Podcasts about Government Accountability Office

There are still a lot of barriers to voting, and when we're thinking about access to voting, it should be easier for every voter to cast a ballot.  According to the CDC, about 1 in 4 adults in the U.S. live with some type of disability: nearly 61 million people. When it comes time to cast their ballots, voters with disabilities can face a number of challenges at the polls. For in-person voters in the 2016 election, the Government Accountability Office found that less than half of polling places were accessible from parking to the voting booth. Accessibility increased in 2020, and people with disabilities made large gains in the historic voter turnout surge of 2020. Expanded access to mail-in ballots pushed disability turnout to 17.7 million in 2020, up from 16 million in 2016, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. We spoke with Michelle Bishop, Voter Access & Engagement Manager at the National Disability Rights Network, and Michelle explained how the steps taken during the 2020 presidential election and against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, lowered some of those barriers and helped make it safer to cast a ballot for all voters,  including voters who have a disability.

Transcription:Intro  00:04Welcome to Changing the Rules, a weekly podcast about people who are living their best lives and advice on how you can achieve that too. Join us with your lively host, Ray Lowe, better known as the luckiest guy in the world.Ray Loewe00:20Welcome, everybody. And thanks for joining us here at Changing the Rules. We're lucky enough this morning, we're sitting in our brand new podcast facilities in Willow Street, Pennsylvania, we have our super engineer Luke Cagno sitting here at the board. And he's the person who makes us sound good or not. So, I have to kind of behave when he's around because he can do damage to me. And we have a great guest today. But before we get into our guest, let me remind everybody that the luckiest people in the world, and that's what this podcast is all about, are people who take control of their own lives, redesign them to meet their own specs, and live them under their own terms. And the name of our show, Changing the Rules, is all about the fact that the luckiest people in the world managed to handle rules really well. You know, all our lives we're thrown new rules. Were given them by our parents when we're born. The church comes in and gives us rules. The schools give us rules, our jobs give us rules. And the next thing we know, we have rules all over the place and rules do two things. They tell us what we can't do and what we must do. And Steve Jobs, the Apple guy, the big Apple guy, came up with a statement a while ago and he said, you know, if you're living your life under somebody else's rules, you're not living your life. So we have a young lady today who is certainly changing the rules. She certainly has a fascinating life. And the real interesting kind of summary that I'm going to start with is that she's going to tell you that her life, all of her life was preparing her for a unique opportunity that she didn't know was going to come. But when it came, she had all the pieces together based on her life so that she was able to take advantage of an opportunity. So Liz Williams, welcome to changing the rules. Say hi to everybody.Liz Williams02:21Hi, thanks for having me, Ray.Ray Loewe02:23Okay, so let's start a little bit with your background as you grew up, where and how many family members did you have? Tell us a little bit about your background.Liz Williams02:33I grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs, which was a wonderful place to grow up. I had three sisters, two parents, my father worked nights, my mother worked a lot, and back in those days of the 50s and 60s, mothers didn't work that much. But she did work as a secretary. So I had two working parents, adored all my sisters. I lost my older sister, April, in 2008, which was a devastating blow but I still have two younger sisters. And it was a great place to grow up.Ray Loewe03:05Okay, so you had a relatively happy life growing up. And you went away to college, right? And where'd you go to school?Liz Williams03:11I went to Shippensburg State, which is a state college here in Pennsylvania, loved Shippensburg.Ray Loewe03:16And what did you major in?Liz Williams03:18I majored in urban studies, my father had died. The September I left for college, my father died. So I had to pick a major that I thought would be very, very practical. I picked Urban Studies, which was kind of an up-and-coming thing. City planning, that kind of thing. So that's what I picked and I enjoyed it. It was part geography, part political science. And I loved it, I loved all my college.Ray Loewe03:47Okay, and then you went into the workforce, and basically give us kind of a short version of what kinds of things did you do? What skills did you use in your jobs?Liz Williams03:59The first job where I worked for my County Planning Commission, which was Delaware County, and again, in suburban Philadelphia, I did a lot of actually going to meetings, local meetings, and so forth. And I realized when I was doing that, I love to write. That was the only thing about that job that I really liked. I found after about two and a half years, I was like no, I don't think this is for me. But I did love the writing and I never forgot that. One thing that I did do there that I enjoyed was we, myself, and the librarian there at the planning commission, they actually had a library in there because they had so much materials to store. We came up with a county library plan for the county and it was one of the early library systems. Up until then, local towns just had their own little libraries. But this was a county-wide system where you get a library card at one library and it's good for all of the libraries there. So we did the foundation for that. So that was something I was proud of there. But I would say after about three years, I followed in my older sister's footsteps and I became a flight attendant.Ray Loewe05:18Okay, now we're getting into excitement. Right? Okay, so the early years basically gave you the tools that you needed to write Liz Williams05:28Yes. Ray Loewe05:29And kind of taught you what to do, right? But also didn't give you any excitement in your life?Liz Williams05:36Not much. Ray Loewe05:37All right. So now you're a flight attendant, you're a woman of the world. So who did you fly for? Where did you go? What did you do?Liz Williams05:45I flew for Piedmont Airlines, which was based in Winston Salem, North Carolina. It was a regional airline for the South. It grew to eventually fly overseas. But I only flew for seven years, I'd had enough after seven years, but it was fun. I met great friends. I did get to see some of Europe, some of South America, some of the Caribbean, in my 20s, which was kind of unusual back then. Not that many people got to travel that much at that age, so it did make me meet a woman of the world, actually. And we flew for very little because we had discounts. Sometimes you'd fly for free. Sometimes you got moved to first class for nothing. So that was great. But as I say, after about seven years that kind of got tiresome too.Ray Loewe06:37Okay, so who did you meet on your flights that were interesting stories?Liz Williams06:41Oh, I had John McEnroe, once, who was truly rude. He wouldn't put his tennis racket in the overhead bin like he was supposed to, insisted on it going in the hang-up closet for the garment bags. And you know, I wasn't going to argue with him. I just wasn't going to get into it with him, because maybe he'd report me to the management or something, you know. So I didn't do that. And I had Lynda Bird Johnson, who was pregnant at the time. With her, I think it was her third child, and I never had children. So I never understood why you'd want to have three children. And so I actually said to her, are you pregnant again? It was rather rude, but you know, it just kind of came out. And I also had General Westmoreland on there who was very quiet, he had not done so well in the Vietnam War. And I don't think he was, you know, a very popular person. So he kind of sat to himself, but we all knew he was. But mainly, you know, the bulk of our customers were Southerners. And when I went to flight attendant training, I was from Pennsylvania, so I was the only one from the north and I was the token Yankee. I had never been referred to as a Yankee before and it was a little daunting, but you know, everyone was lovely. They weren't mean to me or anything was just an odd situation to, you know, realize that, oh my, they're different. And I'm different to them. And, you know, they still kind of think like that, but as I say, they were lovely.Ray Loewe08:20Yeah. So anyway, the first part of your life, you had a fairly happy childhood, you know, moving along got a good education and a sequence of jobs that taught you writing. And then you became more of a woman of the world out there. And then something happened. So let me read this for you. You're an author, you've written a book. And this is where we're going here. And the intro to your book over here is as a young man from a gritty Pennsylvania mill town enlists in the Army Air Corps, and heads to Hawaii, the paradise of the Pacific. There he and his buddies defend a O'ahu while it explodes and burns in the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the worst surges, his bombers squadron ships out to primitive Pacific outposts amid air raid, stifling heat, outbreaks of tropical disease. He clings to sanity through letters that he and his wife share. Letters found years later saved in the attic. A poignant event, wasn't it? Liz Williams09:30Yes. Ray Loewe09:31All right. And here's where your life came together in something that is significant, and I know it's truly meaning to you, so tell us the  story and fill in the details. Liz Williams09:46You set me up terrifically here, Ray. After seven years of being a flight attendant, I actually well, it was probably after six years, I started working at a part-time job. Because as a flight attendant, you have a lot of time off, you probably only work three or four days a week. The other days you're off. So I started working part-time at a printing company locally there based in Arlington, Virginia. And I always excelled in English. And I knew that I had loved to write. So I thought, well, I'll do this part-time, it'll be fun. So basically, I was just finding mistakes. But that job led me to look more seriously at my career and find something in writing and editing rather than being a flight attendant. So I did. So I ended up working for well, in Washington, they were known as beltway bandits. They were trade associations or organizations that would have contracts with the federal government. And they would write proposals and so there was some proposal writing I did for a couple organizations, then I went to work for a trade association. Then I ended up working for the federal government, I worked for the General Accounting Office, which is now called the Government Accountability Office, and the Congressional Budget Office. And in those jobs, I basically wrote and edited reports that were read by the public, they were ordered by a congressperson to investigate or study a program that was already in existence. For example, healthcare for the military, or a welfare program, something like that, they wanted to see where taxpayers' dollars being used to the best advantage. So a lot of the people employed by both GAO and CBO, Congressional Budget Office, were auditors, or economists, or technical experts in some way. So they would collect the data to study these programs. And then the writers and editors such as myself would come along and, you know, make it a finished product, make sure it was organized well, make sure the message was right up front, make sure there weren't spelling or grammatical errors. Because those kinds of errors would undermine the report, they really had to be perfect. And I became a tremendous expert in grammar, I know everything about grammar. And I enjoyed that, it was in a way an organizational task, deciding what goes where, and how it should be presented. And I loved it. I loved my work in Washington, I really enjoyed it a lot.Ray Loewe12:42Okay, so how did this get to the letters that we found?Liz Williams12:47Okay, I did diverge a little bit.Ray Loewe12:49Well, that's okay.Liz Williams12:50Okay. Well, in the early 2000s, my mother downsized, and I helped her clean out her house, and she found a big box of letters from my father in World War II. And she said, do you want these? And I said, yeah, I do. Because by then I had become a pretty good writer. And I looked at them, I said, you know, that's going to be a book, I want to write a book and that's what it's going to be. And when I first thought of the project, I thought, well, it'll just be a straight nonfiction book, it'll just be letters. But when I started reading them, they were very substantive. My father was an excellent writer. And my mother was a good writer, too. Now, he had saved her letters that she wrote him and sent them back to her for safekeeping. So I had a very rich collection, I had both sides of the correspondence. And I started reading and I thought, you know, I think this is really a story, it's not just going to be a collection of letters. So the book turned out to be a war story, a love story, and my story of getting to know my father. Because as I mentioned earlier, he died when I was 18, I really didn't get to know him like you would get to know your parent as a young person. And in the course of my research, I discovered that my father was most likely a gay or bisexual man. So I don't share this with most of my readers because it's rather the climax of my book. And I refer to it as a secret most of the times I talk about my book when I give a talk about my book. But for your audience, Ray, I'm gonna go ahead and just say what it is because there are no WWII stories out there that I know of, that have a gay theme. And I have one. And I don't know for a fact the trail was too cold to really track down men who had known my dad as a young man to really confirm this. But the fact is, I asked my mother about it. I asked my older sister about it, who, as I mentioned, passed away. And she's the one that really tipped me off about it. She said, you know, I interviewed her for the book because she knew him better than my other sisters or myself because as I say, he died young. She said, you know, I think looking back, I think Daddy was gay. And as soon as she said that, I was having an epiphany. I literally looked outside through her window at the leaves on the trees and they became well defined. That was the nature of the epiphany because so many things made sense when she said that. How he was so fixated on the fact that I shouldn't be allowed to wear bangs, so fixated on our hair, what we wore. You know, he had four daughters. There's one other book that I know of on the market. It's called Fun Home, that a young lady wrote who she had a father who was gay. Now, she didn't know it as a child that her father was gay. But she became aware of it because actually, he kind of preyed on young boys, which my father didn't do anything like that. So she came from a lot of dysfunction. But her book became a Broadway play and won a bunch of Tony Awards. But it doesn't have anything to do with World War II. This does, there were, according to my research, at least 40,000 men in the military in World War II who were gay, there were probably more. They did conduct tests and screenings to eliminate those kinds of men, so they wouldn't get in the service. But obviously, they didn't succeed in eliminating all of them. And a lot of them served like my father with a lot of dignity and honor and sacrificed a lot for our country. I think that should be recognized.Ray Loewe17:10So here you are, all of your background kind of culminated in this opportunity. And when it occurred, you knew what to do. And the book that you wrote is No Ordinary Soldier: My Father's Two Wars. Right? Liz Williams17:28That's right. Ray Loewe17:29You won an award for your book.Liz Williams17:32I did. In 2018, I submitted it to, I think, three contests. And one of them I placed as a finalist, there was one all-time winner, let's say top winner, and then there were two finalists in the genre, which was military history that I entered. And the award was the 2018 International Book Awards Contest, which is a contest that Publishers Weekly does recommend that authors enter. So it is a reputable contest. And I was just thrilled by the award.Ray Loewe18:02So let's kind of think about this. Well, first of all, you have a book out there, and everybody should buy this book, right? Just because you wrote it, and it's available on Amazon. Liz Williams18:15It has five stars. Ray Loewe18:16And what we'll do is we'll put a listing on our podcast notes when we're done so that people can find this. But I think the thing that's really interesting about you is how your background enabled you to be prepared to do something. And, you know, from knowing you, I think you consider yourself one of the luckiest people in the world because you've taken this career that was diverse pieces. And you're a writer. Liz Williams18:45I am a writer. Ray Loewe18:46And that's what you are going to be from now on. So, cool. So do you have any closing comments before we sum up?Liz Williams18:55I just want to thank you very much for having me, Ray, it's been a pleasure.Ray Loewe18:58Well, we've been talking with Liz Williams. Liz is a person who has written a book, an award-winning book, and it's available on Amazon through Kindle anytime you want to read it. And it's a war story. And it's not fiction. It's true, but it's how do you describe it? Liz Williams19:21It's a creative nonfiction book. It's actually a hybrid. It's a combination history memoir, and what they call creative nonfiction. In other words, it's a true story, but I use creative techniques such as metaphors, similes. It's a good read. It's not boring.Ray Loewe19:38And you're gonna make it into a TV series at some point, right?Liz Williams19:41Ken Burns, if you're listening, I'm available.Ray Loewe19:44Okay, so thanks, Liz for being with us. You're certainly one of the luckiest people in the world and you found your way to doing what you really want to do. And thanks for being here. And Luke sign us off, please. Outro  20:01Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules. Join us next week for more conversation, our special guest, and to hear more from the luckiest guy in the world.

