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11:40 AM ET, January 29, 2025

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RELATED:
Don Moynihan / Can We Still Govern?:
Compelling Mass Civil Servant Resignations Will Create Chaos  —  Elon Musk's role at Twitter represents a Rorschach test for how people think he will fare in restructuring government.  For fans, he was able to cut the majority of the employees, and the site continued to run more or less as before.
NBC News:
Trump administration will offer all 2 million federal workers a buyout to resign  —  An email is set to go out to federal workers beginning Tuesday.  —  President Donald Trump's administration is set to offer every single federal worker the chance to take a “deferred resignation” …
Axios:
Scoop: Trump offering buyouts to all federal workers, source says … We're five years past COVID and just 6 percent of federal employees work full-time in office.  That is unacceptable," a senior administration official tells Axios.
Associated Press:
Trump offering federal workers buyouts with about 8 months' pay in effort to shrink government  —  The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it is offering buyouts to all federal employees who opt to leave their jobs by next week — an unprecedented move to shrink the U.S. government at breakneck speed.
Amanda Marcotte / Salon:
“Trump is trying to collapse our economy”: War on “woke” revealed as a war on all Americans  —  Christian nationalists behind the spending shutdown aim to punish everyone, not just imaginary Marxists  —  Initially, the most striking detail in the White House Office of Management and Budget memo …
RELATED:
Popular Information:
New Trump memo claims authority to ignore Congress  —  On Monday, the Trump administration issued an extraordinary memo ordering federal agencies to indefinitely freeze the “disbursement of all Federal financial assistance.”  The freeze was scheduled to take effect at 5 PM on Tuesday …
Timothy Noah / New Republic:
The Reason Why Donald Trump Shut Down His Government  —  Washington's newest pastime is counting the number of impeachable offenses Trump commits in his first 100 days.  It's a parlor game rather than a government proceeding because you don't impeach a president less than three months into his term …
Discussion: Talking Points Memo
New York Times:
Which Federal Programs Are Under Scrutiny?  The Budget Office Named 2,600 of Them.  —  A Trump administration memo sent to U.S. federal agencies Monday night ordered temporary freezes in funding for programs across the government.  It caused widespread confusion among agency officials …
Punchbowl News:   1/29/25 ☀️ AM:  —  Dems were in the dumps - until Trump helped them out
Matthew Yglesias / Slow Boring:
Throw Biden under the bus  —  Sleepy Joe landed us in this mess with bad, selfish decisions  —  When Joe Biden stepped aside in favor of Kamala Harris, the overwhelming majority of Democrats praised him for the decision and painted an overall flattering portrait of Biden's presidency and his career.
RELATED:
Brianne Pfannenstiel / Des Moines Register:
Iowa Democrats flip Senate seat in special election to cut into Republican majority  —  Iowa Democrats have flipped a state Senate seat vacated earlier this year by Chris Cournoyer, who resigned to become the state's new lieutenant governor.  —  Democrat Mike Zimmer has defeated Republican Kate Whittington …
Shane Goldmacher / New York Times:
Powerless, Democrats Debate Just How Deep in the Wilderness They Are
Discussion: HotAir
MPR News:
Doron Clark wins Senate special election, DFLers take back the Minnesota Senate
Shawn McCreesh / New York Times:
White House Press Secretary Makes Steely and Unflinching Debut  —  Karoline Leavitt used her first briefing in the role to warn veteran reporters that they were increasingly irrelevant.  —  So much for respecting your elders.  —  Karoline Leavitt, the new White House press secretary …
RELATED:
Financial Times:
OpenAI says it has evidence China's DeepSeek used its model to train competitor  —  White House AI tsar David Sacks raises possibility of alleged intellectual property theft  —  OpenAI says it has found evidence that Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek used the US company's proprietary models …
RELATED:
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
OpenAI Furious DeepSeek Might Have Stolen All the Data OpenAI Stole From Us  —  The narrative that OpenAI, Microsoft, and freshly minted White House “AI czar” David Sacks are now pushing to explain why DeepSeek was able to create a large language model that outpaces OpenAI's while spending orders …
New York Times:
Trump's Order on Transgender Troops Will Likely Ban Their Service, Again  —  In an executive order issued Monday night, the president said transgender service members “cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary” for the military.  —  Hours after President Trump signed …
RELATED:
The White House:
Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation
Daniel Payne / Politico:
RFK Jr.'s confirmation battle has turned politics upside down  —  The Senate Finance Committee will hear from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump's nominee for health secretary, on Wednesday.  —  The scene Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to face in the Senate Wednesday not long ago would have seemed like something out of a bizarro world.
RELATED:
Anna Kutz / The Hill:
Lara Trump: Caroline Kennedy's comments on RFK Jr. ‘disgusting’
Sheryl Gay Stolberg / New York Times:
RFK Jr., Trump's Pick for Health Secretary, Faces First Senate Confirmation Hearing
New York Times:
Caroline Kennedy Calls RFK Jr. a ‘Predator’ in Letter to Senators
David Corn / Mother Jones:
SCOOP: RFK Jr. Secretly Recorded Second Wife During Divorce and Acknowledged Being “Polygamous”  —  One recording might have violated state law.  It was part of a messy saga that ended with her suicide.  —  In the early 2010s, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went through a contentious divorce with his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy.
CNN:
Trump DOJ appointee in DC lashes out after flurry of ‘personally insulting’ leaks in his first week  —  The acting top federal prosecutor in Washington under President Donald Trump is furious about recent leaks to the press and also specifically directed staff to scrutinize a former official's work …
Discussion: Mediaite
Fox News:
Pentagon pulling Gen. Milley's security detail and clearance ‘immediately,’ may face demotion in retirement  —  EXCLUSIVE: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will announce he is “immediately pulling” retired Gen. Mark Milley's personal security detail and security clearance, multiple senior administration officials tell Fox News.
RELATED:
Gary Fineout / Politico:
DeSantis plans to veto Florida immigration bill passed by GOP Legislature  —  The veto decision represents further decay of the quickly deteriorating relationship between the governor and Legislature.  —  TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Gov. Ron DeSantis said he will veto a sweeping illegal immigration …
Evan McMorris-Santoro / NOTUS:
Trump's White House Is Flooding the Zone With Legal Tests … - Copy  —  A sweeping executive action sowing confusion across the nation.  The cry of “Wait, he can't do that!” from constitutional lawyers and the political opposition.  A swift ruling from a federal judge temporarily restoring trillions …
RELATED:
Dana Milbank / Washington Post:
The Trump White House has no idea what the Trump White House just did
David R. Lurie / Public Notice:
Trump's chaos governance failed once.  He's trying it again.  —  He's breaking eggs while ignoring their price. … ✈️ ⛈️ 🚁  —  Pundits spent the past week expressing wonderment at how Donald Trump has lumbered back into the White House with a massive show of dominance and power.
Politico:
‘It was leaked to us:’ Army in chaos over Trump orders  —  Confusion around the new administration's spending freezes and executive orders has caused disarray inside the Pentagon.  —  The Army rushed to satisfy President Donald Trump's executive orders this week, sparking so much confusion …
Punchbowl News:
The best commute to Washington belongs to Jim Justice  —  Most days before the Senate starts its day, a privately-owned Cessna Citation V jet lands at Washington Reagan National Airport.  —  And most evenings, after the chamber is done with its business, the same jet takes off for Greenbrier Valley Airport in Lewisburg, W.Va.
Politico:
How Trump's orbit used blunt force to squeeze Hegseth through  —  The aggressive posture, inspired by Trump, meant going after not only Democrats, the media and Hegseth's accusers — but also their own party.  —  Pete Hegseth seemed well on his way to becoming Trump's next Defense secretary …
Jonathan Cohn / HuffPost:
Trump Administration Scales Back Order To Stop Foreign Assistance  —  A new directive from Secretary of State Marco Rubio says medical and humanitarian operations can continue, though the precise meaning of what's allowed remains unclear.  —  LOADING  —  The Trump administration has dialed …
 
