Government & Communications

It’s time for the Federal Communications Commission to step into the future by using artificial intelligence tools to address the continuing lack of affordable broadband to many communities—an increasingly entrenched problem of “internet inequality,” which impacts our economy and democracy and threatens the future global competitiveness of our country. By adopting more sophisticated data validation algorithms, the FCC could avoid repeating past mistakes. Such algorithms can not only automate the data validation process but also can ensure consistency and learn from previous provider submiss

President Donald Trump joked with Russian President Vladimir Putin about meddling in the US elections. After the two leaders met on the sidelines of the G20 summit, a reporter shouted a question at President Trump about whether he’d warned President Putin not to interfere in US democracy.

The Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 Census — at least, for now. This is a huge win for democracy: There is plenty of compelling research on why the citizenship question would depress response rates, particularly among immigrant, African American, and Hispanic groups.

The Supreme Court on put on hold the Trump administration’s plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census form sent to every household, saying it had provided a “contrived” reason for wanting the information. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the splintered opinion. In a section agreed with by the court’s liberals, he said the Commerce Department must provide a clearer explanation. Agencies must offer “genuine justifications for important decisions, reasons that can be scrutinized by courts and the interested public,” Roberts wrote.

The Broadband Interagency Coordination Act of 2019 (S.1294) would require the Federal Communication Commission, Department of Agriculture, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to enter into an interagency agreement to coordinate how federal funding for the deployment of broadband internet technologies is distributed. The agreement would cover data and information sharing among those agencies.

All over Africa, the double-edged nature of digital technology is becoming increasingly apparent. On the face of it, an internet shutdown in Africa seems less noteworthy than one in Europe, China or North America, where the use of online technology is more widespread. Internet penetration in Africa — while rising more rapidly than elsewhere — is still just 37 percent, against 61 percent in the rest of the world. Yet in some ways, Africans are more dependent on internet and smartphone technologies than people elsewhere.

Large majorities say the tone and nature of political debate in the US has become more negative in recent years – as well as less respectful, less fact-based and less substantive. One takeaway: By a wide margin (66% to 32%), more people say social media companies have a responsibility to remove offensive content from their platforms than say they do not have this responsibility. But just 31% have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in these companies to determine what offensive content should be removed.

President Donald Trump ramped up his attacks against the nation's biggest newspapers, saying that a poll should be done to see whether The New York Times or The Washington Post is "more dishonest and deceitful." "A poll should be done on which is the more dishonest and deceitful newspaper, the Failing New York Times or the Amazon (lobbyist) Washington Post!" he said on Twitter.

President Donald Trump accused the New York Times of treason in response to a story the newspaper claimed his administration approved. President Trump responded to a New York Times story that detailed his administration stepping up attacks on Russia’s power grid in response to Russian-directed US election interference.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary who fiercely defended President Trump through one of the most tumultuous periods in American politics and presided over the end of the daily White House news briefing, will step down at the end of June 2019. No successor was immediately announced.