Government & Communications

In our lifetime, no president has matched Donald Trump’s ability to summon the power of the pulpit, friendly media, and the tweet-by-tweet power of repetition and persuasion to move minds en masse. You see this in the silence of Republican critics; the instant shifts in GOP views of the FBI, Putin and deficits; and the quick, widespread adoption of his branding efforts around “deep state,” “Spygate” and “no collusion.” We hear so much, so often that we become numb to what Trump is doing.

President Donald Trump broke with decades of protocol and commented publicly about the highly anticipated jobs report data 69 minutes before they were released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Treasury yields moved sharply higher within seconds of a tweet from President Trump that said he was “looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8:30 this morning.” He had never issued such a tweet before. A federal rule from 1985 prohibits any federal worker from commenting on the jobs report for at least one hour after its release, though the Trump administration has breached that standar

President Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen is facing legal peril, including an FBI raid of his home and office — and involvement in a civil lawsuit with porn star Stormy Daniels. But in the past, it was Cohen who has sought to put legal pressure on others to solve problems for his boss. For the first time, audio recordings of Cohen's legal threats, from a 2015 Daily Beast interview, are being published.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) went after Google for displaying “Nazism” as one of the ideologies of the California Republican Party. A search on the site for “California Republican Party” apparently returned with a sidebar result listing Nazism as an ideology alongside “conservativism” and “market liberalism.” Majority Leader McCarthy noted the sidebar in a tweet at the company.

A group of 19 Democratic Sens wrote to national security adviser John Bolton urging him to reconsider the move to elminate a top cybersecurity position at the White House, calling it a “step in the wrong direction” and worrying that it would “lead to a lack of unified focus against cyber threats.” The role of White House cybersecurity coordinator was established under the Obama administration to coordinate cybersecurity policymaking efforts across the federal government.

President Donald Trump is continuing to react to the controversy over the cancellation of “Roseanne,” which was taken off the air May 29 after lead actress Roseanne Barr posted offensive and racist tweets. President Trump on May 31 repeated his complaint that Disney chief Bob Iger has not apologized to him for anti-Trump comments made by ABC personalities, something he believes is a double standard since Iger got in touch with Valerie Jarrett, the former top aide to President Barack Obama who was the target of Barr’s racist comments.

The US Digital Service emerged from the technological and political meltdown of the 2013 launch of healthcare.gov. After a squad of Silicon Valley techies descended to fix the site, President Barack Obama created USDS to get tech workers helping other parts of government. Under President Obama, the group’s missions included speeding immigration processes, and expediting the acceptance of refugees. Under President Donald Trump, the unit’s current leader, Matt Cutts, admits that he’s less likely to highlight those projects.

From Washington to Texas to California, politicians are road-testing their political messaging strategies, searching for the best way to reach voters in ways that often bypass the traditional media gatekeepers. These media methods have obvious appeal: Politicians can appear accessible but remain insulated from the press. They are also not altogether new. President Donald Trump eschewed traditional television advertising during the 2016 campaign and can now overshadow even his own party’s message at the drop of a tweet. And many politicians have long made a practice of ducking reporters.

Congress recognized the deficiencies of the current broadband data collection process when it directed National Telecommunications and Information Administration to update the national broadband availability map. Congress asked us to acquire third-party datasets to augment the information that is already available, in order to more accurately identify regions with insufficient capacity.