The Paper Trail: April 28, 2026

The Paper Trail

Announcements

How to Conduct Oversight from a Personal Office: POGO’s virtual training on how to conduct oversight when you don’t have a gavel will be Friday, May 8 at 12 noon ET. This event is only open to staff in Congress, GAO, and CRS. Register HERE.

Top stories for April 28, 2026

White House loosens rules for preserving presidential records: The White House issued a new records preservation policy a day after the DOJ deemed the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional, dismissing decades-old requirements in favor of discretionary guidelines. (Maegan Vazquez, Washington Post)

🔎 See Also: White House allowed officials’ text messages to be deleted, lawsuit says (Minho Kim, New York Times)

The Trump administration is dismantling FOIA: Federal government information is becoming harder to access: Long-standing backlog, staffing cuts, and political pressure are threatening the Freedom of Information Act. Experts say the Trump administration is worse at complying with the transparency law. (Shifra Dayak, NOTUS)

Court filing backs up claims of “shadow administrator” at FEMA: Documents submitted in a lawsuit appear to back up allegations that officials delegated leadership of FEMA to Kara Voorhies, an outside contractor who is currently a subject of multiple ethics investigations involving her tenure at DHS under former Secretary Kristi Noem. (Hassan Ali Kanu and Eric Bazail-Eimil, Politico)

Inspectors general targeted for funding cuts in Trump’s FY27 budget: Based on the fiscal 2027 budget request, the Partnership for Public Service determined that federal inspectors general would receive an average of 12% less in funding than they did in FY 24. The reduction would mean “fewer audits conducted, fewer investigations opened and fewer recommendations made to agencies — and longer timelines for the work that does get done,” according to the Partnership. (Sean Michael Newhouse, Government Executive)

Employment agency pushes discrimination cases that match Trump’s agenda: Staff at the EEOC say they’re being pressured to bring cases that fit the administration’s priorities — discrimination against white men and antisemitism on college campuses — even when there’s little evidence and tenuous legal bases. They described a deeply demoralized and fearful work force, diminished by years of attrition and a surge of resignations and retirements. (Rebecca Davis O’Brien, New York Times)

Agencies doled out $186B in improper payments last year, GAO says: That fiscal 2025 improper payment number increased $24 billion from the previous fiscal year. Most of the improper payments were concentrated in Medicare, Medicaid, the earned income tax credit, and SNAP. Although the majority of the $186 billion was overpayments, at least $10 billion was money that should’ve been sent out but wasn’t. (Natalie Alms, Government Executive)

Analysis: OMB’s latest attempt to sideline GAO: Last month, OMB Director Russell Vought released updated guidance that will reduce federal agencies’ use of standards and recommendations from GAO. It’s the latest in a broader effort to undermine Congress’s watchdog, undermine government efficiency, weaken accountability, and risk more waste across federal programs. (Tim Stretton, Project On Government Oversight)

The inside story of five days that remade the Supreme Court: Internal memos from a 2016 case involving President Obama’s Clean Power Plan illuminate the origins of the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket” rulings on presidential power, the secretive process the court has used to grant President Trump more than 20 key victories. (Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak, New York Times)

They left Congress in disgrace. Taxpayers could still pay their pensions: Former congressmen Eric Swalwell and Tony Gonzales left the House in disgrace, but taxpayers are still on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars per year for their pensions. Under current law, lawmakers can lose their pensions only if convicted of a federal crime that relates to public corruption, espionage, treason, or several other national security offenses. (Anna Liss-Roy, Washington Post)

Investors lost billions on Trump’s memecoin. Another gala won’t fix that: Insiders linked to Trump affiliates who hold most of the president’s memcoin tokens have cashed out at key moments, collected fees on every retail trade, and earned profits exceeding $600 million. But retail investors buying into the token have lost more than $4.3 billion. (Ashley Belanger, Ars Technica)

🔎 See Also: Trump’s crypto luncheon draws “superstars.” But his token hovers near low (Vicky Ge Huang and Amrith Ramkumar, Wall Street Journal)

K street cashes in on U.S. control of Venezuelan oil: The Trump administration’s power over Venezuelan mineral resources after the capture of Nicolás Maduro has been a bonanza for well-connected lobbyists. (Nick Schwellenbach, Project On Government Oversight)

Syrian billionaires needed a favor in Washington. They invoked the Trump name: The White House denies allegations that Trump family-related business discussions had an impact on the president’s policy toward Syria. (Eric Lipton, New York Times)

