Trump signs bill blocking online privacy regulation
Fund has typically been cut off during Republican administrations and had its funding resumed when Democrats control the White House.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was notified of the move by the State Department in a letter received Monday. The letter followed a formal designation by Tom Shannon, the State Department’s undersecretary of political affairs, that said the fund “supports, or participates in the management of, a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”
In a lengthy memorandum obtained by The Associated Press, the State Department said the UN fund partners with China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission, responsible for overseeing China’s “two-child policy” — a loosened version of the notorious “one-child policy” in place from 1979 to 2015.
After his press secretary blasted it as an example of rampant government overreach, President Donald Trump has signed a bill into law that could eventually allow internet providers to sell information about their customers’ browsing habits.
The bill scraps a Federal Communications Commission online privacy regulation issued in October to give consumers more control over how companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon share that information.
Critics have argued that the rule would stifle innovation and pick winners and losers among internet companies. The regulation was scheduled to take effect later this year, but Congress used its authority under the obscure Congressional Review Act to wipe it from the books. AP