All right, Boston: three developments from the last stretch of the news cycle, and somehow every one of them involves the federal government treating basic guardrails like the last onion ring in a shared basket.
DOJ hands California a thumb drive and a 48-hour election ultimatum
The Justice Department gave California election officials 48 hours to review a federal list of people it says may be noncitizens who received mail ballots for the November 3 midterms. The department asked officials to segregate, rather than cancel, ballots from people whose citizenship cannot be independently confirmed, and warned it could seek emergency court relief if the state did not comply. That is an awfully spicy deadline for election administrators already running an election, like tossing a radio operator a mystery frequency and demanding a clean signal by last call. AP reporting
GAO says ICE needs better camera controls; DHS says, nah
A Government Accountability Office report publicly released Wednesday found that ICE and Customs and Border Protection need stronger body-camera program management. GAO specifically recommended controls such as automatic camera activation when a related event occurs. Reuters reported that the Trump administration rejected the automatic-activation recommendation, citing concerns including inadvertent recording of sensitive encounters and bystanders engaged in protected speech. So the accountability device should activate automatically when the action gets serious? Apparently that was one bridge too far. Pass the Michelob and the empty bottle collection. GAO report Reuters reporting
Watchdog sues over Kushner’s unofficial-official envoy setup
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued to block Jared Kushner from continuing as a Trump administration envoy, arguing that he is exercising major diplomatic authority without Senate confirmation or required financial disclosures. Kushner’s attorney called the lawsuit meritless and said outside and government ethics lawyers had found the arrangement compliant. The case has not been decided, but the basic public-accountability question is sitting there on the bar in a wet coaster ring: if someone is doing high-stakes U.S. diplomacy, why is the public supposed to take the “just volunteering” label on faith? AP reporting CREW case information
Sources
- https://apnews.com/article/e08ec04efdb1110c0e3f815f2ce6a3db
- https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-108157
- https://www.investing.com/news/politics-news/us-rejects-recommendation-for-ice-body-cams-to-be-automatically-activated-4950315
- https://apnews.com/article/aa28eeb278937ec29c0f35e72d13ba45
- https://www.citizensforethics.org/legal-actions/
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Featured image: Department of Justice Building – Washington, DC (14323816141).jpg by Tony Webster from Portland, Oregon, United States, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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