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12:45 PM ET, February 14, 2025

memeorandum

 Top Items: 
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
Anyone Can Push Updates to the DOGE.gov Website  —  The doge.gov website that was spun up to track Elon Musk's cuts to the federal government is insecure and pulls from a database that can be edited by anyone, according to two separate people who found the vulnerability and shared it with 404 Media.
Politico:
Senior Republican senator ‘puzzled’ and ‘disturbed’ by Hegseth's Ukraine remarks  —  Live coverage from Munich: POLITICO is on the ground at the Munich Security Conference, where we're having conversations with top officials, lawmakers and experts at our POLITICO Pub.  Follow our exclusive coverage here.
RELATED:
Wall Street Journal:
Vance Wields Threat of Sanctions, Military Action to Push Putin Into Ukraine Deal  —  In interview with The Wall Street Journal, vice president says Ukraine must have ‘sovereign independence’  —  PARIS—Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that the U.S. would hit Moscow with sanctions …
Isabel van Brugen / The Daily Beast:
VP Slaps Down Hegseth by Threatening Putin With U.S. Troops  —  Vice President JD Vance issued a stark warning to Russia, threatening the potential deployment of U.S. troops to Ukraine—a move that directly undercut Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who was forced into an embarrassing reversal on his earlier remarks.
Zachary Basu / Axios:
Hegseth stands by Ukraine comments as GOP senator slams “rookie mistake”
Financial Times:
Europe must respond to Trump ‘electroshock’, says Macron
Discussion: Politico and The National Interest
Steve Vladeck / One First:
124. The Thursday Night Massacre(s)  —  Two very different episodes on Thursday provide growing evidence of a Department of Justice that is showing less respect, by the day, for the rule of law.  —  Welcome back to “One First,” a weekly newsletter that aims to make the U.S. Supreme Court more accessible to all of us.
RELATED:
New York Times:
How the Justice Dept. Helped Sink Its Own Case Against Eric Adams  —  A top Trump appointee guided Mr. Adams's legal team as they crafted an argument for dismissing corruption charges against the mayor of America's largest city.  —  President Trump had just taken office when lawyers …
William Kristol / The Bulwark:
Fool Me Twice, I'll Make You FBI Director  —  As we've always said:  —  Orange Man Bad.  —  We hope you have a happy Valentine's Day, if you're into that sort of thing.  But even if you're not a fan of pink cards and candy hearts, we think there's at least one reason to be glad this weekend: Andrew Egger will be back Monday.
Discussion: Civil Discourse …
Jonah E. Bromwich / New York Times:
Live Updates: Upheaval Over Adams Case Spreads as Calls for His Resignation Grow
Michael Rothfeld / New York Times:
Danielle Sassoon's Letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Annotated
Reuters:
Trump DOJ's order to drop Eric Adams case sparks mass resignations
New York Times:
Trump Official's Demand in Adams Case Forces Justice Dept. Showdown
Discussion: RedState
STAT:
Trump administration to fire thousands at health agencies  —  Employees across agencies who were hired in the past one to two years are being targeted  —  WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is set to eliminate thousands of federal health care jobs Friday, targeting employees across public health …
Discussion: WAGA-TV, WXIA-TV, Politico and The Hill
RELATED:
New York Times:
Trump Officials Escalate Layoffs, Targeting Most of 200,000 Workers on Probation
Rachel Cohen / Vox:   Elon Musk is using the anti-teacher playbook against the entire civil workforce
New York Times:
Read the Resignation Letter From Hagan Scotten  —  Hagan Scotten, an assistant U.S. attorney, wrote to Emil Bove, acting deputy attorney general, refusing to drop the case against Mayor Eric Adams. … Around the New York Region  —  A look at life, culture, politics and more in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
Discussion: Raw Story and MeidasTouch News
The Hill:
Republicans put health care cuts front and center to advance agenda  —  House Republicans are putting cuts to Medicaid at the top of their list of budget cuts to help pay for their wide-ranging agenda that spans tax cuts, energy production and border security.
RELATED:
Meredith Lee Hill / Politico:
Sweeping safety-net cuts have GOP centrists questioning Johnson's budget
Discussion: Washington Examiner and CNN
Addy Baird / Salt Lake Tribune:
Nazi flags can fly in Utah schools, but not pride flags, GOP lawmaker says  —  A new bill would allow for Nazi and Confederate flags to be displayed in some instances in Utah schools and government buildings, but pride flags would be banned.  —  An ongoing fight in Utah to ban pride flags …
Hamilton Nolan / How Things Work:
They Are a Minority  —  For many politically minded people who are not fascists, the weeks since Donald Trump's inauguration have felt like an unstoppable whirlwind of doom.  By plowing ahead with plans to shutter entire federal agencies, cut tens of thousands of federal workers …
Meg Tirrell / CNN:
Louisiana Department of Health says it will no longer promote mass vaccination  —  The Louisiana Department of Health will no longer promote mass vaccination, the state's surgeon general, Dr. Ralph Abraham, told state health workers Thursday.  —  “The State of Louisiana and LDH …
