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Democratic Senator Says He Will Stall Trump Nominees Until USAID Is Back — Schatz said he would hold up Trump's diplomatic confirmations — WASHINGTON—Sen. Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii) said he would place a “blanket hold” on all of President Trump's State Department nominees until …
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USAID workers at Washington HQ told to stay home on Monday in unexpected, early-morning email — The main office of the US Agency for International Development in Washington was unexpectedly closed Monday and workers were emailed shortly after midnight that they should not come in …
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Reuters, BBC, NPR, Wall Street Journal, Mashable, Michigan Advance, Tennessee Star, American Greatness, The Daily Caller, DNyuz, United States Senate Committee …, The National Pulse, Mediaite, Business Insider, The Federalist, OutsideTheBeltway, UPI, Axios, Fortune, New Republic, RedState and CBS News

Democrats push back after Musk says Trump agrees to close USAID and workers are kept out — Democrats have delivered a strong rebuke against the Trump administration's attempts to gut an agency that provides crucial aid overseas to fund education and fight starvation and disease …
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Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz puts a hold on Trump's State Department nominees — The move comes after Elon Musk said he and Trump would shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development. — WASHINGTON — Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said Monday he's placing a “blanket hold” …

Trump Advisers Weigh Plan to Dismantle Education Department — Administration officials are discussing executive order that could shut down key functions of the agency — Trump administration officials are weighing executive actions to dismantle the Education Department as part of the campaign …
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Reuters, Politico, ABC News, Washington Examiner, Scripps News, Townhall and Jewish Insider

Behind DOGE's Standoff at USAID: Desk Searches and Elon Musk Calling
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NBC News, CNN, CBS News, Letters from an American, Reuters, Axios, Associated Press, New York Post, DNyuz, The Post Millennial, Townhall and UPI
Wall Street Journal:
Trump Administration Closes USAID Headquarters
Trump Administration Closes USAID Headquarters
Discussion:
Axios, NOTUS, ABC News, NBC News, Daily Mail, The Gateway Pundit, CBS News, Fox News and Bloomberg
Andrew Perez / Rolling Stone:
Elon Musk Is Permanently Deleting Government Agencies
Elon Musk Is Permanently Deleting Government Agencies
Discussion:
Reuters, Public, Financial Times, USA Today, Breitbart, New York Times, DNyuz, CBS News, LewRockwell and Grabien, more at Techmeme »
Andrew Freedman / Axios:
Ending USAID climate programs could increase security risks
Ending USAID climate programs could increase security risks
Discussion:
Truthout, more at Mediagazer »
Matt Young / The Daily Beast:
Musk: I'm Closing Entire Federal Agency Down Right Now
Musk: I'm Closing Entire Federal Agency Down Right Now
Discussion:
Daily Mail, New Republic, Blaze Media and Baltimore Sun

I'm a Federal Worker. Elon Musk's Government Data Heist Is the Entire Ballgame. — On Friday night, reports emerged that Elon Musk's aides had tussled with Office of Personnel Management and Treasury staffers while demanding access to troves of information about federal employees.
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DCMediaGroup, more at Techmeme »
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Musk's superteam of former iPad babies — Read to the end for Plimbo … Many other government websites faced outages throughout the weekend as they scrambled to figure out exactly how to comply with the instructions being sent out by the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

Musk associates given unfettered access to private data of government employees — Several of Elon Musk's associates installed at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) have received unprecedented access to federal human resources databases containing sensitive personal information for millions of federal employees.
Discussion:
New Republic, USA Today and Raw Story

White House: Mexico is ‘serious’, Canada appears to have ‘misunderstood’ Trump's executive order — The White House said on Monday it has noticed that Mexico is “serious” about President Donald Trump's executive order on tariffs but Canada has “misunderstood” it.
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Associated Press, The Daily Wire, Ars Technica, Retail Dive, The Free Press, New York Daily News, Breitbart and CNN
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Trump to pause promised tariffs for 30 days after speaking with Trudeau — Trump, Trudeau spoke last hour for the second time today — Trump, Trudeau have 2nd phone call as tariff deadline nears — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump will hold off …
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Bloomberg, New York Post, CNBC, Politico, Breitbart, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, UPI, Daily Mail, New Republic, CBS News and E&E News

Live Updates: Mexico Reaches Deal With U.S. to Delay Trump Tariffs
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Washington Post, Politico, Reuters, Washington Examiner, NPR, New Republic, New York Post, The Guardian, The Contrarian, Global News, freebeacon.com, American Enterprise Institute, RedState, HotAir, Raw Story, CNN, Slate, WTTG-TV, The Independent, The Fucking News, Kansas Reflector, Jacobin, NBC News, Townhall, CBS News, Fortune, The Post Millennial, USA Today, Al Jazeera, Grabien and The Free Press
David Edwards / Raw Story:
Trump backs down on Mexico tariffs after Mexican president pledges border troops
Trump backs down on Mexico tariffs after Mexican president pledges border troops
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Kevin Shalvey / ABC News:
Trump 2nd term live updates: Marco Rubio made acting administrator of USAID: Sources
Trump 2nd term live updates: Marco Rubio made acting administrator of USAID: Sources
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New York Times, CBS News, Raw Story, Fox News, New York Post, Baltimore Sun, Twitchy, Forbes, The Guardian, DNyuz and The Post Millennial
Alexander Bolton / The Hill:
McConnell: Trump tariffs ‘will drive the cost of everything up’
McConnell: Trump tariffs ‘will drive the cost of everything up’
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Financial Times, CBS News, Daily Kos, The Guardian, Washington Examiner, Digby's Hullabaloo, Business Insider and HuffPost

