Julius Genachowski, the former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, believes his agency should not back down from regulating new technologies.

"The world isn't slowing down and waiting for debates about authority to get resolved," Genachowski said on an episode of C-SPAN's "The Communicators" over the weekend. "I think it would be a mistake for the U.S. economy, a mistake for our global competitiveness, for the FCC to slow down."

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is preparing to hear Verizon's challenge to the commission's net neutrality rules. The rules, one of the main achievements of Genachowski's chairmanship, require Internet providers to treat all traffic equally.

A bunch of new advisory board meetings are going to be announced on Tuesday in the Federal Register. Here they are:

On June 4, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's (FDIC) board of directors is meeting in Washington. 

On Tuesday, new regulations and proposals will hit the Federal Register governing endangered species, the Freedom of Information Act and ObamaCare. Here's what's coming up:

Education:
The National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities will remain funded through September, 2014, under a waiver from the Education Department. 

Read more...

The Federal Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) is set to vote Monday on whether “non-bank systemically important financial institutions” should be regulated by the Federal Reserve, USA Today reports.

The fight over Dodd-Frank regulations rages on, and public interest groups are significantly outgunned, according to RegWatch.

Read more...

Hundreds of Wall Street lobbyists are swarming government agencies and gutting the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, their opponents say.

Rep. Alan Grayson sent nearly 10,000 constituent letters to remove the measure he says could give unchecked power to corporations.

A Pennsylvania state prison imposed violated the Constitution and imposed “cruel and unusual punishments” on prisoners with mental illnesses and intellectual disabilities, according to a Justice Department document released Friday.

In a 39-page letter to Gov. Tom Corbett (R-Pa.), DOJ said it found the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution at Cresson, in the western part of the state, subjected mentally ill inmates to a combination of long-term solitary confinement and “excessive” use of force while depriving them of proper mental health treatment.

Read more...

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is coming down in favor of a deal to reform the country's toxic chemical laws.

In a letter to Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and David Vitter (R-La.), the writers of the new bill, the business group's executive vice president for government affairs, Bruce Josten, says the organization "strongly supports" the new proposal. 

Released last week, the bill from Lautenberg and Vitter would give new power to the Environmental Protection Agency to test chemicals, forces it to review high priority chemicals and screen new substances entering the market. The law also would require that the agency's actions and determinations be transparent.

Read more...

Long-delayed guidelines to make sure new ferries and cruise ships are accessible to people with disabilities have passed the final stage of internal review and are ready to be proposed.

For more than 15 years, a little-known regulatory agency has been working on the proposed guidelines for making new and refurbished passenger ships compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. On Thursday, the proposal finally completed a review at the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the last step before publication.

Once released, the guidelines will still have to go through a public comment period and a chance for editing before being finalized.