With help from John Hendel, Laura Kayali, Clothilde Goujard and Mark Scott

Editor’s Note: Morning Tech is a free version of POLITICO Pro Technology's morning newsletter, which is delivered to our subscribers each morning at 6 a.m. The POLITICO Pro platform combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day’s biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro.

— European excursion: Starting today, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen will speak with multiple groups of policymakers this week about how giant tech companies hurt their users. Her first stop: Brussels.

— No time to waste: Forget waiting on the FCC nominees. The Agriculture Department has made the first move on net neutrality, and Republicans are crying foul.

— Life after Infrastructure Week: Broadband advocates celebrated Friday’s passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Their efforts now turn to Democrats’ social spending package, which contains a smaller pot of broadband funds.

IT’S MONDAY, NOV. 8. WELCOME BACK TO MORNING TECH. I’m your host, Benjamin Din. A fun milestone for me: Today is MT No. 100. Thanks for winning the morning with MT!

Got a news tip? Email me at [email protected] and find me on Twitter @benjamindin. Got an event for our calendar? Send details to [email protected]. Anything else? Team info below. And don't forget: Add @MorningTech and @PoliticoPro on Twitter.

HAUGEN LANDS IN BRUSSELS — While the Facebook whistleblower is unlikely to offer new revelations when she testifies to the EU Parliament today (she’s already briefed lawmakers in both Congress and the U.K. Parliament), many of the lawmakers are likely to use today’s hearing in Brussels to further their own ideas about the Digital Services Act, a piece of legislation the Europeans are pushing to rein in tech giants.

— Let’s talk about algorithms: “We need to open up the black box that is the algorithm systems and ask platforms to assess the risk that any algorithm or change of algorithm poses to the user,” said Christel Schaldemose, the Danish lawmaker who is the bill’s lead negotiator in the European Parliament.

That’s an issue that also came up when Haugen testified before the Senate Commerce consumer protection panel a month ago and pushed senators to consider changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the tech industry’s liability shield from user-posted content under U.S. law.

But European lawmakers are not just looking to hear about ways that Facebook may have failed to protect its users. They’ll want to dive into the details of the specific bill they’re considering, similar to what U.K. lawmakers did two weeks ago. “I am especially interested to learn if Frances Haugen has specific suggestions for our work on the Digital Services Act regarding the liability of online platforms and marketplaces, recommender systems and algorithms,” Schaldemose added.

— Haugen’s itinerary: On Tuesday, Haugen will also speak with lawmakers from the International Grand Committee on Disinformation, a multinational group of legislators that includes Reps. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).

And on Wednesday, Haugen will head to France, a self-proclaimed champion of cracking down on “Big Tech,” where she will participate in hearings with both chambers of the French Parliament. Lawmakers there are expecting inside intel on how Facebook works.

“What will be interesting is to understand the internal mechanisms, the decision-making processes at Facebook: who makes which decisions, with regards to which documents, at what time,” said Laetitia Avia, an MP from President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party.

DEMOCRATS’ OPENING SALVO ON NET NEUTRALITY — The Department of Agriculture’s ReConnect broadband program is making available more than $1 billion in connectivity loans and grants for internet service providers. But applicants committing to net neutrality will get a leg up, per new USDA evaluation criteria.

— The rub: ISPs currently aren’t legally required to abide by anything of the sort nationwide. (California and other states have legislated on net neutrality in the absence of federal rules.) Many Democrats, however, have called for reviving net neutrality regulations ever since the Trump-era FCC rolled them back in 2017. And President Joe Biden urged the FCC to do so in July as a part of his executive order on competition.

Although Democrats had said they feared ISPs would block or throttle consumers’ internet traffic in the absence of regulation, ISPs have generally still followed net neutrality principles voluntarily. USDA’s move is a small effort to make sure ISPs keep up this behavior as left-leaning advocates await a Democratic majority at the FCC, which might try to reenact such safeguards next year.

— Making waves: Thirteen Republicans on the Senate Commerce Committee asked Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Friday in a letter to have his department back off from this “dangerous” provision. "The investment in broadband infrastructure by both small and large providers remains at an all-time high due to the light-touch regulatory approach taken by the federal government," wrote the group, led by Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.).

USDA didn’t say whether it coordinated with the FCC on the language, simply telling John that the department is working to “respond as promptly as possible.”

