For the second year in a row, the U.S. Senate may fail to enact an intelligence authorization bill, effectively neutering the intelligence oversight process.
“The failure of the Senate to pass intelligence authorization for 2 years threatens to erode the ability of the Intelligence Committee to carry out the mission assigned to it by the Senate,” said Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the ranking member of the Committee, in a floor statement.
In an effort to compel Senate action on the intelligence bill, Sen. Rockefeller introduced an amendment that would strip out language in the Defense Appropriations bill that provides a nominal authorization for continuing intelligence activities.
See September 6 statements by Sen. Rockefeller and Sen. Dianne Feinstein here.
Over the past few months, the Trump administration has been laying the foundation to expand the use of the Defense Production Act (DPA) for energy infrastructure and supply chains.
Get it right, and pooled hiring becomes a model for how the federal government decides what to do together and what to do apart. That’s a bigger prize than faster hiring. It’s a more functional government.
As of March 2026, there were at least nine documented U.S. wrongful arrests tied to face recognition misidentification. Errors like these are as much human as machine.
No one will be surprised if we end up with a continuing resolution to push our shutdown deadline out past the midterms, so the real question is what else will they get done this summer?