Bernie Sanders "has spent the last year and a half building something close to a small [TV] network out of his office in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill," New York Magazine's Gabriel Debenedetti writes.
Flashback: Back when it seemed like Hillary Clinton would become the next president, there was speculation that then-candidate Donald Trump would start something similar — Trump TV.
China's largest music streaming company, Tencent Music Entertainment Group, is preparing an IPO that could be one of the biggest ever recorded for a tech company, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Why it matters: The group's listing shows that public offerings are continuing to build steam in the tech world and it could be one of the largest deals of 2018, potentially raising as much as $25 billion.
Delivering the Arthur Miller Freedom to Write lecture at the PEN America World Voices Festival in New York and acknowledging her own hard times with the media, Hillary Clinton last night defended press freedom abroad and at home, praising Pulitzer Prize winners and even saying nice things about The Washington Post.
Her message: "[W]e have a president who seems to have rejected the role of a free press in our democracy. Although obsessed with his own press coverage, he evaluates it based not on whether it provides knowledge or understanding, but solely on whether the daily coverage helps him and hurts his opponents."
"For generations of Americans, working for a state or local government — as a teacher, firefighter, bus driver or nurse — provided a comfortable nook in the middle class," the N.Y. Times' Patricia Cohen and Robert Gebeloff write. But"[i]n recent years, ... the ranks of state and local employees have languished even as the populations they serve have grown. They now account for the smallest share of the American civilian work force since 1967."
Why it matters: "No less than automobile assembly lines and steel plants, the public sector ensured that even workers without a college education could afford a home, a minivan, movie nights and a family vacation."
Public records show Fox News host Sean Hannity's connections to a group of shell companies that spent $90 million over the past decade to purchase more than 870 properties across the United States, according to a report by The Guardian.
Why it matters: Some of the property purchases were financed utilizing mortgage assistance from the Department of Housing and Urban Development — and Hannity was a vocal supporter of Ben Carson to head the agency without disclosing that connection. These revelations surrounding Hannity's property holdings highlight the ethical issues between his journalistic work and his personal entanglements with the Trump administration.
Kellyanne Conway has never actually wanted the job of White House communications director, according to sources who've discussed it with her, but Axios has learned that she left many in the White House communications team this week with the impression that she'd be leading the team in some capacity.
Behind the scenes: Senior White House communications official Mercedes Schlapp convened an off-site team-building and planning retreat last week for the White House comms team. They held the session on Thursday at the General Services Administration building a couple blocks from the WH (the same building that once housed the transition).
French President Emmanuel Macron criticized President Trump's foreign policy during an interview with Fox New Sunday's Chris Wallace, saying: "It's too complicated if you make war against everybody. You make trade war against China, trade war against Europe, war in Syria, war against Iran. Come on ... You need allies."
The timing: Macron will arrive in Washington on Tuesday for the first official state visit hosted by Trump.
