OPINION:
President Trump was elected in November with a sweeping mandate to tame the deep state and halt the weaponization of government that had been a hallmark of the Biden administration. In just a few short weeks, Mr. Trump has undertaken a historic effort to uproot all the pockets of resistance left over from the Biden era.
However, some parts of the government continue to resist Mr. Trump’s agenda, hell-bent on perpetuating the Biden-era legacy of lawfare and anti-business hostility. Thanks to the president’s leadership and the work of the Department of Government Efficiency, the American people are now seeing how the deep state has been undermining American enterprise and innovation to serve woke goals. The Federal Communications Commission’s recent “regulation by enforcement” action against my company, Telnyx, is a prime example of how the Biden bureaucrats have burrowed in to defy Mr. Trump.
On Feb. 6, 2024, calls were placed to the personal cellphones of more than 365 current and former senior FCC leaders and their family members. The calls were made by a bad actor who engaged in sophisticated fraud to open an account for Telnyx’s voice service. Though Telnyx swiftly detected the activity and shut it down within hours, the calls immediately kicked off an enforcement investigation by Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel’s FCC that lasted for nearly a full year before she left office on Jan. 20.
When Chairman Brendan Carr took over, the one-year statute of limitations on the FCC’s investigation was about to expire. A proposed fine, clearly prepared by the last administration, was rushed out the door shortly before the statute of limitations expired.
Instead of going after the bad actor behind the calls, the Biden FCC targeted Telnyx on the theory that if a single bad actor could open an account and place a single unlawful call, Telnyx should be liable for a massive fine under a strict liability standard. The FCC’s proposed order misinterprets an FCC rule that provided the industry with “flexibility” in devising methods to stop unlawful calls by arguing that Telnyx should have met a standard of “perfection.”
The FCC is attempting to enforce a new standard without prior notice, a discredited Biden-era practice known as “regulation by enforcement” that Mr. Trump banned in Executive Order 13892.
In addition, Executive Order 14218 requires independent agencies such as the FCC to” de-prioritize” any enforcement actions, questionable legal theories or actions likely to harm business innovation. If this proposed fine is not canceled, Biden-era enforcement actions can persist even when they openly defy Mr. Trump’s executive orders and policies.
None of this makes sense.
Meanwhile, the bad actor behind these calls remains free without any pending enforcement actions from the FCC. Oddly, the FCC’s proposed order offers no explanation for how the bad actor obtained the personal cellphone numbers of so many senior FCC officials and their family members. The proposed order goes out of its way to downplay the gravity of the apparent security breach, misstating the number of calls to the FCC as “eight” when the actual number of calls is more than 365. Americans deserve to know when their government has been compromised and what is being done to ensure it never happens again.
Why is our small business being targeted by the Biden-era bureaucracy? Why is an agency run by a stalwart Trump ally doing great things to serve Mr. Trump allowing a leftover Biden-era enforcement proceeding to move forward? Does the new FCC want to own a “regulation by enforcement” lawfare action conceived by the last administration? The commission claims that fighting unlawful robocalls is its top consumer-protection priority. Why did the commission spend hundreds of hours, substantial resources and countless taxpayer dollars to punish Telnyx for 1,117 completed calls by a single, sophisticated bad actor when Americans receive more than 5 billion robocalls per month?
This action must have sneaked past the new FCC leadership, but sunlight is the best disinfectant. We are optimistic that the agency will reverse course as more people understand how a Biden-era “regulation by enforcement” approach managed to sneak through the cracks.
In the meantime, we will never stop fighting until our name is clear because we have no choice. Anyone in our position would do the same. The Biden era’s hostility to business caused significant harm to America’s greatness, and any remnants of it must be rooted out. The future of Mr. Trump’s presidency depends on the entire federal government working in sync with his agenda.
• David Casem is CEO of Telnyx.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.