Hill, The

President-elect Donald Trump's plan not to pursue an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server is not being received well at Breitbart News. "Broken Promise: Trump ‘Doesn’t Wish to Pursue’ Clinton Email Charges," reads the lead story headline on Breitbart.com. Breitbart openly supported Donald Trump during the campaign, with almost all stories and editorial being favorable to the Republican nominee. Its former executive chairman, Steve Bannon, served as CEO of Trump's campaign and was recently named as a senior advisor in his White House.

A coalition of 26 organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Google, signed a letter asking lawmakers to delay a measure that would expand the government’s hacking authority. The letter asks Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), plus House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to further review proposed changes to Rule 41 and delay its implementation until July 1, 2017. The Department of Justice’s alterations to the rule would allow law enforcement to use a single warrant to hack multiple devices beyond the jurisdiction that the warrant was issued in.

President-elect Donald Trump designated a dozen transition officials, campaign supporters, scholars and former administration officials to bridge the gap at key federal finance and business agencies. President-elect Trump’s transition team announced 12 men and women from various sectors and industries — including several early campaign supporters — to serve on “landing teams.” The teams will help Trump staff his new administration, though members of the teams won’t necessarily be nominated or hired. Jeffrey Eisenach, director of the fiscally conservative American Enterprise Institute’s Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy, and Mark Jamison, director of the University of Florida’s Public Utilities Research Center, will lead the Federal Communications Commission team.

President-elect Donald Trump will meet with anchors and executives from the country's five biggest television networks Nov 21 at Trump Tower. The top five networks from a ratings perspective are NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox News and CNN. MSNBC, the cable news arm of NBC News, will also attend. The meeting was arranged by Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, who also served as Trump's campaign manager for the final few months of the White House race. The conversation has been deemed off the record.

President Barack Obama held similar meetings with television executives and anchors in 2008 before and after the election, including one two months before his victory with then-Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes and 21st Century Fox Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch.

The Federal Election Commission may have found more than a thousand mistakes in the latest financial filing by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, according to a new report. The FEC determined that Trump’s campaign accepted about 1,100 donations — totaling approximately $1.3 million — that may be in violation of various campaign finance laws. The commission sent Timothy Jost, the campaign's treasurer, a letter seeking clarification of Oct's financial filings.

The FEC’s message focused on two main concerns: whether Trump’s campaign accepted contributions from organizations not properly registered with the commission and whether donors giving to the Republican’s campaign exceeded legal donation limits. “If any apparently prohibited contribution in question was incompletely or incorrectly disclosed, you should amend your original report with clarifying information,” it states. "In addition, please clarify whether the contribution(s) received from the referenced organization(s) is permissible. If any apparently excessive contribution in question was incompletely or incorrectly disclosed, you must amend your original report with the clarifying information.”

President Barack Obama denounced the the spread of fake news online, suggesting it’s helped undermine the US political process. “If we are not serious about facts and what’s true and what’s not ... if we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems," President Obama said during a news conference in Germany.

The president’s comments amplify reports that viral fake news influenced the 2016 presidential election, adding to pressure on social media sites like Facebook to address the criticism that they didn’t do enough to address the issue. President Obama argued that phenomenon can have an affect on voter attitudes toward candidates, particularly “in an age where there is so much active misinformation, and it’s packaged very well, and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or turn on your television.” “If everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won’t know what to protect,” President Obama said. “We won’t know what to fight for."

[Commentary] Tech jobs can be found across the United States in virtually every industry. New York, Denver, Austin and "Silicon Beach" in Los Angeles are just a few tech clusters enjoying rapid growth, with jobs spanning industries such as finance, energy, healthcare and marketing. Jobs once thought of as being outside of tech — installation and repair, human resources, project management, sales and advertising — increasingly heavily rely on tech-driven skills. That's why fostering greater tech diversity starts with rethinking what constitutes a tech job.

Taking a broader view enables a more comprehensive strategy that could foster awareness and diversity, capture various skill levels and include tech employers across all pertinent industries.

[Carew is an assistant policy analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and a doctoral candidate at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. She is also a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute.]

Sen Edward Markey (D-MA) blasted GOP calls for Federal Communication Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler to avoid action on “controversial items" until the new administration. "Blind and visually impaired individuals will suffer because Republicans and their allies on the Commission will not allow a vote to expand the amount of video-described programming available,” Sen Markey said. "Small business, universities, hospitals, and public safety organizations will suffer because Republicans and their allies on the Commission won’t allow a vote on business data services. Republican lawmakers should stop their obstruction and support Commission action on those pro-consumer, pro-accessibility measures without delay.”

A shakeup among Democrats has positioned Sen Mark Warner (D-VA) as the top minority voice on the Senate Intelligence Committee, a key role overseeing the nation’s spies.

Sen Warner, who joined the panel in 2012, ascends to the role of vice chairman following Sen Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) decision to replace Sen Patrick Leahy (D-VT) as Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee. Sen Leahy in 2016 opted to become the senior Democrat on the powerful Appropriations Committee. As Ranking Member of the panel, Sen Warner will work along with Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) to guide oversight of the CIA, National Security Agency (NSA) and other secretive intelligence agencies. The panel will have a key role to play in 2017 as lawmakers contemplate whether to reauthorize a key portion of the 2008 update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which undergirds controversial NSA data collection programs.

[Commentary] In 1995, the Congressional Office of Technological Assessment (OTA) was abolished. The OTA existed from 1972 to 1995 and was tasked with providing congressional members nonpartisan analysis on complex scientific and technical issues. When the OTA was abolished, legislators really did not contemplate the impact and the future need for such an office. They did not anticipate the rates of obsolescence and the "Malthusian" advances in science and technology. They also did not envision the economic implications for manufacturing and the corresponding economic sectors of energy, health, security, agriculture, finance, communications and transportation that constitutes the new American economy.

The time is ripe for the next Congress to consider the value of OTA as it pertains to the future applications of new technologies and processes.

[Brooks serves as the vice president for government relations and marketing at Sutherland Government Solutions. He is also vice chairman of CompTIA's New and Emerging Technologies Committee. Logsdon is the senior director of public advocacy for CompTIA.]