Analysis: Closing the data broker loophole: A Q&A with a privacy expert: The current impasse over reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (a post-9/11 surveillance law), why Section 702 is so controversial, and why reforms — including closing the data broker loophole, which allows the government to get around Fourth Amendment privacy protections — should be an urgent priority for Congress. (Don Bell, The Constitution Project at POGO)

Iran War

Iran caused more extensive damage to U.S. military bases than publicly known: U.S. bases and equipment across the Middle East suffered extensive damage from Iranian strikes. Repairs could cost billions. (Gordon Lubold et al., NBC News)

Iran war has drained U.S. supplies of critical, costly weapons: The Iran war has significantly drained much of the U.S. military’s global supply of munitions and forced the Pentagon to rush bombs, missiles, and other hardware to the Middle East from commands in Asia and Europe. The drawdowns have left these regional commands less ready to confront potential adversaries and has also underscored the Pentagon’s overreliance on excessively expensive missiles and munitions. (Eric Schmitt and Jonathan Swan, New York Times)

Cookies, deodorant, socks. Iran war puts military packages in limbo: Thousands of care packages sent to U.S. service members in Middle East are stuck in limbo because the Postal Service has indefinitely suspended delivery amid the Iran war. Meanwhile, U.S. vessels in the region are running short on food and supplies. (Cybele Mayes-Osterman, USA Today)

🔎 See Also: Navy having no problems feeding sailors in Middle East, admiral says in denying reports (Alison Bath, Stars and Stripes)

World’s top producer of condoms raises prices as Iran war rattles supply chains: The Malaysian company Karex, which makes about a fifth of the world’s condoms, is raising prices by up to 30%, warning that shortages of raw materials and chemicals because of the war could disrupt production. (Zunaira Saieed, New York Times)

Marine animals in the Strait of Hormuz don’t get a ceasefire: Naval mines, residual military activity, and congested shipping lanes mean the strait remains a high-risk environment — not just for vessels but also for the ecosystems beneath them. (Evangeline Elsa, Wired)

Prediction Markets

A Polymarket trader made $300,000 betting on Biden’s pardons, a new analysis shows: In the final hours of President Biden’s term, a Polymarket trader made around $300,000 correctly betting on four of Biden’s last-minute pardons. A month earlier, the same bettor placed a well-timed wager that Hunter Biden would receive a pardon. “The odds of this happening by random chance are virtually zero,” said an insider trading expert. (Bobby Allyn, NPR)

U.S. soldier involved in Maduro raid charged with betting on the operation: Federal authorities arrested and charged U.S. special forces soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke with using classified information about the raid that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to make $33,000 in Polymarket bets. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it was also hitting Van Dyke with civil charges. (Tom Winter et al., NBC News)

Kalshi suspends three political candidates who bet on their own races: Prediction market platform Kalshi fined three political candidates — Mark Moran, a candidate for U.S. Senate in Virginia; Matt Klein, a congressional candidate in Minnesota; and former Texas congressional candidate Ezekiel Enriquez — and suspended them from its site for betting on their own races. (Manuela Silva, NOTUS)

Epstein Files

This is how Democrats say Oversight Republicans are trying to quash the Epstein investigation: Democrats claim Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer is hindering the Epstein investigation by holding “roundtables,” which are more informal than hearings and don’t permit members to offer motions to subpoena witnesses and documents. (Riley Rogerson and Hailey Fuchs, Politico)

DOJ watchdog launches review of agency’s compliance with Epstein files law: The DOJ’s inspector general is auditing the department’s compliance with the law compelling the release of the Epstein files. (Jeremy Roebuck and Maegan Vazquez, Washington Post)

Insurrection

DOJ dumps January 6 sedition convictions: District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro asked the courts to vacate the seditious conspiracy and other convictions of 12 Proud Boys and Oath Keepers members, all of whom had previously been granted commutations of their prison sentences by President Trump. (Dan Friedman, Mother Jones)

Donald Trump lost in 2020. An alarming number of his nominees won’t say so: Refusing to acknowledge the fact that Trump lost the 2020 election appears to be a basic condition for securing an appointment to the administration, with dozens of nominees twisting themselves in knots to avoid saying Trump lost in 2020. (Jennifer Bendery, HuffPost)

Trump’s former lawyer John Eastman disbarred in California over 2020 election scheme: The California Supreme Court affirmed Eastman’s disbarment two years after the state bar found him culpable of 10 disciplinary charges for helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. (Matthew Rodriguez, CBS News)