There are still a lot of barriers to voting, and when we're thinking about access to voting, it should be easier for every voter to cast a ballot.  According to the CDC, about 1 in 4 adults in the U.S. live with some type of disability: nearly 61 million people. When it comes time to cast their ballots, voters with disabilities can face a number of challenges at the polls. For in-person voters in the 2016 election, the Government Accountability Office found that less than half of polling places were accessible from parking to the voting booth. Accessibility increased in 2020, and people with disabilities made large gains in the historic voter turnout surge of 2020. Expanded access to mail-in ballots pushed disability turnout to 17.7 million in 2020, up from 16 million in 2016, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. We spoke with Michelle Bishop, Voter Access & Engagement Manager at the National Disability Rights Network, and Michelle explained how the steps taken during the 2020 presidential election and against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, lowered some of those barriers and helped make it safer to cast a ballot for all voters,  including voters who have a disability.

Twice postponed launches of its big new rocket may indicate deep problems with NASA's Artemis program, as it makes plans to get back to the moon and eventually to Mars. The basic guidance the agency uses to manage Artemis may not be suited to such a complex enterprise, at least according to the Government Accountability Office. For more on this, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with Bill Russell, the GAO's director of contracting and national security acquisitions.

In 2010, the Government Accountability Office published a report detailing the results of "undercover tests" at 15 for-profit colleges conducted in order to discern whether these schools might be engaging in fraudulent or deceptive marketing and admissions practices. For-profit schools derive much of their revenue (and profits!) from federal funding sources, leaning on the availability of grants and loans to entice many of their students. The results were shocking. The GAO found "4 colleges encouraged fraudulent practices and that all 15 made deceptive or otherwise questionable statements to GAO's undercover applicants." Fast forward to 2022, and for-profit colleges are in the news again as the Biden administration attempts to crack down on colleges and universities after years of relaxed rules enabled by the Trump presidency. A mere 26% of students who complete degree programs at for-profit institutions do so in six or fewer years. 68% of students in private colleges and 62% in public colleges obtain degrees within that same time period.Along with renewed attention to for-profit schools comes a fresh round of student loan forgiveness proposals. This week, Katie and Chelsea are bringing you up to speed on the proposal, who would benefit from it, and why the conversation around loan forgiveness deserves more nuance than it currently receives.Sources:CNN - Biden administration cancels another $3.9 billion in student loan debt for former for-profit college students By Katie LoboscoThe Best Schools - Guide to For-Profit Colleges: How to Avoid Predatory Schools BY TBS StaffUS News -The Real Cost of For-Profit Colleges By Emma Kerr and Sarah WoodThe Columbus Dispatch - What Ohioans need to know about student debt relief plan by Nolan SimmonsThe New York Times - They Have Debt but No Degree. Could Loan Forgiveness Send Them Back to School?Brookings - The for-profit college system is broken and the Biden administration needs to fix it by Ariel Gelrud Shiro and Richard V. ReevesDavid's Ankles: How Imperfections Could Bring Down the World's Most Perfect StatueHigher ED Dive - 4 questions for-profit colleges face in 2022 by Natalie SchwartzWikipedia - David by Michaelangelo

The Homeland Security Department's headquarters project might be one of the longest-running construction programs in government history. Planning started more than 17 years ago. The latest estimates peg the completion date at 2027, another five years. Now, the Government Accountability Office reports the latest cost and schedule estimates lack detail and, perhaps, reliability. Federal Drive host got some details on the mater from Chris Currie, GAO's director for Homeland Security and Justice issues.

The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the ways that we look at office space. While many organizations have brought office workers back to physical locations, telework has become a fact of life for most of us in America. The federal government is no different, with agencies expanding telework since March 2020. The Government Accountability Office recently released a report on the state of federal office space, saying that the future will have to account for remote work and telework in the federal government. Courtney Bublé has a post on our site right now headlined “Most Agencies Plan to Cut Back on Office Leases and Square Footage in the Next 3 Years, Watchdog Finds.” She joined the podcast to discuss the story and the future of federal government office space

One big source of cyber talent for federal agencies is other federal agencies. Simon Szykman, senior vice president for client growth at Maximus and former chief information officer at NIST and Dept. of Commerce, discusses the current state of the federal cyber workforce. The new U.S. Chief Data Scientist, Denice Rose, says disaggregated data is “the next generation of data.” Donna Roy, strategic advisor for the national security sector at Guidehouse and former executive director of the Information Sharing and Services Office (IS2O) at the Department of Homeland Security, explains why disaggregated data is useful to federal agencies. The House IT Modernization Caucus will kick off its work next Thursday. Dave Powner, executive director of the Center for Data-Driven Policy at MITRE and former Director of IT Issues at Government Accountability Office, previews what he expects to see from the caucus. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every weekday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. And if you like what you hear, please let us know in the comments.

The Office of the National Cyber Director is developing a talent strategy for the whole federal government and the whole cyber industry. Margie Graves, senior fellow at the IBM Center for The Business of Government and former deputy federal chief information officer, discusses what the strategy should include and any potential trouble implementing it. The federal government's overall contract spending is down, according to new numbers from the Government Accountability Office. Tim DiNapoli, managing director for contracting and national security acquisition issues at the Government Accountability Office, explains the dip in spending and the impact COVID-19-related spending has had. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every weekday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. And if you like what you hear, please let us know in the comments.

Welcome to the weekend! This is Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette digital news desk and I'm here with your update for Saturday, September 10, and Sunday, September 11. This is a weekend that is going to feel very much like fall has arrived with cooler temperatures and potentially some rain in store. According to the National Weather Service, on Saturday in the Cedar Rapids area it will be cloudy, with a high near 72 degrees. There will be a north wind of 5 to 15 mph with wind gusts as high as 20 mph. There will be an above 50 percent chance of rain from around 6 p.m. on Saturday until 6:00 a.m. on Sunday. On Sunday the chance of rain will linger, mostly until 1 p.m., and the high will be 67 degrees. The wind will be similar to Saturday. On Sunday night it will be mostly cloudy, with a low of around 54 degrees, and a 40 percent chance of showers. Six years after a Davenport veteran's suicide sparked national attention and calls from members of Congress for an investigation after having been denied inpatient psychiatric care, the Iowa City Veterans Administration Medical Center is planning for a major expansion. “Over the past several years, mental health — both in the military and civilian sector — has been recognized as a shortcoming in our medical treatment of individuals, whether they veterans or civilians,” Heath Streck, associate director for operations, said following a 9/11 flag-raising ceremony on Friday at the Iowa City VA Health Care System. Streck stressed, however, that several mental health initiatives and newly approved funding by Congress will help deal with these shortcomings. President Joe Biden in June signed the Sgt. Ketchum Rural Veterans Mental Health Act into law. The legislation was named for Sgt. Brandon Ketchum. The 33-year-old served in Iraq and Afghanistan and struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse after serving in the U.S. Marines and the Iowa Army National Guard. He died by suicide in 2016 after being denied inpatient psychiatric care at the Iowa City Veterans Administration Medical Center. The new law, supported by Iowa's congressional delegation, will establish teams of specialists that can be more responsive to the needs of rural VA hospitals, as well as requiring the Government Accountability Office to conduct a study and report on whether the VA has sufficient resources to serve rural veterans who need mental health care that is more intensive than traditional outpatient therapy. Streck and Jamie Johnson, public affairs officer, said the Iowa City-based VA health system is in the process of developing a medical psych unit and plans to develop a community living center in addition to a residential rehabilitation treatment program to fill gaps and meet demand.  Over the next five budget years, the University of Iowa and its health care enterprise plan to spend more than $1.4 billion on new construction and renovations — including $620.9 million on a new inpatient hospital tower and $212 million on a new “modern health care research facility.” Iowa's three Regent universities this week shared more details of their projected capital spending over the next five years in a facilities plan going before Iowa's Board of Regents next week. For UI, the report for the first time attached numbers and general timelines to conceptual projects the campus unveiled earlier this year as part of its 10-year master plan. “UIHC's five-year capital plan for other funds would be for $786 million, up 51 percent from last year's $521 million, mainly due to a new inpatient bed tower project,” according to the new report. A spending schedule for the new UIHC inpatient tower budgets nearly $3 million toward that project in the next budget year, jumping to $148 million for fiscal 2025 — with costs escalating through fiscal 2028, reaching a total of $620.9 million. Although spending on the project could continue beyond that fifth year, the new UIHC inpatient tower at that price

GUEST OVERVIEW: Subrata Ghoshroy is a research affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Program in Science, Technology, and Society. He is also a specially-appointed Professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. Earlier, he was for many years a senior engineer in the field of high-energy lasers. He was also a professional staff member of the House National Security Committee, and later a senior analyst with the Government Accountability Office. He is a frequent contributor to the Bulletin.

If the armed services didn't allow tattoos, they'd probably have to cut the forces in half. In recent years, they've relaxed rules on allowable tattoos, responding to the fact that ink has become a cultural norm. It's also become a recruitment and retention issue. The Government Accountability Office surveyed the armed forces' policies and came up with a few recommendations. For the details, Federal Drive host Tom Temin spoke with GAO's director of defense capabilities and management issues, Brenda Farell.

The larger the budgets and deficits grow, the more elusive auditable financial statements of federal finances seem to get. The Government Accountability Office says the Treasury Department has made good progress on some deficiencies. But new ones have popped up. We get the latest from the GAO's director of financial management and assurance issues, Dawn Simpson.

The larger the budgets and deficits grow, the more elusive auditable financial statements of federal finances seem to get. The Government Accountability Office reports that the Treasury Department has made good progress on some deficiencies. But new ones have popped up. Federal Drive host Tom Temin got the latest info from GAO's director of financial management and assurance issues, Dawn Simpson.

