Government & Communications

After repealing the Open Internet Order and ending net neutrality, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai doubled down on his efforts to ruin online culture. He released a cringe-inducing YouTube video titled "7 Things You Can Still Do on the Internet After Net Neutrality" that featured his own rendition of the "Harlem Shake" meme. Muckrock editor JPat Brown filed a Freedom of Information Act request for emails related to the video, but the FCC rejected the request, claiming the communications were protected "deliberative" records.

President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget request seeks $150 million in new funding for the Technology Modernization Fund, which provides seed money to governmentwide IT projects that agencies are ultimately expected to pay back. So far, TMF has funded seven projects totaling close to $90 million of the total $125 million Congress authorized for the program. The president’s request for more TMF funding is far from a certainty. Appropriations for TMF were only authorized through the 2018 and 2019 budgets through the Modernizing Government Technology Act.

House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr.

A global reckoning around the future of the internet is underway as autocratic regimes look to censor the internet in their countries, and races to develop new internet technologies, such as blockchain and 5G, heat up between the US and China. The next version of the internet could be split between countries that embrace an open web and isolationists that don't. It could also be fractured by different technologies that could fundamentally change the interconnected nature of the network and limit who can do business where.

A new executive order from the White House will aim to make federal research funding for colleges and universities contingent on their support for “free speech,” President Donald Trump said. The announcement, during Trump’s address to the Conservative Political Action Conference, appeared to target complaints by some university critics that institutions of higher education stifle right-wing viewpoints.

President Donald Trump’s war on the press hasn’t stopped. This week, he praised a $250 million libel lawsuit against the Washington Post, got some support from a Supreme Court Justice to review the nation’s libel laws, and issued his sharpest words yet against the New York Times, calling the newspaper “a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” Political journalists often ask the question: Is Trump winning his war on the media? Winning or losing, the point is that the war is ongoing. As we stated a year ago, the question should be: Are the American people the losers in this fight?

Even by his standards, President Trump’s biting attacks on the press this week stand out.

America’s founders believed that a free press was essential to democracy because it is the foundation of an informed, engaged citizenry. That conviction, enshrined in the First Amendment, has been embraced by nearly every American president. All these presidents had complaints about their coverage and at times took advantage of the freedom every American has to criticize journalists.

President Donald Trump sought to discredit a news report that says he asked his then-acting Attorney General Matthew G. Whitaker whether he could put a Trump ally in charge of an investigation into hush money paid to women during the 2016 campaign. “The New York Times reporting is false,” President Trump said in a tweet. “They are a true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” President Trump was asked on Feb 19, after the Times story published online, about his reported inquiry to Whitaker. “No, I don’t know who gave you that, that’s more fake news,” President Trump told reporters.

A supporter of President Donald Trump attacked a BBC camera operator during a presidential rally in El Paso (TX), the broadcaster said. The president was talking about a decline in attacks on African, Hispanic, and Asian-Americans when the cameraman was pushed. A 36-second clip from Skeans’s camera before, during and after the shove was widely circulated on social media.