The War on “Narcoterrorists”

Trump has already spent at least $4.7 billion attacking Latin America: According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project, the U.S. military’s intervention in Venezuela and attacks on boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific have cost taxpayers at least $4.7 billion. (Nick Turse, The Intercept)

Weaponization of the Government

FBI said to have investigated Times reporter after article on Patel’s girlfriend: The FBI began investigating New York Times reporter Elizabeth Williamson last month after she wrote about FBI Director Kash Patel using bureau personnel to provide his girlfriend with government security and transportation. Agents queried databases for information on Williamson and recommended moving forward to determine whether she broke federal stalking laws. However, DOJ officials determined there was no legal basis to proceed with the investigation. (Michael S. Schmidt, New York Times)

🔎 See Also: The FBI director is MIA (Sarah Fitzpatrick, The Atlantic)

🔎 See Also: Kash Patel sues The Atlantic for $250 million over alcohol abuse claims (Dan Mangan, CNBC)

DOJ charges Southern Poverty Law Center over paid informants: A federal grand jury in Alabama returned an 11-count indictment against the SPLC, charging it with bank fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering. The government alleges the civil rights organization defrauded donors and stoked “racial hatred” through payments it made to informants working for a variety of hate groups between 2014 and 2023. (Jeremy Roebuck and Perry Stein, Washington Post)

ODNI sends criminal referrals to DOJ for ex-IG, whistleblower tied to Trump impeachment: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence sent criminal referrals for the whistleblower whose complaint helped trigger President Trump’s 2019 impeachment and for the former intelligence community inspector general who notified Congress of the allegations. The referrals came after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released documents exposing what she claimed was a coordinated effort by the intelligence community to manufacture a conspiracy on which the impeachment was based. (Brooke Singman, Fox News)

DOJ agrees to pay $1.25M to 2016 Trump adviser over surveillance: The DOJ agreed to pay $1.25 million to settle former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page’s claims that the government abused its foreign surveillance authorities after his travel to Russia in 2016 fueled investigations of then-candidate Trump’s ties to the Kremlin. (Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein, Politico)

Prosecutor withdraws from Trump team’s investigation of ex-CIA chief: Maria Medetis Long, a senior federal prosecutor in Miami, withdrew from an investigation into former CIA Director John Brennan over concerns about whether the evidence justified moving forward with the case. The top prosecutor in the office, Jason Reding Quiñones, plans to take action — possibly asking a grand jury to indict Brennan — in the next few weeks. (Charlie Savage, Alan Feuer, and Glenn Thrush, New York Times)

Ad firms settle with FTC over claims they boycotted conservative media: The FTC pressured advertising firms Dentsu, Publicis, and WPP into settlements that will likely result in more ad spending on conservative media platforms. (Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica)

Amid quarrel with pope, Trump strips Miami charity of funding to house migrant kids: HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement abruptly canceled an $11 million contract with Catholic Charities to shelter and care for migrant children who enter the U.S. alone, amid rising tensions between the administration and American Catholics over President Trump’s attacks on the Pope. (Carol Marbin Miller and Syra Ortiz Blanes, Miami Herald)

🔎 See Also: U.S. spies on the Vatican (Ken Klippenstein)

DOGE

Where the DOGE operatives are now: Some of DOGE’s operatives have remained in government, ascending to powerful positions within the administration, while others have moved to the private sector. Some moved back to companies that maintain strong ties to Elon Musk or other Silicon Valley players. (Vittoria Elliott, Wired)

White House Ballroom

Firm building Trump’s ballroom got a secret no-bid contract for a nearby job: The National Park Service secretly awarded Clark Construction a no-bid contract to repair the fountains in the park across the street from the White House at a sharply inflated price. (David A. Fahrenthold, Luke Broadwater, and Andrea Fuller, New York Times)

Trump fought to keep the ballroom fundraising contract secret. Here’s what’s in it: The contract governing private donations to build the White House ballroom shields donors’ identities, excludes the White House from conflict-of-interest protections, and was disclosed only after a lawsuit and a judge’s order. (Jonathan Edwards and Dan Diamond, Washington Post)

🔎 See Also: Appeals court again allows ballroom construction to go on, for now (Zach Montague, New York Times)

🔎 See Also: Trump uses the correspondents’ dinner shooting to renew his White House ballroom push (Peter Nicholas, NBC News)

