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7:20 PM ET, February 15, 2025

memeorandum

 Top Items: 
New York Times:
Hegseth's Bruising 72-Hour Debut Overseas  —  It was a crash course in geopolitical realities as the new defense secretary stepped onto the world stage.  —  Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has had a rocky trip to Europe this week.  —  In his debut on the world stage, Mr. Hegseth told NATO …
RELATED:
Jim Tankersley / New York Times:
Trump Officials Attack a German Consensus on Nazis and Speech  —  Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk have challenged decades-long approaches to political extremism that were designed to prevent another Hitler.  —  The American vice president visited a concentration camp on Thursday afternoon.
Patrick Wintour / The Guardian:
Europe will not be part of Ukraine-Russia peace talks, US envoy says  —  Keith Kellogg tells countries to offer concrete solutions and boost spending instead of complaining about talks role  —  Europe will be consulted - but ultimately excluded - from the planned peace talks between Russia …
Zachary Basu / Axios:
Trump strangles Europe
Politico:
Trump team to start Russia-Ukraine peace talks in Saudi Arabia
Adam Wren / Politico:   Playbook: GOP confronts a continental divide
Patrick Wintour / The Guardian:
JD Vance's Munich speech laid bare the collapse of the transatlantic alliance
Associated Press:
Zelenskyy calls for ‘European army’ as EU leaders bristle at new US policies on Ukraine
Ilya Somin / Reason:
Birthright Citizenship - A Response to Barnett and Wurman  —  In a recent New York Times op ed, legal scholars Randy Barnett and Ilan Wurman offer a partial defense of President Trump's executive order denying birthright citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants, and migrants in the US on temporary visas.
RELATED:
New York Times:
Don't Assume Trump Is Wrong About Birthright Citizenship  —  On his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order that purports to end birthright citizenship for certain children.  It does so despite Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, which declares, “All persons born …
Discussion: Fox News and ZeroHedge News
Greg Sargent / New Republic:
Trump-Musk Scandal at USAID Takes Unnerving Turn With Vile Leaked Memo  —  Shockingly, it turns out that empowering the richest human being on the planet to maliciously and gratuitously heap additional misery on that planet's most poor, hungry, and desperate people might—just might …
Discussion: Bloomberg
RELATED:
Washington Post:
Forced to flee Congo, USAID workers lost everything. They're suing Trump.
Discussion: OutsideTheBeltway
Scott Lemieux / Lawyers, Guns & Money:   Musk And Trump Are Stopping The Distribution Of Live-saving Aid And Firing Anybody Who Tells The Public About It
NBC News:
Trump administration wants to un-fire some nuclear safety workers but can't figure out how to reach them  —  The individuals, who work in an agency that oversees the nation's nuclear stockpile, had been fired on Thursday and lost access to their federal government email accounts.
RELATED:
Edward Helmore / The Guardian:
US Forest Service and National Park Service to fire thousands of workers
Discussion: New York Times
Politico:
Stunned federal workers brace for the real-world repercussions of Trump's purges
Washington Post:
Records show how DOGE planned Trump's DEI purge — and who gets fired next  —  A DOGE team plans to fire federal workers who are not in DEI roles and employees in offices that protect equal rights, internal documents show.  —  A team of workers from the U.S. DOGE Service developed step …
Discussion: Grabien and Althouse
RELATED:
Tom Boggioni / Raw Story:
Internal DOGE documents lay out plans for ‘Phase 3’ to begin on Wednesday: report  —  According to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) documents obtained by the Washington Post, Elon Musk's unofficial agency is set to launch what they have labeled as “Phase 3” of their drive to dismantle the government on Wednesday.
Ali Bianco / Politico:
DOGE, Education Department threaten states' funding if they don't cut DEI programs
Discussion: Fox News and Scripps News
Washington Post:
Musk accused Reuters of ‘social deception.’ The deception was his.  —  Trump's DOGE chief mischaracterizes a contract as he marshals “deep state” conspiracy theories to justify cuts to federal agencies.  —  The actor and director Ron Howard posted Wednesday on X an article …
Discussion: Daily Mail and American Greatness
RELATED:
Washington Post:
As federal workers and aid recipients reel, Trump's team is unmoved
Associated Press:
Trump administration fires 20 immigration judges with no explanation  —  Courts are currently backlogged with 3.7m cases as US president demands more deportations  —  The Trump administration fired 20 immigration judges without explanation, a union official said on Saturday amid sweeping moves …
Discussion: Fox News
RELATED:
Myah Ward / Politico:
Trump administration fires new immigration judges
Discussion: UPI and CBS News
Gilad Edelman / The Atlantic:
‘The Gulf of America’ Is the Wrong Fight to Pick  —  The more that politicians mess around with place names, the more important it is to respond according to consistent principles.  —  The executive order rechristening the body of water known internationally as the “Gulf of Mexico” is not an easy document to take seriously.
Discussion: Breitbart
RELATED:
Brenda Wintrode / The Baltimore Banner:
Maryland National Guard out of Frederick Douglass parade after DoD order declares Black History Month ‘dead’  —  Strict guidance from the national defense department crushed plans for an Eastern Shore parade held in honor of Frederick Douglass' 207th birthday because it was being held during …
Asawin Suebsaeng / Rolling Stone:
Trump Publicly Admits He Thinks He Can Break Any Law He Wants  —  Donald Trump has been back in office for less than one month, and he, Elon Musk, and his senior administration officials have already plunged the nation into an ongoing constitutional crisis and openly performed various brazen acts …
Luke Broadwater / New York Times:
An Unchecked Trump Rapidly Remakes U.S. Government and Foreign Policy  —  The president's swift moves underscore the confidence of an administration with a much firmer grip on the levers of government than during his first term.  —  The last time President Trump held office …
Garrett M. Graff / Doomsday Scenario:
Musk, Trump Establish New Era of Kleptocracy in America  —  A third dispatch comparing how the US media would cover this moment if it was happening overseas  —  American institutions, from the media to civil society to Congress and state capitals, continue to underreact to the unraveling of our democracy.
CBS News:
How a Vermont border agent's death exposed violence linked to the cultlike Zizian group  —  In the wooded outskirts of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a perplexed landlord noticed odd sights at two of his rental properties.  —  Tenants wore long black coats and parked box trucks outside the duplexes.
Discussion: The Guardian and SFGATE
Will Neal / The Daily Beast:
Former RNC Chair Erupts On-Air: To Hell With Republicans!  —  MSNBC host Michael Steele rebuked Republicans in a fiery Saturday morning monologue in which he alleged that President Donald Trump has given DOGE director Elon Musk “absolute power.”  Addressing co-hosts Alicia Menendez …
Discussion: Raw Story
Ashley Holt / HuffPost:
Trump Supporters Shared How He Could Lose Their Support, And There's One Issue That's Verrrrry Important To Them  —  “We didn't vote for my husband to lose his government career and benefits.”  —  Ashley Holt— BuzzFeed … We recently asked people in the BuzzFeed Community who voted …
Discussion: New York Daily News
Financial Times:
Is corporate America already souring on Trump?  —  Optimism at the prospect of tax cuts and lighter regulation has given way to anxiety over trade policies
Discussion: The Daily Wire
 