DOJ Says Trump Administration Doesn't Have to Follow Court Order Halting Funding Freeze — The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) argued Monday that a federal court order blocking President Donald Trump's federal funding freeze doesn't halt the administration's efforts.
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USA Today
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Judge Says She Will Further Block White House Spending Freeze
Discussion:
WNYW-TV, Roll Call and Law & Crime

‘Trump will screw up’: Schumer plots the Democratic comeback — Chuck Schumer's advice for Democrats staring at a long two or more years out of power: Just wait. — “Trump will screw up,” he told Semafor in an interview. — The Senate minority leader and his 47-member caucus finally got …
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Nicholas Wu / Politico:
Hakeem Jeffries wants funding freeze ‘choked off’ in spending deal
Hakeem Jeffries wants funding freeze ‘choked off’ in spending deal
Discussion:
Democratic Leader …, Digby's Hullabaloo, Axios and RedState
Moira Donegan / The Guardian:
Why are the Democrats so spineless? — No wonder the American public thinks of Democrats …
Why are the Democrats so spineless? — No wonder the American public thinks of Democrats …
Discussion:
The Hill

Trump orders creation of US sovereign wealth fund, says it could buy TikTok — U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday ordering the U.S. Treasury and Commerce Departments to create a sovereign wealth fund and said it may purchase TikTok. — “We're going to stand this thing up within the next 12 months.
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TechCrunch, Wall Street Journal, ABC News, The Hollywood Reporter, The Post Millennial and New Republic
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Warren Questions Bessent Over Musk Access to Treasury Payment System — In a letter to the Treasury secretary, the Democratic senator warned against meddling with a system that processes trillions of dollars of transactions. — Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts sent a letter …
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Bloomberg, Esquire, ABC News, The Independent, The Verge, Fortune, The Lens, MeidasTouch News, Robert Reich and Wall Street Journal
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‘Filled With Unmitigated Terror’
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Rolling Stone, Axios, Notes on the Crises and Fortune
Margaret Sullivan / American Crisis:
The split personality of Big Journalism in covering this nightmare

CFPB halts work after Trump appoints Bessent as acting head — The consumer watchdog agency was formed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Elon Musk wants to “delete” it. — President Donald Trump on Monday appointed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent as the acting director …

Trump plans to invoke obscure 18th century wartime law in bid for mass deportations — President Donald Trump is set to test the limits of his immigration crackdown by invoking a wartime law to deport immigrants alleged to be gang members without court hearings, a broad authority …
Discussion:
The Independent and Reuters

Ford ‘ripping up’ Ontario's $100M contract with Elon Musk's Starlink in wake of U.S. tariffs — Musk part of President Donald Trump's team that wants to destroy families, Ford says — Progressive Conservative Leader Doug Ford is “ripping up” Ontario's nearly $100 million contract …

E.P.A. Tells More Than 1,000 They Could Be Fired ‘Immediately’ — A spokeswoman for Lee Zeldin, the new head of the agency, said the goal was to create an “effective and efficient” federal work force. — The Trump administration has warned more than 1,100 Environmental Protection Agency employees …
Discussion:
Washington Examiner, The Hill and New York Post
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The Twitter Files Playbook Comes For The US Government — Remember the Twitter Files? That carefully orchestrated “exposé” where incredibly gullible hand-picked journalists were given selective access to internal documents to manufacture misleading outrage about Twitter's content moderation?
Discussion:
Advocate

No, Elon: It Isn't Illegal To Boycott X — While news cycles in the first Donald Trump presidency were dominated by Trump's erratic social media pretense, news cycles during Trump 2.0 seem so far to be dominated by the erratic social media titan Elon Musk. The X CEO and leader …
Discussion:
Breitbart and Adweek, more at Mediagazer »

Democratic state Sen. Mallory McMorrow preparing to enter US Senate race in Michigan, AP sources say — Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow is preparing to enter the Democratic primary for an open U.S. Senate seat in the state, multiple people familiar with her plans confirmed on Monday.

Exclusive: Trump's meme coin made nearly $100 million in trading fees, as small traders lost money — Entities behind President Donald Trump's crypto coin have accumulated close to $100 million in trading fees in less than two weeks, according to estimates from three blockchain analysis firms …
Discussion:
MSNBC and DNyuz, more at Techmeme »

N.Y. Attorney General Warns Hospitals Against Canceling Transgender Care — A White House executive order last week threatened to pull federal funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care. But not providing the care could violate state law, Letitia James said in a letter on Monday.
Discussion:
The Hill, The Guardian, Gay City News, okay, this looks bad. and WTOP News