Washington Post

President-elect Donald Trump is preparing to create an infrastructure “task force” that will help carry out the ambitious federal spending program he intends to undertake upon taking office, according to several individuals briefed on his plans.

Key members of Trump’s team — including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, senior counselor Stephen K. Bannon, senior adviser Stephen Miller and Gary Cohn, whom Trump has tapped to head the National Economic Council — are all involved in the discussions. The task force head is “not Cabinet level,” but would play a critical role in coordinating among federal, state and local officials as well as private investors as the new administration prepares to inject hundreds of billions of dollars into projects across the country. The task force would also have to help identify what qualifies as infrastructure, a word that has been used to describe everything from roads to broadband, from bike trails to electric transmission lines.

Reporters hung out with Donald Trump over the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, though American news consumers won’t be reading too much about the event. That’s because it was all off-the-record, meaning that Trump could say anything he wanted, and the journalists who heard it all couldn’t pass along a single word.

Mike Allen, the former Politico mainstay turned correspondent for start-up Axios, tweeted some pictures from the event. Those were allowed by the authorities.

There is plenty of precedent for reporters doing off-the-record discussions with presidents, and the tradition remained strong in the Obama years. The rationale for attending is that journalists can get a window into the president’s thinking on stuff. And the rebuttal to that rationale is that the president uses the opportunity to spin reporters on his position, without any fingerprints on the transaction. It’s a way of getting the media to internalize the official view of things.

New York Times Washington bureau chief Elisabeth Bumiller said, “Our policy on off-the-record with presidents and presidents-elect is to push long and hard to do things on record.” However: “With journalists, you need some insight into the president-elect’s thinking. We have found in the past that this has helped us with Obama,” says Bumiller, arguing that the exposure has given the newspaper the “thought and direction to pursue stories afterward.”

Consumer advocates have filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission charging that Google violated user privacy through a policy change that gives the company more leeway to build profiles of people as they browse the Web and use Google services. The complaint, submitted by advocacy groups Consumer Watchdog and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, alleges that Google acted in a “highly deceptive manner” in changing its privacy policy in June to allow the merging of data collected by various services owned by the company, such as Google Maps, Google search and the DoubleClick online advertising service. The result, the groups say, allows for the gathering of more comprehensive information on most people who use the Web. The changes, which were activated if users opted in when prompted by a query, were widely covered by tech-oriented news sites at the time.

Argentina: In the thin air of the salt flats here, nearly 13,000 feet above sea level, the indigenous Atacamas people face a constant struggle. Yet beneath their ancestral land lies a modern-day Silicon Valley treasure: lithium.

The silvery-white metal is essential for the lithium-ion batteries that power smartphones, laptops and electric vehicles, and the popularity of these products has prompted a land rush here. Mining companies have for years been extracting billions of dollars of lithium from the Atacama region in Chile, and now firms are flocking to the neighboring Atacama lands in Argentina to hunt for the mineral known as “white gold.” But the impoverished Atacamas have seen little of the riches. One lithium company, a joint Canadian-Chilean venture named Minera Exar, struck deals with six aboriginal communities for a new mine here. The operation is expected to generate about $250 million a year in sales while each community will receive an annual payment — ranging from $9,000 to about $60,000 — for extensive surface and water rights.

[Commentary] With Donald Trump’s Presidency at hand, the news-media landscape is unlike anything we’ve seen before. What can we expect in the months ahead? With the help of some expert observers, here are a few:
1. Unprecedented conflict between the administration and the media.
2. Journalism that follows the money — but may not hit home.
3. The weakening of journalism in the heartland.
4. More pressure than ever on dominant news organizations.

President Barack Obama didn't get terribly animated during his annual year-end news conference Dec 16. Except, that is, when talking about how the media covered the 2016 election.

Asked about the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and some top operatives in Hillary Clinton's campaign, President Obama offered up a media critique: "This was an obsession that dominated the news coverage. So I do think it is worth us reflecting how it is that a presidential election of such importance, of such moment, with so many big issues at stake and such a contrast between the candidates came to be dominated by a bunch of these leaks." President Obama was then asked about Clinton and whether her loss could be laid at the feet of the Russian hack. Again, he turned to a media-focused answer: "I couldn't be prouder of Secretary Clinton, her outstanding service, and she's worked tirelessly on behalf of the American people, and I don't think she was treated fairly during the election. I think the coverage of her and the issues was troubling."

FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. are in agreement with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the White House, officials disclosed , as President Obama issued a public warning to Moscow that it could face retaliation. New revelations about Comey’s position could put to rest suggestions by some lawmakers that the CIA and the FBI weren’t on the same page on Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s intentions. The positions of Comey and Clapper were revealed in a message that CIA Director John Brennan sent to the agency’s workforce.

T-Mobile employees under pressure to meet sales goals are sometimes driven to mislead customers or to enroll them in services they didn’t ask for, alleges a report from a labor coalition.

In a complaint that Change to Win said they filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the labor group claimed that T-Mobile sets “unrealistic sales targets” that encourage workers to act in ways that may not benefit consumers. The group found that some workers said they felt pressure to add insurance, phone lines and other services that customers didn’t explicitly ask for to meet sales targets and earn commission payments. The findings were based on a review of consumer complaints collected by the Federal Trade Commission, a consumer protection agency, interviews with workers and online surveys of people who identified themselves as T-Mobile employees and customers.

FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. are in agreement with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the presidency, according to US officials. Director Comey’s support for the CIA’s conclusion — and officials say that he never changed his position — suggests that the leaders of the three agencies are in agreement on Russian intentions, contrary to suggestions by some lawmakers that the FBI disagreed with the CIA.

“Earlier this week, I met separately with (Director) FBI James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper, and there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election,” CIA Director John Brennan said in a message to the agency’s workforce, according to U.S. officials who have seen the message. “The three of us also agree that our organizations, along with others, need to focus on completing the thorough review of this issue that has been directed by President Obama and which is being led by the DNI,” Brennan’s message read.

Toward the end of its extensive dive into the Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the New York Times included this potent little sentence: Every major publication, including The Times, published multiple stories citing the Democratic National Committee and [Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John] Podesta e-mails posted by WikiLeaks, becoming a de facto instrument of Russian intelligence.

The questions are: What if we don't immediately know where the e-mails came from? Do we ignore hacked e-mails until we can determine their origins? Do we ignore them completely, regardless of origin? And even if many of us agree to either approach, do we all agree to hold off together? How do we formalize that process? And what if some outlets decline to join us? The simplest solution probably would be a blanket ban on publicizing any hacked e-mails, but again, that would be easier said than done, and the information would still be out there for anybody to disseminate — again, without fact-checking and proper context. That's a recipe for plenty of additional misinformation after an election already plagued by “fake news.”