Congress has managed to appropriate $6 trillion or $7 trillion for this and that in the past few years. But it's never been able to pass a regular federal budget on time. The upcoming September 30 deadline will bring another Continuing Resolution. CRs do not have to spoil agency planning. Federal Drive host Tom Temin talked about that with Jeff Arkin, the director of strategic issues at the Government Accountability Office.

Earlier this year, the Thrift Savings Plan transitioned to a new recordkeeping service and, with it, launched a series of new services for participants. But, that transition proved to be rocky, with technical issues and long phone wait times for users trying to resolve problems with their accounts. This month, the Government Accountability Office confirmed it will investigate what went wrong with the TSP's tough transition. GovExec Senior Correspondent Erich Wagner covers the federal workforce. As part of our #moneyMonday series, he joined the podcast to talk about the controversial TSP transition.   *** Follow GovExec on Twitter! https://twitter.com/govexec

Each day, more than 300 Americans are shot, and, according to the CDC, more than 110 are killed by gunfire. The Government Accountability Office reports that gun violence costs hospitals over $1B annually. Dr. Chethan Sathya, a pediatric trauma surgeon and director of Northwell Health's Center for Gun Violence Research recently testified in front of the Senate's Judiciary Committee on this topic. He sits down today with Laura Castellanos, associate director of the American Hospital Association's Hospitals Against Violence initiative to discuss what we know about the cost to hospitals and health systems, as they treat a growing number of victims of gun violence. For more information on the work that Northwell's Center for Gun Violence Prevention is doing, please visit https://www.northwell.edu/center-for-gun-violence-prevention

Back in the mid ‘90s, when the Education Department first started its current Direct Loan program for college students, the program was expected to turn a profit for the U.S. Treasury. The initial estimates were that it would bring in $114 billion over the next quarter century. Now that were here, that estimate turns out to be wrong...way wrong. The Government Accountability Office discovered the program has actually cost the government $197 billion. The reasons for that giant difference are pretty complex, so Federal Drive Deputy Editor Jared Serbu talked wit the lead author of a GAO report that examined the Direct Loan program: Melissa Emrey-Arras, GAO's Director of Education, Workforce, and Income Security Issues.

BRN AM |  The Government Accountability Office begins to investigate the TSP's Transition to a New Online Platform | Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, U.S. House of Representives  | Visit www.broadcastretirementnetwork.com

On today's episode of The Daily Scoop Podcast, the Government Accountability Office plans to investigate the Thrift Savings Plan's recent move to a new online platform. The Air Force has a new name for its cyber people, the cyberspace and information technology career field. Wanda Jones-Heath, principal cyber advisor at the Dept. of the Air Force, discusses the duties of her role. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every weekday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. And if you like what you hear, please let us know in the comments.

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Wednesday, August 10th, 2022. We’ve got some crazy news to get to today, so let’s dive right in… https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/08/trump-fbi-maralago-search-00050442 Trump's Mar-a-Lago home searched by FBI in unprecedented move The FBI executed a search warrant at the Mar-a-Lago estate of former President Donald Trump on Monday as part of an investigation into the alleged mishandling of White House records, including potentially classified material, according to two people familiar with the matter. The Florida raid, which one of the people said took “hours,” resulted in the seizure of paper records, according to one person familiar with the development, who also noted that Trump attorney Christina Bobb was present during the search. It was a historic step by the Justice Department and FBI to investigate the residence of a former president, who is battling an increasingly complex thicket of legal threats. No former president — particularly one who is openly considering another bid for the Oval Office — has faced such a public law enforcement action, which immediately led to calls among his allies for recriminations and even the elimination of federal law enforcement agencies. “They even broke into my safe,” Trump himself said in a lengthy statement decrying the FBI search and comparing it to Watergate. Trump, who was the first to confirm the FBI action, said in a statement that his resort was “under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.” “After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” Trump said. The former president was not present at Mar-a-Lago. Instead, he was at Trump Tower in New York City, according to a person familiar with the situation. His son Eric Trump informed him of the raid. The FBI and the U.S. attorney’s offices in Washington didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Spokespeople at Justice Department headquarters in Washington declined to comment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, the Secret Service and the Palm Beach Police Department deferred comment to the FBI. Two sources familiar with the matter said top Biden White House officials were not given advance notice of the raid, which could potentially alter the course of both the upcoming midterms and an eventual Trump-Biden rematch in 2024. Though the investigation of Trump’s handling of presidential records has been percolating for months, it has largely remained in the background while the Jan. 6 select committee built a case that Trump committed crimes to disrupt the transition of power after his defeat in the 2020 election. The National Archives and Records Administration had confirmed in February that it had sought to recover 15 boxes of records from Mar-a-Lago that it deemed improperly removed, including some marked as “classified national security information.” The Archives confirmed at the time that it had been in touch with the Justice Department about the recovered documents. At the time, the Archives said it had had “ongoing communications” with Trump’s team about recovering missing presidential records. The Archives also indicated that it was working to recover un-archived social media messages and that it had evidence that Trump tore up and destroyed some papers, not all of which were recovered. The Archives also confirmed in December that it was reviewing whether Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows had properly stored records from his personal phone and email accounts. That investigation has also become an increasingly public threat to Trump, with some of his top allies and former White House officials facing grand jury subpoenas and FBI searches. Earlier in the day, the Justice Department defended its decision to seize the cellphone of John Eastman, the attorney who helped devise Trump’s strategy to seize a second term he didn’t win. Federal investigators have pursued evidence that Trump’s administration mishandled presidential records and even removed some boxes to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. An executed search warrant would require the signoff of a federal judge or magistrate, who would issue the warrant based upon evidence of a potential crime. The law enforcement moves at Trump’s residence came as lawyers and other observers have been bracing for action this month in politically sensitive Justice Department investigations as prosecutors approach a traditional quiet period for such probes in the lead-up to elections. Unbelievable… before I get to my next story: Club Membership Plug: Let’s stop and take a moment to talk about Fight Laugh Feast Club membership. By joining the Fight Laugh Feast Army, not only will you be aiding in our fight to take down secular & legacy media; but you’ll also get access to content placed in our Club Portal, such as past shows, all of our conference talks, and EXCLUSIVE content for club members that you won’t be able to find anywhere else. Lastly, you’ll also get discounts for our conferences… so if you’ve got $10 bucks a month to kick over our way, you can sign up now at flfnetwork.com https://www.theepochtimes.com/irs-stockpiles-more-than-5-million-rounds-of-ammunition_4636607.html?welcomeuser=1 IRS Stockpiles More Than 5 Million Rounds of Ammunition Apparently, the IRS needs a little firepower to help with those audits. The IRS has stockpiled five million rounds of ammunition and spent $725,000 on bullets this year, according to Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who has introduced a bill to block future ammunition purchases by the agency. The Republican lawmaker announced his sponsorship of the Disarm the IRS Act in a July press release. The bill would ban the IRS from acquiring ammunition through direct purchase or otherwise. The bill awaits a potential vote in the House Ways and Means Committee. The issue drew national attention after Gaetz appeared on Fox News’ Jesse Waters Primetime last week, saying that the IRS had spent $750,000 in 2022 alone on ammunition. “Call me old-fashioned, but I thought the heaviest artillery an IRS agent would need would be a calculator, not $725,000 worth of ammunition,” Gaetz said during his appearance on Fox News. While people may not think of the IRS needing weapons and ammunition, it has a criminal investigation division with armed law enforcement to pursue tax felons. A 2018 report from the Government Accountability Office said the IRS’s Criminal Investigation Division had 2,148 law enforcement officers, 4,461 weapons—including 15 fully automatic firearms—and 5.05 million rounds of ammunition. According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, four officers with the IRS have died since 1989 from medical conditions or accidents. None was firearm related. But the IRS isn’t the only governmental agency building up massive caches of guns and bullets. OpenTheBooks.com, a nonprofit government watchdog group, released a report called “The militarization of the U.S. Executive Agencies” in December 2020, detailing how agencies that people wouldn’t normally associate with law enforcement were stockpiling weapons and ammunition. The Environmental Protection Agency owns 600 guns. At the same time, special agents at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are equipped with machine guns and AR15s. Even the Smithsonian Institution employed 620-armed “special agents,” up from zero officers in 2008, according to the report. Adam Andrzejewski, CEO & founder of OpenTheBooks.com, told The Epoch Times via email that the public should question why these agencies are armed to the teeth. Not only do they wield legal power, but they are also amassing firepower. “Just who are the federal agencies preparing to battle?” Andrzejewski wrote. Andrzejewski said there is no public purpose for rank and file, paper-pushing federal agencies to load up on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment. “Our data shows that the federal government has become a gun show that never adjourns. Taxpayers need to tell Washington that police powers belong primarily to cities and states, not the feds,” he stated. Armored Republic The Mission of Armored Republic is to Honor Christ by equipping Free Men with Tools of Liberty necessary to preserve God-given rights. In the Armored Republic there is no King but Christ. We are Free Craftsmen. Body Armor is a Tool of Liberty. We create Tools of Liberty. Free men must remain ever vigilant against tyranny wherever it appears. God has given us the tools of liberty needed to defend the rights He bestowed to us. Armored Republic is honored to offer you those Tools. Visit them, at ar500armor.com https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2022/08/08/the-media-begins-to-notice-that-were-running-out-of-cops-n488242 The media begins to notice that we're running out of cops Let’s say there’s a violent intruder at your door or someone is breaking into your house in the middle of the night. Who ya gonna call? Assuming that you don’t have the number for the Ghostbusters, you’ll probably dial 911. But in a number of cities, the odds that anyone will be available to respond quickly enough to save you have been dropping. The problem has grown serious enough that even the Associated Press has been forced to cover the story. They begin with an interview with George Spaulding of Portland, Oregon. Five years ago, his son Brian was shot to death in his apartment. Though George checks in with the detective assigned to the case frequently, the police say they still have no leads. But even George admits that the police are simply overwhelmed and they probably just don’t have the manpower to assign anyone to really work the case full time. And it’s not just Portland where this is happening. Response times to emergency calls are rising and the number of criminal cases being closed are falling in many cities. From Philadelphia to Portland to Los Angeles, killings and gun violence are rising at the same time officers worn out by the pandemic and disillusioned over the calls to divest from policing that followed George Floyd’s murder are quitting or retiring faster than they can be replaced. Departments are scrambling to recruit in a tight labor market and also rethinking what services they can provide and what role police should play in their communities. Many have shifted veteran officers to patrol, breaking up specialized teams built over decades in order to keep up with 911 calls. If you read through that entire report, the AP cites statistics and provides quotes from various officials in five cities. Take a look at this list of names and see if you notice anything in common. Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Baltimore are all cited. It should come as no surprise to most of our readers that these are all cities that were subjected to violent BLM riots during the Summer of Love and all of them later attempted to “defund the police” in various ways. Now crime rates are up in each of those cities, particularly violent crime rates. Response times are up and case closure rates are down. The police forces in each of those cities have been depleted and they are struggling to find qualified recruits to replace the officers who have left. (Along with the officers who were killed or too seriously wounded to return to duty in some cases.) Is there any honest person who is having trouble connecting the dots here? The Associated Press gamely quotes one professor from the Crime and Justice Policy Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. He claims that you can’t blame the protests and the defunding movement because “crime is up in many areas,” even where those things didn’t happen. That much may be true, but it’s definitely a lot worse in the cities on this list. How can anyone continue to deny this? Today, we’re hearing complaints from disgruntled and frightened citizens. That’s understandable. But we should also remember that many of those complaining the loudest also helped elect the municipal officials who put all of these policies in place to begin with and bent to the will of the mob. Now they are reaping what they have themselves sown. If you don’t like what’s going on in the streets, take some responsibility yourself and work to put new people in charge who will deal with the situation in a serious fashion. Once you do that, you just might be able to convince some new aspiring law enforcement officers to come to work in your cities. Well, let’s shift our eyes over seas now. Did you know that China, is one of the freest countries in the world?! Nancy Pelosi: “China Is One Of The Freest Societies In The World…” - Play Video https://thepostmillennial.com/watch-pelosi-says-china-one-of-the-freest-societies-in-the-world?utm_campaign=64487 Pelosi says China 'one of the freest societies in the world' She cited Freedom House as a source, but Freedom House, however, does not list China as a free country, calling its government an "authoritarian regime" that has "become increasingly repressive in recent years." Freedom House writes: "The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to tighten control over all aspects of life and governance, including the state bureaucracy, the media, online speech, religious practice, universities, businesses, and civil society associations, and it has undermined an earlier series of modest rule-of-law reforms. The CCP leader and state president, Xi Jinping, has consolidated personal power to a degree not seen in China for decades." Freedom House considers the small island nation of Taiwan, however, to be "free," ranking 94/100 on its freedom scale. Perhaps this is what Pelosi was referring to, as she just returned from a trip to Taiwan. Pelosi's Taiwan trip was a huge issue for China, which took the opportunity to engage in a massive show of force over the island. The self-ruling island has faced increased threats of violence from the CCP in recent days following Pelosi's visit to there, to repeated condemnation by the communists. US officials have made clear, though that they do not support an independent Taiwan, despite comments from President Joe Biden that the US would "militarily defend" it. https://twitter.com/i/status/1554169482242916354 - Play Video That was John Kirby for those wondering. https://www.outkick.com/oklahoma-cale-gundy-didnt-want-resignation-football/ ‘VAST MAJORITY’ OF OKLAHOMA PLAYERS DIDN’T WANT CALE GUNDY TO RESIGN: REPORT Many members of the Oklahoma Sooners reportedly didn’t want Cale Gundy to leave the program. The longtime Sooners assistant resigned from his coaching position after he admitted to reading a “shameful and hurtful” unknown word off a players iPad during a film session. He announced his resignation late Sunday night after more than two decades as a coach with the program. Despite his resignation, it sounds like many members of the team didn’t want him to leave. Gabe Ikard reported “the vast majority” of players on the roster didn’t want Gundy to leave. However, it sounds like they couldn’t sway his mind. After more than two decades as a coach with the Sooners and several seasons as a dominant QB in Norman, Gundy is gone because he read a player’s iPad during a film session. As Gundy claimed in his statement, they weren’t his words. He was reading a message on the iPad. ““I want to be very clear: the words I read aloud from that screen were not my words. What I said was not malicious; it wasn’t even intentional. Still, I am mature enough to know that the word I said was shameful and hurtful, no matter my intentions. The unfortunate reality is that someone in my position can cause harm without ever meaning to do so,” the former Oklahoma coach told fans in his resignation announcement. Overall, it seems like this situation spiraled out of control before most people even realized what happened, and that’s backed up by the fact most players didn’t want him to resign. What an incredibly bizarre and strange situation within the Oklahoma football program. This has been your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief… If you liked the show, share it. If you want to sign up for a club membership, for our conference with that club membership discount, or sign up for our magazine, head on over to fightlaughfeast.com. And as always, if you’d like to send me a news story, ask about our conference, or approach us about corporate partnership with CrossPolitic, you can email me at garrison@fightlaughfeast.com. For CrossPolitic News, I’m Garrison Hardie. Have a great day, and Lord bless

