Washington Post

Vice President-elect Mike Pence pledged that the incoming administration would work with Republican and Democratic mayors alike on priorities facing America’s cities, including passage of a “big” infrastructure bill.

Appearing before a gathering of the US Conference of Mayors in Washington, Pence relayed that he had told President-elect Donald Trump that he would be dropping by and that Trump offered this instruction: “Tell 'em we’re going to do an infrastructure bill, and it’s going to be big.” Trump has pledged to mobilize anywhere from half a trillion to a trillion dollars to upgrading the nation’s aging roads, bridges and transportation hubs. But rather than relying entirely on direct federal spending, the Trump plan could utilize an investment tax credit to spur private spending.

When President-elect Donald Trump rails against the “dishonest” media, roughly half of Americans agree with his premise — that the press treats him unfairly. But even more people think Trump is unfair to the media. Those are among the results of a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, which showed that 47 percent of Americans generally view media coverage of Trump as unfair; 49 percent say coverage is fair (plus-2) but the poll's margin of error is 3.5 points. Call it an even split. Public opinion is clearer on Trump's treatment of the media: 57 percent characterize it as unfair, and just 38 percent call it fair. That's a 19-point gap.

So why, you might ask, does Trump keep up a fight in which he looks like the more flagrant offender? It appears that his anti-media screeds do more damage to his own reputation than to his target's. The answer could have something to do with the way public opinion breaks down along demographic lines. In short, Trump's attacks on the media overwhelmingly bother people who, generally speaking, are not likely to support him, anyway. At the same time, they are red meat for his base.

President-elect Donald Trump named former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani as an informal adviser on cybersecurity. Giuliani, who heads a cybersecurity consulting firm Giuliani Partners, will serve as an adviser on finding solutions to cyber-incursions in the private sector and to advise the government on possible responses.

Giuliani, an early Trump supporter, was a top candidate for secretary of state in the Trump administration but was passed over for former ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson. “This is a rapidly evolving field both as to intrusions and solutions and it is critically important to get timely information from all sources,” the transition team said. “Mr. Giuliani was asked to initiate this process because of his long and very successful government career in law enforcement and his now sixteen years of work providing security solutions in the private sector.” According to the transition, Trump will solicit “anecdotal information” from private-sector executives on the challenges and solutions to cybersecurity challenges.

Top AT&T executives swept into Trump Tower Jan 12 for a discussion with President-elect Donald Trump's team that could include the telecommunication giant's $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson and Senior Executive Vice President Robert Quinn arrived at about 9:15 am — and headed upstairs without telling reporters why they were there. But with AT&T's massive merger still pending — and with Trump having publicly opposed the deal — it would be a surprise if the acquisition were not brought up in Stephenson and Quinn's meeting. That is bolstered by the fact that Quinn serves as AT&T's top official in Washington and is charged with handling regulatory affairs. To complete the purchase, AT&T must persuade the federal government that the deal would not harm competition.

For years, companies like Facebook and Google have captivated audiences with the prospect of someday beaming Internet access down to earth from drones or satellites flying high above the ground. The dream held particular promise for developing countries where it's often expensive to build cellular towers or lay down physical Internet cabling. Now, though, Google's parent company, Alphabet, is scaling back its ambitions for Internet by drone. It has disbanded the team that had been developing the technology, according to the company. Dozens of employees in the group, known as Titan, have been reassigned to work on other projects. They include Project Wing, Alphabet's effort to develop a drone delivery service, and Project Loon, which seeks to deliver Internet around the world via floating balloons. That project is still going strong, Alphabet says.

WikiLeaks wants to start building a list of verified Twitter users that would include highly sensitive and personal information about their families, their finances and their housing situations. “We are thinking of making an online database with all 'verified' twitter accounts & their family/job/financial/housing relationships,” WikiLeaks tweeted Jan 6.

The disclosure organization, run by Julian Assange, says the information would be used for an artificial-intelligence program. But Twitter users immediately fired back, saying WikiLeaks would use the list to take political vengeance against those who criticize it. Twitter “verifies” certain users, such as world leaders, nonprofit organizations and news outlets, with a blue check mark beside their names so that other users of the service can be confident about the posters' identities. Asked by journalist Kevin Collier why it needed to build a database of dossiers, WikiLeaks replied that the database would be used as a “metric to understand influence networks based on proximity graphs.” But the proposal faced a sharp and swift backlash as technologists, journalists and security researchers slammed the idea as a “sinister” and dangerous abuse of power and privacy.

AT&T is trying to ease its way out of scrutiny by the Federal Communications Commission over the wireless and TV giant's $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. Telecommunication regulators shouldn't need to analyze the deal because it will be beyond their jurisdiction, AT&T signaled in a filing Jan 5 to the Securities and Exchange Commission. By potentially eliminating a layer of oversight, the claim could accelerate the merger's approval in Washington, where federal antitrust officials are also expected to review the proposed purchase.

AT&T, which became the nation's largest pay-TV provider when it acquired DirecTV in 2016, is gunning for Time Warner's massive library of content and intellectual property, which it hopes to distribute and sell advertising against. In its SEC filing, AT&T said it has concluded that no licenses will be transferred. (In addition, Time Warner could seek to spin off its FCC licenses so that they are not a part of the deal, analysts have said.)

T-Mobile is trying to simplify how it and other wireless companies sell you phone service — and how they bill you for it. If it works, it could help clear up those headaches you may get while trying to decipher what you're actually paying for month after month.

T-Mobile said that beginning Jan 22, it will only sell a single cellular plan to new customers: a plan that gives you unlimited talk, text and data (though heavy users may still experience reduced Internet speeds during periods of high demand). This plan, known as T-Mobile One, has been around for a while now. But T-Mobile's decision to sell only this plan moving forward is an effort to streamline what can be a confusing jumble in the industry of different-size data buckets, temporary promotional discounts and opaque billing that adds up to billions every year, according to the company. The centerpiece of this new approach is the notion of single-figure billing: You see one number on your bill, and you pay it. That's it — no additional line items for taxes or other fees. As an example, a family of four might previously have paid $40 a line, and then additional miscellaneous charges on top of that, upping the total.

[Commentary] President-elect Donald Trump perceived, correctly in my view, that political rhetoric in the United States had become empty, a vast collection of platitudes and bogus phrases that no longer bore any real connection to the truth. Everyone else pretended to mean what they said when they didn’t; Trump simply dropped the pretense. The result is a post-Christian political discourse of a distinctively American sort: blunt and self-assured and largely free of the obligation to express yourself with sincerity. The new post-Christian discourse uses words, not as vehicles to express thoughts and arguments, but as weapons — as instruments to wrong-foot adversaries and keep them guessing while you seize the advantage. I find it hard to lament the quickening demise of the old honesty-based political culture. It had become cheap and false. If Trump hadn’t snapped it, somebody else would have.

[Barton Swaim is the author of "The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics" ]

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name former Sen Dan Coats (R-IN) to be his director of national intelligence, apparently. Coats, who is seen as a traditional Republican, served two stints in the Senate and was ambassador to Germany during George W. Bush’s presidency. Apparently, the selection of Coats on the condition of anonymity since it has not been announced.