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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 …
Discussion:
Science, The Guardian, APLU and STAT
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Trump Administration Cuts Put Medical Progress at Risk, Researchers Say
Discussion:
Forbes, NPR, Talking Points Memo, STAT, Bloomberg, KRDO, Politico, Inside Medicine, Ars Technica and Raw Story

Indirect Costs and Trump's Attack on Independent Voices
Discussion:
STAT, Reuters and grants.nih.gov


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 …
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Townhall, CBS News and Instapundit
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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:
emptywheel, Mother Jones, The Post Millennial, Washington Examiner, Business Insider, CBS News, Politico, Althouse, The Japan Times, Bloomberg and Foreign Affairs


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 …
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CNN, ZeroHedge News, UPI, Fox Business, Bloomberg, Washington Post, Fox News, Gothamist and Tampa Free Press


Federal judge temporarily blocks DOGE from accessing sensitive Treasury Department payment systems
Discussion:
Reuters, Rolling Stone, Axios, The Dispatch and CBS News


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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In Trump's actions, opponents see more than cuts — they see a constitutional crisis
Discussion:
LewRockwell, Wall Street Journal, Reuters and American Thinker

Trump's Gaza proposal strikes fear in his new Arab American supporters
Discussion:
Raw Story


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.
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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 …


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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Trump and Musk Bring Vast Aid Machinery to a Halt in Africa
Discussion:
Raw Story


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, WTTG-TV, RedState, Reuters, Alternet.org, Forbes, Wired, Bloomberg, Washington Post, Breitbart, American Financial …, Americans for Financial Reform, Townhall and Gizmodo
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Elon's X army takes the wheel … - Musk, who typically posts between 50 and 100 tweets per day, is taking the bottom-up approach by letting foot soldiers supply suggestions that get seen — and acted on — by his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). … Then on Monday, he declared that Trump “agreed” to shut it down.
Discussion:
Fox News
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The real lesson of the DOGE racist tweets scandal
Discussion:
American Thinker, Vanity Fair, The American Saga, People For, Twitchy, The Daily Signal, The Guardian, The Gateway Pundit, Arizona Republic, HuffPost, Raw Story, Daily Mail, New Republic, Politico, Mercury News, Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Forbes, New York Post, Mediaite, Washington Examiner, driftglass, Bloomberg, Breitbart, Crooks and Liars, Wall Street Journal and The Daily Caller


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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'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


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:
Townhall, The Guardian, New York Post, Daily Mail, CBS News and Toronto Star


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


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 …


Trump dismisses archivist to the United States — The National Archives became the target of Trump's ire when the independent agency sought to retain documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022. — President Donald Trump has terminated the head of the National Archives and Records Administration …
Discussion:
Reuters, CBS News, ABC News, KRDO and Saywhat Politics
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Trump Fires National Archives Director Colleen Shogan
Discussion:
Politico, New York Times, NBC News, Bloomberg and The Gateway Pundit


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 …
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Trump orders U.S. to prioritize refugee resettlement of South Africans of European descent


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 …


Why would a ‘Christian’ destroy the world's largest relief agency? — For Christians here and across the world, the ongoing confrontation over the fate of USAID dramatically illustrates the moral degeneration of the politicians who most fervently profess their piety.


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 …


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 »


This senator says Democrats need to invoke villains, namely Elon Musk — Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut calls on his party to be more aggressive in going after Trump's billionaire allies as it tries to win back the hearts of voters. — Sen. Chris Murphy thinks that Democrats have been too timid …


Trump Administration Moves to Send $8 Billion in Arms to Israel, Bypassing Some Lawmakers — President Biden announced the arms sales at the end of his administration, and President Trump is pushing it soon after his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
Discussion:
New York Post, CNN and WTOP News