CrossGov.com Gives Reporters Covering Washington a Ready Story List: Tariff Refunds, a Shrinking CISA, FEMA Denials and an IRS With No Commissioner
Ask any reporter what the hardest beat in Washington is and you’ll rarely hear “the White House.” The White House announces things. The hard beat is everything after the announcement: the agency that has to carry out the order with a third fewer staff, the court that blocks it, the GAO report that lands eight months later and gets one paragraph in one trade publication.
CrossGov.com lives on that beat. It’s a site about US government, federal first, state and local second, and it reads like a reporter’s notebook kept by someone who actually opens the inspector general reports. For newsrooms that lost their agency reporters years ago (most of them), it’s a useful place to find the story before somebody else does.
Follow the money that’s moving backwards
The best government stories are often accounting stories in disguise. When the Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs, the follow-up wasn’t the ruling. It was $122 billion in refunds and the Section 301 and 232 tariffs that took their place. By the end of the fiscal year, customs receipts had gone negative for three months and tariff revenue had fallen to $172 billion. That’s a number most coverage never got to.
Same pattern at the Pentagon. The war with Iran has cost $43.6 billion by the Pentagon’s own count, Congress hasn’t paid for it, and interceptor stocks are running low. Meanwhile the Golden Dome missile shield carries a CBO estimate of $1.2 trillion over 20 years, with 97% of next year’s money waiting on a reconciliation bill that may not come.
Agencies doing more with much less
Here’s where local editors should pay attention, because the cuts land in their coverage area. FEMA is denying more state disaster requests with a surge force of 240 people. That’s not a typo. States pick up what FEMA won’t.
Election security follows the same line. CISA’s plan for the midterms leaves counties paying for what Washington used to supply free, while the agency itself shrinks to 2,200 staff without a confirmed director. Every county clerk in a swing district is a source on that story.
And tax season is coming. The IRS heads into the 2027 filing season with no commissioner, 28% fewer staff and brand new forms for the tip and overtime deductions. Somebody is going to write the “why can’t I get anyone on the phone” story in February. CrossGov wrote the setup in August.
The stories with a long tail
Some threads don’t break once. They grind on for years, and the reporters who keep the files win them:
The VA’s Oracle health record is closing in on $50 billion, with Cleveland and Anchorage next in line. FISA Section 702 lapsed in June, yet collection goes on until March 2027 on court-approved certifications. Federal statistics are wobbling too: CrossGov put BLS after the firing next to Britain’s ONS and Argentina’s shelved inflation index, which is the kind of comparison that turns a Washington spat into a pattern.
Then there’s the courts. Eighteen months in, the elections executive order has lost on proof of citizenship, and DOJ has lost 26 voter-roll suits. With three weeks to the vote, that one writes itself.
Why bother pointing you there
Because the press corps is thinner than the government it covers, and that gap is where accountability goes to die. A site that reads the GAO so you don’t have to start from zero is worth a bookmark. Start with the archive and pick a thread.
Somebody has to read the reports.