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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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 …

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.

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

Mass layoffs now paused at US nuclear weapons agency  —  The Department of Energy has paused the firings of hundreds of employees who work for a key agency maintaining the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, multiple sources tell ABC News.  —  Managers with the National Nuclear Security Administration …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

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.

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 …

Musk-linked group offered $5m for proof of voter fraud - and came up with nothing  —  Fair Election Fund has yet to reveal evidence of voter fraud despite deep-pocketed backers - and has now gone silent  —  In May 2024, a flashy ad went viral on social media warning that “across the country …

RFK Jr. says he has ‘generic list’ of HHS staffers who ‘should move out’  —  Newly confirmed Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he has a “generic list” of people he wants removed from his department.  —  “I have a list in my head ... we have a generic list …

Trump officials ask CDC, FDA to use gender notice on restored websites  —  The Trump administration had directed health agencies to place a notice condemning “gender ideology” on health webpages that had been earlier taken down.  —  The Trump administration has directed the nation's premier health agencies …

Say what this is: a coup.  —  I want to talk today about the media's coverage of the Trump-Vance-Musk coup.  —  I'm not referring to coverage by the bonkers right-wing media of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News and its imitators.  —  I'm referring to the U.S. mainstream media — The New York Times …

Treasury watchdog begins audit of Musk DOGE team's access to federal government's payment system  —  The Treasury Department's Office of Inspector General on Friday said it was launching an audit of the security controls for the federal government's payment system, after Democratic senators raised red flags …

“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.