2020 to today
2020 to today
Section 702 searches, license plate cameras, data center deals, private equity in housing, deaths in ICE custody, and the Epstein files.
Key facts
- The FBI made 278,000 improper searches of Americans' communications under Section 702.
- Cities and counties sign nondisclosure agreements before voting on data centers.
- 269 of the 469 entries on the site fall in this period.
Timeline
269 events, oldest first
- 2020February 5, 2020Health, Food & Regulators
Fauci to Burwell: masks not really effective; I do not recommend that you wear a mask
Released under FOIA in June 2021.
- February 13, 2020Congress, Elections & Speech
Senator sells up to $1.7 million in stock after a pandemic briefing
Investigation closed January 19, 2021. No charges.
- March 10, 2020Health, Food & Regulators
PREP Act declaration: vaccine makers immune from suit except for willful misconduct
Signed before there was a vaccine.
- March 2020Wall Street & Banking
The Federal Reserve hires BlackRock to run its corporate bond purchases
The first time the Fed bought corporate debt. The purchases included ETFs managed by BlackRock and companies in which BlackRock is a major shareholder. The same firm had managed toxic assets for the Fed in 2008.
- March 27, 2020Health, Food & Regulators
The CARES Act adds 20 percent to Medicare's payment for every inpatient with a COVID-19 diagnosis
From September 1, 2020 a positive test had to be on the chart; a second add-on payment for new treatments followed in November.
- April 27, 2020CIA, War & Covert Operations
The Defense Department releases the Navy's three videos and says the phenomena remain characterized as unidentified
The 2004 Nimitz video and two from 2015; the office later resolved one as parallax and lists the other two as unresolved.
- May 6, 2020CIA, War & Covert Operations
Congress votes to bar war with Iran; vetoed
Override fails the next day.
- July 22, 2020Health, Food & Regulators
$1.95 billion to Pfizer for 100 million doses of an unauthorized vaccine
A second $1.95 billion on December 23.
- September 16, 2020Health, Food & Regulators
House report: grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA on the 737 MAX
346 dead; Boeing's own employees certified the plane.
- September 17, 2020Taxes & Government Spending
A federal judge blocks the 2020 mail changes; from the bench he calls them a politically motivated attack
On-time first-class mail had dropped from 90 to 80 percent.
- October 14, 2020Health, Food & Regulators
JBS's owners plead guilty to foreign bribery in a U.S. court and pay $256 million
The SEC: $150 million in bribes, in part to buy Pilgrim's Pride.
- October 22, 2020Health, Food & Regulators
The FDA approves remdesivir seven days after the WHO's Solidarity trial found it had little or no effect on death
The first drug approved for COVID-19; a month later the WHO's guideline panel recommended against it in hospitalized patients.
- November 9, 2020Health, Food & Regulators
Pfizer's chief executive sells $5.6 million of stock the day the results are announced
Under a plan adopted August 19, 2020.
- November 24, 2020Health, Food & Regulators
Purdue pleads guilty to three felonies
$8.3 billion on paper, mostly uncollectable.
- December 10, 2020Health, Food & Regulators
The BBC, AP, Reuters, the Washington Post, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, and other partners announce a joint effort against vaccine disinformation
The Trusted News Initiative: partners will alert each other to disinformation which poses an immediate threat to life.
- December 23, 2020Congress, Elections & Speech
Trump pardons Manafort, Stone, and Charles Kushner
Flynn a month earlier; Bannon a month later.
- December 24, 2020Health, Food & Regulators
Fauci: I can nudge this up a bit, so I went to 80, 85
The herd immunity number moved with the polls.
- 2021March 22, 2021Housing & Private Equity
FBI opens about 700 safe deposit boxes its warrant said it could not
The Ninth Circuit finds a Fourth Amendment violation in January 2024.
- June 25, 2021CIA, War & Covert Operations
The Director of National Intelligence reports 144 UAP reports and explains one
Eighteen incidents with objects stationary in winds aloft, against the wind, or at speed without discernable means of propulsion.
- June 29, 2021Housing & Private Equity
PennEast: a private pipeline company may condemn state land under a federal certificate
5 to 4.
- July 20, 2021Health, Food & Regulators
Fauci to Senator Paul: you do not know what you are talking about
Three months before NIH wrote to Congress about the EcoHealth experiment.
- August 2021CIA, War & Covert Operations
SIGAR: we didn't know what we were doing
$145 billion in reconstruction, $837 billion in war; 2,443 American troops dead.
- August 21, 2021Health, Food & Regulators
The FDA posts: You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it.
Three doctors sued over the posts; the randomized trials of ivermectin, published the next year, found no benefit.
- September 27, 2021Wall Street & Banking
Two Federal Reserve bank presidents announce their departures over 2020 trades
Cleared of rule violations in 2024; appearance of a conflict found.
- October 4, 2021Congress, Elections & Speech
Attorney general sends the FBI to meet about school board meetings
The association whose letter prompted it apologized eighteen days later.
- October 20, 2021Health, Food & Regulators
NIH to Congress: EcoHealth failed to report a finding right away, as the grant required
Five days to hand over all unpublished data.
- 2022January 6, 2022Health, Food & Regulators
Judge orders the FDA to release Pfizer's data at 55,000 pages a month, not 500
A request of paramount public importance.
- January 27, 2022Surveillance & Privacy
Intelligence community's own review: purchased data covers nearly everyone
Declassified June 2023.
- Early 2022Housing & Private Equity
Michigan manufactured housing bills die in the Senate after $358,000 goes to the industry PAC
The package had passed the House with bipartisan support and had been negotiated with the Michigan Manufactured Housing Association. The association withdrew its support at the time two Havenpark executives gave $358,000 to its PAC.
- February 10, 2022Surveillance & Privacy
Senators disclose the CIA's own bulk collection program
Outside the statutory framework; searches of Americans with no written reason.
- February 28, 2022Wall Street & Banking
Treasury immobilizes the Russian central bank's assets in the United States
About 300 billion dollars frozen worldwide with the allies.
- March 30, 2022Wall Street & Banking
Federal Reserve balance sheet peaks at about $8.9 trillion
From $4.2 trillion before the pandemic. Prices rose 9.1 percent in the year to June.
- April 6, 2022Taxes & Government Spending
Congress repeals the prefunding mandate and cancels about $57 billion in missed payments
House 342 to 92, Senate 79 to 19.
- July 1, 2022Congress, Elections & Speech
Trade Adjustment Assistance stops certifying workers
Not renewed since.
- July 13, 2022Police, Courts & Prisons
Three Chicago men freed after 35 years; the fire could not have started as they confessed
The confession said a lit cigarette lit a pool of gasoline, which cannot happen.
- August 10, 2022Health, Food & Regulators
Camp Lejeune Justice Act: the right to sue, after decades
409,910 claims filed in two years.
- 2023January 23, 2023Congress, Elections & Speech
FBI Richmond memo proposes sources inside Catholic parishes
Withdrawn in a day; found by the inspector general to have no evidence behind it.
- February 3, 2023Health, Food & Regulators
Norfolk Southern train derails in East Palestine
Five cars of vinyl chloride burned over the town three days later.
- March 1, 2023CIA, War & Covert Operations
Intelligence agencies call a foreign attack on injured officers very unlikely
Two agencies dissented with low confidence. The government's own panels had pointed to pulsed microwaves.
- March 12, 2023Wall Street & Banking
Every deposit at Silicon Valley Bank and Signature guaranteed
$231.1 billion uninsured; $16.7 billion charged to 110 other banks.
- April 5, 2023Police, Courts & Prisons
Farmington, New Mexico officers sent to a domestic violence call at 5308 Valley View Avenue knock at 5305 and shoot the homeowner, Robert Dotson, two seconds after he opens the door holding a handgun
The state declined charges in January 2024, a federal judge granted the officers qualified immunity in May 2025, and in 2026 the city's insurer paid his family $6 million with no admission of liability.
- April 28, 2023Wall Street & Banking
Fed review: the 2018 rollback promoted a less assertive supervisory approach
Supervisors saw the problems and did not act in time.
- May 19, 2023Surveillance & Privacy
Secret court opinion released: 278,000 improper FBI searches of Section 702 data
Protesters, donors, and January 6 suspects among them.
- June 3, 2023Housing & Private Equity
Congress approves the Mountain Valley Pipeline and bars court review
Section 324 of the debt ceiling law.
- June 27, 2023Police, Courts & Prisons
Inspector general: negligence, misconduct, and job performance failures in Epstein's death
No cellmate, no rounds, no working cameras.
- July 26, 2023CIA, War & Covert Operations
A former intelligence officer tells the House under oath of a crash retrieval program and nonhuman biologics he did not see himself
David Grusch; the Pentagon: no verifiable information to substantiate the claims.
- September 1, 2023Health, Food & Regulators
The Fifth Circuit: FDA is not a physician
The court held the agency had no authority to tell consumers to stop taking a medicine; in 2024 the FDA settled and deleted the posts.
- 2023Police, Courts & Prisons
Study: public defender offices carry 300 to 350 felonies per lawyer
The 1973 standard was 150, and even that leaves under 14 hours a case.
- September 28, 2023Surveillance & Privacy
Homeland Security inspector general: 71,000 location queries without privacy review
Three agencies; recommendation to stop left open.
- October 31, 2023Health, Food & Regulators
Flint prosecutions closed with no convictions
Every charge thrown out over the one judge grand jury.
- November 20, 2023Surveillance & Privacy
Wyden: Hemisphere still running, funded again in 2022
Trillions of records; the documents marked Law Enforcement Sensitive.
- December 22, 2023CIA, War & Covert Operations
The defense law keeps the UAP records collection and drops the review board and the eminent domain clause
The Schumer-Rounds act as filed would have claimed recovered technology and biological evidence of non-human intelligence for the government.
- 2024January 2024Housing & Private Equity
BlackRock buys Global Infrastructure Partners for about $12.5 billion
The acquisition made BlackRock one of the largest owners of infrastructure in the world, with about $150 billion in airports, ports, pipelines, and utilities.
- January 18, 2024Wall Street & Banking
Fed inspector general: the rules did not sufficiently support public confidence
Kaplan and Rosengren: no violation, appearance of conflict.
- February 15, 2024Police, Courts & Prisons
344 deaths in federal prisons 2014 to 2021 that the rules were written to prevent
187 suicides; rounds not made in more than a third.
- February 29, 2024Taxes & Government Spending
23 large profitable corporations paid no federal income tax for five years
342 paid 14.1 percent on average, 2018 to 2022.
- March 6, 2024Surveillance & Privacy
House committee publishes the banks' January 6 search terms
MAGA, Trump, Cabela's, Bass Pro Shop, religious texts.
- March 8, 2024CIA, War & Covert Operations
The Pentagon's review of the historical record finds no evidence that any investigation ever confirmed a sighting as extraterrestrial technology
The alleged programs do not exist, are misidentified sensitive programs, or resolve to the rejected Kona Blue proposal.
- March 20, 2024Health, Food & Regulators
The last Guatemala suit ends; the appeals court affirms for the private defendant
It was our own government that was the driving force behind these monstrous wrongs.
- April 1, 2024Health, Food & Regulators
Alaska and Canada suspend fishing for Yukon River king salmon for seven years, one full life cycle, after the run falls about 90 percent from its 1980s level
The suspension holds regardless of how many fish return. Alaska also committed to reduce ocean catches and bycatch of Yukon salmon to the extent practicable.
- April 15, 2024Taxes & Government Spending
F-35 lifetime cost passes $2 trillion
Sustainment up 44 percent since 2018; availability down five years running.
- April 17, 2024Surveillance & Privacy
House passes the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, 219 to 199
The Senate never votes.
- April 24, 2024Wall Street & Banking
REPO Act: the president may seize, confiscate, transfer, or vest Russian sovereign assets
The first law authorizing the taking of another central bank's reserves.
- May 9, 2024Housing & Private Equity
Culley v. Marshall: no right to a prompt hearing when your car is seized
6 to 3. The car had been held 20 months from an innocent owner.
- June 5, 2024Congress, Elections & Speech
The Manhattan district attorney says YouTube changed its firearm rules in response to his office's advocacy
YouTube told reporters the changes were not the result of pressure from officials; the House Judiciary Committee chairman told YouTube's parent company that its records on the change fell under a committee subpoena.
