Meet Me in the Parking Garage

Five products from August 17.

My wife and I gravitate towards movies and shows about journalism. All the President’s Men, Desk Set, Spotlight, The Post, Almost Famous, Frost/Nixon, Bombshell, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. The Devil Wears Prada/2 and Cruella, all of which also hit that fashion designer angle that is so visually rich to watch. The Big Short or Ted Lasso if you squint (we squint). Venom. Spiderman. Superman. Supergirl. Sorkin’s The Newsroom. NBC’s The Paper. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. The true GOAT: The Mary Tyler Moore Show. You know, just to name “a few.” We have gotten to the point where we tend to rewatch favorites instead of grabbing new ones. So: enthusiastic recommendations welcome in the comments or my inbox, and the bar is low. If it has a newsroom, a records request, or a source who will only meet in a parking garage, we’ll probably watch it.

Which is a lighter way into today’s first product than it deserves. The Justice Department spent the last two years subpoenaing reporters at three newspapers, and CRS has now written down what the law would have done to them if the subpoenas hadn’t been withdrawn.

It’s also the reason WCSBR now has a source policy. Sort of. I said on July 30 that I would post one within the week; it is August 18. Sometimes I’m really not punctual. I got it put together today. For anyone interested, see the top bar of this Substack, or use this link.

After that: why twenty-six years of anti-trafficking law still hasn’t produced a count, trade with China falling by roughly a quarter in both directions, Congress arguing about a hemp deadline it set itself, and the FCC asking out loud whether E-Rate should still exist.

Title: The Reporter’s Privilege and Government Employee Confidential Sources

Report No. LSB11471 | Type: Legal Sidebar | Date: August 17, 2026, version 1
CRS Author(s): Dorothy C. Kafka, Legislative Attorney | Official Congress.gov copy

In 2025 and 2026, the Department of Justice reportedly subpoenaed journalists at the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times to testify before grand juries about the confidential sources behind certain national security reporting. The stated purpose was to identify government employees who allegedly leaked in violation of federal law. The news organizations challenged the subpoenas, and DOJ reportedly withdrew them in June and July 2026. This sidebar is CRS setting out what the law might have done had the withdrawals not happened.

The governing case is Branzburg v. Hayes, decided in 1972 and the only time the Supreme Court has addressed the question directly. A 5-4 majority held that the First Amendment does not let a journalist refuse to testify about confidential sources before a criminal grand jury. The Court acknowledged that news gathering gets some First Amendment protection, but found insufficient evidence that permitting subpoenas would meaningfully constrict the flow of news, and it declined to exempt the press from laws that apply to everyone else. Justice Powell, whose vote made the majority, wrote separately to stress how limited the holding was and to suggest that a court could balance the competing interests where a subpoena bore only a remote relationship to the investigation.

That concurrence is the seed of everything that followed. Lower courts read Branzburg in incompatible ways. The minority position among the circuits, held by at least one court of appeals, reads it to foreclose any First Amendment reporter’s privilege at all. Most circuits, including the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and D.C., recognize some qualified privilege, typically applied through a balancing test weighing the government’s need against the press’s interest in protecting sources. Some recognize it only in civil litigation. What no circuit appears to recognize is a privilege in the situation Branzburg actually involved, a grand jury subpoena, at least absent bad faith. The scope varies too: some courts protect only a source’s identity, others protect confidential information more broadly, and some have extended the privilege beyond staff journalists to book authors, academics, and newsletter writers.

Two appellate decisions, both from 2006, are the closest analogues to what DOJ attempted. In In re Grand Jury Subpoena, Judith Miller, the D.C. Circuit considered subpoenas seeking the identity of the officials who disclosed a CIA operative’s identity. The three-judge panel produced four opinions. The majority held Branzburg foreclosed any First Amendment privilege in the grand jury context and concluded that a federal common law privilege, if one existed at all, had been overcome. The court affirmed the contempt orders against the reporters. In New York Times Co. v. Gonzales,1 the Second Circuit addressed a subpoena for reporters’ phone records held by third-party carriers, sought to find who disclosed the government’s plan to freeze the assets of two organizations suspected of funding terrorism. That court also found no First Amendment privilege and declined to decide whether a common law privilege exists, holding that any such privilege would be qualified and would be overcome on these facts. One judge dissented, arguing that in leak investigations the standard analysis strikes no balance at all, because the reporter is not merely a repository of evidence but effectively a witness to the alleged crime, which makes the government’s showing nearly automatic.

CRS closes on the third possible source of protection, statute. Most states have shield laws, but their scope varies, and whether one applies in federal court depends on how the case got there. In diversity cases, state substantive law governs and a state shield law may be available. In federal question cases, it generally is not. Congress has never passed a federal shield law, though Members have been introducing them since at least the 1970s. The most recent examples CRS cites are S. 2074 and H.R. 4250 in the 118th Congress and H.R. 4382 in the 115th.

Nothing in this document protected the reporters at those three newspapers. DOJ withdrew the subpoenas. Had it not, the reporters would have been arguing for a privilege that no circuit recognizes in the grand jury context, in a posture where the two appellate courts to consider it ruled for the government both times. The protection people assume exists is, in the one setting where leak investigations actually happen, close to absent.

