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President Trump will deliver his first State of the Union address to a joint session of U.S. Congress tonight. The Democrats’ counter-speech will come from Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy III. Here’s an explainer of the history of the SOTU; here’s the growing list of Democratic lawmakers boycotting the event; here’s how to watch on TV and online. [Meghann Farnsworth / Recode]
The Trump administration says it has no plans to build its own ultrafast 5G wireless network. A memo from the National Security Council that suggested otherwise was picked up by news outlets on Sunday; the White House said that the document is outdated. Here’s what happened — and what a nationalized 5G network might actually mean. [Tony Romm / Recode]
Facebook says it will promote local news to its users. In the third big change to its News Feed in the last month, Facebook says it will push more stories from local news publications; previous shifts included de-emphasizing news and other commercial content and promoting more “trustworthy” publications. At least one more algorithm adjustment will be coming, focusing on “informative” content. [Peter Kafka / Recode]
NFL games on TV are like everything else on TV — they’re losing eyeballs. Ratings fell by 13 percent in the regular season, and by as much as 20 percent in the playoffs. As analyst Michael Nathanson sees it: “The NFL is experiencing a structural decline in viewership, and it is going to be an issue!” Last year, regular season NFL games and related content accounted for 66 of the 100 most popular shows on TV. [Peter Kafka / Recode]
Here’s how a consortium of U.S. banks developed an alternative to third-party mobile payment services like Venmo, Square Cash and PayPal. Originally called ClearXchange, now known as Zelle, the company claims that nearly 100,000 consumers per day sign up for the service, with more than 60 financial institutions on board; it processed over 247 million payments in 2017, totaling $75 billion in peer-to-peer payments. [Sarah Perez / TechCrunch]
People are scared of tech because we’re telling them to be scared, says Patrick Collison, CEO of the online payments startup Stripe. Collison was a special guest at Recode and MSNBC’s first town hall event for the series “Revolution,” which will examine tech’s impact on the future of work over the next year; Google CEO Sundar Pichai and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki were interviewed onstage for the show. Plenty of interesting stuff, including Collison’s remarks, didn’t make the final cut of the one-hour show; check it out here. [Kara Swisher / Recode]
Top stories from Recode
Ken Chenault has yet another gig, this one at General Catalyst.
He’ll be one of the highest-profile black venture capitalists.
Indian ride-hail player Ola is taking its fight against Uber global, starting with Australia.
Ola, which has often touted its home-field advantage over Uber, expects to expand to a number of other countries, as well.
Uber looked at buying a truck logistics company.
Load Delivered and Uber met as recently as this month in Chicago.
This is cool
Watch the first State of the Union speeches by Presidents Obama, Bush 41, Clinton and Bush 43.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