- June 25, 2024Health, Food & Regulators
NTSB: the East Palestine burn was not necessary
The chemical maker's dissent never reached the incident commander.
- June 26, 2024Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Morrow County officials settle Amazon ethics case for $2,000 each
Three officials who voted $245 million in tax breaks for Amazon owned 20 percent each of the company laying its fiber.
- June 26, 2024Congress, Elections & Speech
Murthy v. Missouri dismissed on standing
The appeals court's finding of coercion left undecided.
- June 28, 2024Housing & Private Equity
Grants Pass v. Johnson: sleeping outside can be punished with no shelter offered
6 to 3.
- July 25, 2024Police, Courts & Prisons
Federal Prison Oversight Act signed
Inspections and an ombudsman; cameras in 12 of 121 prisons by March 2025.
- July 30, 2024Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
PJM capacity auction rises from $2.2 billion to $14.7 billion
The price cleared at $269.92 per megawatt day, from $28.92. The market monitor attributed $9.3 billion of the total to data center load.
- July 30, 2024Congress, Elections & Speech
Interior: 417 boarding schools, at least 973 children dead, 74 burial sites
$23.3 billion spent on the system.
- August 2024Housing & Private Equity
Michigan park owner charged criminally for operating without a license
The county prosecutor charged Homes of America's local company over North Morris Estates near Flint, the first criminal charge of its kind against a park owner in Michigan. The park could not get a license because it would not fix its water.
- September 4, 2024Wall Street & Banking
Atlanta Fed president broke two trading rules and two conduct policies
He stayed in office.
- September 25, 2024Health, Food & Regulators
$600 million East Palestine settlement approved
Injury payments release the railroad from future health claims.
- September 30, 2024Surveillance & Privacy
Federal funding for Hemisphere ends
Seventeen years after it began.
- October 16, 2024Housing & Private Equity
Residents of a Brunswick, Maine park buy it for $26.3 million
The 278 home Linnhaven Mobile Home Park became Blueberry Fields Cooperative, the first purchase under Maine's 2023 opportunity to purchase law. Financing came from a MaineHousing loan and grant, a community loan fund, a bank, and the town.
- October 25, 2024Congress, Elections & Speech
First presidential apology for the boarding schools
A sin on our soul.
- November 7, 2024Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Virginia auditors put the data center tax exemption at 48 cents on the dollar
JLARC reported the exemption cost $683 million in fiscal 2023, the largest incentive in the state.
- November 13, 2024Surveillance & Privacy
FBI confirms Salt Typhoon: call records, private communications, and the wiretap system
At least eight carriers, then nine.
- December 1, 2024Congress, Elections & Speech
Biden pardons his son for eleven years of anything
After repeated pledges that he would not.
- December 3, 2024Surveillance & Privacy
FTC: a broker gathered 17 billion location signals a day from a billion phones
Sold to agencies and others; barred from selling sensitive locations in January 2025.
- December 4, 2024Surveillance & Privacy
Government advice after the hack: encryption is your friend
The hackers still inside the networks.
- December 5, 2024CIA, War & Covert Operations
House subcommittee: increasingly likely a foreign adversary is behind some injuries
And the agencies hindered the inquiry.
- December 18, 2024Housing & Private Equity
Senate Budget Committee: home insurance non-renewals spreading
249 million policies; $1 trillion of coastal property at risk of becoming unmortgageable.
- December 19, 2024Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Energy Department lab reports data centers at 4.4 percent of national electricity
176 terawatt hours in 2023, up from 76 in 2018, with 6.7 to 12 percent projected for 2028.
- 2025January 15, 2025Surveillance & Privacy
FCC rules the 1994 law requires carriers to secure their networks
Rescinded November 20, 2025.
- January 16, 2025Housing & Private Equity
Treasury: premiums 8.7 percent above inflation, the riskiest fifth dropped 80 percent more often
246 million policies, 2018 to 2022.
- January 17, 2025Health, Food & Regulators
HHS debars EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak for five years
A lack of business integrity and business honesty.
- January 19, 2025Health, Food & Regulators
Fauci pardoned for anything from January 1, 2014 to the date of the pardon
He said he had committed no crime.
- January 20, 2025Congress, Elections & Speech
Biden pardons Milley, Fauci, the January 6 committee, and five relatives in the morning
No one charged with anything.
- January 20, 2025Congress, Elections & Speech
Trump pardons or commutes about 1,500 January 6 convictions in the afternoon
Fourteen commuted by name; all others pardoned; pending cases dismissed.
- January 31, 2025Taxes & Government Spending
Postal regulator: the 2025 standards will downgrade service for half of ZIP code pairs, worst for rural areas
Mail more than 50 miles from a hub gets an added day.
- March 2025Housing & Private Equity
BlackRock-led group agrees to buy the Panama Canal ports for $23 billion
The ports at Balboa and Cristobal sit at the two ends of the canal. The deal was announced as returning the ports to American control. It is a private purchase by an asset manager.
- March 5, 2025Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Harvard review finds utility deals with data centers hidden from the public
Nearly 50 proceedings reviewed. When a data center underpays for what is built for it, the rest of the customers cover the difference.
- March 6, 2025Housing & Private Equity
South Dakota bans eminent domain for carbon pipelines
Iowa's governor vetoes the same bill in June.
- March 20, 2025Surveillance & Privacy
Executive Order 14243: end the walls between agency records
Unfettered access to every state program's data.
- April 2, 2025Wall Street & Banking
Tariffs on nearly every country by emergency proclamation
Average rate reaches 17.9 percent by October, the highest since 1934.
- April 2, 2025Congress, Elections & Speech
Emergency declared over the trade deficit; tariffs on nearly every country
Struck down February 20, 2026; the emergency still listed.
- April 15, 2025Wall Street & Banking
Consumer bureau asks a judge to vacate its own $8 late fee cap
Granted the same day.
- May 15, 2025Surveillance & Privacy
Coinbase: support agents bribed, government ID images taken
A $20 million demand refused; the IDs were already gone.
- May 15, 2025Police, Courts & Prisons
Chicago agrees to pay $48 million to the three men convicted on the impossible confession
The detective who took it had a documented pattern.
- May 16, 2025Taxes & Government Spending
Moody's removes the last Aaa rating
Successive administrations and Congress have failed to agree.
- May 20, 2025Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Maryland orders separate tariffs for data centers
The Next Generation Energy Act, chapter 625, signed by the governor.
- May 21, 2025Police, Courts & Prisons
GAO: inspectors rated 238 of 241 detention facilities acceptable while finding 5,493 deficiencies
The department needs to define goals and measures for its inspections.
- June 7, 2025Police, Courts & Prisons
4,000 Guard and 700 Marines sent into Los Angeles
Found a serious violation of the Posse Comitatus Act on September 2.
- June 16, 2025Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Oregon's POWER Act signed
House Bill 3546 requires a separate rate class and contracts for facilities over 20 megawatts.
- June 25, 2025Health, Food & Regulators
FDA requires an expanded myocarditis warning on the mRNA vaccines
About 27 cases per million doses in males 12 to 24.
- June 27, 2025Surveillance & Privacy
Supreme Court upholds ID checks to read
Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton, 6 to 3.
- June 27, 2025CIA, War & Covert Operations
Senate declines to require authorization after the Iran strikes
Three nuclear sites bombed June 21 to 22.
- July 1, 2025Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Senate strikes the ten year ban on state AI laws, 99 to 1
The provision had been tied to a $500 million broadband fund. Senator Tillis cast the one vote to keep it.
- July 4, 2025Taxes & Government Spending
Public Law 119-21 signed
$3.4 trillion in deficits, 10 million more uninsured, $1,200 a year from the bottom tenth, $13,600 to the top.
- July 4, 2025Housing & Private Equity
$2.4 billion in Neighborhood Access and Equity grants rescinded
Syracuse, Portland, Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Jacksonville.
- July 7, 2025CIA, War & Covert Operations
Justice Department: no Epstein client list, no further disclosure warranted
Five months after the attorney general said it was on her desk.
- July 7, 2025Health, Food & Regulators
VA to shed nearly 30,000 employees by September 30
484,000 in January to about 455,000.
- July 2025Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Ohio regulators make data centers pay for 85 percent of what they reserve
AEP Ohio's tariff for customers over 25 megawatts, for up to 12 years, with exit fees.
- July 22, 2025Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
PJM auction clears at the price cap, $16.1 billion
$329.17 per megawatt day. The monitor found data center load added $7.27 billion.
- July 24, 2025Housing & Private Equity
Executive Order 14321: undo the limits on civil commitment, fund the cities that enforce camping bans
Federal support for housing first ended.
- August 6, 2025Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Tucson City Council votes unanimously against Project Blue
The 290 acre campus tied to Amazon would have used about 6 percent of the city's water. The developer went ahead on county land.
- August 6, 2025Surveillance & Privacy
ICE asks the IRS for 1.3 million addresses; gets 47,000
Found contrary to law on November 21.
- August 7, 2025Surveillance & Privacy
Order on debanking names the January 6 search terms
The reporting system itself left untouched.
- August 20, 2025Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Louisiana approves three gas plants for Meta, 4 to 1
2,262 megawatts at $3.2 billion, a 15 year contract with sealed terms, and a $550 million line.
- August 22, 2025Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Federal government takes a 9.9 percent stake in Intel
$8.9 billion paid with CHIPS grants and a Defense Department program, with no vote in Congress.
- August 26, 2025Surveillance & Privacy
Whistleblower: Social Security file on 300 million people copied to an outside cloud
The agency's security staff had called unauthorized access catastrophic.
- August 28, 2025CIA, War & Covert Operations
Judge lets the 9/11 families' case against Saudi Arabia go to trial
Evidence that two Saudi employees helped the hijackers within the scope of their jobs.
- August 29, 2025Congress, Elections & Speech
Texas signs a mid-decade map for five more Republican seats
Requested by the president in July.
- September 2, 2025CIA, War & Covert Operations
First boat strike; two survivors killed by a second missile
69 strikes and 227 killed by August 2026.
- September 12, 2025Health, Food & Regulators
Senate committee releases Fauci emails: please delete this e-mail after you read it
To the NIH director in February 2020 and to his chief of staff in July.
- September 17, 2025Congress, Elections & Speech
FCC chairman: the easy way or the hard way
A late night program off the air within hours.
- September 23, 2025Police, Courts & Prisons
Two senators: ten people died in ICE custody in the first half of 2025, the highest since 2018
They ask the department for a plan to prevent further deaths.
- September 24, 2025Housing & Private Equity
Maine gives park residents a right of first refusal when their park is sold
LD 1145 lets a resident cooperative match any third party offer. LD 1016 puts a transfer fee on purchases by buyers worth more than $50 million and uses it to help at risk residents. Two more laws remove taxes on sales to residents.
- September 25, 2025Congress, Elections & Speech
NSPM-7 lists anti-capitalism and support for overthrow as indicators of violence
The terrorism task forces, the Treasury, and the IRS assigned to it.
- Fiscal year 2025Police, Courts & Prisons
97.7 percent of people convicted in federal court in 2025 pleaded guilty
1,563 of 66,662 went to trial.
- October 3, 2025Surveillance & Privacy
Discord: 70,000 government ID photographs taken from a support contractor
Sent in to prove age; kept by the contractor.
- October 21, 2025Congress, Elections & Speech
Trump pardons the founder of Binance
Blagojevich in February, Milton in March, Santos in October.
- October 21, 2025CIA, War & Covert Operations
Arizona sues the Speaker to seat the member whose signature completes the Epstein petition
Johnson: it has zero to do with Epstein.
- October 30, 2025Congress, Elections & Speech
Senate votes 51 to 47 to end the global tariff emergency
The House, under its own rule, does not vote.
- November 4, 2025Congress, Elections & Speech
California's Proposition 50 passes, 64.4 percent, for five Democratic seats
7,453,339 to 4,116,998.
- November 6, 2025Health, Food & Regulators
Boeing criminal case dismissed for $1.1 billion
The judge: it fails to secure the necessary accountability.
- November 10, 2025Taxes & Government Spending
Fiscal 2025: corporations paid 8.6 percent of federal receipts
Individuals paid $2,656 billion in income tax and $1,748 billion in payroll tax; customs duties up 153 percent.
- November 12, 2025Health, Food & Regulators
43 day shutdown ends with a promise of a vote on the health credits
The vote fails in December.
