Newsletter

The Paper Trail: January 31, 2025

D.C. Airport Collision; Federal Workers Get Buyout Offer; New Pentagon Chief Declares War on Mark Milley; and More.

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The Paper Trail

Announcements

The Office of the Whistleblower Ombuds has released the 2025 edition of its Training Manual: Best Practices for Working with Whistleblowers (available on HouseNet). You can also check out the Office’s 2024 Annual Report (PDF) and 119th Congress Strategic Plan (PDF).

Top stories for January 31, 2025

Before D.C. airport collision, lawmakers brushed off warnings and boosted flights: Months before Wednesday night’s fatal midair collision of a passenger jet and an Army helicopter, lawmakers dismissed safety warnings and passed an industry-backed measure to increase flights at Reagan National Airport. (Freddy Brewster, Lois Parshley, and David Sirota, The Lever)

🔎 See Also: Control tower at National Airport understaffed before deadly collision (Katie Shepherd et al., Washington Post)

🔎 See Also: FAA data shows 30 near-misses at Reagan Airport (Robert Benincasa, NPR)

🔎 See Also: The FAA is facing a major crisis without a leader because Elon Musk pushed him out (Andrew J. Hawkins, The Verge)

White House incentivizes federal workers to resign: OPM sent an email blast Tuesday to federal employees offering them a way to resign with pay through September 30. Democratic lawmakers and unions advised workers not to take the offer, which parallels one made by Elon Musk in 2022 when he acquired Twitter. (Emily Davies, Jeff Stein, and Faiz Siddiqui, Washington Post)

“Raging misogynist” now federal government H.R.’s top lawyer: Andrew Kloster, a self-described “raging misogynist” with a history of racist and sexist online comments and insistence on loyalty to Donald Trump, has been installed as OPM’s general counsel. (Nick Schwellenbach, Project On Government Oversight)

🔎 See Also: Elon Musk lackeys have taken over the Office of Personnel Management (Vittoria Elliott, Wired)

🔎 See Also: OPM’s new email system prompts lawsuit (Andrew Beaujon, Washingtonian)

2 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Democrats fired: The action leaves the EEOC without a quorum. Trump this week also left the National Labor Relations Board without a quorum and unable to hear and decide cases when he fired Democratic member Gwynne Wilcox. (Sean Michael Newhouse, Government Executive)

Trump administration shocks senior FBI ranks by moving to replace them: The move is remarkable in part because it’s happening before a director has been confirmed, and its quick and unexpected nature has left bureau employees badly shaken. (Adam Goldman and Devlin Barrett, New York Times)

Senior Treasury official to exit after rift with Musk allies over payment system: David Lebryk, the highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department, is departing after a clash with members of DOGE over access to the payment system the government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year. (Jeff Stein, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Jacqueline Alemany, Washington Post)

National Science Foundation suspends salary payments, leaving researchers unable to pay their bills: Although President Trump rescinded the federal funding freeze, as of Thursday the NSF’s online payment system was still down, throwing lives into uncertainty. (Eric Boodman, STAT)

Trans women in federal custody face the terror of being transferred to men’s prisons: A Trump executive order directs the Bureau of Prisons to ensure “that males are not detained in women’s prisons.” Trans women who are forced to live in men’s prisons face a heightened risk of sexual assault and violence. (Shawn Musgrave, The Intercept)

Israel-Hamas War

Trump administration to cancel student visas of pro-Palestinian protesters: An executive order threatens deportation of non-citizen college students and others who took part in pro-Palestinian protests. It also calls for cancelling the student visas of “Hamas sympathizers.” (Andrea Shalal, Reuters)

Classified Documents

Prosecutors move to drop classified documents case against Trump’s co-defendants: Federal prosecutors moved to drop their effort to prosecute Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, President Trump’s co-defendants in the classified documents case. It’s now even more unlikely that the DOJ will release the classified documents volume of the special counsel’s report. (Alan Feuer, New York Times)

Insurrection

Franklin County woman pardoned for Capitol riot is sentenced to 10 years in fatal crash: Emily Hernandez, who was pardoned for her participation in the insurrection, was sentenced this week to 10 years in prison for her involvement in a fatal drunk driving crash in 2022. (Ethan Colbert, St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

Russia-Ukraine War

American fighters are dying in Ukraine in growing numbers. Bringing their bodies home is a complex task: More than 20 Americans are missing in action on the front lines in Ukraine. For their relatives, there is a distressing lack of closure in not being able to bury their sons, the legal limbo of not being able to officially declare their loved ones dead, and the torment inflicted by Russian trolls who harass them online. (Nick Paton Walsh et al., CNN)

