Government & Communications

President Donald Trump blamed yet another entity for the growing immigration crisis on the US southern border: the news media. President Trump said the “fake news” reports about children being separated from their families at the border are aiding human traffickers. "They are helping these smugglers and these traffickers like nobody would believe," President Trump said of the media.

The June 19 episode of the New York Times' podcast "The Daily"  focused on the GOP’s controversial new policy of separating migrant families. Reporter Julie Hirschfeld Davis had actually interviewed White House policy adviser Stephen Miller, and she planned to use the audio from the interview on this morning’s show.

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.

The Rural Reasonable and Comparable Wireless Access Act of 2018 (S 2418) would direct the Federal Communications Commission to conduct a rulemaking to establish a national standard for Universal Service Fund programs to use when determining whether mobile broadband service in rural areas is reasonably comparable to such service in urban areas. Under current law, there is no national standard for comparing mobile broadband in rural and urban areas.

Former FBI director James B. Comey was “insubordinate” in his handling of the investigation of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, a critical Justice Department report concluded on June 14.  But the report, by the department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, does not challenge the decision not to prosecute Clinton. Nor does it conclude that political bias at the FBI influenced that decision, the officials said. “We found no evidence that the conclusions by department prosecutors were affected by bias or other improper considerations,” the report said.

Is bias in responsiveness to constituents conditional on the policy preferences of elected officials? The scholarly conventional wisdom is that constituency groups who do not receive policy representation still obtain some level of responsiveness by legislators outside of the policy realm. In contrast, we present a theory of preference-induced responsiveness bias where constituency responsiveness by legislators is associated with legislator policy preferences.

Apple has long positioned the iPhone as a secure device that only its owner can open. That has led to battles with law enforcement officials who want to get information off them, including a well-publicized showdown with the FBI in 2016 after Apple refused to help open the locked iPhone of a mass killer. The FBI eventually paid a third party to get into the phone, circumventing the need for Apple’s help. Since then, law enforcement agencies across the country have increasingly employed that strategy to get into locked iPhones they hope will hold the key to cracking cases.

The White House pushed back on legislative efforts to reverse President Donald Trump’s deal with China that eases penalties on Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE, helping to revive the company. White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley defended the administration's agreement to impose lessened penalties on the company, maintaining that the punishment was "massive" and "historic." “This will ensure ZTE pays for its violations and gives our government complete oversight of their future activity without undue harm to American suppliers and their workers," Gidley said.

The White House restricted journalists’ access to parts of President Donald Trump’s summit with Kim Jong Un despite long-standing arrangements intended to ensure the public is kept fully abreast of key presidential moments. Under standard rules agreed to by the White House and the press corps, a full pool of reporters travels with the president at all times and is allowed at any meetings where press access in granted, even if space is limited.

President Donald Trump declared that the nation's "biggest enemy is the Fake News," particularly NBC and CNN for their coverage of the North Korea summit. "So funny to watch the Fake News, especially NBC and CNN," President Trump tweeted. "They are fighting hard to downplay the deal with North Korea. 500 days ago they would have 'begged' for this deal-looked like war would break out. Our Country’s biggest enemy is the Fake News so easily promulgated by fools!"