According to Techdirt, the Trump administration has signaled to California that it cannot take on large telecommunications companies if it expects to receive federal taxpayer grants. The report frames the move as part of a broader federal retreat from consumer protection and corporate oversight.
Techdirt notes that states have stepped into the vacuum left by Washington, with varying degrees of success. In telecom, the collapse of federal privacy and net neutrality enforcement has made state-level action more important, and California has become a prominent battleground over how far that authority can go.
The report is based on a single source, so there are no competing accounts to compare. It does suggest that conditioning federal grants on state regulatory restraint could discourage California and other states from policing telecom companies, even when they see local consumer harms.