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6:35 AM ET, February 16, 2025

memeorandum

 Top Items: 
New York Times:
Trump Suggests No Laws Are Broken if He's ‘Saving His Country’  —  President Trump shared a quotation on social media, making it clear it was one he wanted people to absorb: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”  —  President Trump on Saturday posted on social media …
RELATED:
Asawin Suebsaeng / Rolling Stone:   Trump Publicly Admits He Thinks He Can Break Any Law He Wants
Luke Broadwater / New York Times:   An Unchecked Trump Rapidly Remakes U.S. Government and Foreign Policy
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.
Discussion: Mediaite, Fox News and New York Times
ProPublica:
Trump Official Destroying USAID Secretly Met With Christian Nationalists Abroad in Defiance of U.S. Policy  —  ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.  Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published.  —  Before Peter Marocco was selected …
NBC News:
Justice Department fires multiple immigration judges amid case backlog  —  A union representing the judges said it “makes no sense” to make cuts to immigration courts as Trump promises to carry out mass deportations, which must go through the courts.  —  WASHINGTON — The Department …
Discussion: The Hill
RELATED:
Associated Press:
Trump administration fires 20 immigration judges with no explanation
Discussion: New York Times and Bloomberg
Alexandra Koch / Fox News:
Trump administration fires more than a dozen immigration judges
Discussion: CBS News
Myah Ward / Politico:
Trump administration fires new immigration judges
Discussion: Washington Examiner
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.
RELATED:
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: Althouse
RELATED:
Sugam Pokharel / CNN:
European leaders to hold emergency summit on Ukraine as Trump-Putin call strains ties  —  British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is set to join European leaders at an emergency summit in Paris on Monday, Britain's PA media reported, after the relationship of the continent with Washington …
RELATED:
CNN:
Zelensky warns days of guaranteed US support for Europe are over, as Kellogg says Europeans won't be at table for peace talks
Washington Post:
ICE struggles to boost arrest numbers despite infusion of resources  —  Trump has ordered a wartime effort to increase deportations, but ICE statistics show arrests have dipped so far this month.  —  Since taking office, President Donald Trump has launched an all-of-government immigration crackdown …
New York Times:
Venting at Democrats and Fearing Trump, Liberal Donors Pull Back Cash  —  Demoralized donors are frustrated with Democrats' failings and worried about retribution from the president.  Their frugality has left liberal groups struggling to fight the new administration.
RELATED:
Joe Gould / Politico:
Senator Warner: Democrats' ‘brand is really bad’
Matt Brown / Associated Press:
NAACP lists companies that dump DEI in its tactical spending guide for Black Americans  —  The NAACP wants Black Americans to steer their buying power toward companies that haven't pulled back from diversity, equity and inclusion programs under conservative pressure, and the nation's oldest …
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 …
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 …
Edward Helmore / The Guardian:
US Forest Service and National Park Service to fire thousands of workers  —  Agencies say Trump's latest push to trim government could impede firefighting efforts and create crises at national parks  —  The US Forest Service is firing about 3,400 recent hires while the National Park Service …
Discussion: New York Times
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.
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  —  These people are just cartoonishly evil:  —  A new internal memo circulating inside the U.S. Agency for International Development neatly captures this split.
RELATED:
Washington Post:
Forced to flee Congo, USAID workers lost everything. They're suing Trump.
Discussion: OutsideTheBeltway
NBC News:
Trump administration wants to un-fire nuclear safety workers but can't figure out how to reach them  —  The workers, whose agency oversees the nation's nuclear stockpile, had been fired on Thursday and lost access to their federal government email accounts.  —  WASHINGTON — National Nuclear …
Liam Knox / Inside Higher Ed:
Ed Department: DEI Violates Civil Rights Law  —  In a sweeping and unprecedented letter issued over the weekend, the Office for Civil Rights declared race-based scholarships, cultural centers and even graduation ceremonies illegal.  —  The Education Department's Office for Civil Rights declared …
Ronda Kaysen / New York Times:
Home Builders Say Trump Tariffs Are Raising Construction Costs  —  Some developers describe an unpredictable climate that could drive up building costs and home prices.  —  Days after President Trump enacted 10 percent trade tariffs on all Chinese goods in early February …
James Mackenzie / Reuters:
Israel receives shipment of heavy bombs cleared by Trump  —  Israel has received a shipment of heavy MK-84 bombs from the United States, after U.S. President Donald Trump lifted a block imposed on the export of the munitions by the administration of predecessor Joe Biden, the defence ministry said on Sunday.
Jason Beeferman / Politico:
Top state Democrat calls on Adams to resign as party leaders convene for caucus weekend  —  Pressure is mounting on Gov. Kathy Hochul to remove Adams as thousands of Democrats gather in Albany for annual convention.  —  ALBANY, New York — Mayor Eric Adams didn't attend the annual caucus weekend in Albany …
Natascha Elena Uhlmann / Jacobin:
Ahead of Workers' Union Vote, “Amazon Mobilized an Army”  —  Today 4,000 Amazon workers at a North Carolina warehouse will finish voting on a union.  Employees say the company “mobilized an army” ahead of the election, siccing local police on organizers and trying to pit black and Hispanic workers against each other.
Discussion: CBS News, NPR and TechCrunch
Ailia Zehra / The Hill:
Ramaswamy files campaign paperwork for anticipated Ohio governor bid  —  Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has officially begun the process of running for governor of Ohio as he filed the necessary paperwork with the Ohio secretary of state on Friday.
 
 
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 More Items: 
Tim Dickinson / Rolling Stone:
‘Acting Like a King’: Michigan's Attorney General on the Lawsuit to Undo Musk's Damage
Discussion: WUSA
Washington Post:
Trump's federal firings imperil government services from cities to farm towns
Will Neal / The Daily Beast:
Former RNC Chair Erupts On-Air: To Hell With Republicans!
Discussion: Raw Story
 Earlier Items: 
Nicholas Kristof / New York Times:
Not Quite a Unified Theory of Trumpism, but Still an Alarming Pattern
Politico:
Trump team to start Russia-Ukraine peace talks in Saudi Arabia
Francis Fukuyama / Persuasion:
Don't Say “Chaotic” or “Transactional”
Katie Glueck / New York Times:
Georgia's First Jewish Senator Is Losing Jewish Support
Discussion: Washington Examiner
CBS News:
How a Vermont border agent's death exposed violence linked to the cultlike Zizian group
Discussion: The Guardian and Associated Press
Ashley Holt / HuffPost:
Trump Supporters Shared How He Could Lose Their Support, And There's One Issue That's Verrrrry Important To Them
Discussion: New York Daily News
 

 
From Mediagazer:

Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
Joel Kaplan says Meta's US fact-checking program will be over by Monday, and Community Notes will start appearing on Facebook, Threads, and Instagram

Michael M. Grynbaum / New York Times:
Amid the worst stock market sell-off since the 2020 pandemic, Fox News has projected a conspicuous calm and temporarily dropped its onscreen stock ticker

Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Amazon introduces a Kindle Recaps feature that uses GenAI and moderators to create short summaries of books in a series

 
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