The Paper Trail: January 17, 2025
Biden’s Last-Minute Executive Actions; Army Meets Recruiting Goal Thanks to Women; Uncle Sam Needs Cursive Readers; and More.
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Announcements
Statement on the Passing of Elise Bean, Director of the Washington Office of the Carl Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy
Applications are now open for a two-day intensive Boot Camp on the art and practice of oversight and investigations hosted by POGO, the Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy, and The Lugar Center. This training is only open to staff in Congress. Apply at THIS LINK by January 22.
Stop by the House Office of the Whistleblower Ombuds’ first pop-up tabling event of the year on January 22 from 12:00 noon to 1:30 p.m. in the Longworth Cafeteria. Whether you are continuing your work with oversight sources and whistleblower constituents or just starting and need guidance, experts will be onsite to answer your questions. You can also pick up their latest guidance, Working With Whistleblowers: Do’s and Don’ts (PDF) — a primer on best practices.
Top stories for January 17, 2025
Biden seeks last-minute moves that could be hard for Trump to undo: President Biden, whose last-minute executive actions have been far-reaching, has also been weighing advancing the Equal Rights Amendment and issuing preemptive pardons for individuals who might face the hostility of the incoming administration. Still, the new Republican-controlled Congress could use the Congressional Review Act to overturn more than 1,300 climate, education, health-care, and labor regulations. (Matt Viser, Washington Post)
🔎 See Also: Biden tightens cybersecurity rules, forcing Trump to make a choice (David E. Sanger, New York Times)
DOGE agency deployments raise ethical and influence concerns: The lack of clear structure for DOGE raises questions about the chain of command for members of the group, as well as the career civil servants they are working with. There are also concerns about Elon Musk’s conflicts of interest. (Eric Katz, Government Executive)
🔎 See Also: Two watchdogs were rebuffed from joining Trump’s cost-cutting effort (David A. Fahrenthold, New York Times)
Private prison giant hired ICE detention chief: Private prison contractor GEO Group hired former Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Daniel Bible shortly before the election of Donald Trump, whose hardline stance on immigration could provide a bonanza for the company. Bible joins a long line of ICE officials departing the government to work for GEO. (Nick Schwellenbach and René Kladzyk, Project On Government Oversight)
More Americans than ever are living in wildfire areas. L.A. is no exception: In recent years, Americans have been increasingly moving away from city centers to places at risk of burning: areas next to forests, grasslands, and shrub lands. (Mira Rojanasakul and Brad Plumer, New York Times)
As bird flu affects more people and animals, CDC urges faster testing: With more patients flooding hospitals seeking care for seasonal flu, testing for avian influenza could slow down, and that could delay public health measures needed to prevent disease spread. Most hospitals don’t have the capacity to test for bird flu. (Lena H. Sun, Washington Post)
Israel-Hamas War
As ceasefire nears, Jared Kushner’s new investments could boost Israeli settlements: Jared Kushner, President-elect Trump’s son-in-law and close confidant, doubled his ownership stake in an Israeli financial firm that stands to gain from expanding Israeli settlements — just before the announcement of a ceasefire deal that Kushner may have helped broker. (Freddy Brewster and Katya Schwenk, The Lever)
Dobbs Aftermath
Surge in Americans getting sterilizations given states’ abortion laws: State abortion bans and worries that conservative lawmakers could also try to restrict access to birth control have an increasing number of women and men deciding to undergo sterilization. (Sabrina Malhi and Emily Wax-Thibodeaux, Washington Post)
Texas judge allows 3 states to advance efforts to restrict access to abortion pill mifepristone: Federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri can move ahead with their effort to make it harder to access the abortion drug mifepristone. (CBS News)
Police Misconduct
Slow approach to law enforcement AI could combat errors and bias, experts say: While AI technology has potential to help police draft reports, a recent ACLU white paper underscores the risks of relying on AI to inform police narratives. (Kaitlyn Levinson, Route Fifty)
Defense and Veterans Affairs
Pentagon watchdog finds Austin hospitalization scandal increased security risks: The DOD inspector general found Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s hospitalization last year increased national security risks and should have been handled better. (Brad Dress, The Hill)
Watchdog rebukes VA over failure to refund $110M in medical fees: The Office of Special Counsel criticized VA leaders for failing to refund millions of dollars in canceled medical co-pay charges to veterans, despite knowing about the problem for years. According to OSC, between 2012 and 2020, more than 970,000 veterans were owed a total of $110 million in refunds. (Leo Shane III, Military Times)