WHAT’S NEXT AFTER INFRASTRUCTURE — Democrats’ partisan social spending package presently includes $300 million for the Emergency Connectivity Fund, an FCC pandemic relief program to help expand broadband access for students, library patrons and school staff, as well as $100 million for the FCC to promote its broadband affordability programs. It sets up various Commerce Department programs, such as a $280 million pilot program to improve broadband in cities and a $475 million program to help consumers purchase devices like computers and tablets. It also allocates $7 million to establish a “Future of Telecommunications Council” to advise Congress on 6G matters.

— Timeline: House Democrats and the White House are both eyeing the week of Nov. 15 — when lawmakers return from this week’s recess — for a vote on the roughly $2 trillion measure. Biden had been loath to separate the two packages but ultimately called for lawmakers to do so in order to get the infrastructure bill passed.

Moderate Democrats in the House are waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to release its analysis of the social spending package and have said they will vote for it as long as the numbers match White House estimates. “We expect it all to match up with what was presented, and we will move forward. … We all agree that [it] is critically important for our districts,” centrist Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

If it passes the House, the social spending package will still face another round of jockeying in the Senate, where opposition from moderate Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) has stalled the process.

— The math: The additional wave of broadband funding would build upon the $65 billion included in the infrastructure deal. That bipartisan package puts the Commerce Department in charge of $42 billion in grants for building out broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved parts of the country. It also provides $14 billion for the FCC to extend its pandemic-era Emergency Broadband Benefit subsidy (renamed the Affordable Connectivity Program) to help consumers pay their internet bills.

But some warn that the effects of the bill won’t be immediate, with one industry official predicting that much of the money may not go out until 2023, as John laid out for Pros over the weekend. Among the potential snags, the FCC is still working on updating its broadband maps, and agencies will need to set up new programs. Meanwhile, the Senate still has to confirm Biden’s picks to lead the FCC and the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which has been tasked with distributing most of the broadband funding.

Margaret Boles, an AVP of public affairs in AT&T’s Washington office, has announced her intention to leave the company after more than 12 years to “pursue other opportunities,” effective Dec. 1, per an internal memo. … Doug Brake is joining NTIA’s Office of Spectrum Management. He was most recently director for broadband and spectrum policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. … Christopher Moore is joining Apple to work on its self-driving car project, Bloomberg reports. He is a former Tesla engineer.

The Glen Echo Group announced a slate of new hires: Andrea O’Neal joins as a director and was previously at National Geographic Society and Burson Cohn & Wolfe; Joey Battley joins as an associate and was most recently public affairs specialist at MSB Analytics; and Katelin Murray joins as an associate.

Rita Konaev has joined the Atlantic Council as a senior nonresident fellow, exploring the implications of artificial intelligence for national security. She also serves as associate director of analysis and a research fellow at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, and as an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. … Jesse Overton has joined Google as policy marketing manager. He previously was senior comms adviser in the NYC Mayor’s Office of Public Engagement, and is a Heidi Heitkamp alum.

First in MT: Battle for the Net is relaunching its website to help constituents urge their senators to confirm Biden’s FCC nominees by the end of the year. The effort is supported by a coalition of digital and civil rights groups, including Demand Progress and Fight for the Future.

Brainrot or not? “Is Facebook Bad for You? It Is for About 360 Million Users, Company Surveys Suggest,” via WSJ.

Brick and mortar: “To Build the Metaverse, Meta First Wants to Build Stores,” NYT reports.

ICYMI: An arcane FTC rule related to “zombie votes” could be the key to saving Democrats’ antitrust agenda, Leah reports for Pros.

Tech fights back: An economic study commissioned by the Computer and Communications Industry Association found that the tech antitrust bills being considered by lawmakers would have blocked up to 21 percent of the money spent on tech startup acquisitions.

The results are in: Elon Musk asked Twitter users to decide if he should sell a tenth of his Tesla stock. They said yes. More from WSJ.

Getting paid: “Google Temps Fought Loss of Pandemic Bonus. And Won.” NYT has more.

Op-ed: The new director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office should take the opportunity to fix the U.S.' broken patent system, Intel general counsel Steven R. Rodgers writes in Morning Consult.

Tips, comments, suggestions? Send them along via email to our team: Bob King ([email protected]), Heidi Vogt ([email protected]), John Hendel ([email protected]), Alexandra S. Levine ([email protected]), Leah Nylen ([email protected]), Emily Birnbaum ([email protected]), and Benjamin Din ([email protected]). Got an event for our calendar? Send details to [email protected]. And don't forget: Add @MorningTech and @PoliticoPro on Twitter.

SEE YOU TOMORROW!