Supreme Court Ethics

Supreme Court justices turn children’s books into big paydays: The justices have a big incentive to dive into kid lit: They can make millions of dollars. Court ethics rules cap outside income at just over $30,000, but book royalties are exempt. (Julian Mark, Washington Post)

Defense and Veterans Affairs

Pentagon seeks funds for Golden Dome, drones, AI in largest-ever budget request: The DOD last week unveiled a $1.5 trillion budget proposal for fiscal 2027 — a 42% year-over-year increase. Key priorities include investments in the “Golden Dome” missile shield, drone warfare, AI, and a “Golden Fleet” — an expanded Navy with a new line of Trump-class battleships as the centerpiece. (Tanya Noury, Military Times)

🔎 See Also: Trump’s dreams for a battleship led to his Navy secretary’s ouster: (Greg Jaffe and Helene Cooper, New York Times)

Flu vaccine requirement discarded “effective immediately,” Hegseth says: The U.S. military will no longer require service members to get an annual flu shot, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced last week. The program, which had been in place since the 1950s, was a major factor in lower rates of hospitalizations among service members than national U.S. rates, according to a 2025 study. (Patricia Kime, Military Times)

Pentagon fires Stars and Stripes’ advocate for independence: In a blow to independent coverage of the U.S. military, the Pentagon last week fired Stars and Stripes Ombudsman Jacqueline Smith, who was given no reason for her dismissal. (Erik Wemple, New York Times)

Pentagon can require reporters to be escorted during appeal process, judges rule: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled the DOD can require journalists to be escorted on Pentagon grounds while the Trump administration appeals a lower court’s decision blocking enforcement of the DOD’s press policy. (Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press)

Vietnam veteran, daughter sue VA over Agent Orange birth defect benefits: The VA provides disability compensation for birth defects to the children of women Vietnam veterans, but not to the children of men who served in the war, with the exception of children born with spina bifida. According to a lawsuit challenging the policy, roughly 200 children were born with birth defects to female Vietnam veterans, while an estimated 350,000 were born to fathers who served. (Patricia Kime, Military Times)

Business and Finance

Supreme Court hands win to Chevron, Big Oil in environmental damage case: The Supreme Court unanimously sided with Chevron, ruling it can fight an environmental damage lawsuit in federal court — a decision that could affect the outcomes of nearly a dozen other lawsuits that make similar allegations about the oil and gas industry. (Julian Mark, Washington Post)

California accuses Amazon of price fixing in legal filing: The state claims Amazon pressured major brands like Levi’s and Hanes to ask competing retailers like Walmart and Target to raise prices on certain products. Amazon has long maintained that it prioritizes offering customers the lowest price, but it has faced more scrutiny from federal and state regulators who claim the company’s policies harm online competition and inflate consumer costs. (David McCabe, New York Times)

Tech

Greenhouse gases from data center boom could outpace entire nations: New gas projects linked to 11 data center campuses around the U.S. — which are being built to power data centers to serve the major tech companies — have the potential to emit more than 129 million tons of greenhouse gases per year. (Molly Taft, Ars Technica)

“That wasn’t me”: How facial recognition led to a woman being jailed for 6 months: The case of Kimberlee Williams shows the limits of facial recognition software and how faulty tips it generates can lead to arrests and charges. The error-prone technology has led some police departments to forgo basic investigative steps and arrest people wrongly identified by facial recognition without other supporting evidence and without disclosing its use to the accused or their attorneys. (Daniel Wu, Washington Post)

There’s a new phishing scam: fake invitations: Hackers are spoofing Paperless Post, Evite, and Punchbowl to creep into your hard drive, preying on the all-too-human desire to be included in social gatherings. (Steven Kurutz, New York Times)

Infrastructure

Over 1,000 TSA officers have quit amid shutdown: More than 1,110 officers at the Transportation Security Administration have quit since the ongoing DHS shutdown began in February. (Sam Ogozalek, Politico)

“The absolute edge of precedent”: Feds prepare to take on data centers: Over the coming weeks, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will hammer out the details of a proposal that could be a striking assertion of federal power to manage the nation’s rapidly rising electricity demand. Much of this is to satisfy the energy consumption of data centers. (Francisco “A.J.” Camacho, Politico)

Americans’ electricity was shut off 13 million times in a year, data shows: According to a new report, utility companies shut off Americans’ power 13.4 million times and gas 1.7 million times in 2024 — a finding that consumer advocates say signals a surprisingly high rate of extreme financial distress among U.S. households. The report found that disconnections were most frequent in the South. (Julie Z. Weil, Washington Post)

