Politics

House GOP investigates why the feds didn’t give Elon Musk’s company more money

Published

2 years ago

November 11, 2024

House GOP investigates why the feds didn’t give Elon Musk’s company more money

Happy Tuesday. Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, the past week’s top stories from the intersection of politics and the all-inclusive world of technology.

Musk’s Minions

Republicans in Congress are already hard at work doing billionaire Elon Musk’s bidding, in just about the most literal way possible. On Monday, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee announced an investigation into the Federal Communications Commission’s 2022 decision not to award a nearly $900 million bid for Musk’s Starlink to provide broadband internet to rural areas.

The move comes after Musk, a staunch Trump supporter, used his social media platform X to claim that the government’s decision not to grant Starlink the bid was “illegal” and cost lives in North Carolina. In another tweet, he promoted false claims — later amplified by Donald Trump — that the government was preventing Starlink servers from being delivered to victims of Hurricane Helene.

A Monday letter from the House Oversight Committee to the FCC demands documents for a probe on whether the FCC’s decision “followed established processes and is not improperly using the regulatory process for political purposes.”

In 2022, the FCC said the decision was because Starlink didn’t meet its internet speed requirements. And the agency stood by that decision in a statement last December. But Republicans seem eager to bow to Musk every opportunity possible. One can only imagine the level of fealty he’ll likely be paid if Trump wins the presidency in November.

AI and the First Amendment

California’s effort to curtail the use of election-related deepfakes was halted last week when a federal judge paused a law meant to crack down on the deceptive videos. The pause followed a conservative influencer’s claim that California’s law, Assembly Bill 2839, violated the First Amendment.

States sue TikTok

Thirteen states and the District of Columbia are suing TikTokalleging the app is harmful to young people and has been used deliberately to hook them with “addictive” features. TikTok responded in a public statementsaying, “We strongly disagree with these claims, many of which we believe to be inaccurate and misleading.”

A storm of antisemitism

Jewish officials working on the response to Hurricane Helene have faced antisemitic attacks online as right-wingers have spread vile conspiracy theories suggesting that nefarious figures are playing some kind of role in worsening the hurricane’s fallout.

Antisemitic conspiracy theories accusing Jewish people in North Carolina of orchestrating Hurricane Helene are spreading like wildfire on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, according to a new report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

Read the report here.

Clinton’s social media concerns

In a recent interview on BLN, Hillary Clinton came out in support of stricter regulation of social media companies that allow harmful content to be posted on their platform. Clinton, who knows from experience how social media misinformation can influence politics, has been outspoken about the need to combat this misinformation in recent years.

CBP One lies

I recently wrote about Republicans like Trump, Musk and Ohio Sen. JD Vance spreading lies about the immigration app CBP One to stoke fear and anger toward immigrants as early voting is underway.

Politics

World Cup fuels ticketing reform demands

Published

4 hours ago

June 21, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Demands are growing for a political reckoning over ticket scams at the World Cup — and beyond.

The National Independent Venue Association and Fan Alliance, organizations representing and advocating for entertainment venues and artists respectively, sent a joint letter to Congress on Thursday, calling on lawmakers to ban speculative and ghost tickets, cases where resellers flog tickets they don’t actually have.

The letter — addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer — includes nearly two dozen accounts of fans who say they were scammed out of thousands of dollars trying to get tickets to the World Cup, which began last week. The groups are also asking fans to share their own stories with elected officials via the Fix the Tix Fan Action Center that launched last week.

“Every one of these stories erodes the public’s faith that consumers should and will be protected from fraud,” NIVA Executive Director Stephen Parker and Fan Alliance founder Donald Cohen wrote. “We urge Congress to work with us to prevent fraud like this in the future and finally enact ticket resale consumer protections that will protect Americans and ensure affordability.”

The letter flagged fans like Dacy Gillespie, who bought World Cup tickets for her sons on Christmas, only to learn on match day — months later — that the seller couldn’t deliver them. And Skylie Shore, who Parker and Cohen said spent well over $6,000 on tickets to the Scotland-Haiti match on June 13, but was forced to wait outside the stadium because she couldn’t access them as fans marched in on gameday.

“These examples reveal a consistent pattern: consumer deception, speculative ticket sales, and broken-hearted American families at the hands of resale ticketing companies like StubHub,” Parker and Cohen wrote.

In a statement, StubHub spokesperson Jack Sterne said that the platform does not allow speculative ticket sales, and blamed FIFA for users’ difficulty in accessing their tickets.

“We understand that attending the World Cup represents a significant investment in time and money, and we take our responsibility to every fan who books through our platform seriously,” Sterne said in a statement. “Many of the issues fans are facing trace back to the event organizer’s technology infrastructure, newly announced transfer restrictions, and a new app that was launched just a month ago.”

In response, FIFA said in a statement that the organization “can guarantee the validity and delivery of tickets purchased through its official platforms” and that FIFA.com/tickets “is the official ticket sales channel” for the tournament.

NIVA and Fan Alliance are urging congressional leadership to place universal price-gouging limits on ticket resale, enact stringent fines on perpetrators and a violation-reporting mechanism for ticket scams, and require secondary ticketing platforms to produce data on ticket fulfillment and consumer complaints.

The groups are not the only ones monitoring for evidence of shady ticket practices. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway issued a consumer guidance in advance of the tournament, urging match-goers to beware of fraud and promising to hold offenders accountable. And the FBI in May put out a public service announcement, warning fans against purchasing tickets on copycat websites modeled on FIFA’s.

“With the World Cup coming to Kansas City, excitement is high and, unfortunately, so is the potential for fraud,” Hanaway said in her statement. “Missourians should be able to enjoy this once-in-a-generation event without fear of being deceived. My office will hold accountable anyone who seeks to exploit our families, and we stand ready to assist anyone who encounters suspicious activity.”