- November 12, 2025CIA, War & Covert Operations
Grijalva sworn in fifty days after her election; the petition reaches 218
No signer could withdraw; the vote could not be stopped.
- November 14, 2025Police, Courts & Prisons
A citizen journalist is arrested at the Union City board of education after an argument with a police lieutenant
The report says he struck the officer; he says his video shows otherwise.
- November 16, 2025CIA, War & Covert Operations
The president reverses: House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files
Two days before the vote, after four months of calling it a hoax.
- November 18, 2025Health, Food & Regulators
Purdue bankruptcy plan confirmed; Sacklers to pay up to $7 billion over 15 years
Opt in releases after the Supreme Court struck the first plan.
- November 18, 2025CIA, War & Covert Operations
House votes 427 to 1 to release the Epstein files
Signed the next day. Deadline December 19.
- November 20, 2025Police, Courts & Prisons
Judge finds the Guard deployment to Washington unlawful
2,188 troops; the government given three weeks.
- November 20, 2025Surveillance & Privacy
FCC rescinds the network security ruling, 2 to 1
Gomez: less protected than the day the breach was discovered.
- November 25, 2025Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Virginia approves Dominion's Chesterfield gas plant and a rate class for data centers
944 megawatts at $1.47 billion; residential bills up $11.24 a month in January 2026.
- December 4, 2025Congress, Elections & Speech
Supreme Court lets the Texas map stand, 6 to 3
The district court had found a racial gerrymander.
- December 9, 2025Housing & Private Equity
Senator Hassan opens an investigation into six corporate owners of manufactured home parks
Letters went to Alden Global Capital, Patriot Holdings, Philips International, Legacy Communities, BoaVida Group, and Sun Communities asking for rent setting policies, fees, maintenance records, evictions, and lease agreements, due January 5, 2026.
- December 11, 2025Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Executive Order 14365 signed against state AI laws
A Justice Department task force to sue states, and broadband money conditioned on states dropping the laws.
- December 11, 2025Congress, Elections & Speech
Indiana Senate rejects a new map, 31 to 19
21 Republicans voted no.
- December 16, 2025Taxes & Government Spending
GAO: $118 billion in postal losses since 2006, with cash possibly gone in 2026
The stamp had reached 78 cents, on the way to 82.
- December 19, 2025Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Georgia certifies 9,985 megawatts of new generation, 80 percent for data centers
Unanimous vote. Five new gas units, and more than 1,000 miles of transmission line to carry it.
- December 19, 2025Taxes & Government Spending
Pentagon fails its eighth audit in eight
26 material weaknesses on $4.65 trillion in assets.
- December 19, 2025CIA, War & Covert Operations
Deadline day: 3,965 files released, at least 550 pages blacked out in full
The department says the rest will follow.
- December 22, 2025CIA, War & Covert Operations
Redactions in the Epstein release undone with copy and paste; files taken down without notice
One photograph removed and restored the same day.
- December 23, 2025Police, Courts & Prisons
Supreme Court refuses to let the Guard deploy to Chicago
Regular forces means the military; no authority shown.
- December 23, 2025Surveillance & Privacy
Judge blocks Texas app store age law; appeals court revives it in June
Every user's age, every minor's download.
- December 30, 2025Surveillance & Privacy
Judge allows Medicaid to share basic data on some enrollees with ICE
The agency then sent millions more, including citizens, and the sharing was paused.
- 2025Housing & Private Equity
Private equity backed companies accounted for 54 percent of the largest bankruptcies of 2025
71 percent in consumer discretionary, about 60 percent in manufacturing, 44 percent in healthcare. The same firms are refinancing the debt through about $3 trillion of private credit that regulators do not have visibility into.
- December 31, 2025Health, Food & Regulators
Enhanced premium credits expire
Three million fewer people insured by February.
- 2025Surveillance & Privacy
Secret court: 287 applications, 4 denied in full
FBI searches on Americans up 34 percent.
- 2025Taxes & Government Spending
Social Security cost exceeds income by $160.2 billion
Reserves $2,561.3 billion; empty in the fourth quarter of 2032.
- 2026January 3, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
Venezuela bombed; its president seized
47 Venezuelan soldiers and 32 Cubans reported killed. No authorization.
- January 3, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
A man dies while being restrained by ICE officers at Camp East Montana; the death is ruled a homicide
Asphyxia; the first such ruling for an ICE death linked to staff in at least 15 years.
- January 4, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
Review protocol: redact every federal employee's name below Senate confirmation and every woman's face
Categories the law does not contain.
- January 7, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
ICE agent kills Renee Good in Minneapolis
Three shots in under a second into a vehicle turning away. No charge.
- January 8, 2026Health, Food & Regulators
House passes a three year extension of the health credits, 230 to 196
The Senate never takes it up.
- January 8, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
The Epstein law's sponsors ask for a special master
125,575 pages released; two million documents said to remain.
- January 14, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
Venezuela war powers resolution fails 51 to 50
Two senators reverse; the vice president breaks the tie.
- January 16, 2026Congress, Elections & Speech
Student loan garnishment delayed
More than 5 million in default; the debt remains.
- January 21, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
Judge declines to put the Epstein release under a special master
The department keeps the review.
- January 24, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
Border Patrol agents kill Alex Pretti in Minneapolis
Ten shots in six seconds after his gun had been taken from him. No charge.
- January 28, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
Chief judge: ICE violated 96 court orders in Minnesota in a month
Later 209. Criminal contempt threatened.
- January 30, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
Justice Department releases 3.5 million records and declares compliance
Six weeks after the deadline.
- February 5, 2026Housing & Private Equity
Judge orders State Farm to hand over its claims documents in seven days
Oklahoma's attorney general: a pattern of coordinated effort.
- February 14, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
Homeland Security funding lapses for 75 days
Ended April 30 with the immigration agencies left out of the bill.
- February 14, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
The list of officials and politically exposed persons arrives, without saying who did what
Omissions unintentional given the volume and speed.
- February 18, 2026Wall Street & Banking
Union membership at 10.0 percent, 5.9 percent in the private sector
20.1 percent in 1983.
- February 20, 2026Wall Street & Banking
Supreme Court: the emergency law does not authorize tariffs
6 to 3. At least $160 billion collected. Refunds unresolved.
- February 27, 2026Housing & Private Equity
GAO: premiums up 25 percent or more after inflation in high risk areas
3 percent nationally; the state pools of last resort growing.
- February 28, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
United States and Israel go to war with Iran
The supreme leader killed in the first strikes. No declaration.
- March 4, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
Senate rejects an Iran war powers resolution 47 to 53
Six Americans had been killed in Kuwait on March 1.
- March 4, 2026Health, Food & Regulators
Indiana's supreme court holds a hospital system immune under the PREP Act for a ventilated COVID-19 patient's death
The ventilator was a covered countermeasure; the estate's claim that a bed sore went untreated was barred.
- March 8, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
60 Minutes: a former CIA officer says the agency's injury inquiry was told to bring down the temperature
And sources describe a microwave weapon bought from a Russian network in 2024.
- March 10, 2026Health, Food & Regulators
2,531 Camp Lejeune settlements approved since 2023
Of 409,910 claims.
- March 11, 2026Congress, Elections & Speech
The president in Hebron, Kentucky: Massie has got to be voted out of office as soon as possible
Complete and total endorsement of the challenger.
- March 18, 2026Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Microsoft ends nondisclosure agreements with local governments
The company said it would find its active NDAs and terminate them.
- March 24, 2026Housing & Private Equity
At least $82 billion forfeited since 2000
Half of cash seizures under $1,678; 71 percent of federal forfeitures never see a judge.
- March 25, 2026Wall Street & Banking
France discloses it sold its last 129 tonnes of gold in New York and bought bars in Europe
All 2,437 tonnes now in France; the governor says it was not political.
- March 30, 2026Housing & Private Equity
Congressman Frost introduces a bill to help residents buy their own manufactured home parks
H.R. 8047, the Promoting Residential Ownership of Manufactured Home Communities Act, is meant to give residents around the country the chance the Brunswick, Maine residents had.
- Spring 2026Wall Street & Banking
Private credit funds cap withdrawals at 5 percent
Morgan Stanley, Apollo, BlackRock, Blue Owl.
- April 2, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
Attorney general removed
The Epstein files among the reasons reported.
- April 6, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
3,767 people cleared of crimes they did not commit since 1989, more than 36,000 years lost
The known wrongful convictions, not counting the ones never proven.
- April 17, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
29 deaths in ICE custody since October, past the record of 28 set in 2004
The detention population had passed 65,000, most with no conviction.
- April 21, 2026Congress, Elections & Speech
Virginia voters approve a redistricting amendment, 51.69 to 48.31
Voided by the state supreme court May 8, 4 to 3.
- April 22, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
An Essex County grand jury indicts Leonard Filipowski on one count of third-degree aggravated assault on an officer
The grand jury heard the lieutenant and no one else.
- April 29, 2026Surveillance & Privacy
House passes 18 month Section 702 extension without a warrant vote, 235 to 191
The Senate does not act.
- April 29, 2026Health, Food & Regulators
Judge sentencing Purdue: your government failed you
$5.5 billion on paper; $225 million to be collected.
- April 29, 2026Congress, Elections & Speech
Louisiana v. Callais narrows the Voting Rights Act, 6 to 3
Kagan: a nullity of Section 2.
- May 1, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
The 60 days run out; the president declares the Iran action terminated
The fighting continues.
- May 4, 2026Congress, Elections & Speech
Florida signs a map for up to four more Republican seats
Tennessee follows May 7; Louisiana May 29.
- May 6, 2026Surveillance & Privacy
Utah's app store age verification takes effect
Every account, four age categories, a parent's consent for every download.
- May 7, 2026Wall Street & Banking
Trade court strikes the 10 percent replacement tariff
Relief for three importers; the tariff stays for everyone else.
- May 8, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
The War Department posts its first release of UAP files under the President's February order
Six releases and 447 records by September 18, 2026, 78 of them titled Unresolved UAP Report; all of them are on this site.
- May 13, 2026Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Gallup: 71 percent oppose a data center in their area
48 percent strongly. More opposition than to a nuclear plant.
- May 13, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
CIA officer tells Senate the agency took back 40 boxes of JFK and MKUltra files
Luna gives the agency 24 hours. The DNI's office says there was no raid.
- May 18, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
Hennepin County charges an ICE agent with assault and a false report
The first charge from the Minneapolis operation. None for the two deaths.
- May 19, 2026Housing & Private Equity
Michigan Senate passes a six bill rewrite of the state's mobile home law
Senate Bills 934 through 939 add enforcement against unlicensed park operators, a modern eviction process, a right of first negotiation for residents when a park is sold, and financing for resident ownership. The first package, drafted in 2021, died in the Senate in 2022 after two Havenpark executives gave $358,000 to the industry's PAC. The bills go to the House.
- May 19, 2026Congress, Elections & Speech
Thomas Massie loses his primary, 57,822 to 47,539
The most expensive House primary in the country's history.
- May 27, 2026Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Ohio pauses its data center tax exemption
The exemption had cost $1.6 billion in 2025 against a $136 million forecast. Existing agreements continue.
- May 28, 2026Surveillance & Privacy
Google Play begins grading the age of every new Texas account for app developers
Top grade: government ID and a selfie, or a digital ID.
- May 29, 2026Housing & Private Equity
HUD releases the January 2025 count: 745,652 homeless
266,320 unsheltered; released sixteen months after the count.
- 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
DNA testing has cleared more than 600 people since 1989
Eyewitness misidentification was in 69 percent of the first 375.
- June 4, 2026Congress, Elections & Speech
At least 97 January 6 pardon recipients charged with other crimes
41 violent, by Lawfare's count.
- June 5, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
The Pentagon's office writes that 40 percent of what six federal agents saw near a nuclear site in 2023 has no plausible explanation
A red orb stationary for hours is physically incompatible with any known flare; Unrecognized Technology (Pending); unsubstantiated by technical data.
- June 9, 2026Taxes & Government Spending
Trustees: the retirement fund is empty in the fourth quarter of 2032
78 percent of benefits payable after.
- June 12, 2026Surveillance & Privacy
Section 702 expires; the collection continues to March 2027
First lapse since 2008.
- June 14, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
John Stockwell dies at 88
Found near his home in Austin after being reported missing the day before.
- June 17, 2026Health, Food & Regulators
VA inspector general: half of referrals miss the timeliness standards
Inside the department and in private care.