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Wednesday, August 10th, 2022. We’ve got some crazy news to get to today, so let’s dive right in… https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/08/trump-fbi-maralago-search-00050442 Trump's Mar-a-Lago home searched by FBI in unprecedented move The FBI executed a search warrant at the Mar-a-Lago estate of former President Donald Trump on Monday as part of an investigation into the alleged mishandling of White House records, including potentially classified material, according to two people familiar with the matter. The Florida raid, which one of the people said took “hours,” resulted in the seizure of paper records, according to one person familiar with the development, who also noted that Trump attorney Christina Bobb was present during the search. It was a historic step by the Justice Department and FBI to investigate the residence of a former president, who is battling an increasingly complex thicket of legal threats. No former president — particularly one who is openly considering another bid for the Oval Office — has faced such a public law enforcement action, which immediately led to calls among his allies for recriminations and even the elimination of federal law enforcement agencies. “They even broke into my safe,” Trump himself said in a lengthy statement decrying the FBI search and comparing it to Watergate. Trump, who was the first to confirm the FBI action, said in a statement that his resort was “under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.” “After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” Trump said. The former president was not present at Mar-a-Lago. Instead, he was at Trump Tower in New York City, according to a person familiar with the situation. His son Eric Trump informed him of the raid. The FBI and the U.S. attorney’s offices in Washington didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Spokespeople at Justice Department headquarters in Washington declined to comment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, the Secret Service and the Palm Beach Police Department deferred comment to the FBI. Two sources familiar with the matter said top Biden White House officials were not given advance notice of the raid, which could potentially alter the course of both the upcoming midterms and an eventual Trump-Biden rematch in 2024. Though the investigation of Trump’s handling of presidential records has been percolating for months, it has largely remained in the background while the Jan. 6 select committee built a case that Trump committed crimes to disrupt the transition of power after his defeat in the 2020 election. The National Archives and Records Administration had confirmed in February that it had sought to recover 15 boxes of records from Mar-a-Lago that it deemed improperly removed, including some marked as “classified national security information.” The Archives confirmed at the time that it had been in touch with the Justice Department about the recovered documents. At the time, the Archives said it had had “ongoing communications” with Trump’s team about recovering missing presidential records. The Archives also indicated that it was working to recover un-archived social media messages and that it had evidence that Trump tore up and destroyed some papers, not all of which were recovered. The Archives also confirmed in December that it was reviewing whether Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows had properly stored records from his personal phone and email accounts. That investigation has also become an increasingly public threat to Trump, with some of his top allies and former White House officials facing grand jury subpoenas and FBI searches. Earlier in the day, the Justice Department defended its decision to seize the cellphone of John Eastman, the attorney who helped devise Trump’s strategy to seize a second term he didn’t win. Federal investigators have pursued evidence that Trump’s administration mishandled presidential records and even removed some boxes to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. An executed search warrant would require the signoff of a federal judge or magistrate, who would issue the warrant based upon evidence of a potential crime. The law enforcement moves at Trump’s residence came as lawyers and other observers have been bracing for action this month in politically sensitive Justice Department investigations as prosecutors approach a traditional quiet period for such probes in the lead-up to elections. Unbelievable… before I get to my next story: Club Membership Plug: Let’s stop and take a moment to talk about Fight Laugh Feast Club membership. By joining the Fight Laugh Feast Army, not only will you be aiding in our fight to take down secular & legacy media; but you’ll also get access to content placed in our Club Portal, such as past shows, all of our conference talks, and EXCLUSIVE content for club members that you won’t be able to find anywhere else. Lastly, you’ll also get discounts for our conferences… so if you’ve got $10 bucks a month to kick over our way, you can sign up now at flfnetwork.com https://www.theepochtimes.com/irs-stockpiles-more-than-5-million-rounds-of-ammunition_4636607.html?welcomeuser=1 IRS Stockpiles More Than 5 Million Rounds of Ammunition Apparently, the IRS needs a little firepower to help with those audits. The IRS has stockpiled five million rounds of ammunition and spent $725,000 on bullets this year, according to Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who has introduced a bill to block future ammunition purchases by the agency. The Republican lawmaker announced his sponsorship of the Disarm the IRS Act in a July press release. The bill would ban the IRS from acquiring ammunition through direct purchase or otherwise. The bill awaits a potential vote in the House Ways and Means Committee. The issue drew national attention after Gaetz appeared on Fox News’ Jesse Waters Primetime last week, saying that the IRS had spent $750,000 in 2022 alone on ammunition. “Call me old-fashioned, but I thought the heaviest artillery an IRS agent would need would be a calculator, not $725,000 worth of ammunition,” Gaetz said during his appearance on Fox News. While people may not think of the IRS needing weapons and ammunition, it has a criminal investigation division with armed law enforcement to pursue tax felons. A 2018 report from the Government Accountability Office said the IRS’s Criminal Investigation Division had 2,148 law enforcement officers, 4,461 weapons—including 15 fully automatic firearms—and 5.05 million rounds of ammunition. According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, four officers with the IRS have died since 1989 from medical conditions or accidents. None was firearm related. But the IRS isn’t the only governmental agency building up massive caches of guns and bullets. OpenTheBooks.com, a nonprofit government watchdog group, released a report called “The militarization of the U.S. Executive Agencies” in December 2020, detailing how agencies that people wouldn’t normally associate with law enforcement were stockpiling weapons and ammunition. The Environmental Protection Agency owns 600 guns. At the same time, special agents at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are equipped with machine guns and AR15s. Even the Smithsonian Institution employed 620-armed “special agents,” up from zero officers in 2008, according to the report. Adam Andrzejewski, CEO & founder of OpenTheBooks.com, told The Epoch Times via email that the public should question why these agencies are armed to the teeth. Not only do they wield legal power, but they are also amassing firepower. “Just who are the federal agencies preparing to battle?” Andrzejewski wrote. Andrzejewski said there is no public purpose for rank and file, paper-pushing federal agencies to load up on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment. “Our data shows that the federal government has become a gun show that never adjourns. Taxpayers need to tell Washington that police powers belong primarily to cities and states, not the feds,” he stated. Armored Republic The Mission of Armored Republic is to Honor Christ by equipping Free Men with Tools of Liberty necessary to preserve God-given rights. In the Armored Republic there is no King but Christ. We are Free Craftsmen. Body Armor is a Tool of Liberty. We create Tools of Liberty. Free men must remain ever vigilant against tyranny wherever it appears. God has given us the tools of liberty needed to defend the rights He bestowed to us. Armored Republic is honored to offer you those Tools. Visit them, at ar500armor.com https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2022/08/08/the-media-begins-to-notice-that-were-running-out-of-cops-n488242 The media begins to notice that we're running out of cops Let’s say there’s a violent intruder at your door or someone is breaking into your house in the middle of the night. Who ya gonna call? Assuming that you don’t have the number for the Ghostbusters, you’ll probably dial 911. But in a number of cities, the odds that anyone will be available to respond quickly enough to save you have been dropping. The problem has grown serious enough that even the Associated Press has been forced to cover the story. They begin with an interview with George Spaulding of Portland, Oregon. Five years ago, his son Brian was shot to death in his apartment. Though George checks in with the detective assigned to the case frequently, the police say they still have no leads. But even George admits that the police are simply overwhelmed and they probably just don’t have the manpower to assign anyone to really work the case full time. And it’s not just Portland where this is happening. Response times to emergency calls are rising and the number of criminal cases being closed are falling in many cities. From Philadelphia to Portland to Los Angeles, killings and gun violence are rising at the same time officers worn out by the pandemic and disillusioned over the calls to divest from policing that followed George Floyd’s murder are quitting or retiring faster than they can be replaced. Departments are scrambling to recruit in a tight labor market and also rethinking what services they can provide and what role police should play in their communities. Many have shifted veteran officers to patrol, breaking up specialized teams built over decades in order to keep up with 911 calls. If you read through that entire report, the AP cites statistics and provides quotes from various officials in five cities. Take a look at this list of names and see if you notice anything in common. Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Baltimore are all cited. It should come as no surprise to most of our readers that these are all cities that were subjected to violent BLM riots during the Summer of Love and all of them later attempted to “defund the police” in various ways. Now crime rates are up in each of those cities, particularly violent crime rates. Response times are up and case closure rates are down. The police forces in each of those cities have been depleted and they are struggling to find qualified recruits to replace the officers who have left. (Along with the officers who were killed or too seriously wounded to return to duty in some cases.) Is there any honest person who is having trouble connecting the dots here? The Associated Press gamely quotes one professor from the Crime and Justice Policy Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. He claims that you can’t blame the protests and the defunding movement because “crime is up in many areas,” even where those things didn’t happen. That much may be true, but it’s definitely a lot worse in the cities on this list. How can anyone continue to deny this? Today, we’re hearing complaints from disgruntled and frightened citizens. That’s understandable. But we should also remember that many of those complaining the loudest also helped elect the municipal officials who put all of these policies in place to begin with and bent to the will of the mob. Now they are reaping what they have themselves sown. If you don’t like what’s going on in the streets, take some responsibility yourself and work to put new people in charge who will deal with the situation in a serious fashion. Once you do that, you just might be able to convince some new aspiring law enforcement officers to come to work in your cities. Well, let’s shift our eyes over seas now. Did you know that China, is one of the freest countries in the world?! Nancy Pelosi: “China Is One Of The Freest Societies In The World…” - Play Video https://thepostmillennial.com/watch-pelosi-says-china-one-of-the-freest-societies-in-the-world?utm_campaign=64487 Pelosi says China 'one of the freest societies in the world' She cited Freedom House as a source, but Freedom House, however, does not list China as a free country, calling its government an "authoritarian regime" that has "become increasingly repressive in recent years." Freedom House writes: "The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to tighten control over all aspects of life and governance, including the state bureaucracy, the media, online speech, religious practice, universities, businesses, and civil society associations, and it has undermined an earlier series of modest rule-of-law reforms. The CCP leader and state president, Xi Jinping, has consolidated personal power to a degree not seen in China for decades." Freedom House considers the small island nation of Taiwan, however, to be "free," ranking 94/100 on its freedom scale. Perhaps this is what Pelosi was referring to, as she just returned from a trip to Taiwan. Pelosi's Taiwan trip was a huge issue for China, which took the opportunity to engage in a massive show of force over the island. The self-ruling island has faced increased threats of violence from the CCP in recent days following Pelosi's visit to there, to repeated condemnation by the communists. US officials have made clear, though that they do not support an independent Taiwan, despite comments from President Joe Biden that the US would "militarily defend" it. https://twitter.com/i/status/1554169482242916354 - Play Video That was John Kirby for those wondering. https://www.outkick.com/oklahoma-cale-gundy-didnt-want-resignation-football/ ‘VAST MAJORITY’ OF OKLAHOMA PLAYERS DIDN’T WANT CALE GUNDY TO RESIGN: REPORT Many members of the Oklahoma Sooners reportedly didn’t want Cale Gundy to leave the program. The longtime Sooners assistant resigned from his coaching position after he admitted to reading a “shameful and hurtful” unknown word off a players iPad during a film session. He announced his resignation late Sunday night after more than two decades as a coach with the program. Despite his resignation, it sounds like many members of the team didn’t want him to leave. Gabe Ikard reported “the vast majority” of players on the roster didn’t want Gundy to leave. However, it sounds like they couldn’t sway his mind. After more than two decades as a coach with the Sooners and several seasons as a dominant QB in Norman, Gundy is gone because he read a player’s iPad during a film session. As Gundy claimed in his statement, they weren’t his words. He was reading a message on the iPad. ““I want to be very clear: the words I read aloud from that screen were not my words. What I said was not malicious; it wasn’t even intentional. Still, I am mature enough to know that the word I said was shameful and hurtful, no matter my intentions. The unfortunate reality is that someone in my position can cause harm without ever meaning to do so,” the former Oklahoma coach told fans in his resignation announcement. Overall, it seems like this situation spiraled out of control before most people even realized what happened, and that’s backed up by the fact most players didn’t want him to resign. What an incredibly bizarre and strange situation within the Oklahoma football program. This has been your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief… If you liked the show, share it. If you want to sign up for a club membership, for our conference with that club membership discount, or sign up for our magazine, head on over to fightlaughfeast.com. And as always, if you’d like to send me a news story, ask about our conference, or approach us about corporate partnership with CrossPolitic, you can email me at garrison@fightlaughfeast.com. For CrossPolitic News, I’m Garrison Hardie. Have a great day, and Lord bless