Surge of female enlistments helped drive Army success in reaching 2024 recruiting goal: The Army continues to struggle with recruiting men, who have become more of a challenge to enlist in recent years. The reasons are that women applicants are less likely to have criminal records and are outpacing men in higher education. (Steve Beynon, Military.com)
Business and Finance
Capital One is accused of cheating customers out of $2 billion: A Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lawsuit accuses Capital One of cheating customers out of more than $2 billion in interest on high-yield savings accounts. (Rob Copeland, New York Times)
🔎 See Also: Capital One customers report direct deposits not showing up in their bank accounts (Kate Gibson, CBS News)
General Motors is banned from selling driving behavior data for 5 years: The FTC found that consumers had not been aware that GM was providing their driving behavior and geolocation information to data brokers, who used it to generate risk profiles for insurance companies. (Kashmir Hill, New York Times)
What happened to enrollment at top colleges after affirmative action ended: Black and Hispanic enrollment in 2024 declined on average, but there wasn’t a comparable increase in Asian and White enrollment. Many more students in 2024 didn’t disclose their race, which could explain the discrepancy. (Aatish Bhatia et al., New York Times)
Tech
Government sites across the U.S. are awash in hardcore porn: Spammers have exploited dozens of state and federal government websites to redirect visitors to hardcore porn content. (Nikita Mazurov, The Intercept)
Apple plans to disable AI features summarizing news notifications: Apple is disabling an AI feature that aggregates and summarizes news notifications after an outcry from British media outlets that it misrepresented news reports. The incident is the latest in a series of issues that have marred new AI products from the tech giants. (Tripp Mickle, New York Times)
Health Care
FDA bans Red No. 3, artificial coloring used in beverages, candy and other foods: Manufacturers will have until January 15, 2027, to reformulate their products without the dye, which is used in thousands of foods. The FDA isn’t prohibiting other artificial dyes, including Red No. 40, which has been linked to behavioral issues in children. (Berkeley Lovelace Jr. and Elizabeth Chuck, NBC News)
Insulin prices dropped. but some poor patients are paying more.: Federal policies to make medications more affordable created another problem: a severe financial hit to clinics that are tasked by the federal government with caring for the country’s poorest people. (Katie Thomas, New York Times)
🔎 See Also: How a company makes millions off a hospital program meant to help the poor (Ellen Gabler, New York Times)
Breast cancer rates climb among younger women: Experts believe the increase is being driven by a combination of shifts in women’s fertility and environmental or lifestyle factors. (Nina Agrawal, New York Times)
ICYMI
Immigration and Border Security:
→ Deportation at “light speed”: How Trump’s crackdown could unfold
Other News:
→ Biden commutes sentences of nearly 2,500 nonviolent drug offenders
→ FBI shuttered DEI office last month
→ Inspectors general have a new bipartisan caucus in the Senate
→ Trump’s proposed cuts to the federal workforce could increase dependency on contractors, experts say
→ Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway operates the dirtiest set of coal-fired power plants in the U.S.
→ Giuliani and Georgia election workers reach settlement in defamation case
→ Ex-McKinsey partner pleads guilty to destroying records on opioids
→ American Express to pay $230M to settle deceptive marketing, fraud probe
Because It’s Friday
Can you read cursive? The National Archives needs volunteers with your “superpower”: More than 200 years’ worth of U.S. documents need transcribing, and the vast majority from the Revolutionary War era are handwritten in cursive, a form of script that has been rendered nearly extinct by computers. (Elizabeth Weise, USA Today)
Upcoming Events
📌 Nomination of Douglas Collins to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. Tuesday, January 21, 10:00 a.m., G50 Dirksen Senate Office Building.
📌 Nomination of Elise Stefanik to be U.S. Representative to the United Nations. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Tuesday, January 21, 10:00 a.m., 419 Dirksen Senate Office Building.
📌 Nomination of Russell Vought to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Senate Committee on the Budget. Wednesday, January 22, 10:00 a.m., 608 Dirksen Senate Office Building.
📌 Nomination of Daniel Driscoll to be Secretary of the Army. Senate Committee on Armed Services. Thursday, January 23, 9:30 a.m., G50 Dirksen Senate Office Building.
📌 Nomination of Brooke Rollins to be Secretary of Agriculture. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. Thursday, January 23, 10:00 a.m., 106 Dirksen Senate Office Building.
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