Washington Post

President Trump’s Twitter assault on the “so-called judge” who put a nationwide hold on the president’s executive order on immigration has motivated Democrats to challenge Trump’s choice for the Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch, on an important but elusive issue. Is Judge Gorsuch independent enough, they ask, to stand up to the president who picked him?

As the legal battle over Trump’s immigration directive shows, Gorsuch’s nomination lands at a time when the Supreme Court is likely to be called upon to review what Trump already has shown to be a broad reliance on executive power. It is difficult for appeals court judges such as Gorsuch to point to past decisions to demonstrate independence, and few are called upon to make definitive rulings on a president’s powers.

Silicon Valley is stepping up its confrontation with the Trump administration.

Technology giants Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Twitter, Uber and many others filed a legal brief opposing the administration’s contentious entry ban. The move represents a rare coordinated action across a broad swath of the industry — 97 companies in total— and demonstrates the depth of animosity toward the Trump ban. The amicus brief was filed with the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which is expected to rule within a few days on an appeal by the administration after a federal judge in Seattle issued late Feb 3 a temporary restraining order putting the entry ban on hold. The brief comes at the end of a week of nationwide protests against the plan — as well as a flurry of activity in Silicon Valley, a region that sees immigration as central to its identity as an innovation hub.

[Commentary] Communication between the Executive and mainstream media, and with it coverage of the Trump administration, has already come unhinged. The problem originates in part in the blizzard of executive orders issuing or leaking from the White House — some of them signed and others mere drafts — that officials have done little to explain to Cabinet agencies, much less the press. Then there is the already established proclivity of press secretary Sean Spicer and other spokespersons to retail brazen untruths, at the apparent urging of the boss, amid a stream of insults directed at reporters. The result is that even when the White House does something ordinary, it may be portrayed as radical and dangerous, and even when it tells the truth, it is not believed. The story of the National Security Council reorganization is a good case in point.

[Diehl is the Washington Post’s Deputy Editorial Page Editor]

The Federal Communications Commission is telling nine companies they won't be allowed to participate in a federal program meant to help them provide affordable Internet access to low-income consumers — weeks after those companies had been given the green light.

The move undercuts the companies' ability to provide low-cost Internet access to poorer Americans. For Kajeet Inc., one of the companies that was initially granted permission to provide service through Lifeline, the news comes as a blow. “I’m most concerned about the children we serve,” said Kajeet founder Daniel Neal. “We partner with school districts — 41 states and the District of Columbia — to provide educational broadband so that poor kids can do their homework.” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai had indicated that closing the digital divide is one of the signature issues he hopes to address. But the Feb 3 move cuts against those remarks.

"The most obvious fact in our society is that high-speed Internet is astronomically expensive for the middle-class and down," said Gene Kimmelman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge. "So in any way limiting the Lifeline program, at this moment in time, exacerbates the digital divide. It doesn't address it in any positive way."

The Federal Communications Commission is no longer pressing to cut the costs of most prison phone calls, backing away from a years-long effort to limit charges imposed by a handful of private companies on inmates and their families. The shift comes as the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit on Feb 6 considers whether commissioners went too far when they capped prices for inmate calls that had reached more than a $1 per minute.

After President Trump tapped a new leader for the FCC, the commission’s attorneys changed course and told the court that the FCC no longer would defend one of its own key provisions that limited fees for prisoners’ intrastate calls. The issue set for court was first raised more than 15 years ago by a retired nurse in the District of Columbia who could not afford to call her incarcerated grandson. Because the FCC is no longer defending a key provision of its own rule, the court has provided additional time for arguments from attorney Andrew Jay Schwartzman, who represents inmate advocates, including the DC Prisoners’ Legal Services Project and the Human Rights Defense Center.

[Andrew Jay Schwartzman is the Benton Senior Counselor at the Public Interest Communications Law Project at Georgetown University Law Center's Institute for Public Representation]

[Commentary] The debut of virtual seats in the White House briefing room delivered on the promise of new perspectives — but also showed how the Trump administration could use the inclusion of remote questioners to its advantage. The first journalists to join a Q&A session via video link included local television reporters from Rhode Island and Ohio, a conservative radio host from Oregon who endorsed President Trump during the campaign and a newspaper publisher from Kentucky who also backed President Trump. The problem was that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer did not offer straight answers to any of their questions. And because the questioners were quickly disconnected, they had no opportunity do what the reporters who sit before Spicer do every day — follow up and press for more details.

