Top Items:
Shayna Jacobs / Washington Post:
Federal judge blocks Musk's DOGE from access to Treasury Department material — The judge also ordered Musk and his team to “immediately destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from Treasury Department's records and systems, if any.” — NEW YORK — A federal judge issued …
Discussion:
Townhall, CBS News and Instapundit
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New York Times:
Judge Halts Access to Treasury Payment Systems by Elon Musk's Team — The order came in response to a lawsuit filed by 19 attorneys general accusing the president of failing to faithfully execute the nation's laws when he let DOGE comb through federal computer systems.
Discussion:
Mother Jones, emptywheel, The Post Millennial, Washington Examiner, Business Insider, CBS News, Politico, The Japan Times, Althouse, Foreign Affairs and Bloomberg
Kyle Cheney / Politico:
Judge orders sweeping restriction on DOGE access to sensitive Treasury payment systems — The judge limited access to “civil servants with a need for access” who have “passed all background checks and security clearances.” — A federal judge on Saturday issued a sweeping block …
Discussion:
CNN, Washington Post, UPI, Bloomberg, Fox News, Gothamist and Tampa Free Press
NBC News:
Federal judge temporarily blocks DOGE from accessing sensitive Treasury Department payment systems
Discussion:
Rolling Stone, Reuters, Axios, The Dispatch, CBS News and Breitbart
Washington Post:
NIH cuts billions of dollars in biomedical funding, effective immediately — The move halts a large slice of money for most universities and research institutions virtually overnight, imperiling vital research in everything from cancer to heart disease. — The Trump administration …
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Christina Jewett / New York Times:
Deep Cuts to Medical Research Funds Could Hobble University Budgets
grants.nih.gov:
Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Grants Policy Statement: Indirect Cost Rates
Supplemental Guidance to the 2024 NIH Grants Policy Statement: Indirect Cost Rates
Discussion:
Forbes, NPR, Science, APLU, KRDO, STAT, Ars Technica, Inside Medicine and Raw Story
Greg Sargent / New Republic:
Did Trump Quietly Kill a Sensitive Pentagon Probe into Elon Musk? — In December, more than a month before Donald Trump took the presidential oath of office, The New York Times reported a blockbuster scoop: Elon Musk and his SpaceX company had repeatedly failed to meet federal reporting requirements designed …
Alex Isenstadt / Axios:
Why Trump's in-your-face campaign will never end … - On Jan. 31, the Rapid Response account posted a message portraying House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) as violent for promising that Democrats will “fight” Trump's agenda “legislatively... in the courts, and ... in the streets.”
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Washington Post:
In Trump's actions, opponents see more than cuts — they see a constitutional crisis
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal, LewRockwell, Reuters and American Thinker
Natalie Allison / Washington Post:
Trump's Gaza proposal strikes fear in his new Arab American supporters
Trump's Gaza proposal strikes fear in his new Arab American supporters
Discussion:
Raw Story
Politico:
How spending $153M to pay its bills put USAID in DOGE's crosshairs — Aides to the president and Elon Musk suspected USAID officials were trying to go around a funding freeze. — Pete Marocco was furious. — It was Thursday, Jan. 23, and the Trump administration official had discovered …
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Abdallah Fayyad / Vox:
The real lesson of the DOGE racist tweets scandal — On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that a staffer at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) resigned after the paper inquired about some racist social media posts from an account linked to him.
Discussion:
Vanity Fair, The American Saga, People For, The Guardian, HuffPost, Arizona Republic, Twitchy, The Daily Signal, The Gateway Pundit, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Raw Story, Daily Mail, New Republic, Politico, Mercury News, Rolling Stone, Forbes, New York Post, Mediaite, Washington Examiner, Bloomberg, driftglass, Crooks and Liars, The Daily Caller, Associated Press, Fortune, Lawyers, Guns & Money and Mashable
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Olivia Diaz / Associated Press:
Trump chops away at the government and the fallout is felt in the Virginia governor's race — The Trump administration's aggressive push to cut government jobs is reverberating in the early stages of this year's race for governor in Virginia. The fast-moving effort by Republican President Donald …
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Laurel Wamsley / NPR:
Russell Vought takes the helm at CFPB as Musk's DOGE accesses key systems — Russell Vought, an architect of Project 2025 and the new director at the Office of Management and Budget, is now also the acting leader of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Discussion:
CNN, Politico, Washington Examiner, CBS News, Forbes, Reuters, Wired, Bloomberg, Washington Post, Breitbart, American Financial …, Townhall, Americans for Financial Reform and Gizmodo
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New York Times:
Advocate of Jan. 6 Rioters Now Runs Office That Investigated Them — Ed Martin, a loyal Trump soldier, oversees the U.S. attorney's office, which is likely to help turn the investigative powers of the government on several of the president's perceived enemies.