RELATED:
Politico:   Louisiana to end mass vaccine promotion, state's top health official says
Julia Love / Bloomberg:
The Undocumented Workers Who Helped Build Elon Musk's Texas Gigafactory  —  Tesla and SpaceX both relied on their labor while Musk advocated for a border crackdown.  —  Cristy was in her early 50s when she took a job with a cleaning subcontractor on a construction project …
Noah Berlatsky / Public Notice:
The AP provides a model of effective press resistance  —  🧭 🗺️ 🌎 With corporate outlets obeying in advance, supporting independent political media is more important right now than ever.  Public Notice is possible thanks to paid subscribers.
Rolling Stone:
DOGE's ‘Nerd Army’ Is Breaking the Government by Threatening to Snitch to Elon  —  “I can't believe this is how they're blowing up the Constitution,” says a federal official on the receiving end of DOGE threats  —  Every regime's enforcement mechanisms rely on threats and politicized intimidation.
Greg Sargent / New Republic:
This Small Rust-Belt City Holds the Secret to Democrats' Latino Woes  —  During the final, frenzied week of the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris both made campaign stops in a place whose significance in the election had largely been overlooked by observers: Reading …
Discussion: Raw Story
Vittoria Elliott / Wired:
Elon Musk's Man in the Treasury Is Still Holding Down His Day Job as Software CEO  —  An email sent to workers at the US Treasury Department's Bureau of the Fiscal Service said DOGE's Tom Krause is “currently” the CEO of the Cloud Software Group.  Critics believe this could be a massive conflict of interest.
New York Times:
Billionaire Airbnb Co-Founder Is Said to Take Role in Musk's Government Initiative  —  Joe Gebbia is a board member at Tesla and is close to Elon Musk, the company's C.E.O.  —  One of Elon Musk's closest friends, a billionaire co-founder of Airbnb, is taking a role in President Trump's administration …
Discussion: The Independent
Quinta Jurecic / The Atlantic:
The Opposition Is Already Growing  —  And they've already started to slow down certain Trump efforts.  —  During his first term in office, Donald Trump loved to complain about judges on social media.  Reliably, whenever his agenda was held up in court or his allies faced legal consequences …
Discussion: New Republic and Vanity Fair
Jason Leopold / Bloomberg:
Elon Musk's DOGE Targets FOIA Requests at Agency Under its Purview  —  The government efficiency group also wants to be notified when there's any attempt at oversight from Congress, inspectors general, even the Government Accountability Office. … Valentine's Day aside …
Reuters:
Trump closed a loophole for low-cost imports ‒ until all hell broke loose  —  Days after U.S. President Donald Trump ended duty-free entry for cheap Chinese goods entering the U.S., his administration put the order on hold after more than a million packages piled up at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Discussion: The Federalist
Michelle Goldberg / New York Times:
Trump Wants to Destroy All Academia, Not Just the Woke Parts  —  In 2021, JD Vance gave a speech to the National Conservatism Conference, a gathering of Trumpist thinkers and politicians, titled “The Universities Are the Enemy.”  It contained the usual complaints about critical race theory …
NPS.gov:
“By the time of Stonewall...we had 50 to 60 gay groups in the country.  A year later...1500.”  —  Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal.  The Stonewall Uprising on June 28, 1969 is a milestone in the quest for LGB civil rights and provided momentum for a movement.
Washington Post:
Kennedy Center staff describe climate of fear as events drop from calendar  —  Issa Rae became the first major artist to publicly cancel an upcoming show at the center after President Trump took over its board and leadership.  —  The fallout from President Donald Trump's takeover …
William Vaillancourt / The Daily Beast:
RFK Jr.: I'm Already Planning a Purge of the Health Department  —  The newly confirmed health secretary told Fox News he has a “generic list” in his head.
Discussion: Fox News
Wall Street Journal:
How the Trumps Turned an Election Victory Into a Cash Bonanza  —  First lady's documentary deal with Amazon, president's legal settlements and other transactions near $80 million so far; Trump library a major beneficiary  —  | Illustrations by Alexandra Citrin-Safadi/WSJ
Sam Skove / Politico:
NASA astronauts — from space — discredit Trump claims they're stranded  —  The president said the Biden administration left them “virtually abandoned.”  —  NASA astronauts, speaking from space, debunked President Donald Trump's claims that they had been left behind.
Tom Bowman / NPR:
Elon Musk's team is expected to target the Pentagon soon, pledging cost cuts  —  Members of Elon Musk's government efficiency team are poised to arrive at the Defense Department in the coming days.  Officials tell NPR that DOGE has a target of cutting 8% from next year's budget.
Discussion: Washington Examiner and WTTG-TV
Jared Gans / The Hill:
Former prosecutor: Adams's attorneys ‘repeatedly urged what amounted to a quid pro quo’  —  The former acting U.S. attorney overseeing New York City Mayor Eric Adams's corruption case said the mayor's attorneys pushed for a “quid pro quo” ahead of the Justice Department (DOJ) ordering the case against him be dropped.
 
