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Top Social Security official exits after clash with Musk's DOGE over data — Yet another top career staffer is leaving the administration amid a disagreement over a request by Elon Musk's team for sensitive government information.
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Who's in charge of DOGE? Not Elon Musk, White House says — A Trump administration personnel official says Musk has “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions.” — Elon Musk is not the leader of DOGE — the mysterious Trump administration operation overseeing an effort to break and remake the federal bureaucracy.
Discussion:
Techdirt, The Bulwark, IJR, The Fucking News and The Gateway Pundit

Musk is not a DOGE employee and “has no actual or formal authority,” WH says
Discussion:
Reuters, The Verge, HuffPost, The Indian Express, The Independent and PinkNews


No, 150-Year-Olds Aren't Collecting Social Security Benefits — Elon Musk claims to have found rampant fraud in the Social Security Administration. There's a much simpler explanation. — Elon Musk has repeatedly claimed that his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) …
Discussion:
Poynter, PolitiFact, New York Post and Washington Examiner
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NYC Mayor Adams calls demands to resign over Trump DOJ indictment dismissal a ‘modern day Mein Kampf,’ sparking outrage — Mayor Adams contended Monday that renewed calls for his resignation over President Trump's Justice Department bid to drop his corruption indictment amounts to …
Discussion:
Raw Story, New York Post and The Forward
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Statement from Governor Kathy Hochul
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The Hill, Washington Examiner, Politico, Mediaite, New York Daily News, Lawyers, Guns & Money, Axios, NPR and Fox News

Governor weighs removing NYC Mayor Adams after his top deputies quit amid criminal case turmoil
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal, The Hill, USA Today, New York Post, New York Times, The Post Millennial, Townhall, Fox News, Daily Kos, Associated Press, Bloomberg, ABC News, The City, abc7NY and Politico


Delta Plane Overturns at Toronto Airport While Landing — The airport said on social media that emergency teams were responding and that all passengers and crew were accounted for. — A Delta Air Lines flight arriving at Toronto Pearson Airport from Minneapolis appears to have overturned …
Discussion:
CBC News, The Hill, CTV News, TMZ.com, Fox News, CNN, New York Post, USA Today, RTÉ, Reuters, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, IJR, NPR, The Daily Caller, Raw Story, Al Jazeera, Washington Examiner, UPI, The Daily Wire, Fox Business, New York Daily News, WHDH-TV, WAGA-TV, CBS News, Townhall, Mediaite, The Indian Express, RedState, San Diego Union-Tribune, The Japan Times, Associated Press, PBS NewsHour, Breitbart, One America News Network and Politico


Under Trump's Mass Deportation Plan, Some Migrants Are Being Sent to Panama — Migrants deported from the United States are being held at the Decapolis Hotel Panama in Panama City. The deportees come from Afghanistan, Iran, China and other nations. — They arrived at the United States border …
Discussion:
New York Post


C.I.A. Expands Secret Drone Flights Over Mexico — The covert program, begun during the Biden administration and stepped up by President Trump, is hunting for the location of fentanyl labs. — The United States has stepped up secret drone flights over Mexico to hunt for fentanyl labs …
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Exclusive: FDA staff reviewing Musk's Neuralink were included in DOGE employee firings, sources say — U.S. Food and Drug Administration employees reviewing Elon Musk's brain implant company Neuralink were fired over the weekend as part of a broader purge of the federal workforce, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.
Discussion:
Raw Story


Thousands Gather on Presidents' Day to Call Trump a Tyrant — Thousands of protesters opposing broad swaths of President Trump's agenda took to the streets across the country, including outside the U.S. Capitol. — Thousands of protesters opposing broad swaths of President Trump's agenda took …
Discussion:
Rolling Stone, Associated Press, KFOR-TV and Scripps News


This Is the Way to Stop Elon Musk — With the backing of President Donald Trump, Elon Musk has embarked on an unconstitutional rampage against the federal government. The world's wealthiest man is trying to shut down key agencies and programs that protect the health, welfare, and prosperity of millions of Americans.
Discussion:
Raw Story