Health Care

CDC won’t publish report showing COVID shots cut likelihood of hospital visits: A report showing the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine, which had cleared the CDC’s scientific-review process, had been delayed. Now it won’t be published at all. (Lena H. Sun, Washington Post)

Where U.S. science has been hit hardest after Trump’s first year: Through March 31, the number of competitive grants awarded by NIH declined by more than half compared with the same period last year. Biomedical funding has also undergone a shift, cutting the U.S. research footprint across nearly every major disease area, including fewer grants focused on women’s health, cancer, and mental health. (Carolyn Y. Johnson, Lydia Sidhom, and Susan Svrluga, Washington Post)

Big companies position themselves for payday from $50B federal rural health fund: Community clinics and rural health advocates fear the contractors administering the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program will bite off a big chunk of the funding before it reaches patients. (Sarah Jane Tribble, KFF Health News)

South Carolina’s measles outbreak is over. But more are brewing around the country: While South Carolina’s outbreak is over for now, more than 20 other new outbreaks have been reported this year across the U.S. (Maria Godoy, NPR)

🔎 See Also: Immunity lost: How Pennsylvania’s falling school vaccination rates and enforcement failures put thousands of children at risk (Jimmy Cloutier et al., Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

ICYMI

Immigration and Border Security:

→ DOJ targets hundreds of citizens in new push for denaturalization

→ Under Trump, green card seekers face new scrutiny for views on Israel

→ Trump in talks to send Afghans who aided U.S. forces to Congo

→ Florida’s notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” can remain open, court rules

→ ICE acting director Todd Lyons will resign May 31

→ Commerce Secretary says Trump’s “Gold Card” visa approved for 1 person so far

→ The view from inside Trump’s DHS

→ Texas restaurants are forcing a reckoning over immigrant labor

→ Trump’s Memphis crime task force made over 800 immigration arrests. Only 17 were for violent crimes

Other News:

→ DOJ demands Detroit-area 2024 ballots, escalating election scrutiny

→ Todd Blanche could stay atop DOJ for months even without Senate confirmation

→ Judge signals trouble for Trump’s $10B lawsuit against the IRS

→ Palantir is helping the IRS conduct “massive-scale” data mining

→ Panel advances Trump’s triumphal arch, even as key member suggests changes

→ Trump’s changes to Reflecting Pool worry preservationists, locals

→ Top Trump counterterrorism official placed on leave after ex claims she solicited funds from “sugar daddies”

→ EPA appoints industry players and academics to its Science Advisory Board

→ A year after USAID’s death, fired workers find few jobs and much loss

→ After years of waiting, many opioid victims will be shut out of Purdue settlement

→ Washington enters its TMZ era

On The Lighter Side

Taylor Swift files to trademark her voice and likeness in era of AI deepfakes: Swift is one of many celebrities confronting the issue as AI content generation tools become ever more sophisticated. Experts say attempting to register a celebrity’s spoken voice is a new use of trademark registration that hasn’t been tested in court before. (Angela Yang, NBC News)

Upcoming Events

📌 Department of Defense FY27 Budget Request. House Armed Services Committee. Wednesday, April 29, 10:00 a.m., 2118 Rayburn House Office Building.

📌 Department of Defense budget request for Fiscal Year 2027 and the Future Years Defense Program. Senate Armed Services Committee. Thursday, April 30, 11:00 a.m., SD-G50 Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Hot Docs

🔥📃 GAO - Combating Fraud: Challenges in Managing Fraud Risks in Federally Funded, State-Administered Programs. GAO-26-109093 (PDF)

Nominations & Appointments

NOMINATIONS

• Riley Barnes - Director, Peace Corps
• Rudolph Bauer - Ambassador, Belize
• Don Richard Berthiaume, Jr. - Inspector General, Department of Justice
• Sean Costello - United States Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama
• Michael Christopher DiLorenzo - Judge, Superior Court of the District of Columbia
• Erich Hernandez-Baquero - Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration
• Craig Edward Leen - Judge, Superior Court of the District of Columbia
• Christine Michelle Macey - Judge, Superior Court of the District of Columbia
• Roger Mason - Director, National Reconnaissance Office
• Christopher Phelan - Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers
• Erica Schwartz - Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Gary Shatswell - Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs (Information and Technology)
• John Barlow Timmer - Judge, Superior Court of the District of Columbia