June 2017

CONSTITUTIONAL OATH

DC AND MARYLAND SUE TRUMP
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Aaron Davis]
Attorneys general for the District of Columbia and the state of Maryland say they will sue President Donald Trump on June 12, alleging that he has violated anti-corruption clauses in the Constitution by accepting millions in payments and benefits from foreign governments since moving into the White House. The lawsuit, the first of its kind brought by government entities, centers on the fact that Trump chose to retain ownership of his company when he became president. President Trump said in January that he was shifting his business assets into a trust managed by his sons to eliminate potential conflicts of interests. But DC Attorney General Karl Racine (D) and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh (D) say President Trump has broken many promises to keep separate his public duties and private business interests. For one, his son Eric Trump has said the President would continue to receive regular updates about his company’s financial health. The lawsuit alleges “unprecedented constitutional violations” by President Trump. The suit says Trump’s continued ownership of a global business empire has rendered the President “deeply enmeshed with a legion of foreign and domestic government actors” and has undermined the integrity of the US political system.
benton.org/headlines/dc-and-maryland-sue-president-trump-alleging-breach-constitutional-oath | Washington Post
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COMEY

TRUMP ACCUSES COMEY OF LYING UNDER OATH
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Glenn Thrush]
President Donald Trump accused James B. Comey, the former FBI director, of lying under oath to Congress in testimony that the president dismissed as a politically motivated proceeding. President Trump also asserted that Comey’s comments, in which the former FBI director implied that the president fired him for pressing forward with the Russia investigation, had failed to prove any collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow nor any obstruction of justice. “Yesterday showed no collusion, no obstruction,” President Trump said in the White House Rose Garden, during a news conference with the visiting Romanian president, Klaus Iohannis. “That was an excuse by the Democrats, who lost an election they shouldn’t have lost,” he said. “It was just an excuse, but we were very, very happy, and, frankly, James Comey confirmed a lot of what I said, and some of the things that he said just weren’t true.”
benton.org/headlines/president-trump-accuses-comey-lying-under-oath | New York Times
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TRUMP CLAIMS VINDICATION FROM COMEY TESTIMONY
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: David Nakamura]
President Donald Trump broke his public silence June 9 on former FBI director James B. Comey’s testimony to Congress in the Russia probe, accusing him in a tweet of lying under oath and calling him a “leaker.” A day after he had allowed surrogates to respond for him, President Trump took to Twitter to attack Comey directly, writing: “Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication … and WOW, Comey is a leaker!” President Trump’s statement came as surrogates fanned out to defend the president and his personal lawyer was preparing to file a “complaint” early next week over Comey’s testimony to the Department of Justice’s Inspector General’s Office and the Senate Judiciary Committee, apparently.
benton.org/headlines/trump-claims-vindication-comey-testimony-calls-him-leaker | Washington Post
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HOUSE PANEL DEMANDS TRUMP RELEASE COMEY TAPES
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: John Bowden]
Congress wants to know if President Donald Trump taped his conversations with fired FBI Director James Comey. A House panel led by Reps Mike Conaway (R-TX) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) sent a letter to White House counsel Don McGahn demanding the release of any "tapes" of conversations between Comey and President Trump. The president first suggested the existence of such tapes after Comey revealed that he wrote memos of his private conversations with President Trump leading up to his firing. Reps Conaway and Schiff are representing the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence's Russia investigation, and a separate bipartisan group of Senate Judiciary Committee members led by Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) also sent letters requesting the notes Comey wrote documenting the same meetings with Trump. The Senate group requested the memos from Professor Daniel Richman, the friend Comey gave his notes to, and the House group requested any memos still in Comey's possession. Reps Schiff and Conaway provided a deadline of June 23.
benton.org/headlines/house-panel-demands-president-trump-release-comey-tapes | Hill, The
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COMMUNICATIONS & DEMOCRACY