- June 23, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
Both houses vote to end the Iran war
A concurrent resolution; it does not bind the president.
- June 24, 2026Housing & Private Equity
Oklahoma sues State Farm under its racketeering law over the Hail Focus Initiative
Replacement-cost coverage sold, undisclosed standards applied.
- June 25, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
Human Rights Watch counts 39 deaths in ICE custody in 2025 and 13 more by mid-2026
The system it counts had grown to record size.
- June 29, 2026Surveillance & Privacy
Chatrie: a geofence request to Google is a search
Five justices, a sixth concurring; nothing said about purchase.
- July 1, 2026Congress, Elections & Speech
Grad PLUS ends; a thirty year repayment plan begins
Loans capped at $100,000 and $200,000.
- July 6, 2026Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Spartanburg County residents sue over a $3 billion data center approved as a minor development
Two applications, no planning commission review, no public meeting.
- July 8, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
Iran ceasefire declared over; 90 targets struck that night
Three Americans killed in Jordan two weeks later.
- July 11, 2026Housing & Private Equity
Ban on large investors buying single family homes becomes law
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law without the president's signature after passing the Senate 85 to 5 and the House 358 to 32 in June. Investors with 350 or more single family homes cannot buy more, starting 180 days after enactment. Build to rent and renovate to rent are exempt, and the seven year sale requirement in the Senate version was dropped.
- July 13, 2026Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
Meta's Louisiana campus grows to 5 gigawatts and $50 billion
Seven more gas plants, three batteries, and 240 miles of line, with a commission decision expected in December.
- July 13, 2026Surveillance & Privacy
Ninth Circuit: the $200 border reporting order likely unlawful
A shopkeeper who lost half her customers.
- July 17, 2026Surveillance & Privacy
ICE gave Medicaid data a court had withheld to Palantir
Deleted when found, the agency says.
- July 21, 2026CIA, War & Covert Operations
The office's report for fiscal 2025 finds nine cases meriting further analysis and sends 191 to an archive for lack of data
319 reports; 238 resolved as satellite flaring; a Navy report of about 100 airborne objects off Virginia still under investigation.
- July 22, 2026Congress, Elections & Speech
House passes a stock trading bill, 232 to 198, with no divestment and a voter ID rider
Not taken up by the Senate.
- July 23, 2026Wall Street & Banking
Replacement tariffs of 10 to 12.5 percent on 60 economies
Under a third statute, as the second expires.
- 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
At least 203 people sentenced to death since 1973 have been exonerated
About one for every eight people executed.
- July 28, 2026Taxes & Government Spending
Clay County approves a stormwater assessment on every developed property
$51 to $161.50 a year per home, on tax bills from November. Residents at the hearing read the ordinance back to the board.
- July 29, 2026Health, Food & Regulators
Fauci invokes the Fifth Amendment more than a hundred times under Senate subpoena
The pardon ended January 19, 2025.
- July 30, 2026Wall Street & Banking
Productivity up 93.2 percent since 1979, pay up 33.7 percent
The Economic Policy Institute's tracker, from government data.
- July 2026Congress, Elections & Speech
Manufacturing employment 12,611,000
About 19.6 million in 1979.
- July 31, 2026Housing & Private Equity
State regulators: home insurance non-renewals up 96 to 216 percent since 2018
Underwriting profit positive in three of four regions in 2024.
- August 4, 2026Congress, Elections & Speech
Missouri refuses to certify the referendum on its map
More than 300,000 signatures; the count not disclosed.
- August 6, 2026Health, Food & Regulators
Senate committee votes 8 to 5 to hold Fauci in contempt
To be certified to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
- August 7, 2026Wall Street & Banking
Credit card rate on balances at 22.15 percent
Household debt $18.8 trillion.
- August 7, 2026Taxes & Government Spending
National debt $39.885 trillion
Interest passed $1 trillion a year in fiscal 2025.
- August 10, 2026Health, Food & Regulators
Camp Lejeune payments pass $827 million
Offers past $1 billion.
- August 12, 2026Wall Street & Banking
What cost $1 in 1913 costs $33.73
Consumer price index 333.918, up 3.4 percent in a year.
- August 12, 2026Congress, Elections & Speech
Young workers in AI exposed jobs 19 percent below trend
Up from 15 percent a year earlier.
- August 2026Housing & Private Equity
State Farm's documents unsealed: wind and hail the greatest opportunity to impact enterprise results
$1.4 billion less paid out in a year; replacements per repair from 5.6 to 2.
- August 20, 2026Health, Food & Regulators
JBS co-owner Joesley Batista meets the President in the Oval Office about the beef tariff
The plan was announced the next day; the White House says no one conversation decided it.
- August 25, 2026Housing & Private Equity
Oklahoma's attorney general loses the runoff for governor by 2,020 votes
To a candidate who called his State Farm suit political.
- August 26, 2026Surveillance & Privacy
Governor DeSantis calls the license plate camera network out of control
He said he does not want Florida to become a surveillance state and that the legislature has to act. The same day a Kentucky officer was charged with using the system to track his ex-girlfriend 2,048 times.
- August 26, 2026Congress, Elections & Speech
Emergency declared for the bulk power system
The thirteenth since January 2025; 52 in effect.
- August 26, 2026Health, Food & Regulators
Proclamation opens the quota to 300,000 metric tons of foreign beef trimmings, about 660 million pounds
An estimated $650 million in tariffs waived for foreign sellers; cattle futures fell on the announcement.
- August 26, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
A Coweta, Oklahoma officer takes a 69-year-old driver stopped for driving on the shoulder to the ground; he leaves with a fractured arm and a traffic citation
The chief calls it a trip and fall and says the force was within policy; the officer stays on duty while the department's training officer reviews it.
- August 31, 2026Surveillance & Privacy
Florida orders Flock cameras off state roads within 30 days
The transportation department's memorandum applies to state highway rights of way. It does not reach the cameras on county and city roads, where most of them are.
- September 1, 2026Health, Food & Regulators
42,438 radiation compensation claims waiting
9,919 approved and $694.7 million paid under the 2025 law.
- September 1, 2026Surveillance & Privacy
153 million driver's license scans for sale on a Russian forum
Taken over a year from a company that checks IDs 21 million times a month.
- September 2, 2026Wall Street & Banking
Dutch central bank moves 86 tonnes of gold out of New York and Ottawa to London
In view of increasing geopolitical unrest, it says; New York's share cut from 31 to 18 percent.
- September 3, 2026Health, Food & Regulators
WHO's portal: the Gates Foundation its largest contributor for 2024 and 2025, above the United States
$761.1 million to $751.6 million.
- September 3, 2026Health, Food & Regulators
The European Union stops accepting Brazilian beef over antibiotic use, the week the U.S. quota opens
Brazil could not guarantee its cattle were raised without growth-promoting antimicrobials.
- September 3, 2026Congress, Elections & Speech
YouTube rewrites its sponsorship policy and lists weapons and ammunition among what branded content may not feature, for the whole video
YouTube says the rewrite brings no dramatic changes; a report from a program of the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, published 13 days later, says the change came while it was being written.
- September 15, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
The Union City case returns to Hudson County; a motion to dismiss is set for October 8
The judge: there's a conflict with the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office.
- September 16, 2026Health, Food & Regulators
Senator Johnson announces a roundtable on hospital COVID-19 protocols for September 28
Patients, families, doctors, and nurses, in the Kennedy Caucus Room.
- September 20, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
An ICE officer shoots a DoorDash driver in the back in North Austin after a traffic stop and a chase; the officer who fired had no body camera on
His partner turned his camera off during the chase. The man was released from the hospital into immigration custody the same day with the bullet in his back.
- September 28, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
A federal complaint charges the man the ICE officer shot with assaulting a federal officer, a count that carries up to 20 years
Its only account from the officers of why the shot was fired is what the officer told his partner by phone. The next day the judge in his immigration detention case canceled the hearing on it because of the charge.
- September 28, 2026Health, Food & Regulators
At a Senate roundtable, patients, relatives, nurses, and doctors describe how they say hospitals treated COVID-19 patients; no hospital or health agency takes part
Sen. Ron Johnson said his office had received 583 testimonies from 46 states and would post testimony from anyone with a different view.
- September 30, 2026Police, Courts & Prisons
A federal magistrate judge orders Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez held as a flight risk on a charge of assaulting the ICE officer who shot him; the agent who swore the complaint testifies no one on his team interviewed that officer
The judge found probable cause and said he was not a danger to the community. The same day ICE told its officers not to chase vehicles and to wear and activate body cameras at every vehicle stop.
Stories (79)
- 1988 to 2021How the Federal Reserve Hired BlackRock to Run the 2008 and 2020 BailoutsIn 2008 the Federal Reserve Bank of New York gave BlackRock the contracts to manage the toxic assets of Bear Stearns, AIG, and Citigroup, without competitive bidding, while BlackRock was one of the largest shareholders in the banks being rescued. In 2020 the Fed hired the same firm to buy corporate bonds, including bonds of companies BlackRock owns large stakes in.Wall Street & Banking
- 1992 to 2026Pfizer's Record: The $2.3 Billion Fraud Guilty Plea, the Nigerian Drug Trial, and the 2020 COVID Vaccine ContractIn 2009 a Pfizer subsidiary pleaded guilty to a felony and the company paid $2.3 billion, the largest health care fraud settlement in the Justice Department's history, for selling drugs for uses the FDA had refused to approve, while, in the prosecutor's words, it was in his office settling the same conduct by a company it had just bought. In 1996 it tested an antibiotic on 200 Nigerian children during a meningitis epidemic without consent, eleven of them died, and a State Department cable later recorded that it hired investigators to dig up dirt on the Nigerian attorney general to make the case go away. In 2012 it settled bribery charges in eight countries. In 2020 the United States agreed to pay it $1.95 billion for 100 million doses of a vaccine that carried immunity from suit under a federal declaration, and when a court was asked for the trial data, the FDA proposed a schedule that would have taken more than half a century. Comirnaty brought in $36.8 billion in 2021 and $37.8 billion in 2022, and the chief executive sold $5.6 million of stock the day the results were announced.Health, Food & Regulators
- 2005 to 2021How Private Equity Leveraged Buyouts Load Companies with DebtA private equity firm buys a company with borrowed money and puts the debt on the company, not on itself. The workers, the customers, and the pension funds that supplied the money carry the cost. A finance professor who spent decades in the industry and the president of a teachers' union explain where the money goes.Housing & Private Equity
- 1986 to 2026Three Men Cleared After 35 Years in Prison for a 1986 Chicago Fire Built on Beaten ConfessionsIn 1986 a fire killed two brothers in a Chicago house, and three young men were convicted of setting it and sentenced to life. The case against them was confessions a police detective, Victor Switski, obtained, which the men said were beaten out of them and false. The confessions described starting the fire by throwing a lit cigarette into gasoline. In 2005 an episode of the television show MythBusters, and a later study by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, showed that a lit cigarette cannot ignite gasoline. One of the men saw the episode in prison in 2007 and called his lawyer. At the hearing that followed, five other men testified that the same detective had beaten confessions out of them in unrelated cases, and a fire expert testified there was no valid scientific evidence the fire was arson. The three were released on July 13, 2022, after more than 35 years, and the city later agreed to pay $48 million.Police, Courts & Prisons
- 1953 to 2026Camp Lejeune's Poisoned Drinking Water (1953–1987) and 409,000 Veteran and Family ClaimsFrom 1953 to 1987 the drinking water at the Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina carried industrial solvents at up to 280 times the level now allowed. The base's own tests found the chemicals in 1980. The wells stayed in service until 1985 and 1987. The government's health agency has since found higher rates of kidney cancer, leukemia, and other diseases among the Marines and civilians who drank it, and birth defects and childhood cancers among the children born there. In 2022 Congress let them sue. 409,910 claims were filed. As of March 2026, 2,531 had been settled, and as of August 10, 2026 the government had paid $827 million.Health, Food & Regulators
- February 3, 2023 to 2024East Palestine, Ohio Train Derailment: The NTSB Found the Vinyl Chloride Chemical Burn Was UnnecessaryOn February 3, 2023 a Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio after a wheel bearing that the railroad's own trackside sensors had watched overheat for thirty miles finally failed. Three days later, on the railroad's advice, officials vented and burned five tank cars of vinyl chloride over the town. The National Transportation Safety Board found in June 2024 that the burn was not necessary, and that the railroad and its contractors had kept the chemical maker's dissent from the officials who made the decision. The railroad settled with the government for $310 million and with residents for $600 million, in exchange for the residents' right to sue over their health. No one was charged. The rail safety bill written after the wreck never passed.Health, Food & Regulators
