Mallory Shelbourne

President Donald Trump has tapped Michael Pack, the former head of conservative think tank Claremont Institute, to run the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The BBG oversees Voice of America, Middle East Broadcasting Networks and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

A bipartisan budget deal announced by Senate leaders includes $20 billion for U.S. infrastructure programs, an investment plan that comes ahead of the Trump administration's highly anticipated rebuilding proposal. The funds would go toward “existing” projects for water and energy infrastructure as well as expanding broadband to rural regions and improving surface transportation said Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY).

President Donald Trump lashed out at The New York Times on Dec 11 over a report that said he watches a minimum of four hours of television each day. 

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) says he thinks the unmasking of associates of President Donald Trump by officials appears to have been politicized. Unmasking refers to restoring a US citizen’s name in intelligence surveillance reports. American citizens' names are redacted from such reports when incidentally collected during foreign surveillance. Speaker Ryan said unmasking information and then leaking it to the media is a crime. “That is a crime. And so that is taking classified information, unclassifying it, and leaking it out. That is something somebody in the Obama administration decided to do,” Speaker Ryan said.

President Donald Trump spent the Monday after Easter slamming a favorite target: the media. Every story written by “the fake media” is “badly slanted,” President Trump tweeted. “The Fake Media (not Real Media) has gotten even worse since the election. Every story is badly slanted. We have to hold them to the truth!” the president wrote on Twitter.

President Trump earlier in the morning hit the media over how it had covered a recent House special election in Kansas, where Republican Rob Estes defeated Democrat James Thompson by 7 percentage points. The previous incumbent, now-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, had won his most recent race in the conservative-leaning district by more than 30 points. But President Trump said the media had given the race too much attention when it appeared it was close and not enough after Estes pulled out the win. "The recent Kansas election (Congress) was a really big media event, until the Republicans won. Now they play the same game with Georgia-BAD!" Trump tweeted.

Rep Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said Americans may have to choose between purchasing a new iPhone or paying for health insurance. “You know what, Americans have choices. And they’ve got to make a choice,” the House Oversight Committee chairman said, one day after the House GOP unveiled its plan to replace ObamaCare. “And so maybe, rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to spend hundreds of dollars on, maybe they should invest in their own healthcare.”

Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, says journalists covering President Trump should not spin "out of control.” "The danger is that [journalists] spin ourselves out of control out of anxiety or fear or whatever you want to call it," Goldberg said. "But all that this moment requires is a doubling down of our basic commitment to a fact-based discourse."

The comments came before the White House barred several news outlets from a question-and-answer briefing with press secretary Sean Spicer on Feb 24. "We're not supposed to be the resistance. We're not supposed to be the opposition," said Goldberg. "We're supposed to tell the truth about what's happening in any given moment and in any given place. And let's just do that."

Rep Jim Jordan (R-OH) argued that the media is trying to undermine President Donald Trump and his recent executive orders. “Does the media have a bias? And is the media out to make sure that they can undermine some of the things that the president is doing? I think that’s pretty clear,” Rep Jordan told CNN’s “New Day.”

CNN host Chris Cuomo pressed Rep Jordan over President Trump’s recent claim that the media does not cover terrorist attacks, a statement Cuomo said “is demonstrably false.” “I’ll take your word for it that you didn’t underreport that. You actually reported some of those,” Rep Jordan said. “All. All is the word you’re looking for,” Cuomo replied.