Eli Yokley

The president-elect is scheduled to huddle with Sen Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), a member of the Senate Broadband Caucus and a "clean coal" technology advocate, as part of Dec 2's round of transition meetings. There is speculation that Sen Heitkamp could lead the Agriculture Department.

While in Congress, Sen Heitkamp has been a proponent for rural broadband, promoting infrastructure to support high-speed Internet connections on North Dakota's Indian reservations and small towns across the state. In October, she was one of five senators who urged the Federal Communications Commission to consider how its business data services rules could deter investment from emerging providers, especially in rural areas. It's unclear whether the Heitkamp meeting pertains to a potential position in the administration, though news of the expected sit-down fueled rumors that she could be under consideration for a role at either the Energy or Interior departments or at the USDA.

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) would like to be the next chairman of the House Commerce Committee if the GOP maintains its House majority in the next Congress.

Rep John Shimkus (R-IL), who has seniority on the panel over Rep Walden, has also indicated interest in seeking the position. “I would very much like to chair the Energy and Commerce Committee. I’m not alone.” He also said he’s now focused on his work with the House GOP’s campaign arm to ensure “that we have gavels” in 2017. Rep Walden currently chairs the Commerce Committee’s Communications and Technology Subcommittee.

A plurality of Americans share the sentiment that media coverage is biased toward Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, a view pushed for decades by Republicans, and most recently by the party’s current nominee, Donald Trump. Days after Trump proclaimed to be running against two opponents – Clinton and the “disgusting and corrupt media” – a survey found almost four in 10 voters (38 percent) believe the media is biased in trying to help elect the Democratic nominee.

It was the mainstream media, the leading television stations and newspapers such as the ones Trump now critiques, who were blamed, in part, for egging on Trump’s candidacy during the Republican primary. In the view of Thomas E. Patterson, a professor of government and the press at Harvard University, “neither of the two basic indicators of news coverage would have predicted Trump’s heavy coverage,” coverage that he used to his advantage to propel his campaign without spending much on television commercials. But if that was the case during the primary, voters do not believe it to be the case anymore.

These days, only 12 percent of voters said the media is biased in trying to elect Trump. A sliver of Trump’s supporters (9 percent) believe the media is biased toward their candidate, while 66 percent of them said the media is trying to elect Clinton president. Just a little more than one in 10 Trump supporters (13 percent) said the media is fair and unbiased, compared with about a quarter of the overall population. The sentiment among Trump’s supporters was almost identical to that of all the Republican voters surveyed. Among Clinton’s supporters, four in 10 Americans said they viewed the media as unbiased, while 16 percent said it was biased toward helping elect Trump and only 19 percent said it was biased toward trying help elect Clinton.