It would be easy to read the withdrawals as the system working. It isn’t what happened. DOJ dropped the subpoenas because it decided to, and it could have decided otherwise. Nothing in the law moved between the subpoena and the withdrawal, which means the same law is sitting there for the next prosecutor who wants to use it.

If this matters to you, two things are actually available. Find out what your state’s shield law says, because they differ enormously and yours may be stronger or weaker than you assume. And ask your Representative and Senators where they stand on a federal shield law. The bills CRS cites are from the last Congress and the one before it, which tells you how much sustained pressure the idea has been under lately.

Title: Criminal Justice Data: Human Trafficking

Report No. R47211 | Type: Report | Date: August 17, 2026, version 7
CRS Author(s): Kristin Finklea, Specialist in Domestic Security | Official Congress.gov copy

Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act in 2000 and has reauthorized and expanded it repeatedly since. What it has not managed to produce is a number. This report is an inventory of every federal data stream that touches human trafficking and an explanation of why none of them, alone or together, describes the size of the problem.

The criminal justice side runs through the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program, which began collecting human trafficking data in 2013 after Congress required it. Participation has climbed from 13 states then to all 50 states plus Puerto Rico and Guam for 2024. States reported 3,702 trafficking incidents that year and 790 arrests. The report is careful about what the numbers mean: rising participation makes an increase in reporting look like an increase in trafficking, and even with every state nominally participating, the number of individual agencies reporting within each state varies widely. Federal investigations and prosecutions add another partial view, limited to the cases that reach federal jurisdiction and receive federal resources.

Outside criminal justice, the National Human Trafficking Hotline collects reports that are unverified by law enforcement. In FY2025 it received 187,863 signals and identified 13,623 potential trafficking situations. The hotline also changed hands. HHS had funded the Polaris Project to run it since 2007; in September 2025 the department awarded a $35 million grant to Compass Connections instead, after criticism that Polaris shared only some tips with law enforcement. Polaris responded that it forwarded tips that were specific, credible, urgent, and consented to by the victim, and warned that routing every tip automatically can escalate a survivor’s situation or expose them to retaliation. The new grant requires a formal law enforcement engagement plan and annual training for law enforcement and child welfare staff. The remaining sources, immigration relief applications, federal victim services grants, and academic and government surveys, each capture a slice defined by who applies, who is funded, and who was asked.

The gap is not an accident of a hidden crime. Some of it is a set of choices. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), the country’s largest self-report victimization survey, does not ask about human trafficking. It asks about forced or coerced sexual contact, but not the thing itself. Congress could instruct the Bureau of Justice Statistics to add those questions. That is a concrete, cheap, unglamorous fix sitting in plain view.

The hotline transition deserves watching rather than assuming. The stated rationale is better coordination with law enforcement. The unstated risk is the one Polaris named: survivors who fear that calling triggers a police response may not call. Both things can be true, and only the data will show which dominates, which means somebody has to look.

If you want to do something useful with this, the ask is oversight rather than outrage. Congress funds the hotline and directs BJS. Ask your delegation whether they intend to look at how the operator change affects the tips that come in, and whether trafficking questions are going into the NCVS.

Title: U.S.-China Trade Relations

Report No. IF11284 | Type: In Focus | Date: August 17, 2026, version 37
CRS Author(s): Karen M. Sutter, Specialist in Asian Trade and Finance | Official Congress.gov copy

In 2025, U.S. exports to China fell 25.8% and imports from China fell 29.7%. The trade deficit narrowed by $93 billion. China’s share of total U.S. imports dropped from 13.4% to 9%, and it slipped to the fourth-largest U.S. goods trading partner. The contraction continued into the first half of 2026, with imports down another 23%. Trade did not so much rebalance as shrink, and the shrinkage was not symmetric in what it cost: the American losses were in autos, beef, chemicals, natural gas, and soybeans.

The framing changed too. From 2017 through 2024, U.S. national security policy named the PRC as a strategic competitor. The Second Trump Administration’s national security strategy, issued in November 2025, does not. It calls instead for a mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing while countering unfair practices, and in April 2026 the U.S. Trade Representative said the President was not seeking a full-on conflict. CRS reads that as a signal about limits, given how deep the economic ties run and how reliably the PRC retaliates.

What CRS does with the rest of the space is document a pattern of deferral. Commerce delayed for a year a rule extending export controls to foreign affiliates of listed PRC firms. USTR delayed Section 301 tariff actions on PRC semiconductors and ships. The Administration approved Nvidia H200 exports to China on terms giving the U.S. government 25% of the proceeds, which former officials criticized as trading a national security decision for a trade concession. Congress is moving in the other direction on the tariff question, with an International Trade Commission investigation underway into what revoking China’s permanent normal trade relations status would do to the economy, and H.R. 694 and S. 206 pending to revoke it outright. WCSBR covered the companion tariff product, IF12990, yesterday.

