the costs and harms of regulation.

For example, the executive order urges the FCC to restore network neutrality rules. Simington said new net neutrality rules would be better left to Congress and that, if the FCC tried to re-regulate, it would be hard pressed not to apply those rules to Big Tech players. He said that trying to do so would be “an epochal realignment in corporate regulation” whose “potential for disruption, waste and chilling effects is difficult to overstate.”

Like other Republicans who can see the re-regulatory writing on the wall in a Democratic administration, Simington does not oppose new net neutrality rules so long as they are not under a monopoly-era Title II classification of internet access. And, he added, Congress would have “an opportunity for Congress to protect speech rights that would not be protected merely by [the FCC] reclassifying broadband internet access under Title II.”

But Simington sounded almost enthusiastic about working with the other side to affect the president’s order, which the FCC is under no obligation to do since it is an independent agency.

“I look forward to working with my colleagues on the commission and my counterparts in the executive branch to realize a bipartisan vision of openness, competition, and consumer choice consistent with the principles of internet freedom adopted under Chairman [Michael] Powell and supported by every chair since,” he said. 

President Joe Biden has rescinded former President Donald Trump’s May 2020 Section 230 executive order on online censorship (order 13925 on “Preventing Online Censorship,”) which was targeted at social media sites Trump had long argued were biased against conservatives and his Administration.

The current president has his own issues with Section 230 (candidate Biden told The New York Times it should be revoked. That section of the Communications Act provides websites with immunity from civil liability for their treatment of content posted on their sites by third parties, but the Trump effort was clearly not the way he wanted to approach the issue, which is still hot, though the effort to enlist the FCC as a regulator did not go anywhere.

Trump’s May 28 executive order enlisted the Federal Communications Commission in trying to weed out alleged censorship of conservative speech by labeling it deceptive and thus a violation of an online content provider's terms of service.

Current acting FCC chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel at the time opposed the agency‘s participation in what appeared to be an exercise in discouraging content the president didn't like.

The order also directed the government not to spend ad dollars on sites determined to be violating those terms of service.  

As an independent agency, the FCC is not subject to executive orders, so the National Telecommunications & Information Administration was charged with asking the FCC to implement new rules allowing the FCC to judge under what conditions restricting access to content can be considered a violation of an online platform's terms of service. Currently the FCC does not regulate social media sites or ISPs beyond their terms of service.

The FCC ultimately took no action on the NTIA petition to regulate social media sites.

Biden revoked the order along with some others that tried to prevent the removal of "American Monuments, Memorials and Statues," and tied their attempted removal to "criminal violence."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is streaming the oral arguments in the State of Washington’s challenge to President Donald Trump's "travel ban" executive order. Washington state sued and obtained a temporary restraining order, which the Justice Department wants overturned.

The move drew praise from Fix the Court executive Director Gabe Roth, who has long pushed for greater transparency, including video and audio, in federal courts.

"There is no better way to experience the work of our federal judiciary than first-hand via modern technology.

The finer points of immigration law - and which branch ultimately gets to decide who enters the country - are complicated, and as the debate over the travel ban continues, there is value to being able to pull up a video clip of Friday's hearing in Seattle and an audio clip of today's hearing in San Francisco to tell the story - and in a much more engaging way than a transcript could," said Roth.

"As the judicial branch's role in holding the republic together grows, other federal courts should consider expanding broadcast access as the Ninth Circuit has."

The oral arguments -- being done over the phone -- began at 3 p.m. on the West Coast (6 p.m. on the East). Here is the link. UPDATE: after more than an hour, the arguments have ended, here is a link to the recording.

Washington's attorney general signaled to CNN that he would take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary, where video of oral argument is still not allowed.