The White House sent a letter to top U.S. news executives on Wednesday, urging them to intensify their scrutiny of House Republicans after Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, despite having found no evidence of a crime. “It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, wrote in the letter.
Amazon, Google and Meta are among the companies that announced the new commitments on Friday as they race to outdo each other with versions of artificial intelligence.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fictional soccer coach Ted Lasso used a White House visit Monday to encourage people, even in politically divided Washington, to make it a point to check in […]
In a rare rebuke of the Fox News ratings leader, the White House said Carlson is “not credible.”
White House communications director Kate Bedingfield will leave her role at the end of the month, the administration announced Friday. Bedingfield, a longtime Biden aide dating back to his time as vice president, will be replaced by Ben LaBolt, who served as an Obama White House press official and most recently joined the Biden administration on a temporary basis to assist with communications around the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Exclusives
YouTube, Twitch, Microsoft and Meta launched updates aimed at combating violent extremism online, the White House announced Thursday as part of a summit to counter hate-fueled violence. The updates come after pressure from the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress and state offices on tech platforms to revamp their policies to address online hate, especially after mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas.
The White House on Thursday called for a host of new technology laws — including ones that would restrict data collection and targeted advertising. “There should be clear limits on the ability to collect, use, transfer, and maintain our personal data, including limits on targeted advertising,” the administration stated Thursday at a meeting regarding tech platforms. “We especially need strong protections for particularly sensitive data such as geolocation and health information, including information related to reproductive health.”
White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre are among the highest paid White House staffers at $180,000 per year, according to the White House’s just-released 2022 Annual Report. Since 1995 the White House been required to report its staff salaries to Congress; President Biden has made that information public.
A top White House communications official is leaving her position for a job in the private sector, a White House official confirmed on Thursday. Pili Tobar, the deputy communications director, will depart in the coming days. Tobar’s exit comes amid reports of multiple other White House officials making plans to leave their roles before the midterm elections.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki is in exclusive talks with MSNBC to join the network after she leaves the White House around May, according to a source close to the matter. It’s been speculated for weeks that Psaki would leave the White House for a TV gig. White House communications staffers often negotiate TV jobs once they leave an administration.
The Biden White House, plagued by low approval ratings that have weakened the president’s clout and raised fears among Democrats over next year’s midterms, is blaming the media for some of its problems.
The White House led off an infrastructure promotion fact sheet distributed to the media Thursday (July 8) with the impact of a bipartisan framework on high-speed internet, particularly in rural and tribal areas, and President Joe Biden’s pledge to get broadband into every home. The Biden administration also doubled down on its definition of availability as including speed and price.
But the Justice Department is not commenting on whether a seemingly off-the-cuff remark by President Biden is now a policy directive.
The Biden White House Media Doctrine: Less Can Be More
The president does little press. His cabinet does a fair bit. Underlying it all are two overarching ideas: First, do no self-harm, then do things that feel natural.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki was questioned at Wednesday’s briefing about a new report on media access at the border. NBC News reported that the Biden administration is “restricting the information Border Patrol agents and sector chiefs can share with the media” and that Customs and Border Protection Officials are saying they’ve “been told to deny all media requests for ‘ride-alongs’ with agents along the southern land border.” Fox News White House reporter Kristin Fisher asked Psaki: “Is the White House or DHS instructing border agents to refuse ride-along requests from reporters? Because that’s what a lot of our folks on the ground are hearing.”
The White House did not extend a Dec. 4 deadline for the Chinese internet company ByteDance to sell TikTok.
Jennifer Jacobs, a senior political reporter for Bloomberg News, has come to dominate this only-in-2020 beat.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted today that she tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday morning. She says she is experiencing no symptoms and had no knowledge of Hope Hick’s testing positive before her briefing last Thursday. She said in a statement posted on her Twitter account that she will begin to quarantine.
White House Can’t Be Trusted To Be Truthful About Trump’s Health
Margaret Sullivan: “With President Trump apparently struck by covid-19 a month before a critical election and after 200,000 American deaths from the disease, what we really need right now is an entirely credible, fact-based voice from the White House. Good luck with that.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, arguably the most trusted man in America, is practically invisible right now. Fauci is not appearing on any of the major US television networks at a brutal stage of the coronavirus pandemic. An administration official familiar with the situation said high-profile figures from the task force, including Fauci, have been unable to secure White House permission to appear on American TV networks.
The Secret Service abruptly called for reporters to leave the White House grounds Monday night, CNN reported. Broadcasting from Lafayette Square in front of the White House, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins called the move “incredibly unusual,” telling CNN’s Anderson Cooper “I don’t think we’ve ever been asked to actually physically leave the White House at a time like that.”
A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the White House wrongly suspended the hard pass of Playboy’s correspondent Brian Karem after a raucous incident in July in which he got into an argument with Donald Trump’s former aide Sebastian Gorka following a Rose Garden ceremony.
The urgently needed pandemic response measure is the largest economic rescue measure in history and is intended as a weeks- or months-long patch for an economy spiraling into recession and a nation facing a potentially ghastly toll.
A Justice Department lawyer urged a federal appeals court Monday to give President Donald Trump’s White House broad leeway to pull journalists’ press passes for conduct the president or his aides deem unprofessional — even though opinions seem to differ widely about how to define that term in the Trump era.
The White House said Wednesday it’s joining with major media companies, digital platforms and the Ad Council to share “accurate and timely information directly to the American people” about social distancing, hygiene and mental health.
Hope Hicks is exiting her role as the top communications officer for Fox and returning to the White House. White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said that she will be working for Jared Kushner’s office as counselor to the president and senior adviser. Hicks has been EVP-chief communications officer for Fox Corp. She joined the company last fall.
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the White House to restore the hard pass of Playboy’s correspondent Brian Karem, whose credentials were suspended after an incident in July in which he got in argument with former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka following a Rose Garden ceremony.
A loose network of conservative operatives allied with the White House is pursuing what they say will be an aggressive operation to discredit news organizations deemed hostile to President Trump by publicizing damaging information about journalists. Four people familiar with the operation described how it works, asserting that it has compiled dossiers of potentially embarrassing social media posts and other public statements by hundreds of people who work at some of the country’s most prominent news organizations.
Officials from the FCC and FTC have expressed serious concerns about a draft Trump administration executive order seeking to regulate tech giants such as Facebook and Twitter, according to several people familiar with the matter. In a closed-door meeting last month, officials from the two agencies met to discuss the matter with a Commerce Department office that advises the White House on telecommunications, the people said.
Playboy senior White House correspondent and CNN contributor Brian Karem filed a lawsuit Tuesday against President Donald Trump and White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham over the suspension of his White House “hard pass” credential last week.
A draft executive order from the White House could put the FCC in charge of shaping how Facebook, Twitter and other large tech companies curate what appears on their websites, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. The draft order, a summary of which was obtained by CNN, calls for the FCC to develop new regulations clarifying how and when the law protects social media websites when they decide to remove or suppress content on their platforms.
New White House’s new spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham may be most notable for her silence, having sent only a single tweet during her boss’ highly volatile last week. Grisham is evidently fine for now to let others, especially the president, do the talking for her, and she’s formulating a plan that would leave much of her office’s day-to-day decision making and management to deputies.
The White House will hold a summit on social media next month amid growing criticism from President Donald Trump and some in Congress. White House spokesman Judd Deere said the July 11 gathering “will bring together digital leaders for a robust conversation on the opportunities and challenges of today’s online environment.” The White House did not say who will take part and major social media firms did not immediately confirm they will take part.
