It has a scaly body, sharp claws, feral eyes, and a long, ugly, sneering snout - Colleen Boyd
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| SWAMP CREATURES |
ASSUME DEAL DEAD: Sen. Joni Ernst's decision to lay into embattled EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt over his alleged about-face on ethanol appears to have paid off. Ernst spoke to President Donald Trump Tuesday night, she wrote on Twitter, and he "just assured me he 'won't sign a deal that's bad for farmers!' Thank you, Mr. President!" Ernst's tweet came at the end of a day that began with her suggesting Trump may have cause to fire his embattled EPA chief, calling Pruitt "as swampy as you get." It appeared to represent another victory for the farm team in the long-running corn-versus-oil showdown over the Renewable Fuel Standard. The White House had been preparing to unveil an RFS deal that would have expanded sales of E15 and reallocated some blending obligations EPA had waived, while also allowing biofuels exports to count toward compliance with the program in order to bring down compliance costs for refiners.[ POLITICO's Morning Energy, June 6, 2018]
— While the FCC is planning to hold back-to-back
auctions of 5G airwaves starting in November,
South Korea will auction spectrum in multiple bands "at the same time
because they can walk and chew gum," Hendricks said. "That is the
limitation right now that has to be addressed that nobody is talking about."
The FCC has said the differences between the 24 GHz and 28 GHz spectrum bands
require two different types of auctions. [POLITICO's Morning Tech, June 7,
2018]
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| SCREEN |
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| REPUBLICAN PARTY |
SURVEILLANCE BY INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS 'TOP PRIORITY' AT
FBI: Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the attempted theft of
information by international students attending U.S. universities "is a
big problem" that has been "raised up as a top priority of our
national security division in the FBI."
— "I have serious concern about people from other
countries, and notably China, where they come here to go to
our best universities, work their way into the most technically advanced departments,
and often transmit information, some of it improperly and illegally, back to
their home countries," Sessions said, according to a transcript of an
interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday. "This
country cannot afford to spend billions and billions of dollars in the private
sector to develop technologies and then have it stolen from us."
— Sessions told Hewitt that he had "no idea"
what percentage of the 274,000 Chinese students with F-1 visas might engage in
such activities "but even if it were 10 percent, you're looking
at huge numbers. ... I am certain that there are many people here that return
back home to China and are milked for everything they learn," he said.
— The attorney general said "we've got to be more careful
about who we admit first," and also proposed a
process by which international students periodically report on their activities
"so that we could make sure then whether or not they should continue
here." He said the U.S. may need to enact "legislative changes"
to address the issue.
— Session's comments come as U.S. colleges have begun to fall behind foreign competitors in
attracting international students during the Trump era. U.S.
international student enrollment decreased an average of 7 percent in the
2017-2018 school year, according to a preliminary survey of nearly 500 colleges
and universities by the Institute of International Education. At the same time,
academic institutions in countries such as Australia and Canada have seen a
surge in new foreign student enrollment. [Morning Education, June 6, 2018]
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| FAMILY |
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| EDUCATION |
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| READ |
DOJ WON'T DEFEND DACA: The Justice Department
won't defend the DACA program in a lawsuit brought by Texas and six other
states, according to a court filing late Friday evening. The filing cited a
September letter from Attorney General Jeff Sessions that called DACA an
"open-ended circumvention of immigration laws." DOJ said the
plaintiffs could have a basis for an injunction if they can prove DACA costs
the states money because of the expense of issuing drivers' licenses.
But if the federal judge hearing the case does issue
an injunction, DOJ requested that he stay the order for 14 days, so that it can
try to resolve conflicts with court decisions that are keeping the DACA program
alive. Even without DOJ, DACA will still be defended in the Texas lawsuit. The
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund intervened in the
case in May on behalf of a group of Dreamers. Read more from the New York
Times here and the
filing here. [POLITICO's Morning Shift, June 11, 2018]
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| CYBERSECURITY |
Protecting elections
is bringing competitors together
Several private sector companies have independently begun
offering free cybersecurity services to elections since the 2016 polls closed.
Two firms, Cloudflare and Google-owned Jigsaw, offer free services that block
efforts to overwhelm servers with traffic — but rather than butt heads for the
prestige of being most altruistic, they are cooperating.
Why it matters: Competition
in the tech industry is a natural law. That it's being sidelined in at least
one corner of the business is a sign of just how seriously tech leaders are
taking the threat to U.S. elections.
"We have a lot of interaction with Google,"
said Cloudflare head of policy Alissa Starzak. (Jigsaw is a technology
incubator at Google devoted to tackling "global security challenges.")
"We actually refer clients to each others' services when they'd be a
better fit."
- Starzak said Cloudflare might refer to Jigsaw because Jigsaw offers
campaigns and other groups free protection against the traffic-overload
attacks known as distributed denial of service (DDoS) and Cloudflare does
not. Jigsaw might refer to Cloudflare because Cloudflare offers a fuller
range of DDoS products to choose from (DDoS is Cloudflare's primary
business).
- "It's important to have multiple players working toward the
same goal because it encourages innovation," said Jigsaw spokesman
Dan Keyserling, via email.
Plenty of work to go around: Election security is run by states and localities, not by
the federal government. The U.S. encompasses 8,000 districts and more than
100,000 poling locations. As such, there are a ton of systems that need
protection.
- We've already seen a DDoS attack knock an election website offline
this year, before last month's Knox County mayoral primary. Admittedly,
the bigger news coming out of those primaries was the Republican winner, 7
foot, 323 pound pro wrestler Kane (nee Glen Jacobs).
- The move has been tried before. Cloudflare notes that elections
websites that haven't been knocked offline have seen traffic spikes
consistent with DDoS.
- "If you are trying to disrupt confidence in voting, if a
registration or a reporting web site goes down, people will get
suspicious," said Doug Kramer, Cloudflare's general counsel. [Axios Codebook, June 5, 2018]
SODA TAX FALLOUT FROM WHO REPORT: The
Center for Science in the Public Interest is peeved that the World Health
Organization's new report calling for stepped up action on chronic,
non-communicable diseases (like diabetes) didn't endorse sugary drink taxes.
The group issued a statement Friday calling it
"shameful" that the WHO didn't recommend such a policy. The
high-level commission said it didn't have broad consensus on the question of
taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages, or on private sector accountability.
CSPI pointed to a report suggesting that it was the United
States that felt there wasn't enough evidence to back the taxes. "This is
yet another instance of the Trump administration placing corporate
self-interest over the public health," said Michael Jacobson, the longtime
leader of CSPI who's now a senior scientist for the group. [POLITICO's Morning Agriculture, June 4, 2018]
NOTE: I have no official connection to any organization from which information is shared.. Occasionally, I post informational material and/or an opportunity to donate or join as a "community service" announcement. These again are shared for their varying perspectives.
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