Marco Rubio Is Walking into a Trap — I'M AN ETERNAL OPTIMIST. But my gut, informed by a career spent studying and implementing American foreign policy, tells me this week will not go well. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Discussion:
Newsweek and Washington Examiner
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Department of Homeland Security preparing to fire hundreds of senior leaders this week — The firings are a move not to reduce the size of the workforce but to get rid of people the administration sees as not on board with its goals. — The Trump administration is preparing to fire hundreds …
Discussion:
Raw Story, Townhall, Grabien and Saywhat Politics


Making Microbes Great Again — The Texas measles outbreak is just the beginning — I'm almost certain that I had measles as a child. My memories are a bit vague, and unfortunately my parents, who would surely have remembered the incident, have passed on.
Discussion:
Forbes, CBS News, Raw Story and New York Post
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WSJ asks Kennedy to cast aside ‘antivax hooey’ amid Texas measles outbreak
Discussion:
Wall Street Journal, Raw Story, Daily Kos and Off the Kuff


Wokeness Is Not to Blame for Trump — How a misdiagnosis of the 2024 election has calcified into self-defeating conventional wisdom. — In the midst of chaos and cataclysm, it's rare to find agreement across partisan divides, but in the months since Donald Trump won his second presidential election …


Washington Post Cancels Ad From Groups Calling for Trump to Fire Musk — The newspaper told Common Cause, an advocacy group, that it was pulling its special ad, which would have covered the front and back pages of some Tuesday editions. — An advertisement that was set to run in some editions …
Discussion:
Mock Paper Scissors, Raw Story, CNN, New Republic and The Hill, more at Mediagazer »


The Personalist Presidency — Three ways that Trump's politicization really is different … For a considerable period, from about the 1970s until relatively recently, politicization of the U.S. federal government describes a President using two basic strategies: centralizing policy expertise within …


Europe, Dazed by Trump, Confronts Hard Choices in Ukraine — Faced with undisguised hostility from the Trump administration, Europeans are preparing for what is shaping up to be a go-it-alone era. — For years, European leaders have fretted about reducing their dependence on a wayward United States.
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Europe grapples over its “collective security” under pressure from Trump
Discussion:
Reuters, The Dispatch, Agence France-Presse, Euractiv, UnHerd, LewRockwell, The Indian Express, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, New York Post, UPI, Daily Mail, spiked, RTÉ, HuffPost, BBC, New York Times and Fortune


“His mission is to eradicate ‘woke Jesus’”: How money, lies and religion are abused to gut democracy — Journalist Katherine Stewart's “Money, Lies, and God” takes readers into Trump's movement to end America — Money, God and lies: These are the three pillars of the movement that led …
Discussion:
Raw Story


A team from SpaceX is being brought in to overhaul the FAA's air traffic control system — The visit comes after a union representing FAA workers says hundreds are being laid off. … A team from Elon Musk's SpaceX is visiting the Air Traffic Control Command Center in Virginia Monday …
Discussion:
Raw Story, Rolling Stone, Axios, The Guardian, New York Post, Townhall, Daily Mail, The Fucking News, Hollywood Life, Politico, KFOR-TV, UPI, RedState, Daily Kos, Washington Examiner, The Hill, TechCrunch and CNN


Trump administration fires thousands for ‘performance’ without evidence, in messy rush — Many probationary employees targeted in latest Trump cuts across agencies had excellent ratings; legal challenges are expected. — The first message from her manager on Saturday afternoon misspelled Amanda Mae Downey's name.


Trump Isn't Playacting When He Invokes Napoleon — The president is fawning over strongmen past and present because he wants to emulate them. — President Donald Trump invoked Napoleon over the weekend, inspired, it would appear, by Rod Steiger's portrayal of the military dictator …
Discussion:
Associated Press


Republican Senators Try to Curb Influence of Trump Tariff Hawk — White House trade adviser has had major influence on punitive levies as Trump's trade team awaits Senate confirmation — WASHINGTON—President Trump has peppered the first month of his presidency with trade actions even before the bulk of his trade team is in place.
Discussion:
New York Times, Cafe Hayek and Raw Story


White House Email Snafu Said to Stall Firings of US Attorneys — The White House sent termination emails to the wrong addresses of as many as 22 US attorneys who learned they'd been dismissed five days later after a perplexing weekend, said two people familiar with the process.
Discussion:
Executive Functions