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Wednesday, August 10th, 2022. We’ve got some crazy news to get to today, so let’s dive right in… https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/08/trump-fbi-maralago-search-00050442 Trump's Mar-a-Lago home searched by FBI in unprecedented move The FBI executed a search warrant at the Mar-a-Lago estate of former President Donald Trump on Monday as part of an investigation into the alleged mishandling of White House records, including potentially classified material, according to two people familiar with the matter. The Florida raid, which one of the people said took “hours,” resulted in the seizure of paper records, according to one person familiar with the development, who also noted that Trump attorney Christina Bobb was present during the search. It was a historic step by the Justice Department and FBI to investigate the residence of a former president, who is battling an increasingly complex thicket of legal threats. No former president — particularly one who is openly considering another bid for the Oval Office — has faced such a public law enforcement action, which immediately led to calls among his allies for recriminations and even the elimination of federal law enforcement agencies. “They even broke into my safe,” Trump himself said in a lengthy statement decrying the FBI search and comparing it to Watergate. Trump, who was the first to confirm the FBI action, said in a statement that his resort was “under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.” “After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate,” Trump said. The former president was not present at Mar-a-Lago. Instead, he was at Trump Tower in New York City, according to a person familiar with the situation. His son Eric Trump informed him of the raid. The FBI and the U.S. attorney’s offices in Washington didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Spokespeople at Justice Department headquarters in Washington declined to comment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, the Secret Service and the Palm Beach Police Department deferred comment to the FBI. Two sources familiar with the matter said top Biden White House officials were not given advance notice of the raid, which could potentially alter the course of both the upcoming midterms and an eventual Trump-Biden rematch in 2024. Though the investigation of Trump’s handling of presidential records has been percolating for months, it has largely remained in the background while the Jan. 6 select committee built a case that Trump committed crimes to disrupt the transition of power after his defeat in the 2020 election. The National Archives and Records Administration had confirmed in February that it had sought to recover 15 boxes of records from Mar-a-Lago that it deemed improperly removed, including some marked as “classified national security information.” The Archives confirmed at the time that it had been in touch with the Justice Department about the recovered documents. At the time, the Archives said it had had “ongoing communications” with Trump’s team about recovering missing presidential records. The Archives also indicated that it was working to recover un-archived social media messages and that it had evidence that Trump tore up and destroyed some papers, not all of which were recovered. The Archives also confirmed in December that it was reviewing whether Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows had properly stored records from his personal phone and email accounts. That investigation has also become an increasingly public threat to Trump, with some of his top allies and former White House officials facing grand jury subpoenas and FBI searches. Earlier in the day, the Justice Department defended its decision to seize the cellphone of John Eastman, the attorney who helped devise Trump’s strategy to seize a second term he didn’t win. Federal investigators have pursued evidence that Trump’s administration mishandled presidential records and even removed some boxes to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. An executed search warrant would require the signoff of a federal judge or magistrate, who would issue the warrant based upon evidence of a potential crime. The law enforcement moves at Trump’s residence came as lawyers and other observers have been bracing for action this month in politically sensitive Justice Department investigations as prosecutors approach a traditional quiet period for such probes in the lead-up to elections. Unbelievable… before I get to my next story: Club Membership Plug: Let’s stop and take a moment to talk about Fight Laugh Feast Club membership. By joining the Fight Laugh Feast Army, not only will you be aiding in our fight to take down secular & legacy media; but you’ll also get access to content placed in our Club Portal, such as past shows, all of our conference talks, and EXCLUSIVE content for club members that you won’t be able to find anywhere else. Lastly, you’ll also get discounts for our conferences… so if you’ve got $10 bucks a month to kick over our way, you can sign up now at flfnetwork.com https://www.theepochtimes.com/irs-stockpiles-more-than-5-million-rounds-of-ammunition_4636607.html?welcomeuser=1 IRS Stockpiles More Than 5 Million Rounds of Ammunition Apparently, the IRS needs a little firepower to help with those audits. The IRS has stockpiled five million rounds of ammunition and spent $725,000 on bullets this year, according to Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who has introduced a bill to block future ammunition purchases by the agency. The Republican lawmaker announced his sponsorship of the Disarm the IRS Act in a July press release. The bill would ban the IRS from acquiring ammunition through direct purchase or otherwise. The bill awaits a potential vote in the House Ways and Means Committee. The issue drew national attention after Gaetz appeared on Fox News’ Jesse Waters Primetime last week, saying that the IRS had spent $750,000 in 2022 alone on ammunition. “Call me old-fashioned, but I thought the heaviest artillery an IRS agent would need would be a calculator, not $725,000 worth of ammunition,” Gaetz said during his appearance on Fox News. While people may not think of the IRS needing weapons and ammunition, it has a criminal investigation division with armed law enforcement to pursue tax felons. A 2018 report from the Government Accountability Office said the IRS’s Criminal Investigation Division had 2,148 law enforcement officers, 4,461 weapons—including 15 fully automatic firearms—and 5.05 million rounds of ammunition. According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, four officers with the IRS have died since 1989 from medical conditions or accidents. None was firearm related. But the IRS isn’t the only governmental agency building up massive caches of guns and bullets. OpenTheBooks.com, a nonprofit government watchdog group, released a report called “The militarization of the U.S. Executive Agencies” in December 2020, detailing how agencies that people wouldn’t normally associate with law enforcement were stockpiling weapons and ammunition. The Environmental Protection Agency owns 600 guns. At the same time, special agents at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are equipped with machine guns and AR15s. Even the Smithsonian Institution employed 620-armed “special agents,” up from zero officers in 2008, according to the report. Adam Andrzejewski, CEO & founder of OpenTheBooks.com, told The Epoch Times via email that the public should question why these agencies are armed to the teeth. Not only do they wield legal power, but they are also amassing firepower. “Just who are the federal agencies preparing to battle?” Andrzejewski wrote. Andrzejewski said there is no public purpose for rank and file, paper-pushing federal agencies to load up on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment. “Our data shows that the federal government has become a gun show that never adjourns. Taxpayers need to tell Washington that police powers belong primarily to cities and states, not the feds,” he stated. Armored Republic The Mission of Armored Republic is to Honor Christ by equipping Free Men with Tools of Liberty necessary to preserve God-given rights. In the Armored Republic there is no King but Christ. We are Free Craftsmen. Body Armor is a Tool of Liberty. We create Tools of Liberty. Free men must remain ever vigilant against tyranny wherever it appears. God has given us the tools of liberty needed to defend the rights He bestowed to us. Armored Republic is honored to offer you those Tools. Visit them, at ar500armor.com https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2022/08/08/the-media-begins-to-notice-that-were-running-out-of-cops-n488242 The media begins to notice that we're running out of cops Let’s say there’s a violent intruder at your door or someone is breaking into your house in the middle of the night. Who ya gonna call? Assuming that you don’t have the number for the Ghostbusters, you’ll probably dial 911. But in a number of cities, the odds that anyone will be available to respond quickly enough to save you have been dropping. The problem has grown serious enough that even the Associated Press has been forced to cover the story. They begin with an interview with George Spaulding of Portland, Oregon. Five years ago, his son Brian was shot to death in his apartment. Though George checks in with the detective assigned to the case frequently, the police say they still have no leads. But even George admits that the police are simply overwhelmed and they probably just don’t have the manpower to assign anyone to really work the case full time. And it’s not just Portland where this is happening. Response times to emergency calls are rising and the number of criminal cases being closed are falling in many cities. From Philadelphia to Portland to Los Angeles, killings and gun violence are rising at the same time officers worn out by the pandemic and disillusioned over the calls to divest from policing that followed George Floyd’s murder are quitting or retiring faster than they can be replaced. Departments are scrambling to recruit in a tight labor market and also rethinking what services they can provide and what role police should play in their communities. Many have shifted veteran officers to patrol, breaking up specialized teams built over decades in order to keep up with 911 calls. If you read through that entire report, the AP cites statistics and provides quotes from various officials in five cities. Take a look at this list of names and see if you notice anything in common. Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Baltimore are all cited. It should come as no surprise to most of our readers that these are all cities that were subjected to violent BLM riots during the Summer of Love and all of them later attempted to “defund the police” in various ways. Now crime rates are up in each of those cities, particularly violent crime rates. Response times are up and case closure rates are down. The police forces in each of those cities have been depleted and they are struggling to find qualified recruits to replace the officers who have left. (Along with the officers who were killed or too seriously wounded to return to duty in some cases.) Is there any honest person who is having trouble connecting the dots here? The Associated Press gamely quotes one professor from the Crime and Justice Policy Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. He claims that you can’t blame the protests and the defunding movement because “crime is up in many areas,” even where those things didn’t happen. That much may be true, but it’s definitely a lot worse in the cities on this list. How can anyone continue to deny this? Today, we’re hearing complaints from disgruntled and frightened citizens. That’s understandable. But we should also remember that many of those complaining the loudest also helped elect the municipal officials who put all of these policies in place to begin with and bent to the will of the mob. Now they are reaping what they have themselves sown. If you don’t like what’s going on in the streets, take some responsibility yourself and work to put new people in charge who will deal with the situation in a serious fashion. Once you do that, you just might be able to convince some new aspiring law enforcement officers to come to work in your cities. Well, let’s shift our eyes over seas now. Did you know that China, is one of the freest countries in the world?! Nancy Pelosi: “China Is One Of The Freest Societies In The World…” - Play Video https://thepostmillennial.com/watch-pelosi-says-china-one-of-the-freest-societies-in-the-world?utm_campaign=64487 Pelosi says China 'one of the freest societies in the world' She cited Freedom House as a source, but Freedom House, however, does not list China as a free country, calling its government an "authoritarian regime" that has "become increasingly repressive in recent years." Freedom House writes: "The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to tighten control over all aspects of life and governance, including the state bureaucracy, the media, online speech, religious practice, universities, businesses, and civil society associations, and it has undermined an earlier series of modest rule-of-law reforms. The CCP leader and state president, Xi Jinping, has consolidated personal power to a degree not seen in China for decades." Freedom House considers the small island nation of Taiwan, however, to be "free," ranking 94/100 on its freedom scale. Perhaps this is what Pelosi was referring to, as she just returned from a trip to Taiwan. Pelosi's Taiwan trip was a huge issue for China, which took the opportunity to engage in a massive show of force over the island. The self-ruling island has faced increased threats of violence from the CCP in recent days following Pelosi's visit to there, to repeated condemnation by the communists. US officials have made clear, though that they do not support an independent Taiwan, despite comments from President Joe Biden that the US would "militarily defend" it. https://twitter.com/i/status/1554169482242916354 - Play Video That was John Kirby for those wondering. https://www.outkick.com/oklahoma-cale-gundy-didnt-want-resignation-football/ ‘VAST MAJORITY’ OF OKLAHOMA PLAYERS DIDN’T WANT CALE GUNDY TO RESIGN: REPORT Many members of the Oklahoma Sooners reportedly didn’t want Cale Gundy to leave the program. The longtime Sooners assistant resigned from his coaching position after he admitted to reading a “shameful and hurtful” unknown word off a players iPad during a film session. He announced his resignation late Sunday night after more than two decades as a coach with the program. Despite his resignation, it sounds like many members of the team didn’t want him to leave. Gabe Ikard reported “the vast majority” of players on the roster didn’t want Gundy to leave. However, it sounds like they couldn’t sway his mind. After more than two decades as a coach with the Sooners and several seasons as a dominant QB in Norman, Gundy is gone because he read a player’s iPad during a film session. As Gundy claimed in his statement, they weren’t his words. He was reading a message on the iPad. ““I want to be very clear: the words I read aloud from that screen were not my words. What I said was not malicious; it wasn’t even intentional. Still, I am mature enough to know that the word I said was shameful and hurtful, no matter my intentions. The unfortunate reality is that someone in my position can cause harm without ever meaning to do so,” the former Oklahoma coach told fans in his resignation announcement. Overall, it seems like this situation spiraled out of control before most people even realized what happened, and that’s backed up by the fact most players didn’t want him to resign. What an incredibly bizarre and strange situation within the Oklahoma football program. This has been your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief… If you liked the show, share it. If you want to sign up for a club membership, for our conference with that club membership discount, or sign up for our magazine, head on over to fightlaughfeast.com. And as always, if you’d like to send me a news story, ask about our conference, or approach us about corporate partnership with CrossPolitic, you can email me at garrison@fightlaughfeast.com. For CrossPolitic News, I’m Garrison Hardie. Have a great day, and Lord bless

