The Paper Trail: March 24, 2026

The Paper Trail

Top stories for March 24, 2026

ICE agents arrive at U.S. airports amid TSA staff shortages, funding fight: ICE agents arrived at several airports Monday to assist with federal staffing shortages caused by a partial government shutdown. Administration officials said the agents would assist TSA amid lengthy security lines. In social media posts over the weekend, President Trump said agents would detain undocumented immigrants at airports, “with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia.” (Amy B Wang, Marianne LeVine, and Andrea Sachs, Washington Post)

🔎 See Also: Trump’s ICE airport idea came after a radio host pitched it on Fox News (Brian Stelter, CNN)

Some DHS contractors told White House officials they were asked to pay Corey Lewandowski: Several companies allege that Corey Lewandowski, a special government employee at DHS, was substantially involved in the contracting process and expected to be rewarded, either directly or indirectly, in exchange for helping those companies win contracts. (Julia Ainsley et al., NBC News)

DHS handed $140M plane contract to boss of bankrupted airline: Kristi Noem gave a $140 million ICE contract to a firm whose chief executive led his previous airline into bankruptcy. The company’s registered president simultaneously serves as chief executive of Salus Worldwide Solutions, which holds a $915 million DHS contract. The two newly created companies, founded within months of each other, control nearly $1.1 billion in federal business. (Tom Latchem, Daily Beast)

Federal prosecutors are trying new legal approaches for border cases: Since last April, at least 4,700 immigrants already charged with entering the country illegally have faced an additional misdemeanor count of trespassing on military property. Most of these cases failed to result in convictions, yet prosecutors continue pursuing the charge and appealing adverse rulings. (Agnel Philip et al., Government Executive)

An immigration court few have heard of is quietly shaping policy behind the scenes: An administrative court known as the Board of Immigration Appeals has published a body of immigration case law that significantly narrows the due process and relief from deportation available for immigrants. The White House has shrunk the size of the board by nearly half and stacked the remaining slate of 15 judges with Trump appointees. (Ximena Bustillo and Rahul Mukherjee, NPR)

🔎 See Also: Immigration judge firings upheld in boost for Trump cuts (Ben Penn, Bloomberg Law)

FBI is buying data that can be used to track people, Patel says: FBI Director Kash Patel admitted at a Senate hearing last week that the agency is buying data that can be used to track people’s movement and location history, sidestepping a Supreme Court ruling that requires law enforcement officers to obtain a warrant before getting location data from cell phone providers. (Alfred Ng, Politico)

FBI and IRS to investigate nonprofit groups for domestic terrorism links, sources say: The FBI and IRS formed a new initiative to investigate nonprofit organizations over suspected links to domestic terrorism. The effort follows a December directive from Attorney General Pam Bondi to prioritize the prosecution of groups that “use violence or the threat of violence to advance political and social agendas, including opposition to law and immigration enforcement, ... radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity.” (Sarah N. Lynch and Jennifer Jacobs, CBS News)

🔎 See Also: “Go big and go loud”: Inside the Justice Dept.’s push to prosecute protesters (Alan Feuer, Alexandra Berzon, and Ernesto Londoño, New York Times)

Gabbard to shift coveted, CIA-backed high-tech fund to her office: The CIA and some lawmakers oppose Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s plan to assume responsibility for the CIA-backed venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, raising concerns about the size, mission, and effectiveness of ODNI and Gabbard’s grasp of the intelligence community’s needs. (John Sakellariadis et al., Politico)

Trump breaches fire wall between watchdogs and agencies they investigate: After firing inspectors general at 19 agencies in the early days of his second term, President Trump has nominated several new IGs with partisan backgrounds. Investigators, auditors, and others were lost in widespread staffing cuts. Political appointees have increasingly gained new powers over IG offices, which are supposed to operate independently in order to root out waste, fraud, and abuse. (Meryl Kornfield and Lisa Rein, Washington Post)

Voice of America staff allege Kari Lake violated its independence in lawsuit: Voice of America journalists sued the government, alleging Kari Lake and her deputies violated the law that protects the broadcaster’s editorial independence by censoring coverage of the Iran crisis and publishing “propaganda” in support of President Trump as news. (Scott Nover, Washington Post)

Tribal leaders bash USDA’s plan to relocate thousands of staff and shutter offices: Tribal governments panned USDA’s plan to relocate thousands of employees out of D.C. and shutter some regional offices, saying it will degrade long-established relationships and result in staffing shortages that negatively affect services. (Eric Katz, Government Executive)

