Government & Communications

Over the weekend, President Donald Trump was accused by a Republican senator of running the White House like a “reality show.” In the 48 hours that followed, this is how the president rebutted the characterization. He called out the offending senator for being short and sounding like “a fool.” He challenged his secretary of state to an I.Q. contest and insisted he would win. He celebrated the downfall of a critic who was suspended from her job. And his first wife and third wife waged a public war of words over who was really his first lady.

President Trump’s West Wing has always seemed to be the crossroads between cutthroat politics and television drama, presided over by a seasoned showman who has made a career of keeping the audience engaged and coming back for more. Obsessed by ratings and always on the hunt for new story lines, President Trump leaves the characters on edge, none of them ever really certain whether they might soon be voted off the island.

Three weeks ago, President Donald Trump was widely criticized for fanning racial divisions and inflaming the culture wars after he denounced a black NFL player for kneeling during the national anthem, casting the move as unpatriotic and an affront to the country. The player had intended the demonstration to call attention to police brutality against African Americans. What began as an impromptu, crowd-pleasing line at a Trump rally in Huntsville (AL) to “get that son of a bitch off the field right now!” sparked a national debate over free speech, patriotism, racial identity and cultural values.

Rather than back off and try to unify the nation, President Trump upped the ante relentlessly — and on Oct 10, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell capitulated. Concerned about backlash from fans, Goodell sent a letter to all 32 team owners asking them to support a plan to “move past this controversy” and ensure that players stand during the anthem “to honor our flag and our country.”

A group of lawyers who served in former President Barack Obama's administration has moved for a temporary injunction against President Donald Trump's voter fraud commission, seeking to block it from accessing voter roll data from all 50 states.

The Protect Democracy Project, headed by two former associate White House counsels to Obama, claimed in court documents that President Trump's voter fraud probe caused an "immediate blow to the proper functioning of our democracy" by requesting the data without following proper legal procedures. "We're going to be arguing that it's going to be vital for the court to take action right away," Protect Democracy attorney Larry Schwartztol told the news service.

Chief Judge Robert Morin of the District of Columbia Superior Court ruled largely in favor of DreamHost, saying that the Department of Justice overstepped when it initially sought 1.3 million IP addresses that were logged at a website that helped organize nationwide protests against President Donald Trump on his inauguration day.

Federal authorities had initially obtained a warrant against DreamHost, the host of the disruptj20.org site, as part of its investigation into rioting and other violence on January 20, 2017. The ruling comes less than two months after government lawyers told the court it didn’t mean to seek so many IP addresses after all. Under new guidelines, DreamHost will not have to provide IP addresses or any other identifying information unless the government can show that a particular person was involved in alleged criminal behavior. Judge Morin ruled that while the DOJ could execute its warrant, "it does not have the right to rummage through the information contained on DreamHost's website and discover the identity of, or access communications by, individuals not participating in alleged criminal activity, particularly those who were engaging in protected First Amendment activities."

A division of the Library of Congress could play a key role in ensuring future US elections are protected against cyberattacks that alter vote tallies or other digital meddling, the authors of a major report on election hacking said. That division, the US Copyright Office, approved a slate of exemptions to a 1996 copyright law that give ethical hackers more leeway to search for digital vulnerabilities in products without facing legal threats from companies that don’t want their security gaps exposed. The exemption, which came out shortly after the 2016 election, included a specific provision freeing ethical hackers to poke and prod at voting machines. That provision paved the way for a “voting machine hacking village” at the 2017 DEF CON security conference in Las Vegas in July that turned up cyber vulnerabilities in numerous voting systems. If the exemption is allowed to expire in 2018, however, it could leave future elections more vulnerable to nation-state and criminal hackers.

Right now, the Census Bureau is attempting to gather the addresses of every person living in America in preparation for Census 2020. Without proper funding, some outreach will get cut. On top of that, another bad hacking incident like what happened with Equifax could scare people into not responding, especially online.

If a lot of people aren’t responding, the Census Bureau will likely have to rely on “Plan C” to use data to fill in the blanks for people the bureau couldn’t reach in person. It’s a largely untested tactic. Indivar Dutta-Gupta, a data expert and co-director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality, is especially worried about a scenario where the government starts relying on commercial data collected from firms such as Experian, which typically undercount low-income people. “To know someone is between 25 and 40 is all commercial databases care about. That’s not good enough for the census,” said Dutta-Gupta.

President Donald Trump threatened the NFL with trying to eliminate a long-standing tax break over the issue of players kneeling during the National Anthem. Vice President Mike Pence left a Colts/49ers game early on Oct 8 after some players took a knee. The President said later he had instructed the Vice President to do so. The NFL threat came in a tweet Oct 10, one of two related to television and sports (the other slammed ESPN for low ratings). "Why is the NFL getting massive tax breaks while at the same time disrespecting our Anthem, Flag and Country? Change tax law!" the President tweeted.

The public record contains substantial evidence that President Donald Trump attempted to impede the investigations of Michael Flynn and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, including by firing FBI Director James Comey. There is also a question as to whether President Trump conspired to obstruct justice with senior members of his administration although the public facts regarding conspiracy are less welldeveloped.

Attempts to stop an investigation represent a common form of obstruction. Demanding the loyalty of an individual involved in an investigation, requesting that individual’s help to end the investigation, and then ultimately firing that person to accomplish that goal are the type of acts that have frequently resulted in obstruction convictions, as we detail. In addition, to the extent conduct could be characterized as threatening, intimidating, or corruptly persuading witnesses, that too may provide additional grounds for obstruction charges.

The Fact Checker has completed two-thirds of our year-long project analyzing, categorizing and tracking every false or misleading claim by President Donald Trump, as well as his flip-flops. As of our latest update Oct. 10, 2017, or his 264th day in office, the president has made 1,318 claims over 263 days. He has averaged five claims a day, even picking up pace since the six-month mark. With almost exactly 100 days left to go in our year-long project, President Trump is inching ever closer to breaking 2,000 claims.

It is a pleasure to be here with my fellow regulators to discuss the amazing benefits and challenges presented by the new digital age. My goal today is to provide a picture of how this complex subject is being considered within the United States and what that may mean for my international counterparts.
Please forgive me for having the task of reminding everyone that I do not speak for the Trump Administration or the Federal Communications Commission as a whole. My views are just my own.

The FCC’s regulatory speed – and I am sure this isn’t a US specific issue – quite candidly cannot keep up with technological change or the demands of consumers. Simply put, our rather drawn-out pace is not well suited for the dynamic digital age. For this reason, I maintain that we must be very hesitant to regulate new, disruptive technologies. Instead, the presence of these innovative technologies should lead to reduced regulation of our traditional, more heavily regulated sectors.