Essentially, Spicer used the new Skype seats to give himself four chances to recite vague talking points without being challenged by a journalist. There is potential for remote questioners to make meaningful contributions to White House press briefings — the first four certainly tried — but, so far, that does not appear to be what the White House really wants.

Some visitors to the White House website have reported seeing messages that carry some scary warnings. A message from Google Chrome warns: “Attackers might be trying to steal your information from messages.whitehouse.gov, for example passwords, messages or credit cards.” Post staffers ran into similar messages on Microsoft's Edge browser, Apple's Safari and Mozilla's Firefox browser. According to cybersecurity professionals, the messages don't seem to be prompted by an attack. In fact, the messages aren't obviously linked to anything nefarious at all; it’s likely due to a simple maintenance oversight.

Experts said that the messages are appearing because the site's security certificate — or, very simply put, the thing that verifies that a site is what it says it is — isn’t valid. It appears the White House’s equipment isn’t configured correctly, and the old certificate was revoked or allowed to expire without getting replaced, said Kenneth White of the Open Crypto Audit project, a nonprofit dedicated to improving cybersecurity. There are perhaps hundreds of pieces of equipment and servers that need to be just right to keep the White House site up and running correctly, so it’s easy to miss something, he said.

Is Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai for or against network neutrality? In plain English, Chairman Pai is saying he's in favor of the idea of net neutrality; he just doesn't like the FCC's policy of regulating the Internet providers with Title II of the Communications Act. But, how can you be for net neutrality but against the FCC's rules? Aren't the rules "net neutrality"? The FCC regulations are aimed at preserving a free and open Internet, but they aren't technically synonymous with net neutrality. The regulations are simply the government's attempt to defend net neutrality, which is a broader idea about how the Internet should work.

Chairman Pai said he was supportive of a number of so-called freedoms identified by former FCC chairman Michael Powell. Now that he's chairman, Pai isn't saying much about net neutrality beyond that. But we can look to other Title II opponents for clues as to possible alternatives to the current policy. There are several main paths forward, it seems, and any mixture of them seems possible. The FCC could choose not to enforce the net neutrality rules. It could actively seek to roll them back by reversing Wheeler's reclassification. And Congress could seek to legislate.

Consumer advocates are urging Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai to uphold rules restricting companies from inundating people with cellphone calls to collect money owed to or guaranteed by the government, including federal student loans, mortgages and taxes. Eighteen organizations, led by the National Consumer Law Center, will file a petition with the FCC opposing student loan companies’ request for a revision of rules the agency approved in August.

Those rules tightened a provision that was slipped into a 2015 congressional budget deal, amending a law meant to protect people from being harassed or bombarded with text messages and calls that could run up their cellphone bills. The commission limited the number of calls debt collectors can make to wireless phones to three a month and barred them from contacting a borrower’s family or friends. It also said companies must notify people of their right to request that all calls cease upon request. “It is pretty stressful owing money, and calls from debt collectors nagging you to pay is also very stressful, and when the calls are not just made to you but to your relatives, it’s embarrassing,” said Margot Saunders, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer fielded a question about the executive order temporarily barring entry into the United States of citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries. “He’s also made clear that it’s not a Muslim ban, it’s not a travel ban. It’s a vetting system to keep America safe,” said Spicer. Following up on Spicer’s protestations about the word “ban,” NBC News White House Correspondent Kristen Welker noted the tweet above: “He says it’s a ban.”

Alluding to the wonderful symbiosis and spirit of cooperation between the White House and its press corps, Spicer responded, “He’s using the words that the media’s using,” said Spicer in a tribute to the overwhelming power of the modern media. “But at the end of the day … it can’t be a ban if you’re letting a million people in.” Welker wasn’t going to accept that tripe. So she pointedly noted that the president had called it a ban. “Is he confused or are you confused?” she asked. “No, I’m not confused. I think that the words being used to describe it are derived from what the media is calling this. He has been very clear, it is ‘extreme vetting.'” Except for that tweet, which has been retweeted nearly 34,000 times and liked nearly 160,000 times. Perhaps Welker’s remarkable moment of accountability journalism can set to rest all that silly talk that the media shouldn’t pay much heed to Trump’s tweets. Or maybe media organizations should check with Spicer & Co. before characterizing Trump administration initiatives to avoid overly influencing the president of the United States. Because we don’t want to mess up their messaging.