“Please do something”: Concerns raised about LaGuardia safety before fatal runway collision: Pilots have long-raised concerns about miscommunication, air traffic control missteps, and other hazards at LaGuardia Airport. Given the chronic understaffing of air traffic control facilities and previous government shutdowns, reports of near misses and concerns about safety at airports around the country are not uncommon. (Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken, Politico)

🔎 See Also: TSA staffing shortage delayed arrival of some LaGuardia crash investigators (Claire Fahy, New York Times)

Transportation lobbyists have donated thousands to Sean Duffy’s son-in-law as he runs for Congress: Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s son-in-law, Michael Alfonso, is running a congressional campaign in Wisconsin and receiving donations from the transportation industry. (Megan O’Matz, ProPublica)

Analysis: Congress can shield whistleblowers from Schedule Policy/Career: The government is starting to implement the Schedule Policy/Career rule, under which it will reclassify thousands of federal employees as at-will workers no longer entitled to certain due process protections. Congress needs to pass legislation to negate the impact of Schedule Policy/Career and closely monitor how agencies are protecting whistleblowers. (Joe Spielberger, Project On Government Oversight)

Iran War

Trump officials bypass Congress to sell weapons to UAE, Kuwait and Jordan: Secretary of State Marco Rubio determined that “an emergency exists requiring the immediate approval of critical arms transfers for Middle East partners.” The $23 billion in weapons sales was the second time since the start of the war with Iran that the administration has circumvented the normal congressional approval process. (Megan Mineiro and Edward Wong, New York Times)

“It takes money to kill bad guys”: Pentagon seeks $200 billion in new funding for war in Iran: The Pentagon is seeking roughly $200 billion to sustain its war in Iran. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said “that number could move.” (Tanya Noury, Military Times)

Epstein Files

Justice Department blocked release of secret Epstein drug probe file, Sen. Ron Wyden says: The senator accused Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche of blocking the release of an unredacted copy of a 2015 memo related to a DEA investigation of Jeffrey Epstein. The redacted document shows the investigation targeted Epstein and 14 others for suspicious money transfers linked to “illicit drug and/or prostitution activities occurring in the U.S. Virgin Islands and New York City.” (Daniel Ruetenik, Cara Tabachnick, and Graham Kates, CBS News)

🔎 See Also: Democrats storm out of Justice Department leaders’ briefing on the Epstein files (Alanna Durkin Richer and Stephen Groves, Associated Press)

Bags of shredded documents at NY jail after Epstein’s death, officer tells FBI: Witnesses allege that days after Jeffrey Epstein was found dead at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Federal Bureau of Prisons employees at the facility shredded a large quantity of documents. The incident was one of many suspicious events at the Manhattan jail in the days before and after Epstein’s death. (Julie K. Brown and Claire Healy, Miami Herald)

Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s push to cleanse his past online: Jeffrey Epstein never fully sanitized his web presence before he was arrested again in 2019. But the effort at times allowed him to maintain an air of respectability and preserve social contacts he might have lost had his crimes been more prominent online. (Tiffany Hsu and Ken Bensinger, New York Times)

Other Epstein Files News:

→ Jeffrey Epstein’s elite relationships visualized: the banker, the economist and the director

→ Bank of America settles lawsuit brought on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein victims

→ How Epstein helped solve Leon Black’s problems with women

Insurrection

Firm that planned Trump’s Jan. 6 rally received no-bid contracts: The U.S. Navy and Treasury Department bypassed regular contracting procedures to award more than $13 million in contracts to Event Strategies, the company that helped organize the January 6, 2021, rally in D.C. and is staffed by veterans of Trump’s campaigns and first term. (David A. Fahrenthold and Andrea Fuller, New York Times)

They defended the Capitol on Jan. 6. Their names are missing from the tribute: The names of at least 16 D.C. police officers who faced the violent mob are omitted from a QR code-linked list of names accompanying the bronze plaque displayed at the U.S. Capitol. (Olivia George, Washington Post)

The War on “Narcoterrorists”

Boat strikes “aren’t the answer” to U.S. drug problems, general says: The U.S. military’s lethal strikes against alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific “aren’t the answer” to the country’s drug problems, Gen. Francis Donovan, the commander of U.S. Southern Command, said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week. (Filip Timotija, The Hill)

Pentagon reveals attacks in Latin America are just the beginning: Attacks on Latin American drug cartels are “just the beginning” senior Pentagon official Joseph Humire told the House Armed Services Committee last week, unveiling an effort dubbed “Operation Total Extermination.” (Nick Turse, The Intercept)

