March 2017

Can the president change libel laws? No. Libel law is a state-law tort, meaning that state courts and state legislatures have defined its contours. Since the Supreme Court’s 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court has placed constitutional limits on how states can define libel, notably by requiring public officials and, later, public figures to prove actual malice. That protection was needed, Justice William J. Brennan Jr. wrote, to vindicate a “profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide-open.” Such debate, Justice Brennan wrote, “may well include vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” Changing New York Times v. Sullivan would require either the Supreme Court to overrule it or a constitutional amendment. Neither is remotely likely, though President Trump could try to appoint Supreme Court justices who would vote to overturn the precedent.

Two high-profile Republican members of Congress may have been targets of Russian social-media campaigns to discredit them as recently as this past week, an expert in Kremlin influence-peddling told the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 30. “This past week we observed social-media accounts discrediting US Speaker of the House Paul Ryan,” Clint Watts told the committee in a rare open hearing with cybersecurity, intelligence and Russian-history experts that leaders billed as a “primer” on Russian influence-peddling.

Watts, an expert in terrorism forecasting and Russian influence operations from the Foreign Policy Research Institute, also said that in his opinion, Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL) “anecdotally suffered” from Russian social-media campaigns against him during his presidential bid. Speaker Ryan’s office was not aware of the report about an effort against him, according to a spokeswoman. The revelations widen the scope of politicians who have become the subject of Russian smear campaigns carried out on social media, a central part of the Kremlin’s alleged strategy of spreading propaganda in the United States and undermining its democratic institutions.

Silicon Valley’s newest congressional representative is bringing the idea of basic income to Washington, to the tune of $1 trillion. Rep Ro Khanna (D-CA) - who's district is home to companies like Apple and Intel—would seem to have little chance of persuading the most conservative Congress in memory to blithely give away so much money. But there’s a wrinkle: The biggest beneficiaries wouldn’t be Rep Khanna’s well-heeled constituents in Cupertino or Santa Clara. It’s President Donald Trump’s core supporters in rural America who would have the most to gain.

Rep Khanna is preparing to introduce a bill that he calls “the biggest move in orders of magnitude” toward providing a basic income in the US. Specifically, it proposes a $1 trillion expansion of the earned income tax credit, which would roughly double the amount of money going into low-income families’ pockets. The main difference between Rep Khanna’s plan and the Silicon Valley utopianists’ version of basic income is that for now recipients would still have to have a job to qualify. Think of it more as a basic income warm-up.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said that broadband is the infrastructure challenge of our time, and he sees cable operators not as an enemy of that effort but as partners in better enabling citizens to reap the benefits of the digital revolution. Former Chairman Tom Wheeler often framed Internet service providers as gatekeepers and potential snakes in the virtuous garden in need of minding.

American Cable Association president Matthew Polka, who interviewed the chairman at the American Cable Association annual summit, called Pai's a "refreshing take"—to applause from members. Chairman Pai was speaking in advance of their visits around Washington (DC) to make the case on Capitol Hill and elsewhere for the important role of small and medium sized telecoms/cable operators and the need to recognize their particular challenges. Polka pointed to the active agenda of the new chairman, and that came even before he had announced a busy meeting agenda for April that includes a revamp of business data services (BDS) that is not expected to include potential new price regs on cable operators ISPs, as his predecessor had proposed. Chairman Pai said that his short-term goals include promoting infrastructure investment and whether any regulations currently on the books are impeding that—the April agenda includes some proposals to speed that deployment by removing regulatory barriers.