China's reaction to Pelosi's Taiwan trip Yun Sun, director of the China Program at the Stimson Center, discusses the implications of China's live-fire missile drills around Taiwan and recommendations for U.S. response   Future of Russia's space program Kaitlyn Johnson, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, analyzes Russia's threats to exit the International Space Station and the potential impacts on the United States and other partners   Improving semiconductor supply chain Candice Wright, director at the Government Accountability Office, discusses potential consequences of a semiconductor shortage and a recent report about the CHIPS Act, aimed at increasing production

On today's episode of The Daily Scoop Podcast, Chris Mihm, adjunct professor of public administration at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University and former managing director for strategic issues at the Government Accountability Office, discusses agencies' recent updates to performance.gov. The federal government is not in crisis, according to new research about the federal workforce attrition rate from the Partnership for Public Service. Angela Bailey, founder and CEO of AnandaLife, LLC and former chief human capital officer at the Department of Homeland Security, breaks down attrition in the federal workforce and how CHCO's can manage it. The Silicon Valley Innovation Program in the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate is reviewing results from an industry day on addressing software vulnerabilities. Melissa Oh, managing director of the Silicon Valley Innovation Program at the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate, explains DHS' goal for collaborating with industry for these industry days. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every weekday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. And if you like what you hear, please let us know in the comments.

The Government Accountability Office looks at every agency at one time or another. Some more often than others. No one is exempt from this oversight, even the overseers within the executive branch. GAO has a continuing list of recommendations for the Office of Management and Budget, which it recently reiterated. Federal Drive host Tom Temin got all the details from the GAO's director of strategic issues, Michelle Sager.

On today's episode of The Daily Scoop Podcast, Dan Chenok, executive director of the IBM Center for The Business of Government and former branch chief for information policy and technology at the Office of Management and Budget, discusses a new bill on Capitol Hill that would make it easier for agencies to buy commercial technology. Changes to the FITARA grading system push grades down across government, according to the new scorecard. Carol Harris, director of information technology and cybersecurity at the Government Accountability Office, explains what's different in this scorecard and its results. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every weekday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. And if you like what you hear, please let us know in the comments.

Grace Ann ChampionBS, Collat School of Business - 2020MAC, Collat School of Business - 2021Golden Girls Dance Team - 2017-2020U.S. Government Accountability Office, Financial AuditorGraceAnn's2Cents, Founder

