New York Times: Visa Applicants’ Social Media Data Doesn’t Help Screen for Terrorism, Documents Show. “A disputed rule that forces millions of applicants for a visa to enter the United States to disclose their social media profiles to the government has done little to help screen for possible terrorists, newly disclosed documents show.”
Harvard Gazette: How federal missteps opened door to COVID misinformation. “Federal agencies helped set the stage for a wave of COVID-19 misinformation and conspiracy theories about its origins through early missteps in messaging about the virus and control measures, stumbles that fueled public distrust and hampered government efforts, according to New York Times health and science reporter Apoorva Mandavilli. For instance, public health agencies failed to speak clearly and in a timely fashion about how the virus could spread indoors, Mandavilli said in a talk sponsored by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Health Communication on Wednesday afternoon.”
Associated Press: The Great Grift: More than $200 billion in COVID-19 aid may have been stolen, federal watchdog says. “More than $200 billion may have been stolen from two large COVID-19 relief initiatives, according to new estimates from a federal watchdog investigating federally funded programs that helped small businesses survive the worst public health crisis in more than a hundred years.”
Reuters: FBI misused database for January 6 riot searches: court. “A US court found the FBI improperly searched for information in a US database of foreign intelligence 278,000 times over several years, including investigating suspects in the January 6 Capitol riots, according to a ruling.”
Honolulu Civil Beat: The Military’s Public Information Black Hole. “Since I started reporting in Hawaii in 2019, I’ve filed numerous FOIA requests with the military, primarily the Navy. Time and again, I have filed one with the hopes of shining a light on an issue of public importance only to have it fizzle into nothingness. The Freedom of Information Act, which is supposed to provide the transparency needed for a healthy democracy, is too often a pathway to a dead end that leaves us in the dark on critical issues. “
New York Times: White House Restores Arts Commission Dissolved Under Trump .”President Biden on Friday issued an executive order re-establishing the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, an advisory board that was dissolved five years ago after its members resigned in protest over President Donald J. Trump’s reaction to the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va.”
Washington Post: Where did the covid aid money go?. “t was the largest burst of emergency spending in U.S. history: two years, six laws and more than $5 trillion intended to break the deadly grip of the coronavirus pandemic. The money spared the U.S. economy from ruin and put vaccines into millions of arms, but it also invited unprecedented levels of fraud, abuse and opportunism. In a year-long investigation, The Washington Post is following the covid money trail to figure out what happened to all that cash. Here are our key findings.”
USA Today: Scribbled notes, classified materials and golf carts: Here’s how the millions of White House documents and artifacts should be archived. “Until the Watergate scandal during the Nixon administration, former presidents owned their records, although some worked with the National Archives to create presidential libraries. But when Richard Nixon, after resigning, wanted to destroy the White House tapes that incriminated him in the cover-up of the Watergate complex burglary, Congress passed a law giving control over presidential records to the National Archives at the end of an administration.”
Elon University: New book by Amanda Sturgill examines anonymous #AltGov social media movement. “The associate professor of journalism wrote ‘We Are #ALTGOV: Social Media Resistance from the Inside,’ highlighting how and why the #AltGov Twitter movement challenged official governmental statements to inform the American public.”
Route Fifty: Millions Still Lack Broadband Despite 5-year $44B Government Effort. “Despite tens of billions of dollars in funding and numerous efforts to improve internet availability across America, millions of Americans still lack broadband internet, according to a new audit from the Government Accountability Office. Released May 31, the audit posits reasons why the federal government’s broadband efforts haven’t been more successful.”
NPR: These 14 states had significant miscounts in the 2020 census. “For the 2020 census, all states were not counted equally well for population numbers used to allocate political representation and federal funding over the next decade, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released Thursday. A follow-up survey the bureau conducted to measure the national tally’s accuracy found significant net undercount rates in six states: Arkansas (5.04%), Florida (3.48%), Illinois (1.97%), Mississippi (4.11%), Tennessee (4.78%) and Texas (1.92%).”
The Guardian: Trump officials and meat industry blocked life-saving Covid controls, investigation finds. “Trump officials ‘collaborated’ with the meatpacking industry to downplay the threat of Covid to plant workers and block public health measures which could have saved lives, a damning new investigation has found.”
Associated Press: Next release of 2020 census data postponed until next year . “The next release of detailed data about U.S. residents from the 2020 census will be postponed until next year because the U.S. Census Bureau said Wednesday that it needs more time to crunch the numbers, including implementing a controversial method used to protect participants’ identities. The delays leave government budget-makers, city planners and researchers in a lurch because the detailed data are used for planning future growth, locating schools or firehouses and research.”
New York Times: Trump Officials Awarded $700 Million Pandemic Loan Despite Objections. “The report, released by the Democratic staff of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, describes the role of corporate lobbyists during the early months of the pandemic in helping to secure government funds as trillions of dollars of relief money were being pumped into the economy. It also suggests that senior officials such as Steven Mnuchin, the former Treasury secretary, and Mark T. Esper, the former defense secretary, intervened to ensure that the trucking company, Yellow Corporation, received special treatment despite concerns about its eligibility to receive relief funds.”
WIRED: The Census Is Broken. Can AI Fix It?. “The once-a-decade endeavor informs the distribution of federal tax dollars and apportions members of the House of Representatives for each state, potentially redrawing the political map. According to emails obtained through a records request, Trump administration officials interfered in the population count to produce outcomes beneficial to Republicans, but problems with the census go back much further.”
