Politico

[Commentary] When Donald Trump announced his new campaign CEO in mid-August—Steve Bannon, the pugnacious CEO of the conservative news site Breitbart—the world reacted like wires had been crossed. A figure from the media jumping straight into politics? Even in the world of partisan media, it seemed unusual to give up all pretense of removal from the contest for power to directly pulling the strings. But if it seemed surprising, it shouldn’t have.

Conservative candidates have been able to count on more or less the direct support of networks like Fox for a generation, to say nothing of hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Hugh Hewitt. And in fact the connection is much, much older than that—older, in fact, than most people assume conservative media is. If you want to understand just how deeply this kind of activism is entwined in the DNA of modern conservative media, you have to go back to 1956, and to the case of a Steve Bannon-esque figure named Clarence Manion, who tried to run his own outsider candidate for president.

[Nicole Hemmer is assistant professor at the University of Virginia's Miller Center and co-host of the Past Present podcast.]

NBC's Lester Holt, ABC's Martha Raddatz, CNN's Anderson Cooper, Fox News' Chris Wallace and CBS' Elaine Quijano will moderate presidential and vice presidential debates this fall, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced.

Holt, anchor of NBC's "Nightly News,” will moderate the first debate at Hofstra University in New York on Sept. 26, which will be a traditional debate divided into six segments of 15 minutes each on major topics to be determined by Holt. Quijano, an anchor on CBS' live streaming service CBSN, will moderate the vice presidential debate on Oct. 4 at Longwood University in Virginia, which will be a traditional debate as well — divided into nine timed segments of 10 minutes each. Raddatz, ABC's Chief Global Correspondent and co-anchor of "This Week,” along with CNN anchor Cooper, will moderate a town-meeting style debate on Oct. 9 at Washington University in St. Louis. There, the questions will be posed directly by citizen participants made up of uncommitted voters based on topics "of broad public interest as reflected in social media and other sources." Wallace, host of "Fox News Sunday,” will become the first Fox News host to moderate a general election debate since the network's founding. He will host the final presidential debate on Oct. 19 at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. The format of the final debate will be the same as the first.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen Tim Kaine (D-VA) confirmed that the Clinton campaign will establish a "protective pool," at least for his own campaign travel.

The Clinton campaign has been using Donald Trump's total lack of a normal press pool to delay ramping up their coverage to a full protective pool--the group of reporters that travel with the candidate on the same plane. The campaign has indicated to some reporters it would not establish the protective pool before Labor Day. "We are not on the plane together," Sen Kaine said about his traveling press corps. "But that is going to change in about a week. And I think that is fairly common during campaigns that you often fly in small planes and that you get to the end, you start flying in larger planes. I think that is something, yeah, as we get into the thick of the campaign in Labor Day, that is going to change. I don't even think Donald Trump allowed the American press to go with him yesterday when he went to Mexico. Which was highly unusual."

The print pool rotation for covering Donald Trump will include outlets that his campaign has blacklisted. BuzzFeed, the Huffington Post, Politico and The Washington Post are among the blacklisted outlets that will be part of the pool rotation, which begins the week of Aug 29. BuzzFeed is the first outlet to act as official print pooler, through which reporters send out shared reports about Trump’s activities to the rest of the outlets on the pool rotation. "We just wanted to thank you for your patience over the past few weeks,” reads an e-mail sent to the Trump pool list, which will be managed by reporters from The New York Times and Time magazine. “But we are pleased to announce that after some start-and-stop negotiations with the Trump campaign, we are debuting our full print pool this week, starting with BuzzFeed today in Washington.”

According to a source familiar with the negotiations, which have been ongoing for months, those representing the pool demanded that only the pool could determine its membership and not the campaign. What’s not clear though is whether the banned outlets will be allowed to attend Trump campaign events as media when they are not on pool rotation.

[Commentary] E-Rate is almost the perfect Washington DC program. It hits the hot buttons of education, technology, and good jobs at good wages in one shot and spreads federal monies to vendors and consultants in every corner of the country. And no politician has ever been defeated for public office by touting improved Internet connections at local schools. But in a large study of students in North Carolina, two colleagues and I recently found that the actual benefits for students—the kids the program is supposed to help—are about zero. In fact, our research found that the E-Rate program marginally hurt student performance rather than helped it.

To investigate the impact of E-Rate and to focus on the current example proffered by the President, my colleagues (Ben Schwall of Clemson and Scott Wallsten of the Technology Policy Institute) and I studied how broadband subsidies in North Carolina related to learning. Gathering data on all public high schools in the state from 2000-2013, including how much E-Rate funding was sent to schools, we investigated how SAT scores in math and verbal reasoning changed with increased Internet subsidies. Holding other school and socio-demographic factors constant, the changes were small but the finding was statistically significant. Except the relationship was negative. In other words, the more E-Rate funding a school received, the worse its students performed.