Seresto Flea and Tick Collars for dogs and cats have been sold to Americans since 2013. During that time, the EPA has received approximately 100,000 reports of illnesses and 2,500 reports of deaths of animals that wore a Seresto Flea and Tick collar, by far the most reports received about any flea and tick treatment on the market. In this episode, hear testimony from scientists about the Environmental Protection Agency's disturbingly lax review processes for pesticides in pet products and learn why your vote in November is likely to determine if these popular but dangerous products will stay on American shelves. Please Support Congressional Dish – Quick Links Contribute monthly or a lump sum via PayPal Support Congressional Dish via Patreon (donations per episode) Send Zelle payments to: Donation@congressionaldish.com Send Venmo payments to: @Jennifer-Briney Send Cash App payments to: $CongressionalDish or Donation@congressionaldish.com Use your bank's online bill pay function to mail contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North, Number 4576, Crestview, FL 32536. Please make checks payable to Congressional Dish Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Listen to the latest episode of Jen's new podcast with Andrew Heaton and Justin Robert Young — We're Not Wrong Episode 12: About The Never Ending Ukraine War, Biden's COVID and Mike Pence (LIVE FROM BERLIN) To report an incident directly to the EPA via email Report.Pesticide.Incident@epa.gov View the shownotes on our website at https://congressionaldish.com/cd256-poisonous-pet-collars Executive Producer Recommended Sources CD200: How to End Legal Bribes Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith. The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics. Public Affairs: 2011. Background Sources Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes CD254: Baby Formula Shortage CD234: AWOL Recall: The Rock and Play Sleeper Reports on Seresto and Pesticides “Oversight Subcommittee Report Reveals EPA Failed to Protect Pets, Owners From Dangerous Flea and Tick Collar.” Jun 15, 2022. House Committee on Oversight and Reform. House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy. June 2022. “Staff Report: Seresto Flea and Tick Collars: Examining why a product linked to more than 2,500 pet deaths remains on the market.” Lauretta Joseph. May 19, 2022. “Notification of Evaluation: The EPA's Response to Reported Incidents of Unintended Effects from Pet Collar Pesticides, Project No. OSRE-FY22-0120” Johnathan Hettinger. Sept. 24, 2021. “Is your pet wearing a Seresto flea collar? Company reports thousands more adverse incidents.” USA Today. Jordan Liles. Mar 8, 2021. “Did Seresto Flea Collars Cause 1,698 Dog and Cat Deaths?” Snopes. Johnathan Hettinger. Mar 2, 2021. “Popular flea collar linked to almost 1,700 pet deaths. The EPA has issued no warning.” USA Today. Jen's highlighted copy Lawrence J. Dyckman et al. July 1995. “Pesticides: EPA's Efforts to Collect and Take Action on Exposure Incident Data, GAO/RCED-95-163.” U.S. Government Accountability Office. Lobbying “Lobbyist Profile: Ryan Canfield.” 2022. Open Secrets. “Employment History: Ryan Canfield.” Open Secrets. “Elanco Animal Health.” Open Secrets. The Hearing Seresto Flea and Tick Collars: Examining why a product linked to more than 2,500 pet deaths remains on the market June 15, 2022 Committee on Oversight and Reform, Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy Witnesses: Faye Hemsley & Omarion Hemsley, Owners of Deceased Pet Thomas Maiorino, Owner of Deceased Pet Jeffrey Simmons, President and Chief Executive Officer, Elanco Animal Health Incorporated Nathan Donley, Ph.D, Environmental Health Science Director, Center for Biological Diversity Karen McCormack, Former Scientist, Policy Analyst, and Communications Officer (ret.), Office of Pesticide Programs, Environmental Protection Agency Carrie Sheffield (minority witness), Senior Policy Analyst, Independent Women's Voice Clips 1:20 Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): As early as 2015, just a few years after the collar entered the US market, an EPA investigation found that among similar products, the Seresto collar “ranked number one” by a wide margin in terms of total incidents, major incidents and deaths, even after factoring in companies' relative sales. Those findings weren't enough to drive the makers of Seresto collar or the EPA to act. 1:50 Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): In 2016, Canada's equivalent of the EPA known as the PMRA, concluded based on a review of the same American data available to the EPA that the collar posed too great a risk to pets and their owners to be ever sold in Canada. 2:10 Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): Even as the death count rose, the EPA allowed Seresto to remain on the market here without even so much as requiring additional warning labels that regulators mandated in places ranging from Australia to Colombia to the European Union. 2:30 Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): The companies that manufactured the Seresto collar first Bayer animal health and then later Elanco were also aware of the risks, the incidents and the deaths, but they too failed to act. Instead, they hired third party industry insiders to conduct so-called independent reviews of the incident data, which ended up protecting their $300 million a year market but ended up endangering pets. So the Seresto collar stayed the same and so did the consequences. 4:15 Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): This particular collar has caused 100,000 incidents reported to the EPA and over 2500 pet deaths reported to the EPA. 4:30 Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): The steps that we are asking for today are crucial, because it's important to protect our pets and our families, too. I now call upon my distinguished colleague, Mr. Cloud for his opening statement. Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX): Thank you, Chairman. This is the first hearing of the Economic and Consumer Policy Subcommittee this year, and we've been in session for 52 days this year. And our first hearing is on pet collars. And I do realize that our pets are a huge part of our lives, they enrich our families, they provide companionship for my kids, they've helped foster responsibility and compassion and care, important ethics we need in our society. Just recently, our family mourned the loss of our guinea pig, biscuit. And so pets are a huge part of our family lives. But I have to admit that when I saw that this was going to be on the agenda for this week, I cannot help but be concerned, especially coming from South Texas about the 1000s 10s of 1000s of human lives that have passed away due to fentanyl and due to an open border and due to the policies of this administration to continue to aid and abet cartels. And I realized that this is the economic and Consumer Policy Subcommittee. And so I think about economic policy happening right now and where the minds of the American people are. Gas is now averaging $5 A gallon nationwide. For the first time in history. We have not had a hearing. Inflation is at a 40 year high. We have not had a hearing, the American people cannot find baby formula. We still haven't had a hearing. I've mentioned fentanyl is killing Americans, especially our teens at unprecedented rates. We have not had a hearing. Biden's systemic elimination of the safe and secure border he inherited has led to the worst humanitarian and national security crisis in this country's history. We have not had a hearing this term, we could talk about how inflation is affecting the cost of owning a pet, including the increased cost of food, toys, accessories, but we're not talking about that either. Instead, we're holding a hearing on the pet collar, which fights fleas and ticks. And as any pet owner knows fleas and tick management is an essential part of pet care. But I'm not sure it's an essential part of congressional oversight, especially when we take in mind where the American people are at. And frankly, I've talked to a number of people in my district and others who live in other parts of the country and they are really surprised that this has risen to one of the top priorities of commerce at this time in juncture. The subcommittee Republicans would rather explore efforts to help American consumers during these trying times, we would gladly have joined the chairman in holding a hearing on the shortage of baby formula. Moreover, we have welcomed the chance to explore TikTok's troubling practice of showing dangerous content to minors, an investigation you all started last year. In fact, it's now come to light that teenagers are using tick tock and other social media platforms to purchase illicit drugs including unknowingly in many cases, in most cases, fentanyl. Social media platforms are also using it to recruit young people into the gig economy of human trafficking. A hearing on that crisis could be incredibly important. And on the subject of our nation's youth, CDC bureaucrats have actively pursued an agenda to close schools during the pandemic instead of following the science damaging our children's financial, mental, physical, emotional, and also their learning for years to come. But we still have not had a hearing. Americans are facing incredible economic issues which require us as elected officials to listen and to respond. I do appreciate the fact that our pets play an important part of our lives. We should be kind to animals and we should teach our children to do the same. But I do care immensely more about the human lives that we were elected to serve. 10:20 Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): A recorded vote has been requested — we will pause while the we will get the clerk out. 12:00 Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL): Mr. Chairman, it's already been about what? A minute and a half. Where's the clerk? Is the clerk on lunch and not here today? Rep. Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): I think the clerk is on the way Mr. Donalds, thank you. Rep. Donalds: Is the clerk sitting in the side office just hanging out? I mean, come on, Mr. Chairman. 21:20 Clerk: Mr. Cloud? Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX): Yes Clerk: Mr. Cloud votes yes. Mr. Keller? Rep. Fred Keller (R-PA): Yes Clerk: Mr. Keller votes yes. Mr. Franklin? Rep. C. Scott Franklin (R-FL): Yes Clerk: Mr. Franklin votes yes. Mr. Clyde? Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA): Yes. Clerk: Mr. Clyde votes yes. Mr. Donalds? Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL): Yes Clerk: Mr. Donalds votes yes. 26:31 Thomas Maiorino: My name is Thomas Maiorina. I reside in Mount Laurel, New Jersey with my wife Monica. I am the father of three boys. My youngest son, Robert turned 12 in 2011. After years of asking for a dog, he wore us down and we decided to rescue a dog from a southern shelter for my son's birthday. After researching online, we adopted a mixed breed mutt that Robbie and his two other brothers named Rooney. Rooney swiftly became a loved member of our family. A bit rambunctious, she was just what a 12 year old boy needed. She loved the run and chase anything the move in the yard. By all measures, we took great care to ensure Rooney had a healthy and happy life. We took her on daily walks, sometimes three a day, hikes on park trails. We monitor her diet and made sure she was seen by the veterinarian as needed, and she received all of her shots. Because she was a bit rambunctious and we lived in a wooded area where there's a lot of wildlife, we were constantly concerned about the problems of fleas and ticks. We consulted with a veterinarian after getting Rooney to determine the best way to protect her against this. We use a variety of prevention methods for the first few years and when we changed veterinarians in approximately 2013 or 14, the new veterinarian strongly recommended that we use the Seresto flea and tick collar, based on all of our options. We heeded that advice and purchased Seresto collars from our local PetSmart. The collars were intended to provide protection for up to eight months. We noticed that after fixing a collar to Rooney's neck, she began to itch and first had that treated and tested for allergies. We took her to the vet several times during 2018 seeking to find the cause for the ever increasing itching. After several visits and multielement medications, they were unable to determine the cause and we switched to a specialist in 2019 to seek further assistance, where they provided allergy shots and other medications to address the worsening itching and related symptoms. Rooney's behavior then became more erratic as the months wore on she began linking her paws so feverishly they would bleed. She also developed bleeding patches on her stomach. Ultimately, in October 2020, Rooney suffered horrendous grand mal seizure in the presence of myself and my wife. The damage done by the seizure was irreversible. She was a shell of her former self and ultimately, the family decided the most humane thing would be to put Rooney to sleep at the age of nine. In early March 2021, I read an article online about Seresto pet collars resulting in the deaths of 1700 Pets without any warnings from the EPA or the manufacturer. I sought out legal representation not because I wanted financial compensation, but because I took great pains to care for Rooney. The final 18 months of her life were agonizing to watch if I could help prevent another family from going through what my family went through. I wanted to act. I'm here today in furtherance of that effort. I appreciate the committee taking the time to investigate this matter. And thank you for your time. 33:30 Jeffrey Simmons: There are a few points I'd like to emphasize upfront. First, the EPA approved Seresto following more than 80 safety and toxicity studies, all of which show that Seresto and its ingredients have a strong safety profile. Second, more than 80 regulatory bodies around the world have approved Seresto. Seresto is widely used and more than 80 million collars worn over the past decade to protect dogs and cats from fleas and ticks around the world. 34:00 Jeffrey Simmons: Third, adverse event reports are not intended to be, and in fact are absolutely not, proof of causation. Reports require further investigation and analysis to determine cause. And after years of review, our pharmacovigilance team made up of veterinarians and other experts who study adverse event reports has not identified a single death caused by the active ingredients in the collar. 36:45 Jeffrey Simmons: No product is without risk. What matters is whether those risks are reasonable. And in light of the benefits and numerous studies and the incident report data for Seresto demonstrate the product does not pose an unreasonable risk and has a strong safety profile, which is why the American Veterinary Medical Association opposed canceling Seresto's EPA registration. 38:05 Nathan Donley: My name is Dr. Nathan Donley. I'm the science director for the Environmental Health Program at the Center for Biological Diversity. I have a PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology from Oregon Health and Sciences University. The last seven years of my professional life have been spent researching how pesticides impact people and the environment and the regulatory failures that can actually facilitate harm rather than prevent it. I published three peer reviewed scientific articles and five technical reports on this subject. I've authored over 100 technical scientific comments to the EPA on pesticide documents, including flumethrin and imidacloprid, the two active ingredients in the Seresto collar. I've read through 1000s of pages of FOIA documents I requested on matters related to the approval and continued use of Seresto. 39:40 Nathan Donley: While other agencies like the FDA have robust systems in place to surveil harms from products under their purview, EPA only requires minimal information be submitted four times a year and they delegate this responsibility to the pesticide industry itself. The limited information that is collected includes only the pesticide product name, where the incident occurred, and the severity of the incident. That's it. Oftentimes, the agency doesn't even know if the incident involves a dog or a cat. Even though the EPA determines what incident information it collects, it then turns around and laments that the incident data are insufficient to take regulatory action to protect public health, the environment and our pets. It's a system designed to achieve nothing other than maintaining the status quo. Worse yet, reported incidents significantly underestimate the true scope of harm. The EPA recently estimated that only one in 25 pesticide incidents involving another pesticide called Kamba was actually reported to the authorities. That's only a 4% reporting rate. Given that 100,000 people have reported their concerns about Seresto, this is very alarming because the true number of harmful incidents to pets could be potentially far higher. 41:05 Nathan Donley: The EPA's counterpart in Canada was so concerned about Seresto incidents and harms of pets and humans that it denied Seresto approval in 2016. Canada analyzed U incident data and determined that Seresto collars had an incident rate 50 times greater than the average flea collar and 36 times greater than Canada's trigger for review. 41:25 Nathan Donley: EPA has no trigger for review of any pesticide product, no matter how much harm is being reported. And because the agency has no mandated trigger for reviewing pesticides like Seresto, rather than choosing to use incident reporting data to inform a robust regulatory process and take dangerous products off the market, EPA routinely chooses to do nothing at all. And that's especially troubling when you consider that Seresto is just one of 18,000 pesticide products currently approved by the EPA. 42:40 Karen McCormack: My name is Karen McCormack. At the present time I am a retired government employee after working over 40 years at the Environmental Protection Agency. During my career at EPA, I first worked in an EPA laboratory as a research coordinator. And in that capacity, I conducted research on numerous pesticides. Later I transferred to EPA headquarters in Washington DC, and worked in various positions in the pesticide program as a scientist, policy analyst, and a communications officer. I also worked in a number of offices at EPA including the Office of the Assistant Administrator for Pesticides and Toxins. Although I'm retired from EPA, I'm still closely following a number of environmental topics and one of those topics of interest to me has been the impact of flea and tick pet products on cats and dogs. 43:30 Karen McCormack: The US Environmental Protection Agency is charged with regulating products that contain pesticides and in ensuring that all pesticide products are safe to use. Before 1996, EPA did not consistently require manufacturers to conduct animal safety studies for pet products containing pesticides. Because pet products with pesticides were available readily in commercial stores, consumers thought they must be safe. This is not necessarily the case. Flea and tick products are designed to kill insects, and they often contain poisonous chemicals. When combined with pesticides that are used outside the home and in the water and food that people drink and eat, the aggregate risks from all these sources of pesticides can be high, especially for children who are vulnerable to toxic chemicals -- much more vulnerable than adults. And it wasn't until the passage of the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act that EPA began to examine the risks from sources other than food, including risks from pet products containing pesticides. After the passage of FQPA, pesticide manufacturers were required to submit to EPA animal safety studies and incident reports showing harm to animals and humans exposed to pesticides and pet products. Between 2012 and the present time the EPA received an increasing number of incident reports related to the use of flea and tick pet collars for dogs and cats. The toxic effects that were described in these many incident reports from the use of certain pet collars ranged from mild effects, such as skin irritation to more severe effects such as intense tremors, seizures, paralysis, organ failure and death. The largest number of incident rate counts that EPA received during this period were from the use of pet collar called Seresto. 45:35 Karen McCormack: Between January 2012 and the present time, EPA has received over 100,000 incident reports, and these incident reports include human incidents as well as pet incidents. These reports also include at least 2300 reports of pet deaths. The number is most likely a very low estimate of the actual number of incidents that are occurring since many pet owners do not know that they can report incidents to EPA and they may not know how to correlate the adverse effects in their pets with a particular pet product. 46:30 Karen McCormack: There are no independent organizations that rank the safety of pet products. And the sales data which is needed to rank the safety of pet products is considered confidential business information by the manufacturers. EPA's risk assessments also do not tell the full story of what pet products are safe, as they rely heavily on industry generated studies that were conducted on mice and rats rather than dogs and cats. And EPA's risk assessments also are based mainly on studies that were conducted with only one pesticide in Seresto rather than the combined pesticides in this pet product. 47:10 Karen McCormack: Although the original manufacturers of Seresto, Bayer, did conduct a number of efficacy and safety studies in dogs and cats treated with Seresto, the company did not conduct two very critical studies that are important for determining the safety of a pet product. These tests include a pet transferable residue study, a petting study, to determine the exposure of humans to Seresto. And they did not conduct a study that measures the amount of pesticide that gets in the blood of treated dogs and cats. 48:45 Carrie Sheffield: My name is Carrie Sheffield and I'm a senior policy analyst at the Center for Economic Opportunity at Independent Women's Forum. We are a nonprofit organization committed to increasing the number of women who value free markets and personal liberty. 2:44:20 Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): Let me just show you some analysis that was conducted by Elanco, which we would just refer to as well as the EPA, as well as the Canadian equivalent of the EPA, which is called the PMRA. Essentially, we look at this chart here, and we see that at the top Elanco computed that 0.51% of pet deaths were “possibly or probably” caused by the Seresto collar. The PMRA in Canada, looking at a sample of pet deaths concluded that 33% of those pet deaths were possibly or probably caused by Seresto collars. And the EPA here, concluded that 45% were possibly or probably caused by pet by the Seresto collar. Now, sir, I think originally, you said that there is no scientific evidence, no evidence of a causal link, this is clearly evidence, it was so compelling that the Canadian equivalent of the EPA never allowed for Seresto collars to be sold in Canada, correct? Jeffrey Simmons: Yes, I'm aware of that decision. I would also add that 80 other countries have approved this product, we've had over 80 million collars actually used. I'm not familiar with this data comparison, but what I can say is following the EPA regulatory process around the oversight, that we have pharmacovigilance, close to 200 veterinarians and staff on our team, looking at the data through the way the EPA wants us to we have not seen a linkage from the active ingredients. Rep. Krishnamoorthi: I understand that sir, I understand you haven't seen the linkage, although other authorities have and their scientists who are not paid by you have done so. 2:46:25 Nathan Donley: This is what we commonly see, quite frankly, when the regulated industry is doing their own research. It commonly finds that their products are safer than when government agencies or academic scientists take on a similar analysis. 2:46:55 Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): We have FOIA documents from the EPA, and emails internal to the EPA talking about the Seresto collar. Here's just one of them. This is from an employee who basically voiced their opinion about recent coverage of the Seresto controversy, he said, “looks like the sh*t has hit the fan….will be interesting seeing where this goes. I hope there is a FOIA for all communications on this so that our emails are made public. We have been screaming about Seresto for many years.” I presume that you've heard some of these screams and concerns, correct, Ms. McCormack? Karen McCormack: That's correct. A number of EPA employees have contacted me and given me detailed descriptions about what's happening with Seresto and they were very upset that EPA refused to do anything about it. 2:48:25 Karen McCormack: A number of the scientists, and this is not unusual, feel that the decision makers are not considering the science and they're making decisions based on political reasons. I don't know if I have time to talk about this, but I did look at the science that the Canadian government did, the causality analysis. They looked at the consistency and toxicity of effects from exposure of pets to Seresto. And what they found was very disturbing. It was so disturbing that they decided the risks were too high to approve Seresto and they could not be mitigated by putting a label statement on the product or by issuing warning labels, so they refused to approve Seresto. 2:49:25 Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX): Thank you, Ms. McCormack, for acknowledging that the EPA sometimes makes political decisions, so that's something we'll definitely be coming back to next term. 2:55:05 Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA): Are the active ingredients for Seresto in the United States different from the active ingredients for Seresto collars in other countries? Jeffrey Simmons: No, I do not believe they're any different than the other 80 countries. Rep. Porter: In other countries like in Colombia and Australia, the warning labels for Seresto collars classify the collar as highly toxic and as poison. 2:55:50 Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA): Does the label in the United States have language? Like highly toxic or poison? Yes or no? Jeffrey Simmons: It does not. Rep. Porter: Okay. So the warning label here in the United States, though does say that mild reactions may occur and mentions hair loss, scratching and redness. The most severe symptoms listed are eczema and lesions. This is the warning label: does it mention the potential for death? Jeffrey Simmons: It does not. Rep. Porter: So a pet owner looking at this label that we're looking at would have absolutely no reason, no way to know that Seresto may have caused roughly 100 pet deaths. That's what both the Canadian Pest Management Agency, the PMRA, and the EPA found. Will you change this label, so that it includes deaths as a possible side effect? Jeffrey Simmons: Congresswoman, we do not believe the scientific data warrants a label change. And again, that is not just the 80 studies were submitted. There's been 20 additional added studies since and all of the oversight data that's been done on the 33 million pets over the 10 years. So again, following an EPA regulated process, we're always open if a data warranted, some need for a change, we would do that. 2:57:30 Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA): The EPA encouraged both your predecessor, Bayer, and your company, Elanco, to update the warning label. Yet, you just said that you never have. So the federal government did in fact advise you to update the label and you failed to do so. Is that correct? Jeffrey Simmons: I do not believe that is correct. We are in regular engagement with EPA. We have not received any formal…there's no data that warrants that and there's been no formal engagement on that. 2:58:15 Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA): The EPA asked Bayer, the predecessor here, in 2019 to help the agency collect data on adverse incidents for cats and dogs using the Seresto collar. EPA asked Bayer to split the registration for cats and dogs, so the agency could better understand and evaluate the risks for each type of pet. They refused, saying that change might have, “an adverse impact on sales” and they also said, “it would be a substantial increase in work.” Mr. Simmons, are you willing to make that change and split the registration for cats and dogs as the EPA requested? Or do you believe it's too much work? Jeffrey Simmons: I am willing to engage with the EPA on anything that the scientific data and the engagement under the regulatory body of the EPA merits the right thing to do. We believe the 80 studies and all of the pharmacovigilance data that we've submitted to them stands that this is a safe product. 3:00:10 Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA): I feel obligated to begin by stating the obvious this afternoon. Today's hearing is a colossal waste of time and resources. 3:13:25 Rep. Henry Johnson (D-GA): And the only reason that the public knew about the harm caused by this pesticide is because the Center for Biological Diversity publicly petitioned the EPA to cancel registration for Seresto flea collars. If they had not bought this to light, do you think we would even know of the dangers presented by these collars? Nathan Donley: No, we wouldn't. You know, the investigation that came out in USA Today in 2021 really brought this to the public attention. And if there wasn't that amount of pressure from the public, this would just still be completely unknown. EPA, for the last 10 years, has not done anything to alert consumers to the harms associated with this product or any other pesticide products where there are a very high number of incidents. 3:15:10 Karen McCormack: I think some of the people at EPA are programmed to go along with whatever industry says. It makes life easier for you, you can go home earlier and you can also get promoted easier if you go along with what industry says. It's unfortunate a problem there. And I've seen it over the years and it's very hard to do something about it. 3:15:40 Karen McCormack: Canada's analysis was very scientific. It was not only based on incident data and sales data, it was based on the toxicity of the two pesticides in Seresto. And they looked at the consistency and what happened eventually with the pets that were exposed to Seresto. 3:19:20 Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL): And so because of the tremendous number of pet incidents, the tremendous number of deaths, even when factoring in sales, I sadly have no choice but to recommend that the EPA commence a notice of intent to cancel proceedings and to fully investigate what's going on with the Seresto collar, and I respectfully request Elanco to voluntarily recall these collars at this time, pending this further investigation. Cover Art Design by Only Child Imaginations Music Presented in This Episode Intro & Exit: Tired of Being Lied To by David Ippolito (found on Music Alley by mevio)

