Hill, The

The Trump administration said it is going ahead with actions to crack down on Chinese trade practices by June 30. The White House says President Trump is planning further export controls against China to counter Chinese intellectual property theft, including tariffs on Chinese tech exports believed to contain stolen American intellectual property.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is calling out social media and technology giants over what he sees as anti-conservative bias. Majority Leader McCarthy, a leading candidate to replace retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), tweeted a video from a speech in which he lashes out at Amazon, Facebook and Twitter, accusing them of trying to censor conservatives. “Social media is being rigged to censor conservative voices. We will not be silenced,” Majority Leader McCarthy wrote in the tweet.
 

A minimum of 21 journalists worldwide were imprisoned on charges connected to "fake news" in 2017, according to a new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists.  The report cites the recent implementation of measures in countries such as Brazil, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia and Russia aimed at targeting the rise of fake news. Arrests blamed on fake news reportedly more than doubled from 2016.

A former Trump campaign member who later joined the White House communications team is joining Sinclair Broadcasting Group as the network has weathered controversy in recent months over its pro-Trump leanings. Kaelan Dorr, who worked for the Trump campaign as a deputy communications adviser and later joined the White House as Director of Congressional Communications, will join the right-leaning network where he tweeted he will work alongside Boris Epshtyn as an executive political producer for the show.

Large internet companies are pushing back against tougher election advertising regulations, asking the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to allow for some flexibility in how they disclose funding sources for political ads. The Internet Association (IA), a trade group representing the biggest web-based technology companies, said that the same disclosure requirements imposed on television and radio ads don’t work well for the internet.