Weekly Spotlight: Reckless, rudderless, rushed

HAPPENING TODAY!

Find us at Power To The People

We are proud and beyond excited to be tabling at the inaugural Power To The People festival happening in Columbia, Maryland, today. If you’re attending, visit us at the Freedom Village. We would love to connect with you. Stay tuned for highlights throughout the day on POGO’s Instagram.

Get involved from afar: Now is a great time to share our work with your friends and welcome new folks to our community!

FOLLOW THE MONEY

Senate kills sham bill, opening the door for a real insider trading ban

It is not like us to go up against a congressional stock trading ban — POGO has been calling for an end to the corrupt practice for years now. But the Stop Insider Trading Act was a sham masquerading as a ban. With the help of our anti-corruption coalition and action-takers like you, we were able to convince senators to vote down the bill this week, keeping the door open for a genuine ban in the form of the bipartisan Restore Trust in Congress Act. “Congress has an opportunity to demonstrate that ethics, transparency, and public service are more than slogans, and that fighting corruption is not just an empty election-year talking point,” says POGO’s Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette.

• STATEMENT Senate Strikes Down Watered-Down Stock Trading Ban: The Senate’s rejection of the House Administration Committee’s weak stock-trading bill underscores the need for real, bipartisan reforms that prevent lawmakers from making a profit using inside information.
• In 17 months, President Trump made just under 29,000 stock trades. That is more than all Congress members’ trades combined. Corruption is running rampant across the branches. You deserve to know your elected officials are thinking about you and not their financial portfolios. Congress must hold the executive branch accountable — and commit to cleaning up its side of the street.

The bigger the blank check, the bigger the waste and abuse

A new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) details the staggering costs of the Trump administration’s rushed expansion of immigration detention capacity last year. In just one example, the administration spent $1.07 billion on 11 warehouses across the country and millions more on unrecoverable maintenance, insurance, and retrofitting expenses. It now plans to sell seven of the warehouses — likely at a loss — because they’re unusable as detention centers. We already know conditions in many ICE detention centers to be unsafe, inhumane, and deadly. It’s alarming and unacceptable that the administration would waste your taxpayer dollars like this (although operating the dangerous warehouses would have been even worse). We’re pushing for answers and for oversight of the four warehouses that are still operational. The public deserves to know how much money was wasted (and could still be wasted) on this expansion.

• The billion-plus spent on these facilities is a painfully small fraction of the funding ICE and the Department of Homeland Security at large has been given since last year. Wasteful spending is a foreseeable consequence of giving the agency a massive check.
• GAO yet again makes the case for itself. Earlier this year, Congress moved to defund its internal watchdog. POGO warned that weakening GAO would decrease accountability and cost taxpayers in the process.

POGO INVESTIGATES

Explainer: Medical Care in ICE Custody

In internal reviews posted — and then deleted — on ICE’s website this week, it was revealed that at least six people who died in ICE custody in 2025 did not receive acceptable medical care by the agency’s own standards. When people in ICE custody have medical needs, who provides that care? What care is required? And who is responsible if those requirements aren’t met? POGO’s Julienne McClure explains the workings in a new explainer. Read more.

TAXPAYER TRANSPARENCY

No takebacks

Congress, not the president, handles the federal purse strings. That’s because the branch closest to the people should decide where the people’s money goes. Last year, the Trump administration broke with that constitutional mandate by cancelling $4.9 billion in funding through “pocket recissions” — an illegal move by which the president rescinds funds that have already been allocated and approved by Congress. We denounced the action, explaining the disastrous effects of executive overreach on the appropriations process. But late last week, the president did it again, declaring the cancellation of nearly $1 billion in appropriated spending — money for Health and Human Services programs, immigration services, assistance for minority business owners, and many other initiatives. Money that was en route to your community has been pulled with no discussion. The action has already been declared illegal by GAO. Congress must heed its watchdog and do everything it can to restore the rescinded funds.

• Dig Deeper: Three things you need to know about Trump’s “pocket recission” proposal (CREW)

COMMENTARY

Is the Surveillance Reckoning Finally Here?

AI panic has been dominating the headlines. In a hearing last week, senators raised the alarm about AI-powered mass surveillance. Seemingly everyone is paying attention to technological dangers and our faltering sense of privacy and protection. POGO’s Don Bell examines the moment in a new commentary, urging Congress to do something with the momentum. Read more.

REPORT

Census Matters: Full series out now

Understand the full picture of how the census influences the flow of billions of tax dollars.

• NEW! Census Shapes Funding for Local Economies
• How the Census Shapes Funding for Seniors
• How Census Shapes Funding for Rural Communities