DOT rolls out MotusThe Transportation Department says its new registration platform, Motus, is meant to replace a dated federal trucking system that was easy to game. According to the agency, the old setup relied on a scattered mess of disconnected applications, which is bureaucrat-speak for a system that looked like it was built by a committee and maintained by denial. The department says Motus will use biometrics and modern data tools to verify who is registering and whether the company is real, legal, and not a shell with a fresh coat of digital paint.Officials say fraud was built inIn the department’s telling, bad actors could once register with little more than an email, a name, and an address. That is a low bar even by government standards. DOT says that weakness helped suspicious carriers hide their identities, shed bad safety records, and show up again under new names. The agency estimates there are several thousand suspicious registration numbers tied to fraudulent carriers, though it is careful to frame the problem as a technology issue and not, say, a warning that maybe the old system was never meant to guard the front door.New York loses highway fundsThe rollout lands alongside a…

Evacuations spread across Orange County Officials evacuated about 40,000 residents after a 34,000-gallon tank at the GKN Aerospace facility in Garden Grove started acting like a very expensive problem no one wanted. The tank is used in plastics manufacturing, and authorities said a valve overheated on Thursday. By Friday, the worry was simple enough: if the tank failed, it could release toxic chemicals or explode. Several evacuation centers opened, but some residents chose to stay home, which is understandable when you are told to leave everything behind by a system that always seems shocked when people want more than a loud siren and a press conference. Readings changed as crews watched closely Orange County fire officials said the tank’s temperature appeared to drop on Friday, then later clarified that outside readings were being measured by drone while crews kept checking the inside gauge. By Saturday, the internal temperature was said to be around 100 degrees, up from 77 degrees the day before. Fire Chief TJ McGovern later said firefighters found a crack in the tank late Saturday night, which may have relieved some pressure. That is the kind of sentence that makes everyone sound calm while also making nobody feel…