Newsletter

The Paper Trail: December 17, 2024

Federal Response to Drone Sightings Draws Hill Rebuke; Delay and Deny: The Practices Fueling Anger at Health Insurers; Big Donors Secure Big Roles in Trump Administration; and More.

Dec 17, 2024

Delivered Tuesdays and Fridays, The Paper Trail is a curated collection of the government news you need to know. Sign up to get this newsletter delivered to your inbox.

Announcements

The Confirmation Process: POGO’s virtual training on how to vet presidential nominees effectively will be Tuesday, January 7 at 12 noon. This event is only open to staff in Congress, GAO, and CRS. Register HERE.

Stop by the Office of the Whistleblower Ombuds’ last pop-up tabling event of the year tomorrow from 12:00 noon to 2:00 p.m. in the Rayburn Cafeteria. Whether you are preparing for the next Congress or need guidance on how to communicate case closures, experts will be onsite to answer your questions around working with oversight sources and whistleblower constituents.

The Paper Trail

Top stories for December 17, 2024

Federal response to mysterious drone sightings draws bipartisan criticism: Lawmakers from across the political spectrum are criticizing the government’s response to recent drone sightings in the Northeast, as officials emphasize there is no evidence of a security threat. (Jack Forrest, CNN)

Some NC residents distrust FEMA so much they’re hesitant to apply for hurricane aid: Rampant misinformation and conspiracy theories about FEMA’s motives inflamed a long-existing skepticism about government in western North Carolina. That, combined with a federal response that has been trying to navigate complex logistics in a region that is not used to big disasters, is deterring people from getting help. (Brianna Sacks and Kevin Crowe, Washington Post)

Bank of America flagged suspicious payments to Epstein only after he died: Senate staff members asked the Treasury Department to investigate Bank of America for belatedly alerting financial regulators to potentially suspicious payments to Jeffrey Epstein. The request highlights a weakness of the “suspicious activity reports” (SARs) system: Each year, banks file millions of these confidential reports with regulators, but it’s not uncommon for banks to file them long after the transactions have taken place. (Matthew Goldstein, New York Times)

The FDA hasn’t inspected this drug factory after 7 recalls for the same flaw, 1 potentially deadly: India-based drugmaker Glenmark Pharmaceuticals issued several recalls of pills that didn’t dissolve properly. In one case, the company said the problem could be deadly. The FDA still hasn’t visited Glenmark’s factory or stopped it from shipping other drugs to the U.S. (Patricia Callahan, Debbie Cenziper, and Megan Rose, ProPublica)

Native American patients are sent to collections for debts the government owes: Patients say they were stuck with medical debt that should have been paid by the Indian Health Service, a federal agency that provides free health care to Native Americans but is hampered by a chronic shortage of funding and staff. (Katheryn Houghton and Arielle Zionts, KFF Health News)

Big donors secure big roles in the incoming Trump administration: Nearly three dozen of President-elect Trump’s picks to serve in his administration donated to his campaign or to the outside groups that worked to elect him. Eight of his Cabinet picks and their spouses donated a combined total of more than $37 million. (Fredreka Schouten, David Wright, and Alex Leeds Matthews, CNN)

Looking Ahead to 2025:

→ Tracking Trump’s Cabinet and staff nominations

→ Trump and his picks threaten more lawsuits over critical coverage

→ Industrial and business groups send Trump a deregulatory wish list

→ Will civil service protections hold up against RFK Jr.’s threats to the federal public health workforce?

→ USPS privatization again under consideration, Trump says

→ Why Musk doesn’t have access to SpaceX’s biggest government secrets

→ In Ohio, an immigrant community prepares for Trump’s crackdown

Dobbs Aftermath

Texas’ abortion pill lawsuit against New York doctor marks new challenge to interstate telemedicine: Challenges to shield laws, which blue states started adopting in 2023, were anticipated. Experts fear such lawsuits could have a chilling effect on prescriptions. (Sean Murphy, Michael Hill, and Geoff Mulvihill, Associated Press)

Child care gets little help in Idaho. A family-run center is buckling: Idaho, which has one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws, offers the fewest social services for women and children of any state with an abortion ban. (Karin Brulliard, Washington Post)

Defense and Veterans Affairs

House probe finds former Coast Guard commandant decided to withhold sexual assault findings: A congressional investigation into the Coast Guard’s handling of sexual assault cases at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy found that the service mishandled most cases and intentionally withheld criminal investigations from Congress and the public. (Patricia Kime, Military.com)

