The numbers are in, and the public is overwhelmingly demanding net neutrality. There have been nearly 1.3 million calls to Congress in support of it, 14.5 million emails to Congress, 2.7 million FCC comments, nearly 820,000 petition comments, well more than half a million text messages to Congress, and almost 1.2 million faxes sent. Then there's the 700 protests, the 600 congressional office visits, and 99,000 actual snail mail letters. One side hears that message loud and clear, and that side is going to force a vote to overturn the FCC's reversal of the open internet rule.
US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he will force a vote on a bill that would reinstate the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules.
Legislation to reverse the repeal "doesn’t need the support of the majority leader," Schumer said during a press conference Friday, according to The Hill. "We can bring it to the floor and force a vote. So, there will be a vote to repeal the rule that the FCC passed."
The Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal its own net neutrality rules last week, and the repeal will take effect 60 days after it is published in the Federal Register. But Congress can overturn agency actions by invoking the Congressional Review Act (CRA), as it did earlier this year in order to eliminate consumer broadband privacy protections. [...]
"It's in our power to do that and that's the beauty of the CRA rule," Schumer said. "Sometimes we don't like them, when they used it to repeal some of the pro-environmental regulations, but now we can use the CRA to our benefit, and we intend to."
The resolutions to use the CRA are already in the works. It will only take a simple majority in both chambers to reverse the FCC and restore the previous regulations. This isn't new legislation: this is a restoration of the long-debated, long-litigated established net neutrality rules.
It's not going to be an easy lift to get that simple majority, but a huge response from the people—the kind of response we've already demonstrated—can scare even some Republicans into it. They'll have taken a disastrous, hugely unpopular vote for a tax plan only Bob Corker and Donald Trump could love, and they'll sure be hearing about that while they're home over the winter break. The Senate will be split 51-49 when Sen.-elect Doug Jones is sworn in, a very thin margin for Republicans there.
And if this effort, the matter is still going to the courts. If they defeat it, it will be one of the defining issues of the 2018 election, along with their effort to take our healthcare away. That won’t be a good look for them, not at all.
Trump's FCC and Big Cable have teamed up to destroy net neutrality—but we can still stop them. Tell congress to oppose Trump FCC's plan to destroy net neutrality and the open internet.