Bloomberg

Congress has never looked like America. Capitol Hill lawmakers have long been overwhelmingly middle-aged, professional white men who are also much wealthier and better-educated than the people they represent. Still, every new biennial Congress, including the 115th Congress, ushers in small changes in the membership that reflect a diversifying US population. One notable characteristic: an uptick in lawmakers who were born outside the country. 2017’s newcomers include lawmakers born in India, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Viet Nam. They’re part of a freshman class that numbers 55 in the House and seven in the Senate. Reps Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Jimmy Panetta (D-CA) are following in the footsteps of their fathers, both of whom served in a variety of federal offices including in the House of Representatives. The Senate’s freshman class includes a different kind of familiar name: John Kennedy. The one being sworn in today is a Republican from Louisiana.

Tech executives summoned to meet with President-elect Donald Trump in New York had reason to suspect they were being lured into a trap. In the run-up to the election, the President-elect clashed with industry bellwethers over such issues as immigration, manufacturing and smartphone security. But concerns that the new administration would similarly use the Trump summit to browbeat big tech evaporated not long after the industry elite made their way through Trump Tower lobby, surrounded by reporters, security and enormous shining Christmas wreaths. Seated at a long conference table, near Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, President-elect Trump laid the compliments on thick.

Verizon Communications is exploring a price cut or possible exit from its $4.83 billion pending acquisition of Yahoo!, after the company reported a second major e-mail hack affecting as many as 1 billion users, apparently. While a Verizon group led by AOL Chief Executive Officer Tim Armstrong is still focused on integration planning to get Yahoo up and running, another team, walled off from the rest, is reviewing the breach disclosures and the company’s options, apparently.

The US Senate adjourned without confirming Jessica Rosenworcel for a second term on the Federal Communications Commission, forcing her out of office and setting up the agency for a partisan deadlock as the Republican administration of Donald J. Trump begins. Without other changes, the Democrat’s departure would leave the FCC hindered, with two Republicans and two Democrats on the five-member panel, until the Senate can confirm a Republican to gain a majority.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Wheeler, 70, can stay with the commission until 2018 and he hasn’t said when he may leave. In the most recent transfer of power, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican, left on Obama’s inauguration day although he had more than two years remaining in his term. Lawmakers had been working on Rosenworcel's confirmation for more than a year. Retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said her confirmation was supposed to be part of an agreement struck in 2015 to jointly confirm both a Republican and a Democrat at the same time. Michael O’Rielly received confirmation, but Rosenworcel did not.

Critics, including more than a dozen former top Google executives who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they signed nondisclosure agreements, describe a company having trouble balancing innovation and its core business, search advertising. Over the 12 months ended in September, Google’s ad business accounted for 89 percent of Alphabet’s revenue, or $76.1 billion. As one ex-executive puts it, “No one wants to face the reality that this is an advertising company with a bunch of hobbies.”

Writing network neutrality legislation and broadly updating the Communications Act will be major priorities in the next Congress, top Republican and Democratic congressional aides said Dec 2. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) is “very interested” in working with Democrats to create legislation that would authorize the Federal Communications Commission to enforce looser net neutrality standards, David Quinalty, the committee's policy director, said at a Washington (DC) panel discussion with other Capitol Hill staffers. The FCC, meanwhile, is widely expected to roll back its existing net neutrality rules, passed on a party-line vote in 2015, during the next administration.

Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Bill Nelson (D-FL) and House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NJ) are open to working with their GOP counterparts on net neutrality legislation, aides for those panels said. Ranking Member Pallone would just have to be sure that any bill provides a “good deal for consumers,” David Goldman, the House committee Democrats' chief counsel, said.

State-sponsored hackers have conducted a series of destructive attacks on Saudi Arabia over the last two weeks, erasing data and wreaking havoc in the computer banks of the agency running the country’s airports and hitting five additional targets, according to two people familiar with an investigation into the breach. Saudi Arabia said that “several” government agencies were targeted in attacks that came from outside the kingdom, according to state media. No further details were provided.

Although a probe by Saudi authorities is still in its early stages, the people said digital evidence suggests the attacks emanated from Iran. That could present President-elect Donald Trump with a major national security challenge as he steps into the Oval Office. The use of offensive cyber weapons by a nation is relatively rare and the scale of the latest attacks could trigger a tit-for-tat cyber war in a region where capabilities have mushroomed ever since an attack on Saudi Aramco in 2012.

The FBI, National Security Agency and CIA are likely to gain expanded surveillance powers under President-elect Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress, a prospect that has privacy advocates and some lawmakers trying to mobilize opposition. President-elect Trump’s first two choices to head law enforcement and intelligence agencies -- Sen Jeff Sessions (R-AL) for attorney general and Rep Mike Pompeo (R-KS) for director of the Central Intelligence Agency -- are leading advocates for domestic government spying at levels not seen since the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The fights expected to play out in the coming months -- in Senate confirmation hearings and through executive action, legislation and litigation -- also will set up an early test of Trump’s relationship with Silicon Valley giants including Apple and Alphabet’s Google.

[Commentary] In the free marketplace of ideas, true ideas are supposed to compete with false ones until the truth wins -- at least according to a leading rationale for free speech. But what if the rise of fake news shows that, under current conditions, truth may not defeat falsehood in the market? That would start to make free speech look a whole lot less appealing.

The rise of fake news therefore poses a serious challenge to our basic ideas about the First Amendment. Much of the debate in recent weeks has focused on social media and search engines. But whether the market for ideas is failing is more fundamental than whether Facebook or Google can be blamed for algorithms that promote and spread false stories. False news that hinders public discussion and encourages irrationality may have a role in the marketplace; but it doesn’t contribute to the good functioning of democracy

[Noah Feldman is professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard University.]

[Commentary] Details of President-elect Trump’s plan are murky, but at an estimated $1 trillion over 10 years is twice as long and nearly four times as big as the five-year, $275 billion effort championed by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Analysis from Onvia’s State & Local Procurement Snapshot for Q3 2016 suggests that the possible trickle-down effects of increased investment in the nation’s aging infrastructure would naturally have a positive impact on state and local government investments.

For municipalities with “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects, the thought of increased Federal funding for infrastructure projects is an exciting one. Studying project specifications, scopes of work and bid documents to benchmark proposals and pricing from other agencies who have already issued similar solicitations is a time-saving tactic that can help expedite getting the contracts out the door for public bidding.

[Ben Vaught is the Director of Onvia Exchange]