Weaponization of the Government

Comey subpoenaed in conspiracy case against ex-officials who investigated Trump: Former FBI Director James Comey was subpoenaed by federal prosecutors in Miami as part of the DOJ’s investigation into Obama-era intelligence officials. Prosecutors have issued more than 130 subpoenas since starting the investigation last year. (Jacob Rosen, Daniel Klaidman, and Sarah N. Lynch, CBS News)

Trump friend asked ICE to detain the mother of his child: Paolo Zampolli, a former modeling agent and a longtime Trump ally, was in a custody battle with his ex-girlfriend. A senior ICE official allegedly helped him by getting the ex-girlfriend detained and deported. (Megan Twohey, Shawn McCreesh, and Hamed Aleaziz, New York Times)

Lawsuit accuses Justice Dept. leadership of “political retribution”: Two former FBI agents fired last year for having worked on an investigation into President Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election accused senior leaders at the bureau and the DOJ of retaliating against them for being “politically disloyal to President Trump.” (Alan Feuer, New York Times)

Trump administration sues Harvard, alleging it failed to protect Jewish students: Friday’s filing, which alleges Jewish and Israeli students were blocked from school buildings in 2023 and 2024 by protesters and forced to wear baseball caps to hide their yarmulkes, marks the second time the Trump administration sued Harvard this year. (Todd Wallack, Washington Post)

A media-rating company says a Trump agency is threatening its livelihood: The FTC accuses NewsGuard, a service that rates the credibility and reliability of news outlets, of trying to suppress conservative speech. NewsGuard says it’s being forced to kneel before vindictive power. (David Bauder, Associated Press)

Reproductive Freedom

Fewer people traveled for abortions as telehealth went up: A new report found that fewer people are traveling from states with total abortion bans to access abortion services, while the rate of telehealth use for at-home abortions has gone up. Massachusetts and Illinois account for a significant amount of abortion care for out-of-state residents. (Joseph Choi, The Hill)

Inspectors General

Inspector general’s reported plan to run for Congress is a Hatch Act violation, lawmakers and ethics orgs say: Congressional Democrats and ethics experts say Labor Department Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito’s plan to run for Congress may violate a law that limits the political activity of federal employees. (Sean Michael Newhouse, Government Executive)

Defense and Veterans Affairs

Pentagon adopts new press restrictions after court order against previous limits: The DOD said on Monday it was adopting new restrictions on journalists, after a court blocked a previous press access policy. In addition to closing an indoor workspace where journalists have worked for years, the revised policy requires all journalists to be escorted by authorized DOD personnel. The Pentagon Press Association said the revised policy “is a clear violation ⁠of the letter and spirit of last week’s ruling by a U.S. federal court.” (Kanishka Singh and Ismail Shakil, Reuters)

Pentagon’s Golden Dome cost estimate grows to $185 billion: The Pentagon increased the cost estimate for its Golden Dome missile defense shield by $10 billion in recent months due to demand for more space sensing, tracking, and data transport capabilities. Some analysts say the final cost could be anywhere from $250 billion to $2.4 trillion. (Courtney Albon, Air & Space Forces Magazine)

Defense workers’ morale has plunged under Trump, survey finds: A Partnership for Public Service survey found a precipitous drop in the DOD civilian workforce’s job satisfaction in the last year. The survey shows that civilian workers with the Navy and Marine Corps have seen the biggest plunge in satisfaction, from a score of 68.1 out of 100 in 2024 to 36.4 in 2025. Just 9% of Army employees agreed that “Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s political leadership team generates high levels of motivation in the workforce.” (Meghann Myers, Defense One)

Business and Finance

FCC green-lights Nexstar’s $6.2B merger with rival TV station owner Tegna: The FCC signed off on broadcast station owner Nexstar’s $6.2 billion deal to acquire rival company Tegna. The FCC waived a rule that bars a single company from owning TV stations reaching more than 39% of U.S. households: The combined entity would cover at least 60%. (Daniel Arkin, NBC News)

Arizona indicts prediction market Kalshi for running illegal gambling operation: While Arizona’s case is the first time criminal charges have been brought against the prediction market platform, several other states have alleged that Kalshi’s markets constitute illegal and unregulated sports betting. (Stephanie Stacey and Oliver Roeder, Ars Technica)

🔎 See Also: Polymarket buckles down on insider trading after scrutiny over suspiciously timed bets (Mary Cunningham, CBS News)

