Washington Post

Air Force Brig. Gen. Robert Spalding, the author of a memo arguing for a government takeover of development of the nation’s 5G mobile network, is no longer serving as National Security Council Senior Director for Strategic Planning. He was not fired; his detail ended and he was not renewed. His last day as a White House staffer was Jan. 31. Brig. Gen.

[Commentary] I voted to release the Nunes memo because I believe that the duty to inform the American public is one of my biggest responsibilities as an elected representative in our democratic republic. This is in accordance with the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, which directed House and Senate committees to “exercise continuous watchfulness” over executive-branch programs.

At the center of the firestorm over a congressional memo that President Trump and his allies say reveals federal authorities’ missteps is a 40-year-old law passed in the wake of explosive domestic spying scandals. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) grew from congressional investigations into spy agencies’ eavesdropping on Americans, including civil rights activists and protesters against the Vietnam War, without warrants. The law created a warrant requirement for federal authorities to intercept the communications of anyone in the United States, including foreigners.

[Commentary] Mark Zuckerberg announced recently that Facebook plans to ask its community to help rate news producers’ credibility. Randomly selected users will be asked whether they are familiar with an outlet, and if so, invited to judge its trustworthiness. The ratio that results — of those who know the source, the proportion that trusts it — will “inform ranking in the News Feed” (though Facebook has remained vague about its relevance compared with other metrics).

President Donald Trump boasted that the viewership of his State of the Union speech was “the highest number in history” — a claim at odds with ratings figures released the day before. In a Feb 1 tweet, President Trump said, "Thank you for all of the nice compliments and reviews on the State of the Union speech. 45.6 million people watched, the highest number in history. @FoxNews beat every other Network, for the first time ever, with 11.7 million people tuning in. Delivered from the heart!

It was reported that special counsel Robert Mueller's team is interested in President Donald Trump's role in drafting a misleading statement to the New York Times in the summer, about a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower that involved Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner and a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin.  Mueller's team already has questioned several White House officials about the statement and that “some lawyers and witnesses who have sat in or been briefed on the interviews have puzzled over Mueller's interest in the episode.