I’m not naive enough to think that the fate of many bills — even in the Senate — hasn’t been decided in advance of a subcommittee or committee gaveling in to do their business officially. It’s always been there. But I don’t think I’m being paranoid when I say that it has become more and more common in the House subcommittee system to arrange in advance which bills will fail and which ones will advance. Not only that, subcommittee meetings increasingly resemble scripted events.

A bill by Sen. Kannan Srinivasan (D-32) that would put in place some transparency requirements related to data centers was endorsed by a Senate committee on Tuesday morning. SB 533 requires that utilities providing water to data centers report the water withdrawal and use data to the State Water Control Board on a monthly or otherwise practical basis, including the amount of reclaimed water. During a Feb. 3 subcommittee meeting, Srinivasan said the bill’s goal is to ensure that the community had clear, reliable data surrounding water consumption by data centers.

Close the cover on the CIA World Factbook: The spy agency announced Wednesday that after more than 60 years, it is shuttering the popular reference manual. The announcement posted to the CIA’s website offered no reason for the decision to end the Factbook, but it follows a vow from Director John Ratcliffe to end programs that don’t advance the agency’s core missions. First launched in 1962 as a printed, classified reference manual for intelligence officers, the Factbook offered a detailed, by-the-numbers picture of foreign nations, their economies, militaries, resources and societies. The Factbook proved so useful that other federal agencies began using it, and within a decade, an unclassified version was released to the public. After going online in 1997, the Factbook quickly became a popular reference site for journalists, trivia aficionados and the writers of college essays, racking up millions of visits per year.

In November of 2024, two weeks after voters returned President Donald Trump to office, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. summoned employees of the U.S. Supreme Court for an unusual announcement. Facing them in a grand conference room beneath ornate chandeliers, he requested they each sign a nondisclosure agreement promising to keep the court’s inner workings secret. The chief justice acted after a series of unusual leaks of internal court documents, most notably of the decision overturning the right to abortion, and news reports about ethical lapses by the justices. Trust in the institution was languishing at a historic low. Debate was intensifying over whether the black box institution should be more transparent. Instead, the chief justice tightened the court’s hold on information. Its employees have long been expected to stay silent about what they witness behind the scenes. But starting that autumn, in a move that has not been previously reported, the chief justice converted what was once a norm into a formal contract, according to five people familiar with the shift.

Last week’s arrest of two journalists in Minnesota, including former CNN host Don Lemon, represents another dangerous escalation of the Trump administration’s war on independent reporting and the First Amendment. The reporters arrested by authorities did nothing criminal — a point previously affirmed by a federal judge — but President Donald Trump’s weaponized Department of Justice indicted them anyway. All Americans should decry this obvious attempt at intimidation and the White House’s ongoing efforts to silence journalists from delivering facts to the public.