ProPublica

Two government watchdog groups have demanded investigations into whether Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr and Commissioner Olivia Trusty violated ethics requirements by accepting luxury gala tickets from Paramount as the company sought government approval for its $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros.

Reporting has found that the Federal Communications Commission's multibillion-dollar Universal Service Fund pays for what often amounts to slow internet access for customers who actually no longer use it. Once home to thousands of sailors and their families, the island emptied after the base closed in 1997. While the state estimated the population to be 77 last year, residents themselves put it at closer to two dozen—meaning the federal internet subsidy to the local telecom amounts to about $14,000 a year per person.

Frank Ssekamwa says the United States presented his country with an impossible choice. If it accepted the terms of a new health agreement, Uganda would have to give the U.S. access to the data of millions of his fellow citizens—a decision he worries would make their personal information more vulnerable to breaches and possible exploitation.

In Alaska, where many communities can only be reached by plane or boat, the Federal Communications Commission has given telecommunications companies $4.6 billion in Universal Service Fund subsidies since 2016. That’s more than $600 per Alaskan per year. More per resident than in any other state. Yet after all that spending, Alaska still ranks near the bottom for access to the very land-based, high-speed internet service the money was meant to deliver. Some communities have yet to be wired at all.

More than 400,000 Arizonans have lost their SNAP benefits since July—the largest decline in the nation by a wide margin—as an underfunded state agency administered changes called for in President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The drop represents nearly 47 percent of the state’s participants in the program better known as food stamps and includes about 180,000 children, according to the Arizona Department of Economic Security, which administers the program.

The Trump Administration is planning to use artificial intelligence (AI) to write federal transportation regulations, according to U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) records and agency staffers.