A bipartisan group of senators on Wednesday introduced an amendment to the must-pass legislation reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to extend a program that provides broadband discounts to millions of Americans.  Sens. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), JD Vance (R-Ohio), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) proposed an additional $6 billion in funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program.  The program has been winding down in recent months, closing enrollment and cutting the maximum subsidy available, as it ha ..read more

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) leadership is looking to make further job reductions as a cost-cutting measure, according to a new report. WBD, which owns CNN, Max, TNT and a number of other media properties, is eyeing cuts to its budgets on streaming by hundreds of millions of dollars, Bloomberg reported. The company also plans to raise pricing for subscriptions, the outlet reported. “The company is focused on the long-term growth of the business overall, including Max, which has been a priority across WBD to expand the original content offerings for our streaming audiences including news origin ..read more

Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Tuesday that he is still “very interested” in buying TikTok and suggested its technology could be rebuilt even if the Chinese government bars the app’s China-based parent company ByteDance from selling the algorithm.  “I’ve actually spoken to a lot of tech companies on working about rebuilding this,” Mnuchin told Bloomberg Television. “I do believe the algorithms could be rebuilt.”   “So my plan, if we were to purchase it, would be to rebuild the technology under U.S. leadership, make sure that it’s all disconnected from ByteDance going ..read more

Former President Trump's super PAC has joined TikTok, the app that Trump's administration previously attempted to ban, as it seeks to spread its message across various platforms. "MAGA INC will not cede any platform to Joe Biden and the Democrats who are trying to destroy our country," Taylor Budowich, CEO of MAGA Inc., posted on the social platform X. "We will ensure President Trump’s America First agenda is brought to every corner of the internet and every precinct of this country." The super PAC is using the handle "@MAGA" on the app. Its first videos tout Trump's economic record and attac ..read more

President Biden will travel to Wisconsin on Wednesday, where he will seek to draw a contrast between a major investment in the state from Microsoft and the Foxconn investment in the area that never materialized during the Trump administration. Biden will head to Racine to announce a $3.3 billion investment by Microsoft to build a new artificial intelligence datacenter in the area. The project is expected to create 2,300 union construction jobs and 2,000 permanent jobs over time, the White House said. The data center is set to be built on the same land where electronics giant Foxconn announced ..read more

Grocery delivery service Instacart is expanding into restaurant takeout, it said in a press release Tuesday. Instacart is partnering with Uber Eats, the restaurant delivery service app, for the new line of business, according to the release. It said in upcoming weeks, its customers “nationwide will be able to use the Instacart app to order from hundreds of thousands of restaurants, powered by Uber Eats.” “Through this partnership, Instacart customers now have access to both the best online grocery selection in the U.S. and restaurant delivery, making it even easier for them to conveniently tac ..read more

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has identified and indicted a senior leader of the Russia-based LockBit ransomware group as the U.S. government continues its pursuit of those involved in the group’s cybersecurity attacks in recent years. Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev is facing 26 counts in federal court in New Jersey for his alleged role in the creation and development of the LockBit group from its beginning in September 2019 through the present, federal prosecutors announced Tuesday. LockBit is a syndicate group that accounted for more than 20 percent of the nearly 4,000 attacks across the globe ..read more

Meta’s Oversight Board will review three Facebook posts that included the phrase “from the river to the sea” that the social media company ruled to keep up on the platform, the board announced Tuesday.   The phrase pre-dates the current conflict, but the three posts under review were published on Facebook in November, following the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7 and Israel’s military action in Gaza.   The board said it selected the cases in order to consider how Meta should moderate the use of the phrase “given the resurgence in its use after October 7, 2023, and controv ..read more

TikTok sued to block the law that would force the application to be divested from its Chinese-based parent company ByteDance or be banned from the U.S., In a lawsuit filed Tuesday against the U.S. government, TikTok and ByteDanceargued the law, the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversaries Act, violates the First Amendment ..read more

The online trading platform Robinhood is bracing for a potential lawsuit or administrative order from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over its cryptocurrency offerings. In a recent regulatory filing, the platform revealed that Robinhood Crypto, its digital currency trading operation, received a "Wells Notice" from the SEC — a formal warning of a pending enforcement action. “After years of good faith attempts to work with the SEC for regulatory clarity including our well-known attempt to ‘come in and register,’ we are disappointed that the agency has decided to issue a Wells Notice ..read more