🔎 See Also: Bipartisan senators unveil bill banning sports prediction market contracts (Julia Shapero, The Hill)

It's called “private credit” — and it could lead to big trouble on Wall Street: The risky lending business known as “private credit” is causing problems for banks and investors — with implications that go far beyond Wall Street. (Maria Aspan, NPR)

Hawley investigates FICO for mortgage credit scoring: Senator Josh Hawley has weighed in on the issue of rising credit score pricing before, but his actions on Monday drew him further into what some call an oligopoly of the three major credit bureaus and the dominant player in credit scoring prices. (Cassandra Dumay and Jordain Carney, Politico)

Tech

Federal cyber experts called Microsoft’s cloud a “pile of sh-t,” approved it anyway: In late 2024, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), the federal government’s cybersecurity evaluators, rendered a troubling verdict on the security of one of Microsoft’s biggest cloud computing offerings. FedRAMP authorized the product anyway, despite two previous major cyberattacks on Microsoft products. (Renee Dudley and Doris Burke, Ars Technica)

Infrastructure

DOGE goes nuclear: How Trump invited Silicon Valley into America’s nuclear power regulator: The Trump administration is upending the way nuclear energy is regulated, driven by a desire to dramatically increase the amount of energy available to power AI. Career experts have been forced out, and thousands of pages of regulations are being rewritten. A new generation of nuclear energy companies — flush with Silicon Valley cash and boasting strong political connections — wield increasing influence over policy. (Avi Asher-Schapiro, Ars Technica)

Health Care

Judge rules that RFK Jr. overstepped on transgender care: U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai ruled that the health secretary had overstepped his legal authority when he declared last December that providers of gender-transition medical treatments for minors “do not meet professionally recognized standards.” (Amy Harmon, New York Times)

Nursing homes falsely label patients schizophrenic to sedate them, OIG says: HHS's inspector general found many nursing homes are creating phony schizophrenia diagnoses to hide their use of dangerous antipsychotic drugs to subdue dementia patients and artificially inflate their ratings on the government’s Medicare consumer website. (Christopher Rowland, Washington Post)

Parents are refusing routine preventative care for newborns at rising rates, study finds: Skepticism fueled by rising anti-science sentiment and medical mistrust is increasingly reaching beyond vaccines to other routine preventive care for babies. (CBS News)

She died after her pacemaker battery failed. Its maker knew of problems for years: Boston Scientific issued a recall for its Accolade model pacemaker in December 2024, explaining that a battery malfunction issue was limited to 13% of the pacemakers on the market. But the problem is far broader, and Boston Scientific’s chief medical officer acknowledged that the company has struggled to get to the bottom of it. (Katie Thomas, New York Times)

ICYMI

Immigration and Border Security:

→ Mapping ICE’s expanding footprint, and the communities fighting back

→ ICE is turning warehouses into detention centers across the country. A doctor who has audited the records says people will die

→ ICE has detained the parents of more than 11,000 U.S. citizen kids

→ ICE is ignoring rules put in place to avoid family separations, researchers say

→ ICE has been deporting pregnant and postpartum immigrants. Now we know how many

→ 34 former military members were put on deportation track in the past year

→ How an Afghan man who aided U.S. military forces died in ICE custody in Texas

→ Advocates say border wall expansion will destroy pristine country, threaten endangered species

→ Florida sheriffs rebel against Trump’s, DeSantis’ mass deportation efforts

Other News:

→ Opinion: Congress could be headed for a tipping point, irreversible decline

→ Judges appoint career prosecutor as New Jersey U.S. attorney in apparent end to standoff

→ Top HUD official asks wedding guests for help with home down payment

→ Top FEMA official claims to have teleported to a Waffle House

→ Interior renews campaign for employees to snitch on “DEI discrimination” in the department

→ Departments of Defense, Labor sued for organizing Christian prayer services

→ Trump is dismantling democracy at “unprecedented” speed, global report finds

→ U.S. Mint can begin to produce Trump commemorative gold coin

→ Jury finds Elon Musk owes damages to Twitter investors for his tweets

Upcoming Events

📌 Oversight of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. House Committee on Appropriations; Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government. Wednesday, March 25, 10:00 a.m., 2359 Rayburn House Office Building.

📌 Shadow Hearing - The Ultimate Grift: How DHS Is Enriching the President and His Allies at Taxpayer Expense. House Committee on Homeland Security. Wednesday, March 25, 2:00 p.m., CVC-268 Capitol Visitor Center.