 
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 More Items: 
Kitty Kurth / The Sword And the Sandwich:
Who Goes MAGA?  —  In 1934, a courageous, flawed, complicated journalist named Dorothy Thompson …
Sen. Rick Scott / Washington Examiner:
Tulsi Gabbard is the right person to lead the intelligence community
Discussion: American Prospect
Neetu Arnold / City Journal:
Federal Funding Shouldn't Be Going to Woke University Programs
Ashley Parker / The Atlantic:
You're So Vain, You Probably Think Kash Patel Hates You
Joan Westenberg / The Index:
Trump's PEPFAR Shutdown is White Supremacy in Action
Discussion: New York Times and NPR
 Earlier Items: 
Rachel Ulatowski / The Mary Sue:
'Biden's Book Ban Hoax': Department of Education claims book bans are a ‘hoax’ and dismisses all complaints
Umar Shakir / The Verge:
FCC chair says landlords can force bulk internet service on residents
Julia Ainsley / NBC News:
Trump administration may pull money from TSA, Coast Guard to help ICE afford costly deportations
Jennifer Elias / CNBC:
Google reclassifies U.S. as ‘sensitive country’ alongside China, Russia after Trump's ‘Gulf of America’ comments
Daniel Barnes / NBC News:
D.C. federal judge temporarily blocks Trump plan to pause federal aid spending
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Axios:
Sources: G/O Media sold business news brand Quartz and commerce site The Inventory to software firm Redbrick, the fourth Quartz ownership change in seven years

Fareed Sahloul / Bloomberg:
Sources: connected TV ad platform MNTN, which filed for a US IPO in late February, is among companies pausing listings as Trump's trade war upends the economy

Katie Campione / Deadline:
WGA members “overwhelmingly” ratify a new three-year deal with CBS News that includes AI protections and is modeled after a recent ABC News contract
 
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