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4:15 PM ET, February 6, 2025

memeorandum

 Top Items: 
CNN:
Musk associates sought to use critical Treasury payment system to shut down USAID spending, emails show  —  Four days after Donald Trump's inauguration, Elon Musk's top lieutenants at the Treasury Department asked its acting secretary, a career civil servant, to immediately shut off …
RELATED:
New York Times:
Treasury Sought to Freeze Foreign Aid Payments, Emails Show  —  Trump administration appointees and allies of Elon Musk wanted to use the Treasury's sensitive payment system to block payments.  —  In the days after President Trump took office, as Elon Musk's team began pressing for access …
NBC News:
Trump administration agrees to restrict DOGE access to Treasury Department payment systems
Reuters:
Musk's DOGE granted access to US Medicare and Medicaid systems
Bloomberg:
Musk's Brazen Cost-Cutting Campaign Is Annoying GOP Senators, Treasury Staff
Discussion: Raw Story, HuffPost and Forbes
Bloomberg Law:
Musk's Treasury Incursion Puts Entire Financial System at Risk
Discussion: Washington Examiner and Roll Call
Melissa Quinn / CBS News:
Deadline for Trump's federal worker buyout proposal temporarily blocked by judge  —  Washington — A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the Office of Personnel Management's deadline for federal employees to accept the Trump administration's “deferred resignation” offer.
RELATED:
Zach Montague / New York Times:
Trump Administration Live Updates: Judge Delays Program Offering Federal Workers Incentives to Quit  —  Where Things Stand  — Judge delays resignation plan: A federal judge in Massachusetts has stopped, at least temporarily, the Trump administration's effort to get federal employees …
Holly Otterbein / Politico:
Musk aims to hobble federal workers ahead of ‘buyout’ deadline  —  Countless staffers in the government are now grappling with what to do.  —  Elon Musk has declared war on the bureaucracy.  And as a Thursday deadline nears for federal employees to take a “buyout,” he is looking to demoralize and wear down his enemy.
Associated Press:
Federal workers debate the legitimacy of financial incentives to quit as the deadline nears
Jenna McLaughlin / NPR:
CISA staffers offered deferred resignations, extending broader cybersecurity fears
Katherine Long / Wall Street Journal:
Exclusive |  DOGE Staffer Resigns Over Racist Posts  —  A staffer for Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency whose access to U.S. Treasury payment systems was approved by a federal judge on Thursday has links to a deleted social-media account that advocated for racism and eugenics.
RELATED:
Washington Post:
Musk's DOGE agents access sensitive personnel data, alarming security officials  —  The highly restricted data includes personally identifiable information for millions of federal employees maintained by the Office of Personnel Management.
Discussion: Raw Story, Business Insider and Reuters
Joey McFadden / The Daily Beast:   Musk's DOGE Youngins Are Terrorizing Senior Gov Staffers
Daily Kos:
Trump taps televangelist kook to run new White House ‘faith’ office  —  Christian nationalism is in full swing after Donald Trump's Thursday announcement of a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias,” as well as a new White House Faith Office led by right-...
Discussion: Blaze Media and Washington Post
RELATED:
The Guardian:
Aspiring autocrats like Trump are always more dangerous the second time in office
Discussion: PinkNews and ABC7
Noah Berlatsky / Public Notice:
Trump goes full colonialist
Garrett Haake / NBC News:
Trump to sign an executive order sanctioning the International Criminal Court  —  The order will include financial sanctions and visa restrictions against ICC officials found to have assisted in ICC investigations of U.S. citizens or allies.  —  WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday …
RELATED:
David Gutman / The Seattle Times:
Judge in Seattle accuses Trump of trying to change the Constitution  —  A federal judge in Seattle has once again blocked the Trump administration's attempt to rescind birthright citizenship — the guarantee embedded in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that every person born in the U.S. is an American citizen.
ABC News:
Rubio acting director of the National Archives  —  In addition to being the Secretary of State and the acting director of USAID, Marco Rubio is also the acting archivist of the United States, according to a high-level official.  —  Per the official, Rubio has been the acting archivist since shortly …
Discussion: Washington Examiner
RELATED:
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
National Archives Workers Unsure If Marco Rubio Has Secretly Been Their Boss for Weeks
Daniel Wu / Washington Post:
Gutting USAID threatens billions of dollars for U.S. farms, businesses  —  U.S. businesses that sold goods and services to USAID are in limbo, including American farms dealing in rice, wheat and soybeans purchased as food aid.
Wired:
DOGE Teen Owns ‘Tesla.Sexy LLC’ and Worked at Startup That Has Hired Convicted Hackers  —  Experts question whether Edward Coristine, a DOGE staffer who has gone by “Big Balls” online, would pass the background check typically required for access to sensitive US government systems.
Washington Post:
Elon Musk's DOGE is feeding sensitive federal data into AI to target cuts  —  At the Department of Education, the tech billionaire's team has turned to artificial intelligence to hunt for potential spending cuts —  part of a broader plan to deploy the technology across the federal government.
Chris Geidner / Law Dork:
A.G. Pam Bondi says Trump sets DOJ policy, all DOJ lawyers are “his lawyers”  —  Shortly after being sworn into office on Wednesday, Attorney General Pam Bondi went from the Oval Office to the Justice Department to do President Donald Trump's bidding.  —  Immediately issuing a series of orders …
RELATED:
RELATED:
Akayla Gardner / Bloomberg:
Trump Will Seek to End Carried Interest, Expand SALT in Tax Bill
Sigal Samuel / Vox:
JD Vance accidentally directed us to a crucial moral question  —  Theology isn't usually part of the job description for America's vice president, but that's not stopping JD Vance from giving it a try just a couple of weeks into his new position.  —  In a Fox News segment on immigration …
RELATED:
Associated Press:   What is ‘ordo amoris?’ Vice President JD Vance invokes this medieval Catholic concept
Wall Street Journal:
White House Preparing Order to Cut Thousands of Federal Health Workers  —  The executive order could come as soon as next week, if the Trump administration goes ahead with plans  —  The White House is working on an executive order to fire thousands of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services workers …
Discussion: Baltimore Sun
Liam Reilly / CNN:
White House says it will cancel $8 million in Politico subscriptions after a false right-wing conspiracy theory spreads  —  White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, responding Wednesday to a question about a right-wing conspiracy theory, announced that the federal government would cancel $8 million worth of Politico subscriptions.
RELATED:
Dara Kerr / The Guardian:
US immigration is gaming Google to create a mirage of mass deportations  —  Thousands of press releases about decade-old enforcement actions topped search results, all updated with a timestamp from after Trump's inauguration  —  News of mass immigration arrests has swept across the US over the past couple of weeks.
Noam Scheiber / New York Times:
Trump's Attacks on DEI Get Approval From Some in the Left Wing  —  Many Democrats and activists are rallying to defend diversity programs, but others say they distract from deeper efforts to address inequality.  —  A few days after President Trump issued an order urging the private sector to end …
Discussion: HotAir
Alec MacGillis / ProPublica:
Memory-Holing Jan. 6: What Happens When You Try to Make History Vanish?  —  ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.  Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published.  —  On Jan. 10, the U.S. Department of Justice released a 123-page report …
Discussion: NJTODAY.NET
Bloomberg:
Fed Closes Climate Program, Ending Stress-Test Burden for Banks  — US central bank initiated the pilot program two years ago  — Decision impacts lenders, including JPMorgan and Citigroup  —  The Federal Reserve has ended its program that required the biggest US banks to submit data …
Andrew Goudsward / Reuters:
Trump administration disbands task force targeting Russian oligarchs  —  The U.S. Justice Department under President Donald Trump is disbanding an effort started after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine to enforce sanctions and target oligarchs close to the Kremlin.
Politico:
Note to Our Readers  —  POLITICO has been the subject of debate on X this week.  Some of it has been misinformed, and some of it has been flat-out false.  Let's set the record straight.  —  POLITICO has been the subject of debate on X this week.  Some of it has been misinformed, and some of it has been flat-out false.
Rohan Goswami / Semafor:
Trump team considers housing detained migrants in container offices  —  The Scoop  —  The Trump administration is in talks with a private shipping-container company to provide temporary space to house and process thousands of migrants slated for deportation, according to people familiar with the matter.
Jose Pagliery / NOTUS:
Trump's DOJ Is Struggling to Commit to Keeping FBI Agents' Names Private  —  The agents fear political retaliation not only from the Trump administration — but also from the pardoned Jan. 6 rioters.  — Copy  —  Justice Department lawyers in court on Thursday would not make a simple promise …
 