- 2018 to 2026The 2023 Silicon Valley Bank Bailout and the $3 Trillion Unregulated Private Credit MarketIn March 2023 Silicon Valley Bank lost $40 billion of deposits in a day and expected $100 billion more the next morning. The government invoked an emergency exception to guarantee every deposit, including the $231 billion at two banks that the law did not insure, at a cost of $16.7 billion charged to 110 other banks. The Federal Reserve's own review found that the 2018 law rolling back the rules for banks of that size had reduced the standards, increased complexity, and promoted a less assertive supervisory approach. Since then the lending that used to be done by regulated banks has moved to private credit funds, now about $3 trillion, where two large borrowers collapsed in 2025 after hiding their debts and the funds began capping withdrawals.Wall Street & Banking
- April 5, 2023 to September 2026Farmington, New Mexico Police Shoot Homeowner Dead After Knocking on the Wrong AddressLate on April 5, 2023, three Farmington, New Mexico police officers sent to a domestic violence call at 5308 Valley View Avenue knocked at 5305, the home of Robert Dotson, 52, and shot him two seconds after he opened the door holding a handgun. The state declined to charge them, a federal judge granted them qualified immunity, and in 2026 the city's insurer paid his family $6 million with no admission of liability.Police, Courts & Prisons
- 2020 to 2024Federal Reserve Bank Presidents Trading Millions in Stocks and Bonds During the 2020 BailoutsIn 2020 the Federal Reserve decided what the markets would do, and two of the twelve regional bank presidents who sat in on those decisions were trading in the markets. The president of the Dallas Fed traded stocks and options in positions worth millions. The president of the Boston Fed bought into mortgage funds in the months the Fed was buying mortgage bonds. Both announced their departures in September 2021. The Fed's inspector general found in January 2024 that neither had broken the rules in force, that the rules did not sufficiently support public confidence, and that both had created the appearance of a conflict of interest. In September 2024 he found the Atlanta Fed president had broken the trading rules and created the appearance of acting on confidential information. He stayed in office.Wall Street & Banking
- 2014 to 2025344 Preventable Deaths in Federal Prisons, Broken Cameras, and the Death of Jeffrey EpsteinBetween 2014 and 2021, 344 people died in federal prisons by suicide, homicide, accident, or causes never determined. 187 of them killed themselves; more than half of those were alone in a cell, and in more than a third of the suicides the staff had not made the rounds or counts the rules required. Drugs and weapons that should not have been inside contributed to nearly one death in three. The Justice Department's inspector general found the same failures in the death of the most watched prisoner in the system, Jeffrey Epstein, in 2019: no cellmate as ordered, no rounds, cameras that did not work. Congress passed an oversight law in July 2024. As of March 2025, 12 of the bureau's 121 prisons had digital cameras.Police, Courts & Prisons
- 1970 to 2026The Bank Secrecy Act: 26 Million Yearly Bank Reports and Warrantless Treasury SearchesIn fiscal 2025 American banks filed 4.8 million suspicious activity reports and 21.5 million currency transaction reports with the Treasury, and 464 federal, state, and local agencies ran 63.9 million searches of the result. After January 6, 2021 the Treasury's financial crimes office gave banks search terms including MAGA and Trump and the names of sporting goods stores and asked for the matching customers, without a warrant. In 2025 the president ordered regulators to stop banks from closing accounts over politics, and the Treasury ordered money transfer shops on the border to report every cash transaction over $200; an appeals court found that order likely unlawful in July 2026.Surveillance & Privacy
- 1981 to 2026Alaska's Yukon King Salmon Collapse and Factory Trawler Bycatch in the Bering SeaThe Yukon River's king salmon run averaged nearly 400,000 fish a year from 1981 to 1997 and fell below 40,000 in 2022 and 2023. Fishing for Yukon kings has been closed since 2021, and in 2024 Alaska and Canada agreed to suspend it for seven years. In 2025 the pollock trawl fleet in the Bering Sea caught 19,773 king salmon and 151,334 other salmon as bycatch, and trawlers in the Gulf of Alaska caught 15,698 kings and 15,965 other salmon. NOAA's scientists tie the collapse mainly to a warming ocean, and a 2026 study found that bycatch had little effect on the one Yukon stock it examined. Many Alaskans blame the trawl fleet and the federal council that regulates it, where in 2024 four of the eleven voting members worked in or had financial ties to the trawl industry. The fight has become a central issue in Alaska's 2026 Senate race.Health, Food & Regulators
- 2018 to 2026How Intelligence Agencies and Police Buy Phone Location Data to Bypass the Fourth AmendmentIn 2018 the Supreme Court held that the government needs a warrant to get a person's phone location history from the phone company. The agencies then bought the same information from data brokers instead. The intelligence community's own 2022 review said the data covers nearly everyone, could identify every person who attended a protest, and could facilitate blackmail, stalking, harassment, and public shaming. Homeland Security's inspector general found three of its agencies ran at least 71,000 location queries without the privacy reviews their own rules required. A bill to close the loophole passed the House in 2024 and died in the Senate. In June 2026 the court held that a geofence request to Google is a search.Surveillance & Privacy
- 2000 to 2026Civil Asset Forfeiture: $82 Billion Seized by Police and Federal Agents Without Criminal ChargesUnder civil forfeiture the government sues the property, not the owner, and keeps it without convicting anyone. The Institute for Justice's count, published March 24, 2026, is at least $82 billion taken since 2000, $57 billion of it by the federal government. Half of the cash seizures in the states that keep records are under $1,678, less than a lawyer costs. In 2021 the FBI opened about 700 safe deposit boxes under a warrant that said it could not, and in 2024 the Supreme Court held that an innocent owner whose car was held for 20 months had no right to a prompt hearing.Housing & Private Equity
- 2007 to 2026Record US Homelessness (771,480 People) and the Supreme Court Ruling Making Sleeping Outside a CrimeOn a single night in January 2024 the government counted 771,480 people homeless in the United States, the most since it began counting, and in January 2025 it counted 745,652, of whom 266,320 were sleeping in places not meant for people. In June 2024 the Supreme Court held that a city may fine and jail people for sleeping outside even when it has no shelter to offer them. In July 2025 the president ordered the attorney general to seek the reversal of court rulings that limit locking people up for mental illness, directed federal money toward cities that enforce camping bans, and ended federal support for the policy of housing people first.Housing & Private Equity
- 1819 to 2024The Federal Indian Boarding School System (1819–1969): 417 Schools and 973 Documented Child DeathsFrom 1819 to 1969 the federal government ran or paid for 417 boarding schools whose purpose, in its own words, was the complete isolation of the Indian child from his savage antecedents. Children were taken from their families and sent to them, forbidden their languages, put to work, and, the government's own investigation found in 2024, physically, sexually, and emotionally abused. The investigation identified 18,624 children by name and at least 973 who died at the schools, and found 74 marked and unmarked burial sites at 65 of them. The government spent $23.3 billion in today's dollars on the system between 1871 and 1969. On October 25, 2024 a president apologized for it for the first time.Congress, Elections & Speech
- 1945 to 2024How BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street Vote Your 401(k) SharesBlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street hold a stake in nearly every listed company, paid for with pension and 401(k) money. The people whose money it is sign away their votes, the asset managers almost always vote with management, and the managers decide for themselves whether they count as passive investors.Wall Street & Banking
- 2021 to 2026Private Equity Takeovers of Michigan Mobile Home ParksAbout 22 million Americans live in manufactured homes. Since 2020 hedge funds and private equity firms have been buying the parks the homes sit in and raising the rent on people who cannot move. In Michigan the bill that would have limited it died after two executives gave $358,000 to the industry's PAC.Housing & Private Equity
- 1994 to 2025Salt Typhoon: How Chinese Hackers Used Congressionally Mandated Wiretap Backdoors Inside US Phone CarriersIn 1994 Congress required the phone companies to build interception into their networks so the government could listen with a court order. On November 13, 2024 the FBI confirmed that hackers affiliated with the Chinese government had been inside American carriers, had taken customer call records, had read and listened to the communications of people in government and politics, and had copied information from the systems that handle the government's own wiretap orders. By December a ninth carrier had been named. The government's advice to the public was to use encryption, which the FBI had spent a decade telling Congress was a danger. In January 2025 the FCC ruled that the 1994 law obliged carriers to secure their networks. In November 2025 it rescinded the ruling, 2 to 1.Surveillance & Privacy
- 2018 to 2026Surging Homeowners Insurance Cancellations and 82% Premium Hikes Across the USA house with a mortgage must be insured, and in a growing part of the country the companies will not sell the insurance. The Treasury's first study of the market, covering 246 million policies from 2018 to 2022, found premiums rising 8.7 percent faster than inflation, and households in the riskiest fifth of the country paying 82 percent more than the safest fifth and being dropped 80 percent more often. The Senate Budget Committee's data from nearly two dozen insurers found the cancellations spreading beyond Florida, California, and Louisiana. California's insurer of last resort went from 141,391 homes in 2015 to 555,868 in March 2025. State regulators' own analysis, published in July 2026, found company-initiated cancellations up between 96 and 216 percent since 2018 depending on the region, and the companies back in profit.Housing & Private Equity
- 1974 to 2026Fifty Years of Presidential Pardons for Family Members, Political Allies, and Campaign DonorsThe Constitution gives the president the power to pardon any federal offense, and for fifty years presidents of both parties have used it for the people closest to them. Ford pardoned Nixon for anything he might have done in office. Bush pardoned six Iran-Contra defendants twelve days before his former defense secretary was to go to trial. Clinton pardoned a fugitive whose former wife had given money to his party. Trump pardoned his campaign chairman, his national security adviser, his adviser Roger Stone, his former chief strategist Steve Bannon, and his son-in-law's father. Biden pardoned his son for anything he might have done over eleven years after repeatedly pledging that he would not, and then his brother and three other relatives on his last morning in office. Trump then pardoned or commuted the sentences of about 1,500 people convicted for January 6, 2021, and went on to pardon a governor, a congressman, and a cryptocurrency executive who had all been convicted of fraud or bribery.Congress, Elections & Speech
- 2019 to 2025BlackRock's $150 Billion Buyout of Airports, Ports, Pipelines, and Panama Canal TerminalsAfter its environmental investing turned out to be a way to charge higher fees, BlackRock bought Global Infrastructure Partners and with it $150 billion in airports, ports, pipelines, and water systems, then agreed to buy the ports at both ends of the Panama Canal. A former BlackRock executive and a researcher on public banking explain what the firm is doing and who carries the risk.Housing & Private Equity
- March 2025 to July 2026The 2025 Executive Order Merging IRS, Medicaid, and Social Security Records into One Federal SystemOn March 20, 2025 the president ordered every agency to give federal officials full and prompt access to all unclassified records and to secure unfettered access to the data of every state program that takes federal money. Within a year the IRS had handed immigration agents the addresses of about 47,000 taxpayers under an agreement a judge found contrary to law, Medicaid had sent the records of enrollees in every state to the same agents, a copy of the Social Security file on more than 300 million people had been placed in a cloud outside the agency's controls, and the agents' contractor had been given data a court had ordered withheld.Surveillance & Privacy
- 1976 to 202652 Active "National Emergencies": How Presidents Govern by Emergency Decree Under the 1976 ActIn 1976 Congress passed a law to end the practice of governing by emergency. It required the president to declare each emergency in writing, required each house of Congress to meet every six months to consider ending it, and let Congress end one by a vote. Since then presidents have declared 92 national emergencies. As of September 2, 2026, 52 of them are in effect. The oldest was declared against Iran on November 14, 1979. Congress has never ended one through the review it wrote into the law, and when both houses voted to end one in 2019, the president vetoed it. In 2025 and 2026 emergencies were declared for the border, for energy, for the tariffs on most of the world, for Brazil, Cuba, and Venezuela, and for the power grid. A declared emergency unlocks about 150 powers written into other laws.Congress, Elections & Speech
- 2023 to 2026Mandatory Government ID and Age Verification Laws for Websites and App StoresOn June 27, 2025 the Supreme Court upheld a Texas law that requires adults to prove their age with a government ID or other records before viewing websites the state classifies as harmful to minors, and noted that at least 21 other states had passed the same requirement. Texas then required every app store to verify the age of every user and get a parent's permission for every download by a minor. A district judge blocked that law as a rule that would require every bookstore to verify the age of every customer at the door; an appeals court let it take effect in June 2026. The identity check is becoming the price of reading.Surveillance & Privacy
