Hill, The

[Commentary] To his credit, President Donald Trump has appointed sitting Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen as acting chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Given all of the things on the FTC's plate, President Trump would be wise to make Ohlhausen's appointment permanent. Like her newly appointed counterpart, Chairman Ajit Pai at the Federal Communications Commission, Ohlhausen is one of those few public servants who truly is a "lawyer's lawyer," with a profound respect for the bounds of her agency's statutory mandate. Indeed, while often cast as a regulatory agency, the FTC is better described as a law-enforcement agency. And, given such great power, the FTC must wield it judiciously.

Like it or not, the issues facing the FTC are complex and need to be approached with analytical rigor and honesty. President Trump has already made an excellent pick with Ajit Pai as chairman of the FCC. He should bookend the set by making Maureen Ohlhausen permanent chair of the FTC.

[Lawrence J. Spiwak is the President of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies.]

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) says he won’t open an investigation into President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn, citing executive privilege. But the committee will investigate who leaked the story that led to Flynn’s resignation and why Trump's national security adviser was being recorded.

Democrats are demanding an investigation into the matter, which ties into their suspicions about the Trump administration’s alleged close ties to Moscow. But House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said his committee will not investigate Flynn, and Nunes, the Intelligence chairman, followed suit. Chairman Nunes said he is more concerned “that you have an American citizen who had his phone calls recorded.” Chairman Nunes will investigate how the story was exposed, he said.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the administration is not keeping "dossiers" on specific reporters, following a report that said a staffer mentioned dossiers during a dustup with a White House correspondent. "That is absolutely not true. There are no dossiers being kept," Spicer said during his daily press briefing. The Washington Post reported an altercation between veteran Washington journalist April Ryan and Trump White House communications staffer Omarosa Manigault. Ryan, the Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Network, said Manigault "physically intimidated" her last week during a confrontation and mentioned White House "dossiers" kept on African-American reporters.

Trump Administration staffers are reportedly communicating by using an encrypted messaging app that erases messages shortly after they have been received. The Washington Post reported that officials were using the app, called Confide, to avoid being caught talking to the media, as President Trump moves to crack down on leaks. The Post report followed a report from Axios recently that reported Confide had become a favorite app for Republican staffers. Staffers may also be concerned about being hacked after high-profile cyber attacks on Democratic groups during the election.

"We do see a spike in across the board metrics when there is a major news cycle about the vulnerability of digital communications," Jon Brod, Confide’s president, told Axios. The reports raise questions though about the possible violation of federal records keeping laws that require certain government employees to use their official email address for communications. “The whole f---ing campaign was about Hillary's emails and now Trump's team is violating the Presidential Records Act by using Confide,” tweeted former Obama staffer Tommy Vietor.

The director of the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) says White House counselor Kellyanne Conway misused her official position by hawking Ivanka Trump’s product line on TV and is recommending that the White House discipline her for it. “Under the present circumstances, there is strong reason to believe that Ms. Conway has violated the Standards of Conduct Act and that disciplinary action is warranted,” OGE director Walter Schaub wrote in a Feb 14 letter to White House legal counselor Stefan Passantino. Schaub asked the White House to respond by Feb. 28 with the results of its investigation and any disciplinary action it may decide to take.

Democratic Reps are hammering Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai over his decision to cut nine companies from a program that provides subsidized internet service to low-income people. Forty-one Reps, including Reps Ro Khanna (D-CA), Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Ron Kind (D-WI), signed a letter saying that Chairman Pai’s move would hurt poor communities. “Your action will hurt those in our country that need the most help,” they wrote. “Your arbitrary decision will hurt poor children and widen the digital divide.” The House letter follows one sent on Feb 10 from 15 Democratic Sens that also blasted the decision. House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) blasted the decision earlier in Feb, calling it a “baseless action.”

President Donald Trump said the “real story” of national security adviser Michael Flynn’s resignation was “illegal leaks,” rather than reports Flynn misled senior White House officials about his conversations with Russia. "The real story here is why are there so many illegal leaks coming out of Washington? Will these leaks be happening as I deal with N.Korea etc?" President Trump tweeted. The White House announced Flynn's resignation Feb 13, the culmination of weeks of controversy surrounding alleged communications with Russia.

The Internet Association, a trade group representing internet giants including Facebook and Google, is launching a new online political fundraising platform. The program will allow people to ask candidates selected by the group questions and donate money to the association's political action committee to help that candidate. Users will be able to submit questions to lawmakers in livestreamed question-and-answer sessions hosted by the Internet Association. Donations made through the system will be transferred directly to the candidate, and by law will be subject to a contribution limit of $2,700 per election cycle.

“Just as our member companies have done for countless industries, the Internet Association has set out to revolutionize political fundraising,” Michael Beckerman, the group’s CEO, said in a statement. “This fundamentally internet-based approach will democratize political giving — a process traditionally characterized by exclusivity and an overall lack of transparency — and convert it to a public forum that provides everyday internet voters with the ability to participate in a meaningful way.” The new platform will allow the lobbying group to channel crowdsourced fundraising toward lawmakers supported by the internet industry. Rep Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), a member of House GOP leadership, will be the first to participate and will be answering questions submitted to the platform on Feb 15.

Republicans in Congress and at the Federal Communications Commission may have to make some tough decisions soon on how to tackle the Obama administration's landmark network neutrality rules.

At this early stage, it's unclear whether Republicans and Democrats in Congress will work out a legislative solution to the battle over the net neutrality rules that went into effect in 2015. Both sides have interests in putting a compromise into law. Some Republicans worry that actions FCC Chairman Ajit Pai could take to roll back the rules could just be reversed under a future Democratic administration. And Democrats may want to shore up the net neutrality principles in the meantime against a broader rollback. But a compromise is already proving to be a hard sell in some quarters. Democrats vowed to combat any attempts to pare back net neutrality. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has yet to reveal how he's going to handle going after the net neutrality rules, which he has criticized for reclassifying internet service providers to treat broadband as a public utility.

[Commentary] Unlike the Federal Communications Commission’s previous head, new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is putting consumers first, not network neutrality. The sad reality is that the previous FCC did the bidding of the biggest edge providers, both on the issue of net neutrality and opening up the cable box market.

Net neutrality began as a bipartisan, unanimous FCC policy statement in 2005 that ensured consumers could competitively access and use the legal content, apps, and devices of their choice, subject to reasonable network management. In 2009, net neutrality ceased being about consumers, and all about edge providers, when Professor Tim Wu, the one who coined the term “net neutrality,” redefined it to become about consumers economically subsidizing edge providers. By replacing Title II net neutrality price regulation with free market competition that naturally puts customers in charge, Chairman Pai can reverse mistakes made during the Obama administration, and bring a truly pro-consumer focus back to his agency.

[Scott Cleland is president of Precursor LLC and chairman of NetCompetition.]