 
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 More Items: 
Sam Stein / The Bulwark:
Trump and Musk Are Strangling the Government
Discussion: Daily Maverick and New York Times
Andrew Prokop / Vox:
All the ways Elon Musk is breaking the law, explained by a law professor
Discussion: New Republic
Axios:
Netanyahu told U.S. officials war could end if Hamas leaders go into exile: sources
Discussion: Fox News and israelhayom.com
Dan Froomkin / Press Watch:
‘Trump Brazenly Defies Laws’ is not an A17 story
Discussion: New York Times
Niraj Chokshi / New York Times:
Airline Pilots in the DC Plane Crash Acted as Expected, Experts Say
Discussion: Washington Examiner and DNyuz
 Earlier Items: 
Timothy W. Ryback / The Atlantic:
The Oligarchs Who Came to Regret Supporting Hitler
Aamer Madhani / Associated Press:
Trump tells prayer breakfast he wants to root out ‘anti-Christian bias’ and urges ‘bring God back’
Moira Donegan / The Guardian:
It is Elon Musk who is now running the United States. Not Donald Trump
Paul Krugman:
RFK Jr. and the MAGA Death Trip
Ally Mutnick / Politico:
Democratic polling finds Elon Musk is unpopular
Discussion: New Republic, Breitbart and Axios
David Folkenflik / NPR:
Why CBS stands at the epicenter of Trump's assault on the media
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
Netflix agrees to acquire WBD's studios and streaming business in an $82.7B cash-and-stock deal, including debt, to close after WBD splits in two in Q3 2026

New York Times:
The New York Times sues Perplexity, claiming the AI startup violated its copyrights and kept using its content despite repeated demands over the past 18 months

Alexandra Steigrad / New York Post:
Sources: Forbes has cut ties with dozens of contributing writers; one exec said Forbes needs to ensure the contributor model is “financially sound”
 
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