you can kiss this all goodbye Jan 20th 2025.
My organization (Ameelio) works with anyone we can to provide free-of-charge communication services to incarcerated people and their loved ones (and increasingly legal and medical services), and we have almost a perfect split between "red" and "blue" states/areas. Regardless of your priorities, there's somethign important in this. Whether you believe that it's a fundamental right that people are being denied, or whether you care only about tax dollars (keeping people in touch with the loved ones dramatically reduces recidivism, which saves a lot of tax dollars), there's something to love about this. There will no doubt be some pains as the industry readjusts, but this isn't going to be reversed just because a new president of the opposing party takes office.
Seems bipartisan? All five approved of part, four of all.
It passed the Senate by unanimous consent. The next morning at 9:48 am it was received in the House.
At noon there was a motion in the House to suspend the rules and pass the bills. That's done for non-controversial bills with broad bipartisan support. The motion passed within a minute.
After such a motion passes there is up to 40 minutes of debate on the bill. For this bill that lasted 10 minutes and then at 12:10 pm it passed by voice vote.
If Trump gets elected and decides the FCC's regulatory powers are bad, I promise you it will not matter how many republican senators or house reps voted for this before. I cannot think of a single incident in the last 8 years where a member of that party showed the slightest bit of ideological consistency, save McCain, who's dead, and maybe Romney, who's no longer a senator.