House Democrats Criticize Justice Dept. Support of OpenAI in Copyright Suit; The New York Times, October 30, 2026

Karen Weise , The New York Times; House Democrats Criticize Justice Dept. Support of OpenAI in Copyright Suit

"Top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee said on Friday that the Justice Department had overstepped its authority and made a flawed legal argument in its support of OpenAI in a landmark copyright lawsuit brought by The New York Times and other publishers.

In a filing in federal court in Manhattan, the lawmakers also signaled that if the Democrats retook the House in elections on Tuesday, the chamber was likely to shift away from its largely hands-off approach to artificial intelligence companies.

In early September, the Justice Department argued in a court filingthat using articles from The Times and other written works to train A.I. systems sufficiently transformed them into new material, which copyright law allows. And it made a broader case that developing A.I. was critical to national security and outweighed potential harms.

But the Democrats said that when Congress passed the copyright law in 1976, it did not include an exception for national security or give the Justice Department authority to assert specific or broad national security exceptions."

Patent chief tells lawmakers ‘time and attendance fraud is not tolerated’; New York Times, 9/13/16

Lisa Rein, Washington Post; Patent chief tells lawmakers ‘time and attendance fraud is not tolerated’ :

"U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director Michelle K. Lee told lawmakers Tuesday that she and her team “do not tolerate any kind of attendance abuse” and promised that employees who commit fraud are disciplined...

A 15-month analysis by Deputy Inspector General David Smith’s office of thousands of patent examiners’ turnstile badge swipes, computer logins and remote computer connections from their homes to federal systems showed consistent discrepancies between the time employees reported working and the hours they actually put in.

This time and attendance abuse cost the government at least $18.3 million, as employees who review patent applications billed the agency for almost 300,000 hours they never worked, investigators found."