WH SOCIAL MEDIA DIRECTOR
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Matea Gold]
White House social-media director Dan Scavino Jr. violated a federal law that bars public officials from using their positions for political activity when he urged President Donald Trump's supporters to defeat a GOP congressman, the Office of Special Counsel has concluded. As a result, Scavino was issued a warning letter and advised that additional violations of the law could result in further action, according to a June 5 letter that the office sent to the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which filed a complaint about Scavino's tweet. Scavino's April 1 message called on the “#TrumpTrain” to take out Rep Justin Amash (R-MI) in an upcoming primary, referring to him as “a big liability.” Rep Amash is a member of the House Freedom Caucus, a group that President Trump had blamed at the time for derailing legislation that would have repealed parts of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Even though Scavino was tweeting from his personal account, his page at the time listed his official White House position and featured a photo of him inside the Oval Office.
benton.org/headlines/white-house-social-media-director-dan-scavino-violated-hatch-act-tweet-targeting-gop | Washington Post | Vox
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TRUMP RETALIATION?
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Alicia Cohn]
CNN is asking questions about the White House’s decision to place their reporter in the back of a White House press briefing. “We were in the equivalent of Siberia, no pun intended, when it comes to where we were seated,” CNN’s Jim Acosta told Wolf Blitzer. “That could be seen as an oversight on the part of the White House staff but it could also be seen as retaliation over the reporting we’re doing over here at CNN.”
CNN reporters are typically seated with other cable news networks at the front of press events so that their cameras have an unobstructed view for stand up live shots. The White House has occasionally changed seating arrangements in the past for various reasons, however during the June 9 event President Donald Trump specifically called out the cable news networks for treating him "so badly." "Should I take one of the killer networks that treat me so badly as fake news?" President Trump asked, before calling on ABC’s Jon Karl.
benton.org/headlines/media-raise-concerns-about-trump-retaliation-after-seating-changes | Hill, The
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

YOUR VOICE IS NEEDED IN THE NN FIGHT
[SOURCE: Free Press, AUTHOR: Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR)]
[Commentary] Despite Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s claim that he supports Network Neutrality, the proceeding he opened in May attacks not only the legal authority underpinning the rules — which is absolutely vital for enforcing them — but seeks to overturn these protections altogether. If Chairman Pai gets his way, Net Neutrality will be gone for good and people will be left with only the empty promises of big cable companies to protect them online. This administration has gone after so many crucial consumer protections that we have fought for, from ending exploitative prison-phone rates to banning your internet service provider from selling your personal data. President Donald Trump isn’t working for anyone besides the corporate lobbyists and millionaires that are filling his administration. We’ve fought and won this battle before and we can do so again. But it’s going to take all of us working together. I will do my best working with my colleagues in the Senate to protect internet freedom, but we’ll need all of your voices engaged and ready to fight.
benton.org/headlines/your-voice-needed-net-neutrality-fight | Free Press
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SEN JOHNSON ON NN
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Jon Brodkin]
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and Sen Ron Johnson (R-WI) each called network neutrality a "slogan" that solves no real problems, with the senator also arguing that the Internet should have paid fast lanes. "It’s a great slogan," FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said, when asked by a radio host what net neutrality is. "But in reality what it involves is Internet regulation, and the basic question is, 'Do you want the government deciding how the Internet is run?'" Chairman Pai, who is touring midwestern states to meet with rural Internet service providers about broadband deployment, appeared with Sen Johnson on WTMJ Radio in Milwaukee. "As chairman Pai said, net neutrality is a slogan," Sen Johnson said. "What you really want is an expansion of high-speed broadband, and in order to do that you have to create the incentives for those smaller ISPs to invest. They don’t really control their own fiber if the government tells them exactly how they’re going to use their investment." Because of net neutrality rules, "there’s less incentive to invest, so we’ll have less high-speed broadband," Sen Johnson said.
benton.org/headlines/internet-needs-paid-fast-lanes-anti-net-neutrality-sen-johnson-says | Ars Technica
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM

T-MOBILE AND LIFELINE
[SOURCE: telecompetitor, AUTHOR: Joan Engebretson]
T-Mobile’s business selling service to low-income users whose costs are paid, at least in part, through the Universal Service Fund (USF) Lifeline program is “non-sustainable,” said Braxton Carter, T-Mobile chief financial officer. T-Mobile Lifeline customers represent 4.4 million of the carrier’s 73 million subscribers and “we’re going to eliminate them from the base,” said Carter. Carter attributed the change in direction to changes in the Lifeline program associated with requirements for voice and data service. The changes to the Lifeline data apparently relate to the FCC’s plan to raise the minimum monthly allotment to 2 gigabytes in 2018 from an initial 500 megabytes. “We don’t think Lifeline is a valuable or sustainable product for our base,” he said. Based on Carter’s comments, some or all of those customers apparently are sold through companies that buy service from T-Mobile on a wholesale basis. Meanwhile, smaller rural carriers have been reluctant to offer Lifeline broadband because the rate they would have to charge for the service would be in the range of $100, which the $9.25 discount wouldn’t go far to cover – a situation the rural carriers attribute to an insufficient USF program budget.
benton.org/headlines/t-mobile-cfo-non-sustainable-lifeline-business-be-phased-out | telecompetitor
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SECURITY/PRIVACY

