Washington Post

Based on the photographic evidence, living conditions inside government-run detention centers for immigrant children separated from their parents in south Texas look reasonably orderly and clean. But there’s a major catch: All of the photographs depicting life inside the facilities have been supplied by the government itself. There’s been no independent documentation; federal officials, citing the children’s privacy, have barred journalists from taking photographs or video when they’ve been permitted inside.

The Federal Trade Commission, the Trump administration’s privacy, competition and consumer protection cops, plans to embark on a cross-country listening tour to gauge how academics and average Web users believe the US government should address digital-age challenges, from the rise of artificial intelligence to the data-collection mishaps that have plagued companies like Facebook. The effort was announced by new FTC Chairman Joe Simons and includes 15 or more public sessions in a series of cities that have yet to be announced.

Christopher Wylie, the whistleblower who outed Cambridge Analytica for improperly accessing millions of Facebook users’ personal information, warned that unchecked data collection and targeting on social media threaten Web users’ privacy — and the healthy functioning of democracy. Wylie, who worked at the consultancy before it assisted President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, pointed to Facebook’s tools that allow political candidates, advertisers and others to reach discrete categories of Americans online. 

Federal prosecutors said they are not seeking to subpoena reporters or Senate aides in the prosecution of James A. Wolfe, a former Senate Intelligence Committee staffer charged with lying to the FBI about his contacts with journalists. Attorneys for Wolfe, meanwhile, are asking a federal judge for a gag order including on President Donald Trump to forbid government officials from making remarks they contend could harm Wolfe’s case.

The Supreme Court sidestepped a decision on when partisan gerrymandering goes too far, ruling against the challengers of a Republican-drawn map in WI and a Democratic redistricting in MD. The rulings in the separate cases once again put off a decision on when courts can find that partisan efforts to keep parties in power goes so far as to be unconstitutional. But the court again left open a path for such challenges. It was a technical resolution of what has seemed to hold the promise of being a landmark decision about extreme efforts to give one party advantage over another.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray faced lawmakers to defend a report on the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, which rebuked the conduct of former director James B.

A federal judge ordered Paul Manafort to jail over charges he tampered with witnesses while out on bail — a major blow for President Trump’s former campaign chairman as he awaits trial on federal conspiracy and money-laundering charges.  “You have abused the trust placed in you six months ago,” US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson told Manafort.

Roger Stone, a close Trump ally, met with a Russian man, who called himself Henry Greenberg, in May 2016 claiming to have “dirt” that could help Donald Trump be elected. Greenberg, who did not reveal the information he claimed to possess, wanted Trump to pay $2 million for the political dirt, Stone said. “You don’t understand Donald Trump,” Stone recalled saying before rejecting the offer at a restaurant in the Russian-expat magnet of Sunny Isles (FL). “He doesn’t pay for anything.”