The Paper Trail: November 22, 2024

Trump Transition a “Hostile Takeover”; Biden’s Disappointing FOIA Legacy; Google’s Culture of Concealment; and More.

Nov 22, 2024

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Editor’s Note

The Paper Trail is taking a break. We’ll return on Tuesday, December 3. Have a happy Thanksgiving!

The Paper Trail

Russia-Ukraine War

U.S. will send Ukraine at least $275 million in new weapons in push to bolster Kyiv before Trump: Trump’s election has triggered a scramble by the Biden administration to ensure all the congressionally approved funding for Ukraine gets delivered. The administration will have to push out $7.1 billion in weapons from the Pentagon’s stockpiles to spend all of those funds before Trump is sworn in. (Lolita C. Baldor and Matthew Lee, RealClear Defense)

Inspectors General

Senator wants info on inspectors general office sexual harassment settlements: Sen. Chuck Grassley sent letters to 76 inspector general offices requesting information about payments to settle sexual harassment complaints against IG employees over the past five years, and if any settlement agreements violated whistleblower protection laws. (Sean Michael Newhouse, Government Executive)

Police Misconduct

Justice Department blocks random searches of travelers by DEA at airports: DEA agents will no longer be allowed to conduct random searches of travelers at airports and other transportation facilities after an inspector general investigation found DEA personnel failed to properly document searches and lacked training on how to conduct them. (Lori Aratani, Washington Post)

Justice Dept. says Trenton police engaged in systemic misconduct: Under Attorney General Merrick Garland, the DOJ has opened a dozen “pattern or practice” civil investigations into state and local police departments. Five of them have been completed — in Minneapolis; Louisville; Phoenix; Lexington, Mississippi; and Trenton — but none has resulted in a settlement agreement or consent order. (David Nakamura, Washington Post)

Analysis: How states are (and aren’t) collecting death-in-custody data: Although the Justice Department has approved every state’s plan for complying with the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013 (DCRA) — a tool to gather data about people who die in the custody of state and local law enforcement and corrections agencies — some states are clearly lagging. (David Janovsky, The Constitution Project at the Project On Government Oversight)

Defense and Veterans Affairs

U.S. support for Ukraine and Israel is eating into weapons stockpiles, Indo-Pacific commander says: Head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Adm. Samuel Paparo warned that the U.S. providing air defenses to both Ukraine and Israel is impeding his ability to respond to threats in the Indo-Pacific. (Tara Copp, Associated Press)

VA acknowledges significant errors in budget shortfall predictions: VA leaders on Wednesday acknowledged mistakes in their predictions earlier this year of funding shortfalls for the department, but insisted the errors were due to workload surges and not budgetary maleficence. Nevertheless, some lawmakers said the discrepancies undermine congressional confidence in the department’s financial stewardship. (Leo Shane III, Military Times)

F-35 testing report reveals problems with production decisions: A classified report in February documented many problems with the F-35, including guns that don’t shoot straight. Nonetheless, DOD went ahead and approved full rate production of the warplane. (Greg Williams, Center for Defense information at the Project On Government Oversight)

Could a fighter jet software upgrade have saved this pilot’s life?: Two-and-a-half years after Lt. Richard “Max” Bullock’s death, questions have emerged about why a system that keeps a jet airborne if a pilot loses consciousness was never installed in Navy Super Hornets, and if such a system might have prevented Bullock’s death. (Diana Stancy, Navy Times)

Business and Finance

How Google spent 15 years creating a culture of concealment: Trying to avoid antitrust suits, Google took steps to keep a lid on internal communications, instructing employees to destroy messages, avoid certain words, and copy the company’s lawyers as often as possible. (David Streitfeld, New York Times)

🔎 See Also: DOJ seeks forced sale of Chrome, other big changes at Google in monopoly case: (Eva Dou and Bart Schaneman, Washington Post)

Inside the deadliest job in America: Mostly employed in densely forested pockets of the Pacific Northwest and the South, loggers have the highest rate of fatal on-the-job injuries of any civilian occupation in the nation. (Kurtis Lee, New York Times)

