Meet the guy who oversaw the recovery of more than a billion dollars of stolen pandemic relief

Best listening experience is on Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Subscribe to Federal Drive’s daily audio interviews on Apple Podcasts or PodcastOne. The government showed how fast it could spend money when  Congress printed trillions for pandemic relief. Well, now it’s the morning after. Our next guest led a nationwide criminal investigation that so far has clawed back more than a billion dollars anyway, awarded to frauds under the Paycheck Protection Program and prevented maybe twice that much from going out in the first place. He’s an assistant special agent in charge with the…

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Iowa Is Closer Than Ever to Losing Its Place

Every few years for the past four decades, Iowa’s prime placement in American politics has come under threat. The arguments against Iowa’s outsize role in choosing each party’s nominee for president are always the same: The state is too white—90.6 percent white, to be exact—making it completely unrepresentative of the American electorate. Caucuses are messy and volunteer-led, meaning that the process is vulnerable to all kinds of problems (see the great caucus disaster of 2020). Plus, it’s cold as hell in February in Iowa, not exactly the weather most conducive…

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In 2021, Media Did More to Erode Trust Than to Repair It

It’s obvious that the media’s hatred for Donald Trump colored nearly everything they wrote or said during his presidency. But one hoped that after he left the White House, the media might recover a little objectivity. Sadly, a review of 2021 shows that in many cases, it simply did not happen. The case of actor Jussie Smollett’s fake hate crime came to a conclusion this month, revealing that media outlets still are eager to pounce on a racially divisive story and cast blame, but reluctant to examine themselves when the…

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Report: Jan. 6 Committee Has Subpoenaed Phone Records Of More Than 100 People

<p>The Jan. 6 select committee has reportedly subpoenaed the phone records of more than 100 people, which include a number of former Trump officials and associates such as former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to <a href=”https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/07/politics/january-6-committee-phone-records/index.html”>CNN</a>.</p> Talking Points Memo

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Abortion Legacy of 7 Justices: More Than 62 Million Dead Babies

After President Richard Nixon appointed then-Appellate Court Judge Harry Blackmun to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1970, Blackmun somehow convinced members of the U.S. Senate that he embraced judicial restraint and felt a duty to protect “little persons.” When Blackmun’s nomination came up for a vote, Sen. John McClellan, D-Ark., made the case for confirmation. “He does not believe it is either the duty or the prerogative of the court to change the historical interpretations of the Constitution so as to be tantamount to amending that great document by edicts…

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