pelespirit

Thousands of license applications by U.S. companies to export goods and technology around the globe, including to China, are in limbo because turmoil at the agency in charge of approving them has left it nearly paralyzed, two sources said.

Frustration is growing within U.S. industry.

“We’re seeing whole sectors where there is no movement or indication if or when licenses will be issued," including license applications for semiconductor manufacturing equipment worth billions of dollars, said Sean Stein, president of the US-China Business Council.

While the clock is ticking on license applications, “Chinese companies are exploring and doing deals with suppliers in China and other countries,” he said. “The longer we have the delay, the more market share we're going to lose."

A “flash” OIG audit report published earlier this month warned that OPM’s new health insurance program covering about 2 million Postal employees, annuitants and their family members, is facing “critical resource issues,” just a few months ahead of this year’s Open Season. That’s in light of the workforce losses and restructuring that have taken place at the agency under the Trump administration.

The July 2 report found that OPM currently has just three employees out of the 11 total positions it determined it would need to manage the PSHB program’s central enrollment platform, which all PSHB participants must use to enroll and make changes to their health insurance.

They may resemble other ATMs, but officials are increasingly warning about the potential for fraud with the expanding fleet of cryptocurrency ATMs popping up across the country.

The National Consumers League says the largely unregulated machines have become favored by scammers for their anonymity and irreversibility — once a user transfers or deposits funds, that money is essentially gone.

The FTC says consumers should contact banks or other institutions directly about any account issues. And it warns consumers not to believe anyone who says they must use a crypto ATM to address a financial problem.

“Real businesses and government agencies will never do that — anyone who does is a scammer,” the agency said.

What really made the latest jobs report concerning, however, was the downward revision of previous months' gains, which the BLS described as "larger than normal." The number of jobs added in May was revised downward from 144,000 to 19,000, while the number of jobs added in June was revised downward from 147,000 to 14,000. Taken together, this means that the economy has added an average of just 35,000 jobs per month over the last three months.

New York Times chief economics correspondent Ben Casselman described the downward revisions as "a very significant sign of weakening" and he noted that healthcare and social assistance jobs accounted for nearly all of last month's gains.

"If it hadn't been for that sector, employment would have fallen slightly," he observed on Bluesky.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), now the best-funded federal law enforcement agency in the United States, is embarking on a plan to drastically expand its detention infrastructure. But considering the $45 billion it’s been given for the job, the agency’s vision for its new facilities seems startlingly low-tech.

In July, the Wall Street Journal got its hands on internal government documents revealing that ICE wants to incarcerate more immigrants in tents, or “hardened soft-sided facilities.” The administration hopes to erect thousands of these tents “as quickly as possible to expand detention capacity…at US military bases and adjoining bricks-and-mortar ICE jails,” the Journal reported. Officials say they like this approach, at least for now, because they can quickly set up tons of beds in a few new locations rather than finding space at existing facilities here and there.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth of the District of Columbia gave the administration until Aug. 13 to explain how it will get VOA working again. The outlet that dates back to World War II has been largely dark since March.

Lamberth said the administration needs to show what it is doing with the $260 million Congress appropriated for VOA’s operations this year.

Brown University will pay $50 million to Rhode Island workforce development organizations in a deal with the Trump administration that restores lost federal research funding and ends investigations into alleged discrimination, officials said Wednesday.

The university also agreed to several concessions in line with President Donald Trump's political agenda. Brown will adopt the government's definition of "male" and "female," for example, and must remove any consideration of race from the admissions process.

"In a way, it is a backdoor way for privatizing Social Security," the billionaire former hedge fund manager said of the accounts. "Social Security is a defined benefit plan paid out—that to the extent that if all of a sudden these accounts grow, and you have in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for your retirement, that's a game-changer."

The U.S. Justice Department this week dropped an antitrust case against a company represented by the lobbying firm that employed Pam Bondi before her confirmation as attorney general earlier this year.

American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) has paid the lobbying giant Ballard Partners hundreds of thousands of dollars this year to pressure Bondi's Justice Department on "antitrust issues," according to federal disclosures.

There are no ICE detention centers in Hawaii, so the federal government has placed immigrants in prisons. ICE in February signed an agreement with the Federal Bureau of Prisons—part of the Justice Department—to reserve space for ICE detainees, according to the Honolulu Civil Beat, which reported residents from out of state being transferred to Hawaii as early as June.

Immigration lawyers in Hawaii told the Civil Beat that they are concerned residents of other states are not getting effective counsel in Hawaii; even if they had a lawyer, it’s difficult to stay in touch thousands of miles away, they told the Civil Beat.

The order, signed on Wednesday, comes into force on 29 August and broadens earlier presidential action that specifically targeted cheap products from China and Hong Kong to now cover the rest of the world.

The de minimis exemption had allowed goods valued at $800 or less to enter the US without paying any tariffs. US consumers relied on the exemption to buy cheap clothes and household items from online commerce sites like Shein and Temu.

The White House says the global exemption was being used to "evade tariffs and funnel deadly synthetic opioids" to the US.