Tech

The technology the Trump administration could use to hack your phone: In September, DHS signed a $2 million contract with Paragon, an Israeli firm whose spyware product Graphite is used to breach encrypted-messaging applications such as Telegram and Signal. The technology is part of a booming multibillion-dollar market for intrusive phone-hacking software that is making government surveillance increasingly cheap and accessible. (Ronan Farrow, New Yorker)

🔎 See Also: The U.S. bought Pegasus for Colombia with $11 million in cash. Now Colombians are asking why (Jose Olivares, Drop Site News)

Infrastructure

This substitute for lead pipes could carry its own risks: As water utilities mobilize to replace millions of lead pipes across the country, they are sometimes choosing polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which some advocates worry can pose its own health risks. (Amudalat Ajasa, Washington Post)

Mysterious chemical byproduct in U.S. tap water finally identified: The research doesn’t claim that tap water containing the byproduct is unsafe to drink or that the finding represents any kind of emergency. But the discovery could have implications for municipal water systems that use a class of chlorine-based disinfectants. (Carolyn Y. Johnson and Joel Achenbach, Washington Post)

Health Care

IV bags and tubing may contain harmful chemicals that can undermine critical treatments: Intravenous bags and tubes deliver lifesaving medications, but they also might be leaching a toxic chemical into patients’ bodies. (Andrea Nejman et al., CBS 2 Iowa)

RFK Jr. weighs major changes to how Medicare pays physicians: Although policymakers have spent years warning about Medicare’s billing codes and their skewed incentives, the matter has received little national attention given the challenge of explaining the issue to the public, the technicalities of billing codes, and the financial interests for industry groups. (Dan Diamond, Washington Post)

Anti-fraud efforts meet real-world test during ACA enrollment period: Unauthorized switching of Affordable Care Act plans appears to have tapered off in recent weeks. Now, the annual ACA open enrollment period that began November 1 poses a real-world test: Will the changes curb fraud by rogue agents or brokerages without unduly slowing the enrollment process? (Julie Appleby, CBS News)

ICYMI

Immigration and Border Security:

→ Biden administration loosens immigration restrictions ahead of second Trump term: “Last-ditch effort”

→ Immigration enforcement agents see Trump’s border czar as one of their own

→ Why Trump allies say immigration hurts American workers

Other News:

→ House passes bill to punish non-profits deemed to support “terrorism”

→ Surge of guns and ammunition flowing from U.S. to Latin America and Caribbean, fueling conflict

→ GOP effort to police trans bathroom use could extend to D.C. schools, agencies

→ Man convicted of plotting to kill agents who investigated his role in Jan. 6

→ Cities say they store property taken from homeless encampments. People rarely get their things back

→ Life expectancy gap in U.S. widens to 20 years due to “truly alarming” health disparities, researchers say

Because It’s Friday

How Froot Loops landed at the center of U.S. food politics: Froot Loops maker WK Kellogg has been under fire over its use of artificial food dyes. Now one of the company’s highest-profile critics, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been tapped to become the country’s top health official, and he has vowed to target artificial dyes in cereal that he says contribute to widespread health problems, particularly in children. (Jesse Newman, Wall Street Journal)

Upcoming Events

📌 Human vs. Machine: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence in the Law Enforcement Context. Cato Institute. Friday, December 6, 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. EST.

Hot Docs

🔥📃 GAO - Department of Energy Contracting: Actions Needed to Strengthen Certain Acquisition Planning Processes. GAO-25-106207 (PDF)

🔥📃 GAO - Special Operations Forces: Additional Oversight Could Help Mitigate High-Risk Training Accidents. GAO-25-106321 (PDF)

🔥📃 Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction: Staffing the Mission: Lessons from the U.S. Reconstruction of Afghanistan. SIGAR-25-05-LL (PDF)

🔥📃 Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy: Portraits in Oversight: Congress Investigates the Torture and Mistreatment of War Detainees. November 20, 2024