The 2020 election has already begun and with it, an energized fight to bring back net neutrality. The resistance got us a new House in 2018, and new state governments around the country, which means we can fight Individual 1 and his FCC toady Ajit Pai on even more fronts.
We already had one significant win in the Senate this year. The Republican Senate, forced by Democrats, passed a bill 52-47 to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to reverse Pai's order ending net neutrality. In this Senate, Mitch McConnell's Senate, it was a big deal. Our numbers don't look so good for 2019 in the Senate, but on the other side of the Hill, we've got a solid 181 incumbents who signed onto the same CRA effort, the most support we've ever had in the House. That's before a new wave of progressive freshmen get sworn in.
At the state and local level, though, is where we're going to have a real ground game. Already, 125 mayors in cities including Austin, Baltimore, Birmingham, Boise, Columbus, Kansas City, Minneapolis, New York, Newark, both Portlands, St. Louis, San Antonio, and San Francisco have signed a pledge to do business only with providers that adhere to strong open internet principles. These cities represent more than 30 million people.
Six governors have "signed executive orders requiring companies wishing to contract with the states to confirm that they would adhere to the 2015 Net Neutrality standards." And in 37 states, there were legislative initiatives to reject the FCC's decision and require net neutrality at the state level. In four states it passed—California, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. That fight can expand now that Democrats have flipped six legislative chambers around the country, and picked up seven governors' seats.
And we're still fighting in the courts, too. Oral arguments are scheduled for February 1 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a case brought by advocates "challenging the agency’s reversal on the proper definition of broadband, its flawed justifications for tossing out the rules and the many procedural fouls that plagued the FCC's action last year." Oh, and there's a federal investigation ongoing, to determine "whether crimes were committed when potentially millions of people’s identities were posted to the FCC's website without their permission, falsely attributing to them opinions about net neutrality rules."
Net neutrality is consistently and massively popular with voters. Like with 85 to 90 percent support. It's inevitable that we win it back, and we'll do it by taking back our federal government in 2020.