- July 4, 2025The July 4, 2025 Tax and Spending Act: $4.1 Trillion Added to the Debt and Medicaid CutsPublic Law 119-21 was signed on July 4, 2025. The Congressional Budget Office's estimate is that it adds $3.4 trillion to the deficits of the next ten years, $4.1 trillion with the interest, and leaves 10 million more people without health insurance in 2034. Households in the lowest tenth lose $1,200 a year, mostly from Medicaid and food aid. Households in the highest tenth gain $13,600 a year, mostly from tax cuts. It raised the debt limit by $5 trillion, gave $45 billion for immigration detention and $150 billion to the Pentagon, and cut the consumer bureau's funding in half.Taxes & Government Spending
- 2024 to 2025How Household Electric Bills Are Paying $9.3 Billion for Data Center Power PlantsThe cost of generating capacity in PJM, the market that serves 65 million people in 13 states, went from $2.2 billion to $14.7 billion in one auction, and the market's independent monitor attributed $9.3 billion of that to data center load. In Louisiana and Virginia, utilities are building gas plants for Meta and for data centers under contracts the public cannot read. Maryland and Oregon passed laws in 2025 to put data centers in a rate class of their own.Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
- 2008 to 2025How Wall Street Bundled Single-Family Home Rents into BondsPrivate equity owns about 4 percent of the homes in the country, concentrated in five states, and the money behind it comes from public pension funds, university endowments, and foreign governments. The rent gets bundled into bonds. The performance fees get taxed at 20 percent. The lobbying doubled in four years.Housing & Private Equity
- June to December 2025Project Blue: The Secret Amazon Data Center Deal Rejected by Tucson VotersOfficials in Tucson and Pima County signed nondisclosure agreements about a 290 acre data center campus known only as Project Blue. Public records tied it to Amazon. It would have used 1,910 acre feet of water a year, about 6 percent of the city's supply, in a drought. On August 6, 2025 the city council voted unanimously to end the negotiations. The developer kept the county's land and got its power contract approved in December.Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
- August 2025Billions in State Tax Breaks for Meta, Amazon, and Tech Data CentersAs household electric bills climb past $300 to $600 a month, state tax records show billions in public subsidies for tech company data centers: a Louisiana sales tax exemption for Meta estimated at $3.3 billion, a Virginia exemption that returns 48 cents in state revenue for every dollar given up, an 85 percent property tax abatement in Abilene for 357 jobs, and three Oregon officials who voted tax breaks for Amazon while owning a fifth of the company laying its fiber.Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
- 2024 to 2026Meta's $50 Billion Louisiana Data Center: Shell Companies, $3.3 Billion in Tax Breaks, and 10 Gas PlantsThe company applied for a water permit in Richland Parish as Leley LLC, for a project called Sucre. Its sales tax exemption was approved in July 2024 without a public estimate of its value; a later estimate is $3.3 billion. In August 2025 the Public Service Commission approved three gas plants at $3.2 billion, with Meta committed for 15 years and the plants built to run for 30 or more. In July 2026 the project grew to 5 gigawatts and $50 billion, with seven more gas plants.Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
- 2019 to 2026Mid-Decade Gerrymandering (2025–2026): How Both Parties Redrew Congressional Maps to Eliminate Competitive SeatsCongressional districts are drawn after each census. In July 2025 the president asked Texas for five more Republican seats, and Texas drew them. California answered with five Democratic seats, approved by 64.4 percent of its voters. Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, and Tennessee redrew for Republicans; Utah's courts redrew for Democrats; Virginia's voters approved a Democratic map by 3.4 points and its supreme court threw the vote out. On April 29, 2026 the Supreme Court narrowed the Voting Rights Act, 6 to 3, and Louisiana and Alabama redrew again. By one count the number of competitive districts in the country fell from 28 to 13. The Supreme Court had held in 2019 that federal courts may not hear a claim that a map was drawn for party advantage.Congress, Elections & Speech
- 2021 to 2025FBI Investigations of Parents and Parishes, Social Media Censorship, and Terrorism WatchlistsIn 2021 the attorney general directed the FBI to meet with local officials about parents at school board meetings. In 2023 an FBI field office proposed developing sources inside Catholic parishes, and the inspector general found the memo had no evidence behind it. In 2024 a federal appeals court found that the White House and the FBI had coerced social media companies over what users could post, and the Supreme Court dismissed the case without reaching the question. In 2025 the chairman of the FCC told broadcasters they could do this the easy way or the hard way, and a late night program was off the air within hours. On September 25, 2025 the president signed a memorandum that lists anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, and support for the overthrow of the United States government as indicators of a violent ideology to be investigated by the terrorism task forces, the Treasury, and the IRS.Congress, Elections & Speech
- 2025Former CIA Officers Andrew and Jihi Bustamante on Prepublication CensorshipAndrew and Jihi Bustamante met on their first day at the CIA and worked together on an operation to expose a mole inside the agency. The CIA approved their account of it in 2019, reclassified all of it in 2022, and approved it again when they threatened a First Amendment suit. Asked about the country, they describe an executive that has grown stronger for sixteen years, a Congress that does not act, and a distrust of government they consider dangerous in the richest and best armed country in the world. He plans to leave before 2026. She has wanted to for years.CIA, War & Covert Operations
- 2018 to 2026Boeing 737 MAX Crashes: How the FAA Let Boeing Certify Its Own Planes and the DOJ Dropped Criminal ChargesTwo new Boeing 737 MAX jets crashed in October 2018 and March 2019, killing 346 people, because of a flight control system the company had not fully disclosed to the regulator, the airlines, or the pilots. A congressional investigation found a horrific culmination of faulty assumptions, a lack of transparency, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA, which had delegated much of the plane's certification to Boeing's own employees. The Justice Department charged the company with fraud and let it defer prosecution for $2.5 billion. Boeing broke the agreement, a door blew off another MAX in 2024, and in 2025 the government dropped the charge for $1.1 billion. A federal judge said the deal failed to secure the necessary accountability, and that he could not stop it.Health, Food & Regulators
- February 2025 to April 2026How the Justice Department, the White House, and the House Speaker Tried to Block the Epstein Files ReleaseThe attorney general said in February 2025 that the client list was on her desk. In July her department said there was no list and that no further disclosure would be appropriate. The president called the matter a hoax in July and again in November, and announced a primary challenge against the congressman who filed the petition to force a vote. The Speaker of the House kept the House out of session for six weeks and did not swear in the newly elected member whose signature would complete the petition, and said it had zero to do with Epstein. When the law passed anyway, 427 to 1, the department missed its deadline, claimed privileges the law does not mention, took files down after posting them, and declared itself in compliance six weeks late.CIA, War & Covert Operations
- 2025 to 2026The Epstein Files Transparency Act: How Congress Forced a 427–1 Vote and the DOJ Missed the DeadlineIn February 2025 the attorney general said the Epstein client list was sitting on her desk. In July 2025 her department said there was no such list and that no further disclosure would be appropriate. Two members of the House, one from each party, filed a petition to force a vote, and when it reached 218 signatures the House voted 427 to 1 to order every unclassified record released within 30 days, with redactions only to protect victims, and to forbid withholding for embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity. The president signed it on November 19, 2025. The department missed the deadline, released about 125,000 pages while saying two million documents remained, was asked by the bill's sponsors to be placed under a special master, and on January 30, 2026 released 3.5 million records and declared itself in compliance. The attorney general was removed on April 2, 2026.CIA, War & Covert Operations
- December 11, 2025Executive Order 14365: Ordering the Justice Department to Sue States Over AI LawsOn December 11, 2025 the president signed Executive Order 14365, which sets up a task force at the Justice Department to sue states over their artificial intelligence laws and lets federal agencies withhold broadband money from states that keep them. Five months earlier the Senate had voted 99 to 1 to strike a ten year ban on the same laws from the budget bill.Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
- 2006 to 2026How the 2006 Retiree Prefunding Law and 2021 Delivery Cuts Damaged the US Postal ServiceIn 2006 Congress passed a law, without a recorded vote in either chamber, that made the Postal Service set aside more than $5 billion a year to prefund the health benefits of retirees who had not yet retired, a burden no other agency carries. The payments drove most of the reported losses that followed, and in 2022 Congress repealed the mandate and canceled about $57 billion in missed payments. By then the service was slower and dearer. A 2021 plan lengthened first-class delivery from one to three days to one to five, the price of a stamp rose from 55 cents in 2019 to 82 cents in July 2026, and a 2025 change added a day to mail sent from any post office more than 50 miles from a regional hub, which the regulator found would fall hardest on rural areas. The service lost $9.5 billion in fiscal 2024 and $9.0 billion in fiscal 2025, and in April 2026 it stopped paying into its pension fund to keep cash on hand.Taxes & Government Spending
- 2025 to 2026Georgia Power's 1,000 Miles of New Transmission Lines and Eminent Domain for Data CentersGeorgia's largest utility plans more than 1,000 miles of new high voltage lines, up from 24 miles in its 2019 plan, to carry the 9,985 megawatts of new generation the state approved in December 2025, about 80 percent of it for data centers. The lines cross more than 330 private parcels. A homeowner who turns down the offer can have the land taken by eminent domain.Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
- 1995 to 2026The Pentagon Has Failed Eight Consecutive Audits on $4.65 Trillion in AssetsThe Department of Defense has failed every full audit it has ever had, eight in a row through fiscal 2025, on $4.65 trillion in assets. Its financial management has been on the Government Accountability Office's high risk list since 1995, and it is the only major agency that has never been able to account for its spending or its property. The day before September 11, 2001 its secretary said it could not track $2.3 trillion in transactions. National defense spending in fiscal 2026 is $1.05 trillion.Taxes & Government Spending
- 1980 to 2025Private Equity Bankruptcies and the $3 Trillion Private Credit MarketPrivate equity backed companies accounted for 54 percent of the largest bankruptcies of 2025. The industry owns a growing share of the homes, the hospitals, and the entry level jobs, and it has built a $3 trillion private credit market outside the view of regulators. The people coming of age now are the ones who inherit it.Housing & Private Equity
- 2026Economist Steve Keen and Konstantin Kisin on Housing Costs, Debt, and Political InstabilitySteve Keen, who predicted the 2008 crash, and Konstantin Kisin, who grew up in the Soviet Union, disagree on nearly everything. On The Diary of a CEO in 2026 they agreed on this: young people shut out of the housing market have no way to build capital and no reason to support the system, and where economic trouble meets social instability, unrest follows.Congress, Elections & Speech
- 2021 to 2026The 2026 Health Insurance Premium Spike After ACA Tax Credits ExpiredThe larger premium credits that had made insurance on the exchanges affordable since 2021 expired on December 31, 2025. Congress shut the government for 43 days over them in the fall, took a Senate vote that failed, passed a three year extension in the House in January by 230 to 196, and let it die. Enrollment fell from 22.1 million to 19.2 million, premium payments rose 58 percent for the people who stayed, deductibles rose $1,000, and the budget office expects more than 4 million more people uninsured by 2034, on top of the 10 million from the July 2025 law.Health, Food & Regulators
- 2022 to 2026Private Equity Rent Hikes in Florida Retirement ParksAt a 55 and over park in central Florida, Legacy Communities talked residents out of the inflation clause in their leases and the rent more than doubled. Down the road at a Sun Communities park the lot rent is up almost 50 percent since 2014. In Brunswick, Maine, residents facing the same thing bought their park.Housing & Private Equity
- June 2025 to April 2026Military Troops and Federal Agents Deployed to US Cities (2025–2026) and Two Fatal Shootings in MinneapolisIn June 2025 the president federalized 4,000 California Guard troops and sent 700 Marines into Los Angeles; a federal judge found in September that they had broken the law that bars the military from policing. Troops followed in Washington, where a judge found the deployment unlawful, and were ordered to Portland and Chicago, where the Supreme Court refused to let them go. In Minneapolis, during an operation of about 3,000 immigration agents, agents shot and killed two citizens in seventeen days: a mother of a six year old on January 7, 2026, and an intensive care nurse on January 24. The FBI took the evidence and refused it to the state. A federal judge counted 96 court orders the immigration agency had violated in the state in one month. Congress let the Department of Homeland Security go unfunded for 75 days over it.Police, Courts & Prisons
