More Women Are Speaking for the White House

The White House reorganized its communications shop Tuesday, making longtime Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks the permanent communications director, bringing in Bush White House veteran Mercedes Schlapp to run strategic communications, and promoting a pair of longtime aides to fill other vacancies. The new structure gives the White House communications team a historic concentration of women in senior roles, with Press Secretary Sarah Sanders already at the podium.

The tide is turning for Silicon Valley in Washington and across the country, as the wonder of invention yields to new concerns over privacy, economic displacement, and inequality. The White House has refugee admissions in the crosshairs, as it weighs limiting entrants to the lowest levels in a generation. And Trump’s voter commission head relies on bogus information.

Here are your must reads:

Must Reads

There’s Blood In The Water In Silicon Valley
The bad new politics of big tech [BuzzFeed]

Teflon Don Confounds Democrats
Democrats have attacked the president every which way, but polling and focus groups show none of it’s working [Politico]

White House Weighs Lowering Refugee Quota to Below 50,000
Lowest in a generation [New York Times]

Trump Ambassador Qualifications: Wrote a Cookbook, Sang in a Church Choir
What they told Congress [Yahoo]

Trump’s Push for Tax Cuts Is Coming Up Against a Familiar Challenge: Divided GOP
Factionalized party still has no plan [Washington Post]

Sound Off

“The President was 100 percent right in firing James Comey. He knew at the time that it could be bad for him politically but he also knew and felt he had an obligation to do what was right, and do what was right for the American people and certainly the men and women at the FBI. I think there is no secret Comey, by his own self-admission, leaked privileged government information. Weeks before President Trump fired him, Comey testified that an FBI agent engaged in the same practice; they face serious repercussions. I think he set his own stage for himself on that front. His actions were improper and likely could have been illegal. Comey leaked memos to the New York Times, your own outlet. He politicized an investigation by signaling he would exonerate Hillary Clinton before he ever interviewed her or other key witnesses.” — White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, who came prepared Tuesday to attack the former FBI director

Bits and Bites

House leaders to meet on future of Dreamers [Politico]

Top White House Official to Discuss Climate Change at U.N. [New York Times]

Top Dems say Flynn left Mideast trip off security clearance [Associated Press]

From Trump hotel lobby to White House, Malaysian prime minister gets VIP treatment [Washington Post]

Senate Intel slips sentence into bill that could lead to spying on US citizens [McClatchy]

Fact check: Kris Kobach’s bogus ‘proof’ of voter fraud [USA Today]

Hillary’s best Bernie bashing [Axios]