Newsletter

The Paper Trail: July 30, 2024

Biden’s Supreme Court Reform Plan; Congress Takes Another Crack at Over-Classification; High-Tech Scammers Target the Elderly; and More.

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The Paper Trail

Announcements

There will be no Paper Trail on Friday, August 2.

“How to Conduct Oversight of the Secret Service: A Conversation with the first Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security,” POGO’s virtual training on how to conduct oversight of the Secret Service, will be held on August 2 at 12 noon ET. This event is only open to staff in Congress, GAO, and CRS. Register at this link.

Top stories for July 30, 2024

Joe Biden: My plan to reform the Supreme Court and ensure no president is above the law: I am calling for three reforms to restore trust and accountability to the Supreme Court: 1) a constitutional amendment called the No One Is Above the Law Amendment that would make clear there is no immunity for crimes a former president committed while in office; 2) a system of term limits in which the president would appoint a justice every two years to spend 18 years in active service on the court; and 3) a binding code of conduct requiring justices to disclose gifts, refrain from public political activity, and recuse themselves from cases in which they or their spouses have financial or other conflicts of interest. (Washington Post)

FBI lacks strategy for sharing information with social media platforms about foreign influence threats to U.S. elections: The DOJ doesn’t have a comprehensive strategy or specific guidance for sharing information with social media companies about foreign influence threats to U.S. elections, according to an inspector general review. (Sean Michael Newhouse, Government Executive)

House leadership appoints Trump shooting task force members: The group of seven Republicans and 6 Democrats will be led by Rep. Mike Kelly, who represents the site of the attempted assassination. (Jordain Carney, Politico)

🔎 See Also: Top January 6 conspiracist to investigate Trump shooting (Edith Olmsted, The New Republic)

Senators take another crack at solving over-classification: Unnecessary classification of government documents costs upwards of $18 billion per year in maintenance costs and inhibits information sharing across federal agencies, according to Sen. Gary Peters, who co-sponsored a bill to establish a new task force to narrow the criteria for classifying documents and make it harder for agencies to exempt records from automatic declassification. (Erich Wagner, Government Executive)

They have jobs, but no homes. Inside America’s unseen homelessness crisis: Homelessness, already at a record high last year, appears to be worsening among people with jobs as housing becomes further out of reach for low-wage earners. (Abha Bhattarai, Washington Post)

Analysis: Schedule F would turn its back on rural communities: Despite the importance of rural communities to sustaining a healthy and thriving nation, federal policy has too often neglected rural Americans. Schedule F will make this worse by replacing knowledgeable and committed federal agency workers with partisan lackeys. (Joe Spielberger, Project On Government Oversight)

Russia-Ukraine War

U.S. will send $1.7 billion in military aid to Ukraine: The U.S. has sent $55.4 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022. (Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press)

To a list of American journalists jailed in Russia, add Alsu Kurmasheva: The arrests of Americans in Russia have been met with widespread condemnation of Vladimir Putin by media organizations and the U.S. government. It has also thrust their families into the labyrinth of international diplomacy. (Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post)

Defense and Veterans Affairs

Pentagon holding back on hypersonic weapons’ risks, GAO says: The Pentagon isn’t giving Congress and the public a full assessment of its difficulties and challenges developing hypersonic weapons, on which it has spent about $12 billion but has yet to field its first operational system. (Anthony Capaccio, Bloomberg)

Bipartisan Senate group offers bill to plug VA benefit shortfall: Heavy hitters on both sides of the aisle criticized the VA for its late notification of the shortfall, accusing the VA of significant financial mismanagement and incompetence. (Aidan Quigley, Roll Call)

Special needs military families report mixed feelings about program to help with medical care, services: A survey of military families found that less than half were satisfied with a program offered by each service to support families with special medical and educational needs. (Patricia Kime, Military.com)

Business and Finance

How a sugar industry stamp of approval hid coerced hysterectomies: Food brands including Coca-Cola, Unilever, and General Mills use third party auditors like Bonsucro to reassure the public that their international supply chains respect human rights. Yet these audits are all but guaranteed not to find problems. (Megha Rajagopalan, New York Times)

ISPs seeking government handouts try to avoid offering low-cost broadband: Internet service providers are eager to get money from a $42 billion government fund but are trying to convince the Biden administration to drop demands that they offer low-cost service to people with low incomes. (Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica)

Tech

How the crypto industry is buying political support with 202 million U.S. dollars: Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are primarily used for financial speculation and to facilitate organized crime, and the broader crypto industry has been rocked by scandals. Yet crypto lobbyists still have an ace up their sleeve: lots of money. (Judd Legum, Popular Information)

How one man lost $740,000 to scammers targeting his retirement savings: Sophisticated criminals on dating sites, on social media, in messaging apps, or using malicious software present an ever-growing threat to people and their savings — especially people over the age of 60. (Tara Siegel Bernard, New York Times)

Infrastructure

The rush to shore up the power grid against hurricanes, heat and hail: Extreme weather is putting power supplies around the country to the test. Energy companies are racing to find answers. (Phred Dvorak, Wall Street Journal)

The port of Los Angeles has a power problem: Container-handling companies say an unreliable power supply hinders their effort to phase out diesel-powered machinery. Their frustrations highlight the gap in energy infrastructure that complicates moves toward zero-emission technologies. (Paul Berger, Wall Street Journal)

Health Care

People are overdosing on off-brand weight-loss drugs, FDA warns: People are overdosing on off-brand injections of semaglutide, which are dispensed from compounding pharmacies in a variety of concentrations, labeled with various units of measurement, administered with improperly sized syringes, and prescribed with bad dosage math. (Beth Mole, Ars Technica)

Hit with a shockingly high ambulance bill? Here’s what to do: The federal No Surprises Act protects people from many types of unexpected out-of-network health care charges. But the law doesn’t cover ground ambulance services. (Kate Gibson, CBS News)

The CDC’s test for bird flu works, but it has issues: Some researchers say the CDC’s test’s flaws, though manageable, underscore the risk of relying on a single entity for testing. (Arthur Allen and Amy Maxmen, KFF Health News)

COVID-19

Stricter COVID mask rules could’ve saved hundreds of thousands of lives, new study finds: The study found the U.S. could have avoided almost 250,000 COVID deaths if every state had adopted stricter mask and vaccine requirements seen in the Northeast during the height of the pandemic. For example, it found the excess death rate in Massachusetts, the state with the tightest restrictions, was less than one-fifth that of Mississippi, the state with the loosest rules. (Josh Marcus, The Independent)

Disruptions loom for telehealth providers and patients as Congress inches closer to deadline: Telehealth flexibilities passed by Congress during the COVID pandemic are set to expire at the end of 2024. The time crunch is starting to create problems for regulators, providers, and patients. (Mario Aguilar, STAT)

ICYMI

Immigration and Border Security:

Texas governor renews border security disaster proclamation

Texas targets faith-based groups helping migrants along U.S.-Mexico border

Other News:

Senate bill could reduce feds salary to $1 if they don’t respond to congressional requests

How to buy a president: Donald Trump’s media company is an unprecedented opportunity for corruption

Why won’t authorities release 911 recordings from Trump rally shooting?

Federal appeals court rules against Missouri’s waiting period for ex-lawmakers to lobby

The group behind a massive effort to “clean” voter rolls

Hot Docs

🔥📃 GAO - Havana Syndrome: Better Patient Communication and Monitoring of Key DOD Tasks Needed to Better Ensure Timely Treatment. GAO-24-106593 (PDF)