July 2017

In the US Digital Serivces' annual report to Congress, Acting Administrator Matt Cutts—the Google transplant responsible for Gmail's spam filter—outlined the team's current priorities, many of which were established under President Barack Obama. The team reports to the Office of Management and Budget's acting deputy director and is now part of the American Technology Council, a convocation of prominent business leaders that President Donald Trump taps for advice on federal problems. USDS also works with the White House Office of American Innovation, a new team led by Jared Kushner aiming to modernize government technology, according to Cutts.

Despite stark differences between the two administrations' broader priorities—some experts predicted Trump would keep the tech teams but assign them to new projects—USDS appears to be continuing the progress it made under Obama. For instance, Kushner has listed the VA's internal technology as one of the Office of American Innovation's top priorities, and USDS has been working on various VA projects for years, the report noted. A USDS team built and deployed a system that could process claims for disability compensation in 2016, and piloted a new tool that would let lawyers and judges review evidence from those claims in April. It also helped launch Vets.gov, an online portal consolidating the thousands of federal benefit sites for veterans, in 2015; in November USDS added a check claim status tool, applications for education benefits, and other new features. USDS is still collaborating with the U.S. Citizenship and Innovation Services to digitize the immigration paperwork processing system, the report said.

In advance of July 19's Federal Communications Commission nominations hearing in the Senate Commerce Committee, the Consumer Technology Association was calling for a swift vote for confirmation. And the nominees are: Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel for a return engagement, FCC general counsel Brendan Carr for the open Republican seat, and FCC chairman Ajit Pai—he is being renominated given that his term expired at the end of June. Currently the FCC is down to three commissioners, effectively the minimum to get anything done.

According to Sinclair Broadcasting Group, it's doing a service to its viewers by requiring the many local TV news stations it owns to air unabashedly pro-Trump propaganda on a regular basis. The local TV news giant has been pushing a right-wing slant on local television stations across the country for years. Owned by the Smiths, a family of longtime Republican donors who have all the ambition of News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch but a much lower profile, Sinclair has mostly flown under the radar. But following the election of President Donald Trump, the network has begun adopting the playbook Roger Ailes used to turn Fox News into a conservative media goliath.

Over the last few months, Sinclair has been requiring its stations to run more commentaries from pro-Trump personalities and expanding its reach to greater numbers of unassuming viewers in new local media markets. Now it's defending these clear moves to mimic the aspiring state media over at Fox with warped, brainwash-y logic: The conservative propaganda it pushes on its viewers is necessary because the rest of the media is biased.