[Thomas Hazlett is H.H. Macaulay Endowed Professor of Economics at Clemson University, where he also directs the Information Economy Project. He formerly served as Chief Economist of the Federal Communications Commission.]

Hillary Clinton's campaign has tapped a network of more than 100 tech and telecom advisers to craft a policy agenda that echoes many of Silicon Valley's top priorities, from knocking down laws that limit innovation to defanging so-called patent trolls.

The breadth of her outreach to technology experts — not previously reported — marks yet another contrast with Donald Trump, who has offered few clues about who might have his ear on issues important to the tech sector, and whose positions on issues like immigration have alienated large segments of the industry. Even more than Barack Obama did eight years ago, Clinton conspicuously embraces Silicon Valley's view of the world and what it needs from Washington — a view that’s often at odds with long-standing interest groups such as taxi unions and big cable companies. Clinton’s tech advisers — divided into about a half-dozen working groups — provided input for the "technology and innovation" agenda that she released June 28.

The rematch between longtime Rep Mike Honda (D-CA) and upstart Ro Khanna to represent a large chunk of Silicon Valley is as tight as ever.

Khanna, an intellectual property lawyer who’s been backed by tech heavyweights like Sheryl Sandberg, Peter Thiel, Sean Parker and Sundar Pichai, leaned on his tech cred while conducting a Reddit “ask me anything” (AMA) during which he backed network neutrality and patent laws that promote entrepreneurship. In the top-two-advance primary in June, Khanna narrowly edged Rep Honda out, 38.3 to 38.1 percent. The primary results suggest Khanna has gained ground since his 2014 challenge, when he lost the primary by 20 points and went down in the general by three points. Rep Honda has made a name for himself championing policies supporting organized labor and low-income communities. But he’s been dogged by an ongoing ethics probe.

Tim Wu, the law professor and tech policy expert best known for coining the term “net neutrality,” has joined the Office of Management and Budget to work on economic competitiveness issues. Wu willwork closely with the National Economic Council. He had been working in the office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman while on continued leave from Columbia Law School.

Election 2016 isn't all about the White House so Politico is rolling out a series on congressional contests in which prominent techies are facing stiff competition. First up is Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA).

An entrepreneur by trade who chairs the House subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet, Rep Issa is getting an unexpectedly strong challenge from Doug Applegate (D-CA), an attorney and former US Marine who took 45 percent of the vote in a top-two-advance primary on June 7, while Rep Issa captured 51 percent. The incumbent has held the seat, covering parts of San Diego and Orange counties, since 2001, and proven to be a stalwart Republican presence in a state where Democrats dominate. During his time in Congress, Rep Issa has become known for his tech-savvy background and support for innovation, notably defending internet platforms during the SOPA fight in 2012 and backing Apple in its clash over backdoor encryption. Rep Issa has also proposed legislation to update H1-B visa policies, promote open data in government, and protect intellectual property. Because of his tech-friendly efforts, he's been lauded by industry groups like the Internet Association and CTA (Issa was once Chairman of the Board, back when the organization was still called CEA).

Rep Issa also has made a name for himself -- not always in a positive way -- for his aggressive, partisan chairmanship of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, where he garnered national headlines for going after the Obama Administration over issues ranging from the Benghazi attack to the "Fast and Furious" botched gun operation. But he never won a slam-dunk victory in any of his partisan crusades and eventually drew criticism even from within his own party. His successor at the helm of House Oversight, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), needled Rep Issa for a look-at-me leadership style that emphasized "big press releases" over hard-hitting reports. "Darrell Issa didn't do many reports," Chairman Chaffetz said in Dec 2014 , noting that his style would be different: "It's not the 'Jason Chaffetz Show.'"

Donald Trump's long shadow may not be a safe place for a Republican to reside in a blue state this fall. Rep Issa has previously called the candidate an "obvious choice" for President.

HillaryClinton's inner circle insists that any talk about what her administration would look like is premature. But the conversations are happening anyway. Here’s Politico’s rundown of some of the most prominent chatter, based on conversations with top Democrats, people who speak regularly to Clinton and her senior aides, as well as leaders in their respective fields.

Chief of staff: a choice between Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, and Tom Nides, Clinton’s deputy secretary of state for management
Press secretary: Brian Fallon
Senior advisors: Jake Sullivan, Minyon Moore, Jennifer Palmieri, Huma Abedin, Neera Tanden, Ann O’Leary, Maya Harris, Robby Mook, and Marlon Marshall
Secretary of State: Wendy Sherman, Bill Burns, Nick Burns, Kurt Campbell, Strobe Talbott, or James Stavridis, if Sec John Kerry isn’t asked to continue.
Attorney General: Tom Perez, Janet Napolitano, Jennifer Granholm, or Tony West
Commerce: Gov Terry McAuliffe (D-VA) or Export-Import Bank President Fred Hochberg