The U.S. military is now talking openly about going on the attack in space: The inclusion of the term “integrated space fires” in a Space Command planning document is a sign that Pentagon leaders, long hesitant to even mention the possibility of putting offensive weapons in space for fear of stirring up a cosmic arms race, see the taboo of talking about space warfare as a thing of the past. (Stephen Clark, Ars Technica)

Business and Finance

Amazon disregarded internal warnings on injuries, Senate investigation claims: The majority staff of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions released an investigation that found Amazon health and safety personnel recommended relaxing enforcement of strict production quotas to lower injury rates, but senior executives rejected the recommendations. It also found that injury rates at Amazon were almost twice the industry average. (Noam Scheiber, New York Times)

In some port towns, it’s residents vs. cruises: “We’re going to eradicate them”: Residents of port towns around the U.S. are rising up against the cruise ship industry, which they consider a scourge on their communities. They say the vessels pollute their air and water, drain the local economy, and dispatch crowds that diminish their quality of life. (Andrea Sachs, Washington Post)

Students overpaid elite colleges $685 million, “price-fixing” suit says: A lawsuit accuses Georgetown, the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, and other elite schools of colluding to limit the financial aid packages of working- and middle-class students and favoring wealthy applicants. (Susan Svrluga and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, Washington Post)

Tech

Report: AT&T, Verizon aren’t notifying most victims of Chinese call-records hack: AT&T and Verizon aren’t notifying most customers whose call records were stolen in the ongoing Salt Typhoon attack. (Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica)

Authorities abroad use phone-cracking tools to install spyware, report says: Repressive governments abroad are using a product widely marketed to American law enforcement agencies to gain physical access to devices and insert monitoring programs. (Joseph Menn, Washington Post)

Infrastructure

Mountains of unused coal causing financial headaches for U.S. power sector: American power producers have accumulated massive amounts of coal that are now sitting idle at their facilities, creating financial and storage headaches for utilities and coal miners. (Sharon Udasin, The Hill)

Biden administration agrees to record $15 billion loan to PG&E: Officials with the Loan Programs Office said that because the loan is a legal contract, future administrations won’t be able to claw back the funds, although they would have oversight of what projects are funded. Critics of the loan program point to the failure of Solyndra, a solar-panel company that collapsed in 2011, causing a $535 million loan to go sour. (Scott Patterson and Katherine Blunt, Wall Street Journal)

Health Care

Deny and delay: The practices fueling anger at U.S. health insurers: Every year, health insurance companies deny, often without explanation, tens of millions of patient claims for medical expense reimbursements — and the tide of denials has been rising. Insurers also have been increasingly demanding that doctors obtain approval before providing treatment, causing delays in care. (Peter Whoriskey, Washington Post)

🔎 See Also: Health insurers gave $120 billion to shareholders while denying your claim (Veronica Riccobene, The Lever)

🔎 See Also: Fewer than half of Latinos in the U.S. have adequate health insurance coverage (Alejandra O’Connell-Domenech, The Hill)

Giant companies took secret payments to allow free flow of opioids: For years, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) took payments from opioid manufacturers in return for not restricting the flow of pills. As tens of thousands of Americans died from prescription painkillers, these middlemen collected billions of dollars in payments. (Chris Hamby, New York Times)

ICYMI

Immigration and Border Security:

→ The Biden administration is separating families at the border. It doesn’t always say why

→ Trump says border wall material shouldn’t be sold despite congressional requirement

→ The U.S. Census Bureau is adding refugees to its immigrant count

Other News:

→ Confidence in U.S. courts plummets to rate far below peer nations

→ McKinsey to pay $650 million in opioid settlement with Justice Department

→ ABC to pay $15 million to settle a defamation suit brought by Trump

→ Judge rules Trump does not have presidential immunity protections in hush money conviction

→ OPM finally issues regulations implementing 2016 administrative leave reforms

Upcoming Events

📌 Continuing a Bipartisan Path Forward for Antitrust Enforcement and Reform. Senate Judiciary Committee. Tuesday, December 17, 2:30 p.m., 226 Dirksen Senate Office Building.

📌 American Confidence in Elections: Prohibiting Foreign Interference. Committee on House Administration. Wednesday, December 18, 10:00 a.m., 1310 Longworth House Office Building.

📌 Next to Fall: The Climate-Driven Insurance Crisis is Here – And Getting Worse. Senate Budget Committee. Wednesday, December 18, 10:00 a.m., 608 Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Hot Docs

🔥📃 Majority Staff of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions: The “Injury-Productivity Trade-off”: How Amazon’s Obsession with Speed Creates Uniquely Dangerous Warehouses. December 15, 2024 (PDF)