María Luisa Paúl / Washington Post:
Trump halts aid to South Africa, claiming discrimination against Afrikaners — His executive order accuses South Africa's government of seizing property from White landowners and calls for their resettlement as “refugees” in the U.S. — President Donald Trump on Friday signed …
Discussion:
New York Times, Human Events, Los Angeles Times, WTOP News, Bloomberg, The Independent, Washington Examiner, Al Jazeera and Raw Story
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Camilo Montoya-Galvez / CBS News:
Trump orders U.S. to prioritize refugee resettlement of South Africans of European descent
Discussion:
Lutheran Confessions, Revolver News, Fox News and Chicago Sun Times
Bloomberg:
'It's a Circus': Trump Unleashes Chaos at Key US Science Agency — Muddled directives and early-morning emails at NOAA, one of the world's top weather and climate forecasters, have put the agency on edge. — The email arrived in US government workers' inboxes just after 1 a.m. East Coast time on Friday …
Discussion:
New York Times, CBS News and Heatmap News
Deidre McPhillips / CNN:
Measles outbreak expands in West Texas around county with low vaccination rate — A measles outbreak is growing in a rural area of West Texas where vaccination rates are well below the recommended level. — In late January, two children in Gaines County were hospitalized for measles.
Discussion:
Texas Department …, Ars Technica, Raw Story, The Texas Tribune, WAGA-TV, WXIA-TV and KFF Health News
Nick Robins-Early / The Guardian:
Who is helping Elon Musk gut the US government? — The billionaire's cost-cutting ‘Doge’ staff includes wealthy executives, far-right ideologues and young engineers — Elon Musk's rapid attempt to defund and depopulate the federal government has thrown US politics into chaos while the billionaire's …
Joey McFadden / The Daily Beast:
Trudeau Caught on Hot Mic Revealing Trump's Plans for Canada — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told business leaders that U.S. President Donald Trump's interest in annexing Canada was a very real plan aimed at controlling the country's vast mineral resources.Trudeau was caught …
Discussion:
The Guardian, New York Post, Daily Mail, Toronto Star and CBS News
Brian Krebs / Krebs on Security:
Teen on Musk's DOGE Team Graduated from ‘The Com’ — Wired reported this week that a 19-year-old working for Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was given access to sensitive US government systems even though his past association with cybercrime communities …
Discussion:
magpie's nest and NPR, more at Techmeme »
Casey Michel / The Moscow Times:
Washington Has Given Up the Fight Against Kleptocrats. Here's What Democracies Should Do — On Feb. 6, new U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a series of new directives from President Donald Trump's administration outlining her office's priorities. Taken together, they represent …
Wall Street Journal:
The Mood of the American Consumer is Souring — Tariff threats, market turbulence causing jitters early in Trump's second term — The Trump bump in consumer confidence is already over. — Tariff threats, stock market swings and rapidly reversing executive orders are causing Americans across …
Discussion:
The Independent and Raw Story
New York Times:
Now Is Not the Time to Tune Out — Don't get distracted. Don't get overwhelmed. Don't get paralyzed and pulled into the chaos that President Trump and his allies are purposely creating with the volume and speed of executive orders; the effort to dismantle the federal government …
Naomi LaChance / Raw Story:
30K tons of food ‘going to waste’ in Houston after Trump halted aid — About 30,000 tons of food is stuck at a port in Houston after Trump halted foreign aid for 90 days. The food, intended to feed people overseas, is stalled at a warehouse,the Houston Chronicle reported.
Kathryn Watson / CBS News:
Trump fires archivist of the United States, official who oversees government records — President Trump has fired Archivist of the United States Colleen J. Shogan, the government official responsible for preserving and providing access to government records.
Discussion:
Washington Post, Reuters, ABC News, The Gateway Pundit and KRDO
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Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
Trump Fires National Archives Director Colleen Shogan
Trump Fires National Archives Director Colleen Shogan
Discussion:
Politico, New York Times, NBC News and Bloomberg
Politico:
German court orders X to hand over election data in legal blow to Musk's platform — Researchers win a legal battle against the platform formerly known as Twitter, securing crucial access to social media data to probe potential election interference. — BERLIN — A German court handed Elon Musk's X …
Discussion:
DNyuz and TechCrunch, more at Mediagazer »
Melissa Goldin / Associated Press:
Claims about USAID funding are spreading online. Many are not based on facts — As the Trump administration moves to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, false and misleading information is being pushed on social media to support the change, much of it spread by the administration and Elon Musk.
Discussion:
New York Times and Boston Herald