- 1865 to 2026Seven Government Conspiracy Claims Checked Against Declassified RecordsSeven widely circulated claims about secret government operations—a Bulgarian army dig for an alien object, a CIA time-travel program, a treaty between President Eisenhower and aliens, a chamber in Chaco Canyon seized by the NSA, the 1947 Maury Island flying saucer incident, a physicist called by a computer from the future, and John Wilkes Booth's escape—checked against declassified archives and historical records.CIA, War & Covert Operations
- December 2025 to March 2026How the Justice Department Redacted and Withheld 200,000 Pages of the Epstein FilesThe law allowed four kinds of redaction: victims' personal information, child abuse images, material that would jeopardize an active investigation, and images of death or injury. It forbade withholding anything for embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity. The Justice Department's first release, on the day of the deadline, had at least 550 pages blacked out in full, among them a 119 page grand jury file. Its final letter said about 200,000 pages had been redacted or withheld under privileges the law does not mention. Its review instructions told staff to redact the names of every government employee below the rank of Senate confirmation and the face of every woman except Maxwell. Some of the redactions could be undone with copy and paste.CIA, War & Covert Operations
- 2008 to 2026Right to Repair, Software Locks, and Manufacturers Controlling Products After You Buy ThemLouis Rossmann started fixing MacBooks in 2008 and spent fifteen years finding out why the parts were so hard to get. The answer led him from repair to ownership to surveillance: products that stop working when the maker stops supporting them, cars that report your driving to your insurer, phone carriers that sold your location to bounty hunters, and camera networks pushed through city councils by hiring the people on them.Housing & Private Equity
- February 2025 to July 2026The 2025–2026 Emergency Tariffs: $160 Billion Collected Before the Supreme Court Struck Them DownIn 2025 the president imposed tariffs on nearly every country under a 1977 emergency law that does not mention tariffs. By October the average tariff rate on what Americans buy from abroad was 17.9 percent, the highest since 1934, and the Budget Lab at Yale put the cost at $1,800 a household. Customs duties paid at the border rose 153 percent to $195 billion in fiscal 2025. On February 20, 2026 the Supreme Court held 6 to 3 that the law gave the president no such power. About $160 billion had been collected by then. Four days later a 10 percent tariff on everyone went on under a different law; a trade court struck that one in May; when it expired in July it was replaced under a third law, at 10 to 12.5 percent, on 60 countries.Wall Street & Banking
- 1950 to 2026Undeclared US Wars from Korea to the 2026 Strikes on Venezuela and IranCongress has declared war eleven times, in five wars, the last in 1942. Since then presidents have sent the country to war in Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, Libya, Yemen, and twice against Iran without one, and Congress has tried and failed, by tie vote, by veto, and by one vote, to stop them. Since September 2, 2025 the military has struck 69 boats in the Caribbean and Pacific and killed 227 people, including two survivors clinging to wreckage. On January 3, 2026 it bombed Venezuela and took its president. On February 28, 2026 it went to war with Iran, a war that has killed at least 13 American service members and, by one count, 1,701 Iranian civilians, and that both houses of Congress voted in June to end. The president said the war had already ended and kept fighting it.CIA, War & Covert Operations
- 2016 to 2026Havana Syndrome: Brain Injuries Among US Personnel and the CIA's InvestigationSince 2016 American diplomats, spies, and officers have reported being struck by something that damaged their hearing, balance, and memory. Two government panels found the most plausible cause was pulsed microwave energy. The intelligence agencies concluded in 2023 that a foreign attack was very unlikely. A CIA officer who joined the agency's investigation told 60 Minutes his unit's job was to bring down the temperature and to prove the cases were psychosomatic, and that in 2024 federal agents bought a portable microwave weapon from a Russian criminal network.CIA, War & Covert Operations
- 2006 to 2026How Cities and Counties Sign Secret NDAs Before Approving Data CentersErin Brockovich put up a map where people could report a data center near them and got 3,862 reports in a month from 49 states. The reports said the same thing: nobody was told, the officials had signed nondisclosure agreements, and the announcement was the construction. Elected officials in Louisiana have signed at least 54 NDAs since 2024. Microsoft ended its use of NDAs with local governments in March 2026.Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
- 1989 to 20263,760 Documented Wrongful Convictions Since 1989: Official Misconduct, Perjury, and 203 Death Row ExonerationsSince 1989 the United States has recorded more than 3,760 people convicted of crimes they did not commit and later cleared, who together lost more than 36,000 years in prison. Those are only the ones proven innocent. The National Registry of Exonerations finds that perjury or false accusation played a part in about 64 percent of the cases and official misconduct in about 61 percent, with forensic error, mistaken identification, and false confessions behind large shares of the rest. DNA testing has cleared more than 600 people. On death row, at least 203 people sentenced to die since 1973 have been exonerated, about one for every eight executed, and a peer-reviewed study estimated that at least 4.1 percent of everyone sentenced to death is innocent. Most states pay something for the lost years, the federal rate is $50,000 a year, and about half of exonerees receive nothing at all.Police, Courts & Prisons
- May to June 2026The 40 Boxes of JFK Assassination and MKULTRA Files Taken Back by the CIA in 2026In May 2026 a CIA officer told a Senate committee that the agency had taken back about 40 boxes of JFK assassination and MKUltra records that the Director of National Intelligence was preparing to declassify. Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna called it an internal coup and gave the agency 24 hours to return them. The DNI's office said no raid had happened. By the end of June the CIA said it was declassifying newly found MKUltra documents.CIA, War & Covert Operations
- March 2025 to May 2026How Rep. Thomas Massie Forced the Epstein Files Vote and Lost a $32 Million PrimaryThomas Massie, a Republican who has represented Kentucky's Fourth District since 2012, filed the petition that forced the House to vote on releasing the Epstein files, over the objection of his party's leadership and the president. The president had called for a primary challenge against him in March 2025 over his budget votes, endorsed a challenger in October before the challenger had entered the race, and flew to Kentucky in March 2026 to say Massie has got to be voted out of office as soon as possible. The primary became the most expensive House primary in American history, with over $32 million in advertising, more than $9 million of it from pro-Israel groups against Massie. On May 19, 2026 he lost, 57,822 votes to 47,539. He leaves office in January 2027.Congress, Elections & Speech
- 2022 to 2026Ohio's $1.6 Billion Data Center Tax Exemption and Soaring Grid Capacity CostsOhio's sales tax exemption for data centers cost the state $1.6 billion in 2025, almost twelve times the $136 million the Department of Taxation had forecast, and the governor paused new applications in May 2026. The price of capacity in the regional power market rose more than nine times in one auction. A group of rural Ohioans is gathering the 413,000 signatures needed to put a ban on large data centers on the 2027 ballot.Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
- 2025 to 2032Social Security's 2032 Insolvency Date, the $39.8 Trillion National Debt, and the US Credit DowngradeThe Social Security trustees reported on June 9, 2026 that the retirement trust fund will be empty in the last quarter of 2032, six years away, after which the program can pay 78 percent of the benefits it has promised. The federal debt passed $39.8 trillion in August 2026, net interest on it passed $1 trillion a year in fiscal 2025, and in May 2025 the last of the three rating agencies took away the country's top credit rating, saying that successive administrations and Congress have failed to agree on measures to reverse the trend. A worker who is 30 today has paid into a program that, on its own trustees' numbers, cannot pay what it owes by the time that worker is 36.Taxes & Government Spending
- 2008 to 2026FISA Section 702: 278,000 Improper FBI Searches of Americans and Warrantless SurveillanceSection 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act lets the NSA collect the communications of foreigners abroad from American companies without a warrant, and lets the FBI search what it collects for Americans' names. In 2022 a secret court found the FBI had run more than 278,000 improper searches in a little over a year. In 2025 the agencies targeted 349,823 people and the FBI searched for 7,413 Americans. The statute expired at midnight on June 12, 2026 for the first time since 2008 after the House refused a third short extension. The collection continues under court certifications that run to March 2027.Surveillance & Privacy
- 2026Data Center Electricity Demand, Water Consumption, and Telecom Network ControlData centers used 4.4 percent of the country's electricity in 2023, up from 1.9 percent in 2018, and could use 12 percent by 2028. The industry has negotiated through shell companies and nondisclosure agreements since Google's first data center in 2006. The government has claimed the whole telephone network for military use since 1961, and in 2011 a transit agency turned off cell service to stop a protest. Seven in ten Americans oppose a data center near them.Energy, Utilities & Data Centers
- 2020 to 2026Record Deaths in ICE Detention (2025–2026), Unreported Fatalities, and a Texas Restraint HomicideImmigration and Customs Enforcement is required to report every death in its custody. Its own page lists 22 deaths in fiscal 2020, then 5, 3, 4, and 12 in the years that followed, and 16 in fiscal 2025, though the page stops at August 31, 2025 and shows nothing for fiscal 2026 even as the agency kept issuing death notices. Outside counts run higher: one news organization reported 29 deaths in the fiscal year that began in October 2025, past the previous record of 28 set in 2004. Over the same period the detention population rose from about 39,700 at the end of the Biden administration in January 2025 to more than 65,000 by July 2026, most of them people with no criminal conviction, and a July 2025 law set aside about $45 billion to expand it. A medical examiner ruled one 2026 death in Texas a homicide caused by asphyxia during a physical restraint, which reporters called the first such ruling for an ICE detainee death linked to staff in at least fifteen years.Police, Courts & Prisons
- 1978 to 2026Why $1.65 Trillion in Student Loans Cannot Be Discharged in BankruptcyAmericans owe $1.651 trillion in student loans, and 7.83 percent of it was at least 90 days late in June 2026. A student loan is the one consumer debt Congress has made nearly impossible to discharge in bankruptcy, in laws passed in 1978, 1998, and 2005. In 2025 the government resumed taking the wages, tax refunds, and Social Security checks of the more than 5 million borrowers in default, then paused the garnishment in January 2026 while it built a new system. On July 1, 2026 the graduate loan program that let students borrow the full cost of a degree ended, the old repayment plans closed to new borrowers, and a new plan began that runs for thirty years.Congress, Elections & Speech
- March to July 2026The 2026 Law Barring Big Investors from Buying Single-Family HomesIn March 2026 Senator Elizabeth Warren said the country was short 7 million homes and the median first time buyer was 40 years old. That month the Senate passed a bill barring investors that own 350 or more single family homes from buying any more. It became law on July 11, 2026 without the president's signature, with the build to rent industry exempted.Housing & Private Equity
- 2012 to 2026Congressional Stock Trading and How Lawmakers Quietly Gutted the 2012 STOCK ActMembers of Congress may own and trade the stocks of the companies they regulate. In 2012, after a television report on their trading, Congress passed the STOCK Act 96 to 3 and 417 to 2 to require disclosure within 45 days. A year later it repealed the searchable database by unanimous consent, with no debate. The penalty for a late filing is $200. In 2020 four senators sold stock after a private briefing on the coming pandemic; the Justice Department closed every investigation without a charge. In 2025 members bought stock in the days around the president's tariff announcements. On July 22, 2026 the House passed a bill, 232 to 198, that bans new purchases but lets members keep what they hold, and attached a voter ID requirement that has stalled it in the Senate. No member of Congress has ever been prosecuted under the act.Congress, Elections & Speech
- July 2026Clay County, Florida Residents Challenge New Stormwater Property TaxIn July 2026 the Clay County, Florida commission approved a new stormwater assessment on every developed property in the unincorporated county, $51 to $161.50 a year, to show up on tax bills in November. At the public hearing, residents who maintain their own ditches read the ordinance aloud and asked the board what they were being charged for.Taxes & Government Spending
- 1984 to 2026Anthony Fauci's Record: Private Mask Emails, Wuhan Lab Grants, Preemptive Pardon, and Pleadings of the FifthAnthony Fauci ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years, was the highest paid employee of the federal government, and in 2020 became the government's voice on the pandemic. The government's own documents record: the email in which he told a cabinet secretary that masks are not really effective and that he did not recommend one, a month before he said the same on television and four months before he explained the advice had been about preserving supply; the herd immunity number he said he nudged up as the polls moved; the six-foot rule that, in his words to Congress, sort of just appeared; the Senate testimony that NIH had not funded a kind of research in Wuhan, and the NIH letter five months later describing an experiment there that EcoHealth failed to report; the audit, the suspension, and the debarment of the grantee; the pardon covering January 2014 to January 2025; the emails in which he wrote please delete this e-mail after you read it; and the day in July 2026 when, under subpoena, he invoked the Fifth Amendment more than a hundred times, after which a Senate committee voted to hold him in contempt.Health, Food & Regulators
