Category «Legislation»

White House Eyes Rarely Used Power to Override Congress on Spending

The New York Times gift article: “The president’s top aides have signaled they may seize on a timing quirk in law to cancel enacted funds, setting up a clash over the power of the purse. The White House is signaling it may soon invoke a little-known and legally untested power to try to cancel billions …

Subjects: Congress, Economy, Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation

Trump vs. Birds: Proposed Budget Eliminates Critical Research Programs

Revelator: “Experts say there’s “no substitute” for the Bird Banding Laboratory or the Breeding Bird Survey, which help reveal the health and status of avian populations across the country. Two federal programs that experts consider indispensable for bird research and conservation in the United States could be eliminated under the Trump administration’s proposed budget for …

Subjects: Economy, Education, Environmental Law, Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation

H.R. 1, One Big Beautiful Bill Act

CBO Dynamic Estimate: “The Congressional Budget Office and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) previously reported that H.R. 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, as passed by the House of Representatives on May 22, would increase the primary deficit by $2.4 trillion over the 2025-2034 period. That estimate reflects a $3.7 …

Subjects: Economy, Financial System, Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation

The Plan to Steal 80% of National Parks

YouTube: Donald Trump’s proposed FY 2026 budget for the National Park Service is nothing less than catastrophic. Among other measures, the budget proposes firing 5,500 more Park Rangers, reducing the agency’s budget by $1 billion, and selling off 350 of the Park System’s 433 Units. Defenders of Wildlife has called it an “extinction budget,” and …

Subjects: Climate Change, Congress, Economy, Energy, Environmental Law, Legal Research, Legislation

Tracking State-Level DOGEs

Revolving Door Project – “While Elon Musk’s brainchild continues to rampage through our federal government, governors and state legislatures are creating their own DOGE-esque bodies. In some cases, these bodies have been set up by executive order, while others have been codified in the law by (primarily Republican) state legislators, and still others merely consist …

Subjects: Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation

School Librarians Are the First and Perhaps Only Line of Defense in a School for Students’ First Amendment Rights”

Book Riot: “How South Carolina school librarians are rising to the challenge of statewide book bans and why they retain hope in these challenging times. Three U.S. states have provisions in their state law that allow for removal of books from all public schools under certain circumstances. These are South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah. Tennessee …

Subjects: Censorship, Education, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Legislation, Libraries

Where did billions in climate and infrastructure funding go?

Grist – From clean energy projects to bridges, this interactive tool shows what projects lawmakers announced in your neighborhood. “By the time President Donald Trump retook office, lawmakers had announced nearly $700 billion in funding for infrastructure- and climate-related projects under two bills passed during Joe Biden’s administration — the Inflation Reduction Act and the …

Subjects: Climate Change, Environmental Law, Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation, Search Engines

Trump quietly throws out Biden’s cyber policies

Axios: “President Trump quietly took a red pen to much of the Biden administration’s in a little-noticed move late Friday. Why it matters: Until now, it has been unclear which Biden-era cybersecurity policies the Trump administration would keep — if any. Cybersecurity is a rare bipartisan area. It’s pretty common for new administrations to keep …

Subjects: Congress, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Economy, Energy, Financial System, Government Documents, Internet, Legal Research, Legislation, Privacy

Social Security’s Projected Shortfall: The Role of Demographic Factors

CRS Report – Social Security’s Projected Shortfall: The Role of Demographic Factors, June 5, 2025 – Referenced Legislation: P.L.98-21 – “Social Security is a social insurance program that provides income replacement to workers and their families due to a loss of earnings after a worker’s retirement, death, or disability. Yet Social Security, the federal government’s …

Subjects: Economy, Financial System, Government Documents, Legislation

The Dangers of Consolidating All Government Information

EFF: “…The consolidation of government records equals more government power that can be abused. Different government agencies necessarily collect information to provide essential services or collect taxes. The danger comes when the government begins pooling that data and using it for reasons unrelated to the purpose it was collected. Imagine, for instance, a scenario where …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Government Documents, Legal Research, Legislation, Privacy

The ODNI Wants to Make it Easier for the Government to Buy Your Data Without Warrant

EFF: “New reporting has revealed that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is attempting to create the Intelligence Community’s Data Consortium–a centralized online marketplace where law enforcement and spy agencies can peruse and buy very personal digital data about you collected by data brokers. Not only is this a massive escalation of …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Records, Government Documents, Internet, Legal Research, Legislation, Privacy

LLRX May 2025 Issue – Articles and Columns

LLRX May 2025 Issue – Articles and Columns The fallacy of the calculator – Jordan Furlong Safeguarding the Docket: A Roadmap for AI Agent Integration into Patent Docketing Workflows – This paper by John Schulte outlines the potential benefits of using AI agents in docketing workflows and proposes an implementation roadmap, including three key safeguards for …

Subjects: AI, Censorship, Civil Liberties, Climate Change, Cryptocurrency, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Government, Education, Environmental Law, Financial System, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Legislation, Patent and Trademark, Recommended Books