Government & Communications

President Donald Trump gave his first interview in more than a month on June 22, and the result — airing June 23 on Fox News — included President Trump congratulating himself for his suggestion that there might be tapes of his conversations with former FBI Director James B. Comey. What's interesting here is that this isn't the official White House position. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders denied June 22 that President Trump's six-week-old tweet about possible tapes was meant to threaten or influence Director Comey. But then President Trump just went out and basically said it himself.

White House Correspondents' Association President Jeff Mason said they are "not satisfied" with the White House putting a halt on their daily, on-camera briefings. In an e-mail to members of the association, Mason said he met with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to discuss the issues of the briefings.

"The WHCA’s position on this issue is clear: we believe strongly that Americans should be able to watch and listen to senior government officials face questions from an independent news media, in keeping with the principles of the First Amendment and the need for transparency at the highest levels of government," Mason wrote.

The Department of Homeland Security is turning to data scientists to improve screening techniques at airports. On June 22, the department, working with Google, will introduce a $1.5 million contest to build computer algorithms that can automatically identify concealed items in images captured by checkpoint body scanners. The government is putting up the money, and the six-month contest will be run by Kaggle, a site that hosts more than a million data scientists that was recently acquired by Google. Although data scientists can apply any technique in building these algorithms, the contest is a way of capitalizing on the progress in a technology called deep neural networks, said the Kaggle founder and chief executive, Anthony Goldbloom. Neural networks are complex mathematical systems that can learn specific tasks by analyzing vast amounts of data.

As he considers limiting White House news briefings to one per week and requiring journalists to submit written questions, President Donald Trump is listening to advisers outside his administration. Ironically, a couple of those advisers are members of the media — Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity and former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), a Fox News contributor.

Consulting people without formal roles in his administration is not unusual for Trump, and several of these people are media figures. I have compiled a list of unofficial advisers (and possible advisers) from the media, along with what we know about their relationships with the president.

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission, once a sleepy regulatory backwater, has become a deeply political agency, governed less by the science of radio waves than by pressure from inside-the-Beltway groups. How did we get here? The answer, according to “The Political Spectrum”, a remarkable new book by Clemson University economist Thomas Hazlett, is that the agency began life with a political agenda, one that continues to override its technical experts.

With the skill of a TV detective, Hazlett reveals how the undefined “public interest” standard has proven itself a potent and malleable political weapon. As new information technologies are invented — from radio and TV to cable, satellite, cellular and now broadband — the FCC has wielded its power both intentionally and recklessly to benefit a changing cast of favored industries, restricting competition and all but the most mainstream content.

[Larry Downes is a project director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy]

[Commentary] Thanks to the open internet, a new generation of activists fighting for civil rights and equality has been able to make their voices heard in ways previously unimaginable. Now the Trump Administration is trying to turn back the clock and silence them by undoing the Network Neutrality rules. That is simply unacceptable. We have fought and won this fight before, and now it’s time to get organized again. Send your comment to the Federal Communications Commission today.

With the Trump administration waging a war on so many communities — from attempting to gut health-care coverage for millions of people to repeatedly trying to implement an unconstitutional Muslim ban — now, more than ever, we need the open internet to organize and fight back. I’ll work hard to protect Net Neutrality from inside the halls of Congress, but we need your voice too.

After what felt like years of hammering Hillary Clinton for failing to adhere to federal e-mail transparency policies, you might think politicians would take pains not to make the same mistake. But now, the White House has been accused of just that.

One June 22, the nonprofit group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed suit against President Donald Trump for violations of three separate federal records laws, including the automatic deletion of internal e-mails. In each case, the effect of the violations would be to place internal communications outside the reach of public transparency measures like the Freedom of Information Act — exactly what politicians spent an entire campaign season arguing about.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said the commission can do more with less—102 fewer full-time employees, for example—and his budget reflected that philosophy while still being able to serve the FCC's core mission of protecting the public interest and closing the digital divide. Chairman Pai, joined by Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Michael O'Rielly, testified on the FCC's budget before the Senate Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government.

The FCC has asked for about $322 million, 5.2% less than the previous year, even though the FCC's budget has been flat since 2009. Chairman Pai conceded it was a challenge to do more with less but that the FCC had rolled up its sleeves. And while he said past chairmen had pointed out that the FCC is fully funded by fees charged to licensees, he also remembered—and more than one legislator reminded him—that someone was paying that fee, including businesses big and small and the consumers to whom those fees were passed along. Chairman Pai said that even with fewer people, the FCC had more than doubled the number of items it was dealing with at its public meetings—saying the average was not 5.83 items vs. 2.58 under his predecessor. He cited a number of cost savings as well, from closing an off-site warehouse to cutting down on the number of printers and copying machines.

No matter how ready a city is to move toward advanced mobility models, municipal officials can already begin developing a vision for what integrated mobility ought to look like and how their cities might evolve accordingly. More important, they can consider how to manage the transition so that its benefits are maximized in line with local priorities for improving residents’ quality of life.

To help city leaders structure their thinking, we have created scenarios for how mobility might change in three types of cities: dense cities in developed economies, dense cities in emerging economies, and sprawling metropolitan areas in developed economies. Each scenario accounts for present-day conditions and highlights both opportunities and challenges. In this article, we lay out these visions for the future of mobility, along with ideas about how municipal officials and other urban stakeholders can help their cities navigate toward positive outcomes.

We are excited to announce that we have committed $1 million to a new cohort of progressive startups working at the intersection of tech, media, and politics. After receiving more than 500 applications during our “Resist and Rebuild” open call for funding (up from 100 last year!), we narrowed down the field to 14 and are delighted to be investing in the following startups:
Amplify: helping grassroots groups take action
Flippable: turning America blue by building a movement to flip states
Indivisible: building a model for how local activism can affect real change in Congress
Mijente: combining digital & offline organizing w. creative media to inspire activists
Notifica: connecting immigrants at risk of deportation with their support networks when they need them most
Online SOS: serving and supporting people experiencing online harassment
Pantsuit Nation: using storytelling to drive social and political change with a modern ability to reach a large, digitally savvy audience eager to participate in collective action
Ragtag: assembling a volunteer team of technologists, tech enthusiasts, political and community organizers, and activists to build progressive change from the ground up
Sister District: harnessing the energy of volunteers and donors in deeply blue (or red) places and channeling it to critical state races where it can make a big impact
Swing Left: helping you find and commit to supporting progressives in your closest Swing District so that you can help ensure we take back the House in 2018
Townhall Project: empowering constituents across the country to have face-to-face conversations with their elected representatives
Vigilant: building a database so you can search and monitor all of the public records data sources you need — at once
VoterCircle: building a friend-to-friend voter outreach platform that dramatically reduces the time and cost of outreach
We the Protesters / Stay Woke: establishing a community of learners, builders, and activists to create solutions to advance equity and justice in America