Title: Changes to the Statutory Definition of Hemp and Implications for Agricultural Policy

Report No. IF13136 | Type: In Focus | Date: August 17, 2026, version 4
CRS Author(s): Zachary T. Neuhofer, Analyst in Agricultural Policy | Official Congress.gov copy

WCSBR covered version 3 on May 29. The substance of the new definition is unchanged. What changed is everything around it: the product has been retitled from “Issues for Congress” to “Implications for Agricultural Policy” and narrowed accordingly, the legislative history of the 118th Congress and the tabled amendment to strip the hemp provision have been cut, and the Issues for Congress section has been rewritten around the fight over the effective date. CRS has also softened its own forecast from “will likely have implications” to “may have implications.”

The rewrite that closed the so-called farm bill loophole still takes effect November 12, 2026, replacing the delta-9 THC limit with a total THC limit that counts THCA and the rest. What has developed since May is a fight over whether that date holds. On August 8, the Senate passed a continuing resolution, H.R. 6500, that would push most of the new definition to December 11, while leaving one piece effective on schedule: the exclusion of products containing cannabinoids that cannot be naturally produced by the plant, which would become marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act on November 12 regardless.2 The House-passed continuing resolution and the FY2027 Agriculture appropriations bill contain no delay at all.

The stakeholder split has inverted from what you might expect. Attorneys general in several states oppose delay, on the grounds that they have already rewritten their own laws to match the federal definition and would rather not have the ground move again. Hemp industry groups support delay, which buys time for one of the other bills to land: two-year postponement, outright repeal, a 1% delta-9 threshold, a 1% total THC threshold, deference to state definitions, or an FDA regulatory framework. Meanwhile FDA has still not published the cannabinoid lists P.L. 119-37 required within 90 days of enactment, which means the people who have to comply by November still do not have the list of compounds they are complying about.

Title: The Universal Service Fund’s E-Rate Program: Overview and Current Regulatory Activity

Report No. IF13289 | Type: In Focus | Date: August 17, 2026, version 1
CRS Author(s): Patricia Moloney Figliola, Specialist in Internet and Telecommunications Policy | Official Congress.gov copy

This is the third Universal Service Fund product CRS has issued in three weeks, after the contribution base brief on July 31 and the Lifeline and High Cost brief on August 7, both of which WCSBR covered. E-Rate is the piece of the fund that subsidizes broadband and internal networks for schools and libraries, roughly $2.5 billion to $3 billion a year in discounts ranging from 20% to 90% depending on the economic circumstances of the community. About 47 million students and library patrons rely on connectivity it pays for.

On June 25, 2026, the FCC adopted a notice of proposed rulemaking that Chairman Brendan Carr described as a top-to-bottom review, the most comprehensive look at the program since it was created in 1997. It was published August 14. Comments are due October 13 and reply comments November 12. The proceeding covers three areas. The first is educational purpose and screen time, including whether the FCC should limit or monitor children’s screen time in E-Rate-supported institutions and whether funding should be conditioned on local screen use policies. The second is the Children’s Internet Protection Act, where the NPRM asks whether the current interpretation is the best reading of the statute, whether filtering obligations should extend beyond school- and library-owned computers to any device on an E-Rate-funded network, and whether social media should be categorically blocked. The third is scope and oversight, including new registration requirements for E-Rate consultants and a ban on their percentage-based fees.

It also asks whether the program should be narrowed or sunsetted, citing data that virtually all schools now report having broadband, and poses the question of when policymakers should conclude the core objective has been achieved. CRS raises the obvious problem with that: Congress created E-Rate in statute at Section 254(h) of the Communications Act, and some commenters argue the FCC lacks authority to terminate it.

Stakeholders have split sharply, mostly along predictable lines. INCOMPAS, a trade association for competitive broadband providers, argues that institutions losing E-Rate funding would also lose the legal obligation to comply with CIPA’s filtering and internet safety requirements, so ending the subsidy would quietly end the child safety mandate attached to it. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the Commerce Department agency that advises the President on telecom policy, welcomed the proposal and said it had worked closely with the FCC on it. Pushback came from the people who run the buildings: AASA, the association representing school superintendents, called it an effort at sweeping changes that would reshape or dismantle the program, and the Consortium for School Networking, which represents school technology leaders, argued that device and screen time decisions belong to local districts rather than federal regulators.

For anyone who works in a school or a library, or has a kid in one, this is a rare case where the useful action is unambiguous and the door is open until October 13. FCC comment dockets accept filings from anyone, not just trade associations and lawyers, and a filing that describes what E-Rate actually pays for in one specific building is a different kind of evidence than a policy brief. What the record looks like when it closes will shape what the Commission concludes it has authority to do. The alternative route runs through Congress, which wrote the statute and could say plainly whether the FCC may unwind it.

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AI Disclosure: This post was produced with Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5. Claude ran prior-coverage checks, proposed triage and tier assignments, drafted the metadata blocks, and wrote all initial drafts. Charlie Amiot provided the source documents and the version differential for IF13136, directed different tiers and running order, wrote the opener and the footnote, and revised at the paragraph level throughout. Claude fact-checked the finished post against the source documents under close supervision. Charlie Amiot holds final responsibility for all accuracy and editorial judgment in this post. AI use is disclosed in every post.