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

ProPublica Sued the FDA for Withholding Records About the Safety of Generic Drugs

ProPublica: “ProPublica has sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in federal court in New York, accusing the agency of withholding information about the safety and availability of generic drugs critical to millions of Americans. For years, Congress, watchdog groups, doctors and others have questioned the quality of generic drugs made in factories overseas. To …

Subjects: Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Health Care, Legal Research, Medicine

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

16 billion passwords exposed in record-breaking data breach, opening access to Facebook, Google, Apple, and any other service imaginable

Cybernews: Several collections of login credentials reveal one of the largest data breaches in history, totaling a humongous 16 billion exposed login credentials. The data most likely originates from various infostealers. This story, based on unique Cybernews findings and originally published on the website on June 18, is constantly being updated with clarifications and additional …

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Mail, E-Records, ID Theft, Internet, Legal Research

Trump Transcripts

Roll Call Factbase, powered by FiscalNote StressLens, allows users to search for, browse, read the transcripts and watch the video of Trump’s Interviews, Press Briefings, Press Conferences, Press Gaggles, Remarks, Speeches, and Vlogs. In a significant break from providing access to presidential documents, none of these government documents are posted on the White House website.

Subjects: Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Legal Research

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

ChatGPT Has Already Polluted the Internet So Badly That It’s Hobbling Future AI Development

Futurism – The rapid rise of ChatGPT — and the cavalcade of competitors’ generative models that followed suit — has polluted the internet with so much useless slop that it’s already kneecapping the development of future AI models. As the AI-generated data clouds the human creations that these models are so heavily dependent on amalgamating, …

Subjects: AI, Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

The Tyrant Test

The Atlantic [no paywall] – A leader who uses military force to suppress his political opposition ought to lose the right to govern. “Trump came into office promising to carry out a “mass deportation” of undocumented immigrants. Because of a degraded information environment riddled with right-wing propaganda, many Trump supporters came to think this meant …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Government Documents, Legal Research, Social Media

Artificial intelligence and defense are becoming increasingly intertwined

“Artificial intelligence and defense are becoming increasingly intertwined, especially in the US. OpenAI this week announced a $200 million Pentagon contract as part of a project to bring “advanced AI tools to [US] public servants.” In December, the ChatGPT-maker said it was working with the military tech company Anduril, while rival Anthropic is collaborating with …

Subjects: AI, Civil Liberties, Defense, Government Documents, Legal Research

COG Regional Crime Dashboard brings near real-time info about crime around the region

Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments: “The COG Regional Crime Dashboard provides a high-level understanding of local and regional crime trends from recent days to 2002. The dashboard examines the following offenses against people and property: homicide, robbery, rape, aggravated assault, motor vehicle theft, burglary, and larceny. Real-time data in the crime dashboard is classified using …

Subjects: E-Government, E-Records, Legal Research