 
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 More Items: 
Washington Post:
Trump's federal firings imperil government services from cities to farm towns
Joe Gould / Politico:
Senator Warner: Democrats' ‘brand is really bad’
Discussion: Twitchy and Washington Examiner
Naftali Bendavid / Washington Post:
Mass resignation marks a new kind of defiance in the second Trump era
 Earlier Items: 
Nicholas Kristof / New York Times:
Not Quite a Unified Theory of Trumpism, but Still an Alarming Pattern
Discussion: Associated Press
New York Times:
6 Americans on What They Think of Trump, Elon Musk and Gaza
Francis Fukuyama / Persuasion:
Don't Say “Chaotic” or “Transactional”
Politico:
Trump Media says it lost more than $400M last year
Katie Glueck / New York Times:
Georgia's First Jewish Senator Is Losing Jewish Support
Discussion: Washington Examiner and WXIA-TV
Aaron Wiener / Washington Post:
Federal workers are being rushed back to the office. It's causing chaos.
Discussion: Raw Story
Bloomberg:
Trump's Threats and Statehood Taunts Reset Race to Lead Canada
Discussion: UnHerd
 

 
From Techmeme:

Kif Leswing / CNBC:
Tech stocks fall after President Trump announced new global tariffs: Amazon drops as much as ~6%, Meta drops ~5%, Nvidia ~6%, Alphabet ~3%, and Microsoft ~3%

Matt Levine / Bloomberg:
Circle's S-1 shows that it is a fintech and that, as of December 31, 2024, ~85% of USDC reserves were in a BlackRock-managed money market fund only for Circle

Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Europol says German and Dutch authorities shut down Kidflix, a CSAM streaming platform with 1.8M+ users between April 2022 and March 2025, on March 11

 
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