One hundred new ways the government gets wrapped around its axle

Fragmentation, duplication and overlap. There is too much of it in government programs. It degrades economy and efficiency. Each year the Government Accountability Office (GAO) details instances of multiple agencies doing the same thing. This year GAO found what if calls “100 new matters for congressional consideration.” For the highlights, Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with Jessica Lucas-Judy, the GAO’s Director of Strategic Issues. Interview Transcript:  Tom Temin And just briefly, for people that may not be aware of this great list every year, fragmentation, duplication, overlap. Just give…

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Why Not Whitmer?

Why doesn’t Gretchen Whitmer just run for president? Or at least humor the suggestion? Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, sat cross-legged on the couch of a darkened TV studio in East Lansing, where a local PBS program called Off the Record is taped—a weird name for an interview show watched by 100,000 people. “I know!” agreed Whitmer, who wore a camouflage sweatshirt with Michigangster scripted across the front. We met here on a recent evening for an interview in which I would ask her—on the record—several variants of the above…

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North Carolina Court Corrects Flawed Ruling on Voter-ID Law Driven by Ideology, Not Law

In a decision that did not get the attention it deserved, the newly reconstituted North Carolina Supreme Court recently reinstated, as the court said, one of “least restrictive voter identification laws in the United States.” Liberal judges on that court—two of whom are no longer there after losing their 2022 re-election attempts—had previously thrown out the law, erroneously claiming that it was passed with discriminatory intent and that it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the North Carolina Constitution. In Holmes v. Harper, on April 28, the new court withdrew…

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MoveOn Launching Banned Bookmobile This Summer: Full of Censored Books

PEN America   Governor Ron DeSantis has banned hundreds of books across the state of Florida, censoring themes centered on race, history, sexual orientation, and gender in an effort to silence the voices and narratives of marginalized communities and further push his MAGA vision for a “Great American Comeback.” Just last month, a Florida school banned “The Hill We Climb,” the moving poem Amanda Gorman recited at President Joe Biden’s inauguration, saying it would now be off-limits to young readers after one parent claimed the poem was “indoctrinating” students. The…

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Former West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw dies at 84

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Warren McGraw, a former West Virginia Supreme Court justice who spent five decades in public service, has died at age 84, a Supreme Court spokeswoman said Thursday. Court spokeswoman Jennifer Bundy confirmed McGraw’s death but had no additional information. Blue Ridge Funeral Home & Memorial Gardens in Beckley said it was in charge of funeral arrangements, which were incomplete. McGraw, who died Wednesday, had retired as a county circuit judge in 2021, citing the physical impairments due to Parkinson’s disease. Mike Pushkin, the state Democratic Party…

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