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1:40 PM ET, January 29, 2025

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 Top Items: 
Vittoria Elliott / Wired:
Elon Musk Lackeys Have Taken Over the Office of Personnel Management  —  Sources tell WIRED that the OPM's top layers of management now include individuals linked to xAI, Neuralink, the Boring Company, and Palantir.  One expert found the takeover reminiscent of Stalin.
RELATED:
Andrew Prokop / Vox:
Trump and Musk's plan for a massive purge of the federal workforce, explained  —  Donald Trump and Elon Musk's sweeping effort to purge and reshape the federal government is underway.  —  Federal employees have arrived at a “fork in the road,” the new administration proclaimed in a Tuesday night announcement.
Discussion: RedState and OutsideTheBeltway
NBC News:
Trump administration will offer all 2 million federal workers a buyout to resign
Associated Press:
Trump offering federal workers buyouts with about 8 months' pay in effort to shrink government
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.
Discussion: New Jersey Online
RELATED:
Greg Sargent / New Republic:
Trump's First Big Fiasco Triggers Stephen Miller's Rage—Take Note Dems
Siobhan Hughes / Wall Street Journal:   Ted Cruz Leads Republican Charge to Defund Consumer-Protection Agency
Shane Goldmacher / New York Times:
Powerless, Democrats Debate Just How Deep in the Wilderness They Are
Discussion: HotAir
Punchbowl News:   1/29/25 ☀️ AM:  —  Dems were in the dumps - until Trump helped them out
Washington Post:
Trump White House reverses course, rescinds freeze on federal grants  —  The budget office came under immense pressure over the impacts on a sudden pause in key government spending  —  The White House budget office on Wednesday rescinded an order freezing federal grants …
RELATED:
Zachary Basu / Axios:
White House rescinds Trump's funding freeze after massive backlash  —  The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) rescinded a memo Wednesday that had ordered a “temporary pause” on federal funding and unleashed major confusion across the country.
Discussion: The Hill, NOTUS and RedState
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:
Zack Beauchamp / Vox:
Trump is already acting like a king  —  Late on Monday night, the Trump administration sent out a stunning memo suspending all federal grants.  Chaos followed, with everything from veteran's charities facing financial ruin to reports of Medicaid portals shutting down across the country.
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 …
David S. Cohen / Rolling Stone:
Trump Hates the Constitution
Discussion: Los Angeles Times
Daniel Payne / Politico:
Senate Democrats rip into RFK Jr.  —  Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee went on offense against Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s past statements about vaccines, infectious disease and other health-related conspiracy theories.  In a heated exchange, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) …
RELATED:
Hailey Fuchs / Politico:
RFK Jr. is in the hot seat
Brad Reed / Raw Story:
‘Written by children’: Critics slam New York Times' glowing coverage of Trump official  —  White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt received glowing coverage from the New York Times for her press briefing debut despite delivering a performance that other observers have described as an “embarrassment.”
RELATED:
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 …
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 …
RELATED:
Financial Times:
OpenAI says it has evidence China's DeepSeek used its model to train competitor
Erica Orden / Politico:
Trump hires new lawyers to appeal his hush money conviction  —  The lawyers will replace Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, who represented Trump during the trial last spring.  —  NEW YORK — President Donald Trump has hired the elite white-shoe law firm Sullivan & Cromwell to appeal his criminal conviction in the Manhattan hush money case.
Discussion: Fox News
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Zach Schonfeld / The Hill:
Trump appeals hush money criminal conviction  —  President Trump appealed his New York hush money criminal conviction and has brought on a new team of attorneys to represent him.  —  The five-attorney team from elite law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, which will be led by Robert Giuffra …
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 …
RELATED:
MPR News:
Doron Clark wins Senate special election, DFLers take back the Minnesota Senate
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 …
Discussion: Defense One and Palo Alto Online
RELATED:
Popular Information:
New Trump memo claims authority to ignore Congress
Politico:
DOJ moves to drop prosecution of former Trump co-defendants in classified documents case  —  The request offered no explanation for the Justice Department's decision to abandon the case against the two Trump allies.  —  The Justice Department on Wednesday moved to drop its effort …
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.
Discussion: New York Post
Kyle Cheney / Politico:
Ed Martin Jr., a crusader for Jan. 6 defendants, now oversees their absolution  —  Trump tapped the conservative lawyer to carry out his directive dismissing hundreds of pending Jan. 6 cases.  —  For four years, Ed Martin Jr. has embraced the cause of Jan. 6 rioters, downplayed their violence …
The Guardian:
Trump revokes temporary protected status for 600,000 Venezuelans  —  New DHS secretary Kristi Noem ends extension that allows people to stay if they cannot return safely to home country  —  The Trump administration has revoked an extension of deportation protections that the previous Biden …
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
Ashleigh Fields / The Hill:
Florida Republican introduces bill to add Trump to Mount Rushmore  —  Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) introduced a bill Tuesday seeking to add President Trump's face to the Mount Rushmore monument.  —  “His remarkable accomplishments for our country and the success he will continue …
Washington Post:
Rubio backtracks on near-total foreign aid freeze, issues humanitarian waiver  —  The secretary of state, in a memo, approved the continuance of potentially billions of dollars in “life-saving humanitarian assistance.”  Many aid groups are still unsure what that means or whether they are allowed to continue work.
Sara Weissman / Inside Higher Ed:
Governor Leaves Indiana's Predominantly Black University Out of Budget  —  Martin University had a short-lived burst of state funding.  But those funds disappeared in Governor Mike Braun's budget proposal, unveiled on the heels of an anti-DEI executive order.  One lawmaker calls it racist.
 
 
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 More Items: 
Christina Shaw / Fox Business:
Trump, Musk join forces to bring stranded NASA astronauts back via SpaceX after Biden admin ‘abandoned’ them
Dana Goldstein / New York Times:
American Children's Reading Skills Reach New Lows
William Kristol / The Bulwark:
Congressional Republicans Prefer Being a Doormat
Jennifer Rubin / The Contrarian:
The Human Cost of Frozen Funds
Discussion: The Hill, Ars Technica and STAT
Sen. Rick Scott / Washington Examiner:
Tulsi Gabbard is the right person to lead the intelligence community
 Earlier Items: 
Jonathan Cohn / HuffPost:
Trump Administration Scales Back Order To Stop Foreign Assistance
Anna Kutz / The Hill:
Lara Trump: Caroline Kennedy's comments on RFK Jr. ‘disgusting’
Ashley Parker / The Atlantic:
You're So Vain, You Probably Think Kash Patel Hates You
Punchbowl News:
The best commute to Washington belongs to Jim Justice
David R. Lurie / Public Notice:
Trump's chaos governance failed once. He's trying it again.
Zach Montague / New York Times:
Trump Signs Order Restricting Gender-Affirming Treatments for Minors
Politico:
‘It was leaked to us:’ Army in chaos over Trump orders
Discussion: Raw Story, Defense One and Alternet.org