FCC Reverses Prison Phone Price Cap: $500M Savings Blocked, Top Trump Donors Benefit | July 4, 2025 Podcast & Article Analysis Podcast Por arte de portada

FCC Reverses Prison Phone Price Cap: $500M Savings Blocked, Top Trump Donors Benefit | July 4, 2025 Podcast & Article Analysis

FCC Reverses Prison Phone Price Cap: $500M Savings Blocked, Top Trump Donors Benefit | July 4, 2025 Podcast & Article Analysis

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 The Alchemy of Separation: On the FCC and the Price of a VoiceIt happens quietly, this sort of thing. A decision rendered in the hermetic chambers of the Federal Communications Commission, couched in the bloodless prose of bureaucracy: "Order on Reconsideration," "Temporary Suspension," "Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking." The words slide past the attention, designed not to snag on the consciousness of the ordinary citizen. Yet beneath this veneer of administrative procedure lies a transaction of a different order, an alchemy practiced for decades that transmutes human longing and institutional power into pure profit. The FCC, under the stewardship of Chair Brendan Carr, has chosen to suspend, until at least April 2027, rate caps that would have rendered prison phone calls merely expensive, rather than extortionate. The caps, a fragile victory born of a grandmother’s decades-long anguish, would have limited the cost of a fifteen-minute call to ninety cents. Without them, it can again cost eleven dollars and thirty-five cents. Eleven dollars and thirty-five cents to hear the voice of your son, your mother, your brother, for fifteen fractured minutes.Consider the arithmetic of absence. A billion dollars a year. That is the sum extracted, year after year, from the pockets of families – overwhelmingly poor, disproportionately Black and Brown – simply to maintain the frayed threads of connection with an incarcerated loved one. A billion dollars. It is a number so vast it loses meaning, abstracted into the realm of economic indicators. Translate it: the skipped meals, the unfilled prescriptions for insulin or heart medication, the shoes not bought for a growing child, the bus fare foregone. These are the concrete sacrifices made at the altar of the prison phone. This billion dollars does not vanish into the ether; it flows with ruthless efficiency into the coffers of telecommunications giants like Securus and Global Tel Link, and from them, via a mechanism as cynical as it is opaque, directly into the budgets of the prisons and jails themselves. The kickbacks, euphemistically termed "site commissions," can consume half of every dollar paid by a trembling hand feeding coins into a payphone in a prison visiting room. The facility profits more when the call costs more. The incentive is perverse, naked, and immensely profitable.One recalls Martha Wright-Reed. Her name is on the law – the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act of 2022 – that this FCC suspension now effectively guts. She was a grandmother living on a fixed income who understood the arithmetic of absence in her bones. She scraped together more than a hundred dollars a month, money that meant choosing between her own medication and the sound of her grandson’s voice echoing from behind concrete and razor wire. She sued. She persisted. Her fight, a solitary figure against the vast indifference of the carceral state and its corporate partners, eventually forged a rare moment of Congressional unanimity. The law passed, mandating the FCC to act, to make these calls "just and reasonable." It was a testament to the sheer, undeniable cruelty of the existing system. That was 2022. The FCC, under Carr, met the law’s deadline in 2023 with rules set for 2024. And now, in 2024, those rules are suspended. The machinery of delay grinds on. Martha Wright-Reed’s victory, it seems, was provisional.Follow the money. This is the imperative whispered in every political corridor, the thread one pulls to unravel the tapestry of power. It leads, inevitably, to the private prison operators, GEO Group and CoreCivic. These are not merely beneficiaries of the kickback regime; they are its architects and fervent defenders. The suspension of the caps preserves their lucrative slice of the billion-dollar pie. But the connection runs deeper, into the well-lit parlors of political fundraising. GEO Group moved with the swift precision of men who understand the value of access. It became the very first corporate entity to max out its donations to the Trump 2024 campaign through its PAC. On the same day, its CEO and chairman each contributed $11,600. Then came the sleight of hand: a $1 million donation funneled through a GEO Group subsidiary to a pro-Trump Super PAC, a maneuver that watchdogs decried as a likely end-run around laws prohibiting political donations from federal contractors. GEO Group and CoreCivic each bestowed $500,000 upon the Trump inauguration. Former officials from that administration, like "border czar" Tom Homan and ex-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, now find comfortable berths on GEO Group’s payroll. The symbiosis is complete: political support fuels policy decisions that guarantee revenue streams that fund further political support. It is a closed loop, insulated from the cries emanating from the visiting rooms.Chairman Carr’s justification for this suspension possesses a certain chilling banality. He speaks of "...
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