Olivia Beavers Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) called on Vice President Pence in a letter Tuesday to rescind President Trump's voter data directive that he says “is a thinly veiled effort to carry out voter suppression on a national scale." "I write to urge you, in your capacity as chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, to rescind the Commission’s directive for sensitive voter data," Connolly wrote in the letter to Pence, who serves as chairman. The Virginia lawmaker ar...
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Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-VA) released the following statement on reports that the federal government is canceling its search for a new FBI headquarters: "Reports that the federal government is pulling the plug on a new FBI headquarters reveals insurmountable Trump conflicts with GSA, FBI, and Vornado. This is devastating news. Conflicts have consequences."
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Edward Graham Congressional Democrats are calling on the Federal Communications Commission to review its cybersecurity protocols following a May cyberattack that knocked the agency’s commenting system offline, and ahead of online activism in support of net neutrality planned for Wednesday. Ranking House Democrats on two committees — Energy and Commerce and Oversight and Government Reform, as well as their relevant subcommittees — first sent a letter to the three FCC commissioners on June 26, exp...
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Rebecca Savransky Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) late Wednesday criticized President Trump for holding a reelection fundraiser at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. During an interview on CNN, Connolly said he has "insisted" that Trump's "whole relationship with the Trump hotel becomes a massive conflict of interest the day he was sworn in." Connolly called it a "terrible perception problem." "I think it really taints the process," Connolly added. "I think it's most unwise and I thin...
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Jessie Bur The transparent reporting of spending data through Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA) requirements will go a long way to increasing public trust in the government, according to legislators and agency officials who spoke at the DATA Summit on June 29. “Back when I was growing up, people used to trust the government,” said GSA’s Technology Transformation Service Commissioner Rob Cook, explaining that events like the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal caused a plummet in p...
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Jason Squitieri As President Donald Trump holds his first re-election fundraiser Wednesday night at the hotel he owns in Washington, one Democratic congressman is slamming the President over the move, arguing it is "just plain wrong." An invitation to the event, held at the Trump International Hotel, showed that tickets started at $35,000 per person, with a $100,000 price tag to sit on the host committee. Hours after telling reporters they would be allowed to cover the event, the White House cha...
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Jason Miller In a rocky FITARA sea of red and yellow “Fs” and “Ds,” the U.S. Agency for International Development stood out like a lighthouse. USAID became the first agency earlier this month to receive an “A” on the Federal IT Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) scorecard from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. While most agencies stagnated, USAID lifted its grades from a “D” to an “A+” over the last six months. The fourth scorecard, released by the committee on June 13, showed ag...
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Joe Davidson In November, fuming members of Congress demanded to know how the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) would stabilize a long-term care program that shocked participants with price hikes of as much as 126 percent. Seven months later, they are still waiting for answers – but not patiently. It was at a House government operations subcommittee hearing a few days after Thanksgiving when Virginia Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, the top Democrat on the panel, pressed an agency leader on plans to ...
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Jim Zarroli In ordinary times, New York-based Vornado Realty Trust would be a natural candidate to take on a major construction project such as the long-awaited rebuilding of FBI headquarters. As with so much about the Trump era, however, the ordinary rules don't apply. A commercial real estate firm, Vornado is widely reported to be a finalist to build a new campus for the FBI somewhere in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. But its financial ties to President Trump are raising concerns about confli...
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John D. McKinnon When Silicon Valley executives arrived at the White House Monday to talk about modernizing federal computer systems, there was plenty of common interest at stake. The administration wants to cut redundancies and modernize the way Americans interact with their government, and tech companies see a $90 billion-a-year business. But those companies also face a common challenge. The government’s sprawling information-technology system is flawed and balky, controlled in agency fiefdoms...
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