Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

28. Federal Communications Commission · Notable

Bar regulated carriers from interconnecting with insecure providers

Attempted

851 28. Federal Communications Commission

“A new Administration should work with the FCC to close this loophole. One way to do so would be for the FCC to prohibit any regulated carrier from interconnecting with an insecure provider.”

What has happened

  1. Attempted

    The Commission adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (FCC 26-29, WC Docket No. 26-82; released 2026-05-01, published 2026-05-08) proposing to exclude Covered List entities and their affiliates and subsidiaries from blanket domestic section 214 authority, to revoke the blanket authority they already hold, and — section III.C — tentatively concluding that interconnection with an entity denied or stripped of that authority is an unreasonable practice under section 201(b) and outside the section 251(a) duty to interconnect. It seeks comment on prohibiting carriers from interconnecting with Covered List entities, including at Points of Presence and data centers. Proposed only: no Report and Order in the docket as of 2026-09-01, and the comment period ran from Federal Register publication.

  2. Attempted

    The FCC opened an investigation into the loophole in the Mandate's own words. Announcing it, Chairman Carr said Covered List entities "are trying to make an end run around those FCC prohibitions by continuing to do business in America on a private or 'unregulated' basis" and that the Commission would "move quickly to close any loopholes". Letters of Inquiry and at least one subpoena went to the nine Covered List entities. An investigation, not a prohibition.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

The instrument matches the ask unusually closely. The Mandate’s “unregulated end run” is the FCC’s own phrase for the problem, and the NPRM’s section III.C proposes the exact remedy the Quote suggests — prohibiting telecommunications carriers from interconnecting with Covered List entities. It also proposes the narrower step first (no blanket section 214 authority), which Chairman Carr described as “starting from the least controversial”.

Why attempted twice and not partial. Nothing is prohibited yet. An NPRM is a directive without effect (playbook §3); the 2025 investigation was a fact-gathering step. A Report and Order adopting the section 63.01 exclusion would be partial (part of the ask — entry authority, not interconnection); one adopting the interconnection ban would be done. The Federal Register carries only the NPRM in WC Docket No. 26-82 through 2026-09-01 (conditions[term]="26-82", FCC, since 2026-01-01: two documents, the NPRM and the Sunshine notice for the April 30 meeting).

Related items. #2200 (Covered List kept current) and #2201 (a regular review process) sit in the neighboring Mandate bullets and share the Council on National Security evidence.

Checked 2026-09-03 (read-queue ticket 04) against the FCC’s own Covered List page (https://www.fcc.gov/supplychain/coveredlist, stamped 2026-08-21; www.fcc.gov is not walled and opens to the full browser header set). Two in-window instruments come closest to this ask and neither reaches it, so the Status does not move:

  • a Public Notice of 2026-06-26 prohibiting the importation and marketing of equipment added to the Covered List in 2024 or earlier, under the process codified at 47 CFR § 2.939(e), effective “in general, 10 days following Federal Register publication”, with the critical-infrastructure-surveillance limb deferred until the Commission adopts a new definition of “critical infrastructure”; and
  • an Order of 2026-08-11 revoking the equipment authorizations held by Odyssey Robot LLC. Both restrict equipment entering or remaining in the U.S. market. This Quote asks that regulated carriers be barred from interconnecting with insecure providers, which is a carrier obligation, not an equipment authorization. Moved nearby, not moved toward: the instrument that would reach this ask is a Report and Order in WC Docket No. 26-82 adopting the section III.C interconnection prohibition, and that is still an NPRM.
Action
restrict
Object
Interconnection between regulated carriers and insecure providers
ID
2202