The U.S. Small Business Administration has yet to disperse $180 million of unobligated funds that were set aside for the Restaurant Revitalization Fund as of June 2022, according to a July report published by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The Government Accountability Office analyzed weakness and issues with the Restaurant Revitalization Fund program, which appropriated $28.6 billion to the foodservice industry in 2021. According to the report, 88% of applicants were eligible for funding, but only 40% ended up receiving Restaurant Revitalization Fund money. Here’s Joanna Fantozzi with more on the story. Plus, catch up on all the top news of the day with our daily news recap at the beginning of each episode. Be sure to subscribe to First Bite wherever you get your podcasts or on Castos, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

Supply shortages, overpriced parts, questionable foreign sources; they all threaten the Defense supply chain. The Government Accountability Office found, though, that DOD's Industrial Base Policy Office doesn't have a fully developed strategy to mitigate those risks. Federal Drive host Tom Temin talked about this with GAO's director of contracting and national security acquisitions, Bill Russell.

The Office of Personnel Management doesn't hire people to work at federal agencies. But it has a lot of influence over how agencies hire people. And it provides crucial shared services to help agencies manage their workforces. This year the Government Accountability Office added three high priority recommendations for OPM to improve things. Federal Drive host Tom Temin talked about it with GAO's director of strategic issues, Michelle Sager.

The Office of Personnel Management doesn't hire people to work at federal agencies. But it has a lot of influence over how agencies hire people. And it provides crucial shared services to help agencies manage their workforces. This year the Government Accountability Office added three high priority recommendations for OPM to improve things. Federal Drive host Tom Temin talked about it with GAO's director of strategic issues, Michelle Sager.

On today's episode of The Daily Scoop Podcast, more issues were found in the rollout of the Department of Veterans Affairs electronic health records system. The White House is pushing agencies on its small business contracting goals as quarter four begins for FY2022. Alan Thomas, chief operating officer at IntelliBridge and former commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service at the General Services Administration, discusses the impact these goals have on the federal contracting base. The Department of Defense is committed to its Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification program, but the defense industrial base still has questions about how that will work in practice. David Berteau, president and CEO of the Professional Services Council, explains what some of those questions are. The Office of Personnel Management is undertaking a new data strategy and making fixes in its technology infrastructure. Michelle Sager, managing director for strategic issues at the Government Accountability Office, talks about the priority open recommendations GAO made to OPM. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every weekday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. And if you like what you hear, please let us know in the comments.

The pandemic brought about challenges and changes in nearly every sector in the U.S., from healthcare to education. Stephen Sanford joins us in a conversation about the top trends affecting government and society based on a new foresight report by the Government Accountability Office. This episode provides a great overview for risk management professionals seeking to stay abreast of the environmental landscape and sector uncertainties.

When two Federal Aviation Administration-certified Boeing 737 Max jets crashed a few years back, it raised questions about the FAA certification process for new airplane designs. Members of Congress wanted to know if there was anything the U.S. could learn from the European Union's procedures. The Government Accountability Office compared the two. And for what it found Federal News Network's Eric White spoke with GAO's Director of Physical Infrastructure Issues Heather Krause.

On today's episode of The Daily Scoop Podcast, a new Government Accountability Office report on the quality of spending data from government agencies. Agencies have less than three months to spend their money as the end of the fiscal year approaches. Joe Jordan, president and CEO of Actuparo LLC and former U.S. chief acquisition officer, explains what government agencies should be thinking about now to prepare to spend their appropriated money wisely for the rest of the fiscal year. The new version of the State Department's EVOLVE contract could be worth up to $10 billion. It's the largest indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract the State Department has ever issued. Joe Klimavicz, managing director at KPMG and former chief information officer at the Department of Justice and NOAA, discusses how CIO's can manage a large contract coming through their IT shop. The Department of Homeland Security's newest prize challenge takes on cooling solutions. It's part of an effort by the department to find solutions to a number of aspects of climate change. Kathleen Kenyon, program lead for prize challenges at DHS' Science and Technology Directorate, talks about how her organization decides when prize challenges are the right fit for a certain problem set. The Daily Scoop Podcast is available every weekday afternoon. If you want to hear more of the latest from Washington, subscribe to The Daily Scoop Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher. And if you like what you hear, please let us know in the comments.

The principal overseer of government operations and budget execution also has to go to Congress each year for its own appropriation. The Government Accountability Office uses the savings its caused throughout government as its own justification. For 2023, GAO is asking for $810 million, a nearly 13% increase from what it received for the current fiscal year. For more, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin turned to the GAO's Chief Operating Officer Orice Williams Brown.

Principles of ethical artificial intelligence Jane Pinelis, chief of AI assurance at the Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, discusses the principles of responsible AI in a newly released strategy from DoD   USAID opening doors for kids with disabilities Josh Josa, inclusive education specialist at USAID, discusses his work in helping improve education access for kids with disabilities in countries around the world   Immigration and Customs Enforcement oversight Rebecca Gambler, director at the Government Accountability Office, discusses new recommendations regarding the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Alternatives to Detention program

As the country reels from last Friday's decision by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, people, politicians, and health care providers are scrambling to figure out what's next. But pregnancy was already an especially complicated process, full of rules and regulations, for one particular sector of the population — the military. According to a 2018 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, women made up just 16.5% of active-duty service members in the Department of Defense; however, military women are more likely than their civilian counterparts to have unintended pregnancies. They're also more likely to suffer a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy, making medical care an essential should the department continue to diversify. This week, Brooke sits down with Kyleanne Hunter, senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation and a Marine Corps combat veteran, to talk about how the department had just begun to make positive changes, and now sits in a complex limbo.  

Even as the armed forces develop hypersonic missiles, the Missile Defense Agency pursues a project to develop measures to counteract enemies' hypersonics. But the program is having significant oversight problems and technical risks. For details, we turn to the acting director for contracting and national security acquisitions issues at the Government Accountability Office, John Sawyer.