MAKING GOOGLE THE CENSOR
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Daphne Keller]
[Commentary] Prime Minister Theresa May’s political fortunes may be waning in Britain, but her push to make internet companies police their users’ speech is alive and well. In the aftermath of the recent London attacks, PM May called platforms like Google and Facebook breeding grounds for terrorism. She has demanded that they build tools to identify and remove extremist content. Leaders of the Group of 7 countries recently suggested the same thing. Germany wants to fine platforms up to 50 million euros if they don’t quickly take down illegal content. And a European Union draft law would make YouTube and other video hosts responsible for ensuring that users never share violent speech. The fears and frustrations behind these proposals are understandable. But making private companies curtail user expression in important public forums — which is what platforms like Twitter and Facebook have become — is dangerous. Outraged demands for “platform responsibility” are a muscular-sounding response to terrorism that shifts public attention from the governments’ duties. But we don’t want an internet where private platforms police every word at the behest of the state. Such power over public discourse would be Orwellian in the hands of any government, be it May’s, Donald Trump’s or Vladimir Putin’s.
[Keller is the director of Intermediary Liability at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, and previously was associate general counsel to Google]
benton.org/headlines/making-google-censor | New York Times
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TELEPHONE RECORDS RULES
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Public Notice]
On August 4, 2015, a number of public interest advocates (including the Benton Foundation) filed a petition for rulemaking asking the Federal Communications Commission to repeal Section 42.6 of the Commission’s rules, Retention of Telephone Records, that requires telephone companies to retain the detailed call records of their customers. The petitioners explained that the regulation was unduly burdensome and ineffectual and posed an ongoing threat to the privacy and security of American consumers. The FCC is seeking comment on the petition. Comments are due June 16; reply comments are due July 3.
benton.org/headlines/fcc-seeks-comment-repeal-retention-telephone-records-rules | Federal Communications Commission | read the petition | read the gentle reminder to the FCC
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POLICYMAKERS

REDL CONFIRMATION HEARING
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Li Zhou]
James Comey may have sucked up all the oxygen June 8 on Capitol Hill, but NTIA Administrator-nominee David Redl, previously senior counsel for the House Commerce Committee, addressed several issues of interest to technology and telecommunications folks during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee:
On striking the right balance for spectrum: "One of the core jobs that NTIA has is balancing the need for spectrum for government users to meet their very important needs and balancing that with the need for spectrum in the commercial sector ... there's always an opportunity for more efficient use of spectrum."
On the ICANN transition: "The reality is that we're in the situation we're in ... We're going to have to move forward and be a vigorous representative of U.S. interests before ICANN. It would have been very difficult to put the genie back in the bottle."
On FirstNet: "The statute is clear, that NTIA is to work with FirstNet and the states, to make sure there is deployment, particularly in rural areas."
On expanding rural broadband: "Everyone in America should be able to benefit from the economic value of broadband ... I would want to look across all the different challenges facing individual states, particularly rural areas, and try to find individual mechanisms that will help support private sector investment in those places."
On 5.9 GHz spectrum and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications: "As we go forward and look at ways to increase use of that band ... we need to ensure that those systems that are planned for and incumbents are protected as we look at additional uses."
benton.org/headlines/other-hearing-thursday-ntia-administrator-nominee-david-redl | Politico
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KATHI KROMER NEW HEAD OF ALA WASHINGTON OFFICE
[SOURCE: American Library Association, AUTHOR: Press release]
After a nationwide search for the American Library Association’s (ALA) new Associate Executive Director (AED), Washington (DC) Office, ALA has announced the appointment of Kathi Kromer to the role. Prior to joining ALA, Kromer was with The Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Association for 11 years where she was their Vice President, Strategy and Outreach. While with ALS, Kromer created and executed public policy and outreach strategy for ALS, with the goals of raising awareness, improving the lives of people with ALS, advancing ALS research, increasing organizational and government funding, and creating strategic partnerships. She worked collaboratively in cross-functional teams to integrate mission priorities of advocacy, care services, and research. Kromer has a Master of Arts, International Commerce and Policy from George Mason University, Fairfax (VA) and a Bachelor of Arts, History and Political Science from University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown (PA). Kromer has more than 20 years’ experience working with Congress as well as with state governments.
benton.org/headlines/kathi-kromer-new-head-ala-washington-office | American Library Association
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June 2017

June 12, 2017 (Adam West)

Sad Day for Gotham: Adam West, Who Played Batman

DC and Maryland to sue President Trump, alleging breach of constitutional oath

Making Google the Censor