 
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 More Items: 
Ashleigh Fields / The Hill:
Hochul: Louisiana extradition order ‘ripple effect of overturning Roe v. Wade’
State of California:
Attorney General Bonta Sues Trump Administration, Challenging Elon Musk's Unconstitutional Exercise of Power
The Guardian:
Musk-linked group offered $5m for proof of voter fraud - and came up with nothing
Tom Phillips / The Guardian:
‘A human rights disaster’: immigrants sent into Guantánamo black hole despite no proof of crime
Discussion: Migrant Insider
Reuters:
Inside Trump's immigration crackdown as net widens
Discussion: Axios and ABC News
Eric Levitz / Vox:
How Democrats should respond to Trump's war on DEI
Discussion: The Guardian and al.com
 Earlier Items: 
Kris Van Cleave / CBS News:
Senator demands answers on possible federal $400M Tesla Cybertruck deal
New York Times:
Russian Drone Damages Radiation Shield at Chernobyl, Ukraine Says
New York Times:
Don't Be Fooled, ‘Trump Is a Weak President’
New York Times:
TikTok Returns to Apple and Google App Stores
New York Times:
No Tubman, No Rainbows: Defense Schools Prepared for Hegseth's Wife
 

 
From Techmeme:

Emma Roth / The Verge:
Nintendo delays preorders for the Switch 2 from April 9, 2025 due to concerns about Trump's tariffs but the June 5 launch date remains unchanged

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Klarna has halted its planned IPO in the wake of Trump's tariffs turmoil; StubHub has also delayed its IPO plans

Annmarie Hordern / Bloomberg:
President Trump reiterates he's open to tariff relief for China if it approves the sale of TikTok's US operations; the app faces an April 5 divestment deadline
 
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