Overnight Regulation: Federal judge temporarily halts third Trump travel ban | FCC chief dismisses Trump threat to media licenses | Dem AGs sue DeVos over for-profit college rule
Welcome to Overnight Regulation, your daily rundown of news from the federal agencies, Capitol Hill and the courts. It’s a chilly Tuesday night (relatively speaking) in Washington, D.C., where Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) have announced a bipartisan agreement to stabilize the ObamaCare insurance markets. But the deal is getting a cold shoulder from Republicans, signaling a rocky path ahead.
THE BIG STORY
Not so fast.
A federal district court in Hawaii has temporarily blocked the majority of President Trump’s travel ban from taking effect just hours before it was set to do so.
Trump’s order, which was slated to take effect on Wednesday at 12:01 a.m., indefinitely banned immigration into the U.S. by nationals of Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad and North Korea, as well as certain government officials from Venezuela.
Judge Derrick Watson said the third version of Trump’s targeted restrictions on travel from eight countries, issued on Sept. 24, suffers from the same maladies as the previous order, which temporarily banned travel from six majority-Muslim countries — Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen.
Context: Watson, a U.S. District judge appointed by former President Obama, also temporarily halted Trump’s second travel ban.
The case Hawaii brought challenging Trump’s previous order is still pending before the Supreme Court.
The Hill’s Lydia Wheeler has the story.
ON TAP FOR WEDNESDAY
The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on oversight of the Department of Justice.
REGULATORY ROUNDUP
Tech: The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) doesn’t have the authority to revoke a broadcast network’s license based on content, Chairman Ajit Pai said Tuesday, in response to President Trump’s remarks criticizing NBC News.
“I believe in the First Amendment. The FCC under my leadership, will stand for the First Amendment,” Pai said in response to a question at an AT&T policy event.
Pai had been asked about Trump’s threat that regulators could look into revoking the licenses of broadcasters that aired what the president called “fake news.”
But Pai rejected those calls.
“Under the law, the FCC does not have the authority does not have the power to revoke license of a broadcast station based on content of a program,” Pai, who was appointed by Trump as FCC chairman, said.
He added that it is “not within the FCC’s jurisdiction to handle fake news.”
Context: Trump tweeted last week that NBC’s broadcasting license should be challenged and potentially revoked after it published a story that said he had called for the nation’s nuclear stockpile to be increased by a factor of 10. Trump has disputed the report.
Education: Eighteen Democratic attorneys general are suing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for refusing to enforce an Obama-era rule meant to protect students from predatory career college programs, BuzzFeed News reported Tuesday.
The attorneys general from 17 states and D.C. filed suit against Tuesday after DeVos blocked and then vowed to undo an Obama-era rule called “gainful employment.”
It would have stopped federal financial aid funding from going to career college programs at for-profit colleges that leave students with low income and massive debt loads.
Read Jacqueline Thomsen’s story here.
Health care: Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) is withdrawing his name from consideration as the nation’s drug czar, President Trump announced Tuesday.
The withdrawal followed a Washington Post-“60 Minutes” joint investigation that highlighted his support for legislation that weakened the government’s ability to go after drug companies, something critics say has contributed to the nation’s opioid crisis.
Marino was a leader in passing the legislation last year that made it tougher for the Drug Enforcement Administration to stop suspicious shipments of prescription drugs. The pharmaceutical industry heavily lobbied for the bill and showered Marino and other lawmakers with campaign contributions.
Read the rest from Rebecca Savransky and me.
Cybersecurity: Senators are bearing down on the credit reporting industry in the wake of the Equifax data break.
They’re grasping for answers on what firms will do in the future to better protect Americans’ data.
Senators grilled a trade association representative for the consumer data industry during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Tuesday.
Many expressed frustration that an industry able to profit off of consumer data has little incentive to safeguard that data from compromise and ensure it remains accurate.
“Your clients basically take my data — personal information about me — without my permission and as a business model they sell it to businesses. I am not compensated,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) when questioning Andrew Smith, a counsel for the Consumer Data Industry Association.
Morgan Chalfant has the rundown.
Environment: The Trump administration plans to restrict the ability of scientists who get Environmental Protection Agency grants to serve on the agency’s scientific advisory committees.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt teased a new policy on the matter during an event at the conservative Heritage Foundation on Tuesday, saying he’ll issue a directive next week.
He did not say how restrictive the policy would be. But it has the potential to greatly reduce the body of expert scientists who could serve on the boards that advise Pruitt and the EPA on matters like policy and enforcement.
Energy: The Securities and Exchange Commission has issued a subpoena to the developer of a canceled nuclear plant project in South Carolina.
Scana Corp., whose subsidiary was developing the V.C. Summer nuclear project with a state-run corporation, announced the subpoena in a statement on Tuesday.
The company said it intends to “fully cooperate with the investigation.”
South Carolina Electric & Gas Co., the Scana subsidiary, and Santee Cooper announced in July that they would suspend efforts to build the $14 billion V.C. Summer nuclear plant northwest of Columbia, S.C.
Health care: The DOJ announced the indictments of two Chinese nationals who allegedly conspired to traffic fentanyl, a drug that’s more powerful and deadly than heroin, across the United States.
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said Xiaobing Yan and Jian Zhang used the Internet to sell fentanyl and related synthetic opioids to drug traffickers and individual customers.
While Rosenstein said the U.S. has been in working with Chinese officials, he would not comment on whether Yan and Zhang are in custody.
ALSO IN THE NEWS
Barry Diller says tech giants ‘inevitably’ will face more regulation (The Wall Street Journal)
Major clearinghouses can avoid liquidity crunch in crisis, CFTC says (The Wall Street Journal)
Sinclair may sell TV stations for up to $1B to satisfy FCC (Bloomberg)
John Deere wins lawsuit in protection of green and yellow colors (Reuters)
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