Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that trade negotiations with South Korea are "moving faster" than expected and that technical details could be available as soon as next week.
NTIA has given all states and territories 90 additional days to submit their final BEAD proposals, the Colorado Broadband Office said Tuesday. NTIA originally set a 12-month deadline for submitting final proposals, with the clock starting after the initial proposal is approved. In its waiver announcement, the Commerce Department said the additional time is "to implement the forthcoming programmatic improvements" to BEAD. West Virginia and Maine have both paused their BEAD processes in anticipation of program changes that are expected from NTIA and Commerce (see 2504180003).
CTIA and other industry commenters urged the FCC to proceed with caution as it considers changes to wireless emergency alerts (WEAs) that were proposed in a February Further NPRM. Comments were due last week in dockets 15-94 and 15-91. The FNPRM proposed allowing more flexibility in sending out alerts using a “Public Safety Message” classification (see 2502270042).
The Connecticut Senate is likely to vote on data privacy and AI legislation in mid-May, state Sen. James Maroney (D) told Privacy Daily on the sidelines of the IAPP Global Privacy Summit on Tuesday.
Craig Allen, senior counselor at the Cohen Group, has joined the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis as a non-resident senior fellow, the center announced April 16. Allen, a former Commerce Department official, recently retired as president of the U.S.-China Business Council (see 2409100027). In December, Allen urged the U.S. and China to pause their escalating trade restrictions against one another and discuss how to manage national security risks around technology (see 2412120052).
New BEAD guidance from NTIA is expected in the middle of next month, state sources told us. There have been indications from the Commerce Department and elsewhere that big changes are ahead for BEAD rules (see 2503200003). NTIA didn't comment.
State attorneys general may take the lead on Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement in light of the Donald Trump administration's pause on enforcing the act, attorneys at Crowell & Moring said in an April 14 alert. There's good reason to believe states will follow California's lead in announcing that it will enforce anti-foreign bribery efforts, the firm said.
State attorneys general may take the lead on Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement in light of the Donald Trump administration's pause on enforcing the act, attorneys at Crowell & Moring said in an April 14 alert. There's good reason to believe states will follow California's lead in announcing that it will enforce anti-foreign bribery efforts, the firm said.
The FCC is granting some official travel requests, Commissioner Nathan Simington’s office told us Thursday. A pause on official travel led to Simington’s last-minute cancellation of plans to speak at the NAB Show 2025 in Las Vegas earlier this month. Commissioner Anna Gomez paid her own way to attend (see 2504080036). Simington is set to go to Boston to speak Saturday at the Harvard Business School Infrastructure Summit. His staff said the FCC chairman’s office approved the trip, and they were told FCC employees could now travel to events. Gomez’s office told us Thursday that it was unaware travel was again being approved and that she had also self-funded a visit to Philadelphia last week (see 2504160046). FCC Space Bureau Chief Jay Schwarz traveled to Colorado Springs to speak at the Space Foundation’s Space Symposium the same day Gomez spoke at the NAB event, but it wasn’t clear if the FCC paid for his trip (see 2504100038). The agency didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The first few weeks of Undersecretary Jeffrey Kessler’s tenure at the Bureau of Industry and Security have been defined by industry uncertainty and skepticism toward career government and business officials, industry members and BIS staff said.