USDA says it accidentally fired officials working on bird flu and is trying to rehire them  —  In a statement, an Agriculture Department spokesperson told NBC News that officials are “working to swiftly rectify the situation.”  —  The United States Department of Agriculture on Tuesday acknowledged that …

DOGE Claimed It Saved $8 Billion in One Contract.  It Was Actually $8 Million.  —  The biggest single line item on the website of Elon Musk's cost-cutting team appears to include an error.  —  The Department of Government Efficiency, the federal cost-cutting initiative championed by Elon Musk …

Trump says Ukraine ‘should never have started it’ in comments about war with Russia  —  Trump made the remark while deriding Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose country was invaded by Russia in February 2022.  —  President Donald Trump suggested Tuesday that Ukraine was responsible …

Senior U.S. prosecutor resigns, citing demands to open probe into Biden-era contract  —  The top federal prosecutor who supervised criminal cases at the Washington, D.C. U.S. Attorney's office resigned on Tuesday, citing what she described as an improper demand by officials appointed …

Trump signs order to claim power over independent agencies  —  The action is likely to face court challenges and test a once-fringe legal theory.  —  President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a sweeping executive order bringing independent agencies under the control of the White House …

Musk Ally Demands Admin Access to System That Lets Government Text the Public  —  A worker at the General Services Administration told colleagues in a Slack message Tuesday that they have resigned in protest after Elon Musk ally Thomas Shedd requested “admin/root access to all components …

Brazil Charges Bolsonaro With Attempting a Coup  —  Brazil's attorney general charged the former president Jair Bolsonaro with trying to overturn the 2022 elections.  —  Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil's former president, was charged Tuesday with overseeing a vast scheme to try to undermine …

Vance's Munich Disgrace  —  In April 1928, Joseph Goebbels, later the Third Reich's chief propagandist, wrote a newspaper essay addressing the question of why the National Socialists, despite being an “anti-parliamentarian party,” would nonetheless compete in that May's parliamentary elections.

U.S. weighs destroying $500 million in stockpiled covid tests  —  The government is reviewing proposals to shut down the program that ships free covid tests to American households and has been considering destroying 160 million tests.

Judge halts firing of intel agency personnel involved with DEI  —  The order may amount to only a temporary reprieve.  —  A federal judge has temporarily blocked the CIA and the Office of Director of National Intelligence from firing 11 people whose jobs were eliminated to comply …

F.D.A.'s Food Safety Chief Resigns Over Trump Administration Layoffs  —  The chief said the loss of critical employees overseeing the nation's food supply made his work impossible.  Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation's new health secretary, has pledged to gut the division.

Zachary Levi Begs Elon Musk Not To Fire The ‘Good’ Federal Workers Who Voted For Trump  —  The “Shazam” star was upset that Trump supporters are getting “lost in the cracks” during DOGE's firing frenzy.  —  LOADING  —  Oh, bless his heart: Zachary Levi seems to believe that a billionaire cares …

11-Year-Old Texas Girl Bullied Over Family's Immigration Status Takes Her Own Life  —  Students also threatened to call ICE to deport the girl's family  —  Jocelynn Rojo Carranza took her life after experiencing months of relentless bullying from her sixth grade classmates …

‘Good luck with that.’ Trump administration terminates privacy officials at agency overseeing government hiring and firing  —  The Trump administration has quietly fired multiple members of the “privacy team” and other officials from the office that oversees the hiring of federal workers …

Moving on from 18F.  —  note: This post gets into the last few weeks of American politics.  If that's not your cup of tea, or if that's a stressful topic for you, please feel free to skip this one.  (Also, it's a bit long.  Sorry about that.)  —  Last week, I finished my tenure as a designer at 18F.

Trump says AP will be curtailed at the White House until it changes its style to Gulf of America  —  President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he will continue to restrict The Associated Press' access to his events and news conferences until the news outlet goes along with his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico in its reports.

'Stephen, let's calm down': Yelling Trump aide berates host as he loses cool live on CNN  —  White House aide Stephen Miller launched into a barrage of shouting aimed at CNN's Brianna Keilar Tuesday as she grilled him on cuts being made by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency …

Kennedy Library closes abruptly  —  “The sudden dismissal of federal employees at the JFK Library forced the museum to close today,” a statement from the foundation read.  —  The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum closed abruptly Tuesday afternoon amid a flurry of mass firings at federal agencies across the government.

Kennedy says panel will examine childhood vaccine schedule after promising not to change it  —  To earn the vote he needed to become the nation's top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a special promise to a U.S. senator: He would not change the nation's current vaccination schedule.

Musk and DOGE Might Soon Have Access to the Most Lucrative Defense-Contract Database of All  —  Ex-officials warn Zeteo that the USXports database is a means for Musk to undercut competitors to SpaceX in the defense sector.  —  ∙ Paid  —  Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency …

Trump's FBI pick one step closer to confirmation  —  Kash Patel, the controversial nominee to lead the FBI, cleared another key procedural hurdle Tuesday.  The Senate voted 48-45 to move forward with Patel's nomination, setting up his confirmation vote in the coming days to helm the agency for a 10-year term.

Not Even DOGE Employees Know Who's Legally Running DOGE  —  Despite all appearances, the White House insists that Elon Musk is not in charge of DOGE.  US Doge Service employees can't get a straight answer about who is.  —  President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have repeatedly affirmed Musk's leadership …

“I'm Suffering:” Holiday Massacre of Federal Workforce Is a Rude Awakening for Rural Westerners  —  Park rangers, biologists, maintenance crews, wildfire prevention people—all fired arbitrarily.  —  A President's Day weekend swept by fear and grief from the sudden termination of thousands …

State Dept. orders cancellation of news subscriptions around the world  —  Embassies and consulates were told to terminate subscriptions to the New York Times, the Associated Press and others.  —  The State Department has ordered the cancellation of all news subscriptions deemed …

Tens of millions of dead people aren't getting Social Security checks, despite Trump and Musk claims  —  The Trump administration is falsely claiming that tens of millions of dead people over 100 years old are receiving Social Security payments.  Over the past few days …