- 2022 to 2026Entry-Level Jobs and Recent College Graduate Hiring Drop 19% in AI-Exposed FieldsStanford economists tracking payroll records from ADP report that employment of workers aged 22 to 25 in the jobs most exposed to artificial intelligence is now about 19 percent below where it would be if it had kept pace with their peers in less exposed work, a gap that was 15 percent a year earlier. Experienced workers show no comparable gap. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates was 5.6 percent in the second quarter of 2026 against 4.1 percent for everyone, and 42 percent of them were in jobs that did not require the degree. In July 2026 the country lost 23,000 jobs.Congress, Elections & Speech
- 2020 to 2026Unsealed State Farm Records Show a Nationwide Program to Cut Roof Replacements by $1.4 BillionIn August 2026 a judge in Comanche County, Oklahoma unsealed State Farm's internal documents in a lawsuit by a couple whose hail claim was denied. A 2020 planning document called wind and hail the greatest opportunity to impact enterprise results, roof claims being more than half of the company's weather payouts; a program began in Dallas County that June and was nationwide by the end of the year; managers had to approve any full roof replacement; each percentage point fewer replacements was calculated at $78.8 million a year; and the company recorded a $1.4 billion drop in payouts in the first year, with full replacements falling from 5.6 for every repair to 2. The attorney general sued the company under the state racketeering law on June 24, 2026. Two months later he lost the Republican runoff for governor by 2,020 votes to a candidate who had called the lawsuit political, who took donations from at least nine people listed as State Farm agents or employees, one of them a State Farm corporate lawyer listed as an agent, and who proposes to lower premiums by limiting lawsuits against insurers.Housing & Private Equity
- August 2026Flock License Plate Camera Networks and Police Warrantless TrackingOn August 26, 2026, Ron DeSantis said the Flock camera network that local police in Florida use to track vehicles is out of control and that he does not want the state to become a surveillance state. Five days later the state transportation department ordered the cameras off state roads within 30 days. The same week a Kentucky officer was charged with using the system to track his ex-girlfriend 2,048 times.Surveillance & Privacy
- 2007 to 2026The August 2026 Tariff Waiver for 660 Million Pounds of Foreign Beef Six Days After JBS Met the PresidentOn August 26, 2026 the President signed a proclamation letting 300,000 metric tons of foreign lean beef trimmings, about 660 million pounds, into the country over three months at the low in-quota tariff instead of the 26.4 percent rate that applies above the quota, on the stated ground that ground beef had become too expensive. The Wall Street Journal reported that six days earlier the co-owner of JBS, Joesley Batista, had met the President in the Oval Office and argued for exactly that; the announcement came the next day, and the White House said the decision "was not done as the result of any one conversation." JBS is the Brazilian company whose owners pleaded guilty in the United States in 2020 to bribery, admitted in Brazil to paying nearly 1,900 politicians, and bought their American packing plants with money from a Brazilian state bank. In 2017 the Agriculture Department had halted fresh Brazilian beef after refusing 11 percent of it at the border against 1 percent for the rest of the world. Since 2015 beef in the store has not had to say what country it came from. The week the quota opened, Europe stopped taking Brazilian beef over antibiotic use, the American cattle herd stood at its smallest since 1951, cattle prices fell, and the retail price of ground beef was $6.92 a pound.Health, Food & Regulators
- August 26 to October 1, 2026Coweta, Oklahoma Traffic Stop: Police Officer Breaks 69-Year-Old Driver's Arm Over Driving on the ShoulderOn the morning of August 26, 2026 a Coweta, Oklahoma police officer, Matt Rice, stopped James Rogers, 69, near State Highway 51 for driving on the shoulder. Rogers got out of his car, the officer told him to get back in and then to put his hands on the hood of the patrol car, and about a minute into the officer's body camera recording the two men went to the ground. Rogers left with cuts to his face and a fractured upper left arm. He was not booked into jail and, according to the police chief, was given a traffic citation. The chief, Mike Bell, says Rogers resisted, that the fall was "a trip and fall type situation," and that the officer followed department policy. The family says video from a nearby business shows the officer slamming him to the pavement, wants the officer fired, and has hired a lawyer. The department's review is being done by its own training officer, and the officer has stayed on duty while it goes on.Police, Courts & Prisons
- 2025 to 2026153 Million Driver's License Scans Leaked for Sale After Mandatory ID Checks at Retailers and WebsitesOn September 1, 2026 a service opened on a Russian criminal forum selling scans of more than 153 million American and Canadian driver's licenses, 10 million identification cards, 3 million passports and other travel documents, and 579,000 medical cards, each record with front and back photographs of the card and the date it was scanned. The data appears to come from IDScan.net, a New Orleans company that checks IDs for Hertz, Target, FedEx, and casinos, more than 21 million times a month at more than 20,000 locations. The sellers said they had been taking it for over a year. Every law that requires an ID to be shown to a company builds a database like this one. The laws now require it to buy a phone application, to open a website, to board a plane, and, on the Justice Department's own site, to read the Epstein files.Surveillance & Privacy
- 2013 to 2026Why European Central Banks Are Pulling Their Gold Reserves Out of the New York FedOn September 2, 2026 the Dutch central bank said it had moved about 86 tonnes of its gold out of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Bank of Canada to London between March and August, in view of increasing geopolitical unrest, so that the gold could be sold quickly in a crisis. France's central bank had already sold the last 129 tonnes it kept in New York and bought replacement bars in Europe. Germany, which keeps 1,236 tonnes in New York, is being pressed by its own economists and politicians to bring it home. The New York vault held over 12,000 tonnes of other countries' gold in 1973 and 6,331 tonnes in 2024. The countries that kept their gold in Manhattan because they trusted the United States are, one by one, deciding they would rather have it somewhere else.Wall Street & Banking
- September 3 to October 1, 2026YouTube's September 2026 Ban on Firearm Sponsorships Following Gun Control LobbyingOn September 3, 2026 YouTube replaced its policy on paid product placements with a policy on branded content, which it defines as content a creator makes under a brand's influence in exchange for payment, free products, or a sponsorship. The new page lists weapons and ammunition among the things branded content may not feature, says the rule covers the whole video, and says YouTube may remove videos that break it. YouTube told creators the rewrite brought no dramatic changes. In 2024 its spokespeople described its rule on gun sponsorships differently to two news outlets. Thirteen days after the announcement The Smoking Gun, a program of the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, published a report on gun channels and their sponsors that said the change came while the report was being written. Gun Owners of America says the change likely came from pressure by gun control groups and officials, as it says the 2024 changes did. The record shows who asked YouTube for changes before, who claimed credit, and what YouTube said about it. It does not show why YouTube made this one.Congress, Elections & Speech
- November 2025 to October 2026Union City, New Jersey Police Arrest and Felony Indictment of Citizen Journalist "Leroy Truth"On November 14, 2025 a citizen journalist named Leonard Filipowski, who records his encounters with officials under the name Leroy Truth, was arrested at the Union City, New Jersey Board of Education building after an argument with a police lieutenant, Glen Gaston. The police report says he "forcefully struck Lt. Gaston in the upper body area causing him to fall backwards." Filipowski says "it didn't happen" and that his own video of the arrest shows the lieutenant grabbing him and both men going to the floor. A grand jury in Essex County indicted him on April 22, 2026 for third-degree aggravated assault on an officer, after hearing the lieutenant testify that he was elbowed in the chest and tore a hamstring, according to a recording of the presentation published on YouTube. The case was moved out of Hudson County because of a conflict with its prosecutor's office and later moved back. A judge was to rule on a motion to dismiss on October 8, 2026, but the ruling was put off until December, and Filipowski says his next hearing is December 11.Police, Courts & Prisons
- 1947 to 2026What Declassified US Government Files Actually Show About UFOs (1947–2026)The Air Force took 12,618 reports of unidentified flying objects between 1947 and 1969 and could not explain 701 of them. Its own contractor found in 1955 that the better the witness, the more often the object stayed unknown. A CIA panel in 1953 recommended a public campaign of debunking, and the CIA wrote in 1997 that over half the reports of the late 1950s and 1960s were its own U-2 and OXCART flights, which the Air Force covered with misleading explanations. The Navy said in 2019 that the objects in its three videos were unidentified, the Director of National Intelligence told Congress in 2021 that it could explain one report in 144, and the Pentagon's office has since reported 757 cases in one year with 21 worth further study. A witness told a House committee under oath in 2023 that the government held recovered craft and non-human biologics; the Pentagon's 2024 review found no evidence that any investigation had ever confirmed a sighting as extraterrestrial. Congress wrote a disclosure law with eminent domain over recovered technology and passed only the part about records. In 2026 the War Department began posting its files, 447 records in six releases so far.CIA, War & Covert Operations
- 1947 to 2026The Unexplained UFO and UAP Cases in Air Force, CIA, DIA, and Pentagon RecordsThe Air Force closed 701 of its 12,618 cases as unidentified. The study it paid for in 1968 wrote that the McMinnville photographs were consistent with "an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic, disk-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial," and left four other cases unexplained. The Defense Intelligence Agency rated a 1976 report from Tehran, in which an F-4 lost its instruments and its weapons panel as it closed on an object, as confirmed by other sources and of major significance. An Air Force deputy base commander reported "unexplained lights" and a triangular metallic object in an English forest in 1980. The Navy has said since 2019 that the objects in its videos are unidentified. The War Department has released 78 records it titles "Unresolved UAP Report," and its office wrote in June 2026 that a red light six federal agents watched sit over a ridge for hours near a nuclear site "is physically incompatible with the burn-time and descent rate of any known military flare."CIA, War & Covert Operations
- September 20 to October 7, 2026Austin, Texas Traffic Stop: ICE Officer With Body Camera Off Shoots Unarmed Driver in the BackOn September 20, 2026 an ICE officer shot Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, a 28-year-old Venezuelan man who was delivering food for DoorDash, in the back in North Austin after a traffic stop over a deportation order and a car chase. The officer who fired had no body camera on, and the other officer turned his off during the chase, before the shot. The federal complaint's only account from the officers of why the shot was fired is what the officer who fired told his partner by phone afterward: that Garcés Pérez tried to hit him with his car. Garcés Pérez told the investigating agent that the officers' SUV struck his car and spun it around and that the officer then fired into it. He was charged with assaulting a federal officer, which carries up to 20 years. On September 30 a magistrate judge found probable cause for the charge and ordered him held as a flight risk, though not as a danger to the community, and the agent who swore the complaint testified that no one on his team had interviewed the officer who fired. The same day ICE told its officers not to chase vehicles and to wear and activate body cameras at every vehicle stop. The bullet was removed on October 1, eleven days after the shooting. Austin police, the Texas Rangers, and the Travis County district attorney are investigating the shooting, and as of October 2 the district attorney said DHS had given local investigators no footage or reports.Police, Courts & Prisons
- 2017 to 2026COVID-19 Hospital Payment Bonuses, Remdesivir Approval, PREP Act Hospital Immunity, and Pre-2020 Pandemic PlansIn 2020 Congress paid hospitals 20 percent more for every Medicare patient with a COVID-19 diagnosis and then added a bonus for new treatments, the Food and Drug Administration approved remdesivir seven days after the World Health Organization's own trial found it had little or no effect on death, the government told the public not to take ivermectin in words a federal appeals court later said it had no authority to use, and the March 2020 declaration that gave drugmakers immunity was read by a state supreme court in 2026 to shield a hospital from a patient's death. The plans written before the pandemic had said not to do most of what was done: the government's 2017 guidance said an exposed household in a severe pandemic should stay home for up to three days, and the WHO's 2019 guidance said quarantine of the exposed and contact tracing were not recommended in any circumstances. At a Senate roundtable on September 28, 2026, patients, relatives, nurses, and doctors described what they say was done to patients in hospitals; no hospital or health agency took part, and the senator's office has released no report on it.Health, Food & Regulators