Congress Passes Historic Legislation Requiring All Bills To Be Read Aloud In A Soothing Voice Before Signing, Senate Selects Narrator

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In what officials are calling 'an administrative oversight of generational proportions,' the Department of Nonsense confirmed Tuesday that the federal government has been carbon-copying the wrong Karen on all interagency policy correspondence for approximately thirty-seven years, affecting an estimated 4.2 million emails, eleven international treaties, and at least one strongly worded memo about the break room refrigerator.

The error, first detected during a routine audit of the government's Contact Management Infrastructure (CMI), traces back to a data entry error made on October 14th, 1987, when a junior staff member accidentally transposed the middle initial of Karen J. Delacroix, Deputy Undersecretary of Lateral Policy Initiatives, with Karen M. Delacroix, a retired dental hygienist currently residing in a beachfront condominium in Boca Raton, Florida.

'What's remarkable,' said Dr. Thaddeus Orm, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Government Competency Metrics, 'is not that this happened. It's that Karen M. Delacroix appears to have read everything, flagged several inconsistencies in the 2003 Farm Bill, and replied to at least four of them with genuinely useful feedback. She has, in many respects, outperformed the intended recipient.'

The Department of Nonsense's official statement, released at 4:47 p.m. on a Friday, described the situation as 'a clerical anomaly consistent with the department's operational standards' and assured the public that a bipartisan task force has been convened to 'evaluate the full scope of Karen's involvement and determine what, if anything, should be done about it.'

The task force, titled the Congressional Review of Erroneous Addressee Notification (C.R.E.A.N.), is expected to deliver preliminary findings no sooner than 2031.

Karen M. Delacroix, reached by phone, described the past thirty-seven years as 'honestly fine.' 'I didn't know I wasn't supposed to be on these,' she told reporters from her balcony. 'I just thought the government really valued my perspective. I did flag the thing about the refrigerator. Nobody ever fixed it, but I flagged it.'

Senator Patricia Woll (D-MN), who co-chairs the task force, called the situation 'a profound lesson in the consequences of poor data hygiene.' 'We are committed,' she added, 'to ensuring that by 2027 we have identified which Karen is which, and that both Karens feel heard throughout this process.'

Policy analysts have noted that removing Karen M. Delacroix from future correspondence may create what some are calling a 'feedback vacuum,' given that she appears to be the only recipient who ever replied.

'Frankly,' said Dr. Orm, 'our modeling suggests federal policy outcomes may decline slightly without her. She had a real eye for unnecessary jargon and was very consistent about hitting reply within forty-eight hours, which puts her in the ninety-eighth percentile among all cc'd parties in government history.'

The Department of Nonsense closed its statement by thanking Karen M. Delacroix for her decades of service, clarifying that she is not entitled to a pension, and reminding all federal staff that reply-all remains 'strongly discouraged.'

As of press time, Karen M. Delacroix had already replied to the official statement with three tracked changes and a suggestion about font size.