Defense and Veterans Affairs

Pentagon removes General Milley’s security detail and revokes his clearance: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth removed Milley’s security detail, revoked his security clearance, and ordered an inspector general inquiry into his record. Since Milley has been pardoned, he can’t be court-martialed, but he could get his rank reduced. (Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger, New York Times)

A Defense Department directive to expand access to military courts falls short of federal law’s requirements: The DOD directed the military branches to give advance public notice of preliminary (“Article 32”) hearings, provide access to certain court records, and publish the results of military trials on a public website. Legal experts say the new measures fall short of the conditions laid out in a law requiring the military to increase public access to its justice system. (Ziva Branstetter, ProPublica)

More problems for the costly F-35 jet: Another just fell from the sky: Officials haven’t said what exactly led to Tuesday’s crash, only that the pilot experienced an “in-flight malfunction.” The accident mirrors several similar crashes in recent years in which pilots were forced to eject from the stealth fighters. (Christopher Cann, USA Today)

Business and Finance

The Federal Reserve should resist pressure from Trump and defend its independence, experts say: President Trump had a message last week for the Federal Reserve while at the annual World Economic Forum gathering in Switzerland: He plans to “demand that interest rates drop immediately.” Experts warn that interfering with the Fed could have consequences, both legally and for the stock market. (Aimee Picchi, CBS News)

Target’s DEI cuts have Black entrepreneurs saying “clear the shelves”: Owners of brands that Target championed before rolling back DEI efforts fear the ripple effects of that decision, including calls to boycott the store. (Amber Ferguson, Washington Post)

Infrastructure

What America can learn from Miami’s trash nightmare: America produces more trash than almost any other country and lags in recycling and composting. That leaves U.S. cities with two flawed options for getting rid of waste: burning and burying. (Nicolás Rivero, Washington Post)

Health Care

The deadly secrets behind “breakthrough” Alzheimer’s drugs: The manufacturers of Alzheimer’s drugs and the FDA downplayed possible harms while exaggerating potential benefits. Three of the four FDA physician advisers who voted in favor of approval had financial ties to the drugmakers. (Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee, The Lever)

Some hospitals pause gender-affirming care to evaluate Trump’s executive order: Hospitals in Colorado, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., paused gender-affirming care for people under age 19 as they evaluate President Trump’s executive order cutting federal support for such care. Other hospitals say their current practices will continue. (Carla K. Johnson, Devna Bose, and Laura Bargfeld, Associated Press)

ICYMI

Immigration and Border Security:

Trump leans on WWII Japanese incarceration law to deport immigrants

Trump to build mass detention camp for deportees at Guantánamo Bay

DHS revokes Biden’s extension of protections for Venezuelan migrants

Prison company banking on ICE raids donated to Trump inauguration

Other News:

Chief VA watchdog who helped expose flawed computer system in Spokane speaks out after being fired by Trump

As data goes off-line under Trump, environmental researchers are uploading backups

Meta to pay $25 million to settle 2021 Trump lawsuit

Trump appointees can’t own crypto. That rule doesn’t apply to Trump himself

How Tulsi Gabbard plans to follow Donald Trump’s business arrangement

Students aren’t recovering from COVID. Test scores are getting worse

Kansas is dealing with a major tuberculosis outbreak

Because It’s Friday

DOGE may target the penny: Why do we still have it anyway?: With the cost of the penny increasing to more than three times its face value and fewer Americans paying with cash, the penny could be on DOGE’s chopping block. (Addy Bink, The Hill)

Hot Docs

🔥📃 GAO - Army Corps of Engineers: Expedited Permitting Process Would Benefit from More Transparency. GAO-25-107637 (PDF)

🔥📃 GAO - Temporary Assistance for Needy Families: Additional Actions Needed to Strengthen Fraud Risk Management. GAO-25-107290 (PDF)

🔥📃 National Institute of Justice Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice: Understanding and Reducing Deaths in Custody: Analysis of the Bureau of Justice Assistance Death in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA) Data. September 2024 (PDF)

🔥📃 Project On Government Oversight: Census-Guided Funds in Michigan: Health | Education | Economic Development | Housing | Infrastructure

Nominations & Appointments

Withdrawals

  • Frank Bisignano - Commissioner of Social Security
  • Adam Boehler - Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs
  • Michael Duffy - Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment