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11:55 AM ET, February 28, 2025

memeorandum

 Top Items: 
New York Times:
How Elon Musk Executed His Takeover of the Federal Bureaucracy  —  The operation was driven with a frenetic focus by the billionaire, who channeled his resentment of regulatory oversight into a drastic overhaul of government agencies.  —  On the last Friday of September 2023 …
RELATED:
Washington Post:
Feds to start getting weekly emails asking what they did.  Bosses will see if it fits Trump goals.  —  The new strategy is in part meant to allow supervisors and agency heads to check whether employees' work fits into the Trump administration's goals and priorities, according to people familiar with it and records obtained by The Post.
Discussion: The Hill, CBS News, Daily Kos and NewsNation
Salvador Rizzo / Washington Post:
Judge blocks Trump administration's mass firings of federal workers  —  A federal judge ruled that the terminations at several agencies, including the Department of Defense, were likely illegal.  —  SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Office of Personnel Management …
Wall Street Journal:
Inside DOGE's Clash With the Federal Workforce  —  With a surprise incursion in the first minutes of the Trump presidency, Elon Musk's programmers seized control of a key personnel agency; ‘rogue bureaucrats’ fight back  —  WASHINGTON, D.C.-At 12:01 p.m. on Jan. 20, as Donald Trump …
Jake Lahut / Wired:
Elon Musk's Takeover Is Being Aided by a Trumpworld Power Couple
Discussion: Raw Story
Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo:   Two Good Reads.  —  There are two good, big feature pieces out from the Times and the Journal …
Eric Katz / GovExec.com:
Judge orders Trump administration to rescind directives on probationary employee firings
Eileen Sullivan / New York Times:
Office Closures and Relocations Part of Trump's Plan for Large-Scale Layoffs
Discussion: USA Today
Stephanie Nolen / New York Times:
U.S. Terminates Funding for Polio, H.I.V., Malaria and Nutrition Programs Around the World  —  Here are some of the 5,800 contracts the Trump administration formally canceled this week in a wave of terse emails.  —  Starting Wednesday afternoon, a wave of emails went out from the State Department …
Discussion: Politico
RELATED:
Reuters:
Services to millions of people collapse as USAID cuts contracts worldwide
Discussion: Associated Press
Kat Lay / The Guardian:
US shutdown of HIV/Aids funding ‘could lead to 500,000 deaths in South Africa’
Discussion: Al Jazeera
Meridith McGraw / Wall Street Journal:
Trump to Sign Executive Order Making English Official U.S. Language  —  The U.S. has never had a national language in its nearly 250-year history  —  WASHINGTON—President Trump is planning to sign an executive order that would for the first time make English the official language of the U.S., according to White House officials.
RELATED:
Kevin Breuninger / CNBC:
Trump to sign order making English the official U.S. language
Discussion: Reuters
Rebecca Crosby / Popular Information:
BREAKING: SEC halts fraud prosecution of Chinese national who sent Trump millions  —  In December, Popular Information reported that Chinese crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun purchased $30 million in crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial (WLF), a new venture backed by President Donald Trump and his family.
RELATED:
Seth Borenstein / Associated Press:
Hundreds of weather forecasters fired in latest wave of DOGE cuts  —  Hundreds of weather forecasters and other federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees on probationary status were fired Thursday, lawmakers and weather experts said.  Federal workers who were not let …
RELATED:
Pamela Herd / Can We Still Govern?:
Trump's Assault on Social Security  —  Social Security is our biggest and most successful safety net program.  The annual $1.6 trillion in benefits constitutes 21% of federal spending and 40% of older adults' income.  It lifts more people out of poverty than any other government program.
RELATED:
Justin Glawe / Rolling Stone:
Lies, Cuts, Closures: Trump and Musk Ravage Social Security Administration
Garry Kasparov / The Atlantic:
The Putinization of America  —  Trump's deference to the Russian dictator has become full-blown imitation.  —  We are barely a month into the second presidential term of Donald Trump and he has made his top priorities clear: the destruction of America's government and influence and the preservation of Russia's.
RELATED:
Stephen Robinson / Public Notice:
MAGA's Orwellian notion of “free speech”
Discussion: Blaze Media
Peter Baker / New York Times:
After Insults and False Claims, Trump to Host Zelensky for Minerals Deal
Washington Post:
FBI takes up EPA probe amid pushback from judge, prosecutors  —  While career prosecutors in two U.S. attorney offices and a U.S. judge balked at a court-ordered freeze, Citibank has locked down billions without explanation  —  FBI agents this week questioned Environmental Protection Agency …
Discussion: Talking Points Memo and IJR
Sarah Rumpf / Mediaite:
Young Republicans Group Invites Accused Sex Trafficker Brothers to Speak: ‘As Free Speech Absolutists...’  —  The Tampa Bay Young Republicans tweeted an invitation to Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan to come speak to their group, drawing swift criticism for the outreach to the men currently facing charges …
RELATED:
Michelle Goldberg / New York Times:
Andrew Tate, Accused of Sex Trafficking, Is Trump's Kind of Guy
Andrew Egger / The Bulwark:
Democrats Are About to Eat Their Own  —  Expect a bizarre scene at the White House today, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is showing up to sign an agreement pledging some Ukrainian rare-mineral rights to the United States—theoretically in exchange for further U.S. opposition to Vladimir Putin engulfing his country.
Discussion: New York Times and Vanity Fair
RELATED:
Susan B. Glasser / New Yorker:
Why Aren't We in the Streets?  —  On Trump the Almighty and his so-far quiescent capital.
Discussion: Althouse
Murshed Zaheed / Off Message:   Democrats Need A Battle Plan—And A War Room
Bloomberg Law:
US Attorney Ed Martin Demotes Jan. 6 Case Supervisors  —  Washington's top federal prosecutor Ed Martin has demoted multiple senior supervisors involved in Jan. 6 insurrection cases to work in significantly reduced capacities.  —  The supervisors oversaw the office's work on federal crimes …
Discussion: New York Post
RELATED:
Ashleigh Fields / The Hill:   Pardoned Jan. 6 protester: ‘The DOJ was not weaponized against me’
William Vaillancourt / The Daily Beast:
Musk Makes Big Mistake While Trying to Smear CNN Legal Analyst Norm Eisen  —  CARELESS  —  The billionaire DOGE chief found a woman with the same last name as a lawyer he hates.  Cue the conspiracy.
Discussion: Electrek and emptywheel
ProPublica:
Speaker Mike Johnson Is Living in a D.C. House That Is the Center of a Pastor's Secretive Influence Campaign  —  ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.  Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published.  —  In 2021, Steve Berger …
Discussion: Diane Ravitch's blog
RELATED:
Dana Milbank / Washington Post:
Here's the real threat to ‘personal liberties and free markets’  —  The rapidly spreading authoritarianism coming from this administration threatens all of our freedoms.  —  Over the last 48 hours, I've been receiving from readers and friends the sort of notes one gets upon losing a loved one …
Jason Leopold / Bloomberg:
The Story Behind FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's Role in Project 2025  —  Dozens of pages of emails reveal how Brendan Carr, the FCC's Republican chairman and close confidante of President Trump, was cleared by ethics officials to write a chapter in the 922-page manifesto when he was a commissioner.
US Department of Justice:
Attorney General Pamela Bondi Releases First Phase of Declassified Epstein Files  —  Today, Attorney General Pamela Bondi, in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), declassified and publicly released files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his sexual exploitation …
New York Times:
The MAGA War on Speech  —  In 1791, the nation's founders ratified the First Amendment to the Constitution.  It would come to offer protections in the new nation essentially never seen before: the right to ask things of and to criticize the government; to express opinions, popular or not …
William Shoki / New York Times:
Elon Musk Is South African.  It Explains a Lot.  —  Elon Musk is everywhere.  —  He is firing federal employees, gaining access to important government data, popping into the Oval Office, appearing on Fox News alongside President Trump and even attending a White House cabinet meeting.
 
 
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 More Items: 
NBC News:
A top DOJ spokesperson says he is resigning due to a ‘hostile and toxic work environment’
Tara Palmeri / Puck:
A Biden Family Insider Tells All
ProPublica:
A Study of Mint Plants. A Device to Stop Bleeding. This Is the Scientific Research Ted Cruz Calls “Woke.”
Heather Cox Richardson / Letters from an American:
Yesterday an unvaccinated child in Texas died of measles as nearly 140 people in Texas …
Noah Shachtman / New York Times:
Dead Athletes. Empty Stands. Why Are We Paying Billions to Keep This Sport Alive?
Garrett M. Graff / Doomsday Scenario:
Patel, Ratcliffe Set Up U.S. for a National Catastrophe
 Earlier Items: 
Steve Inskeep / NPR:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tells NPR: ‘Everything feels increasingly like a scam’
David Smith / The Guardian:
Trump tried to extort Zelenskyy and was impeached - now he may succeed
Discussion: Raw Story
Paul Krugman:
Chaos Is Bad for Business
CDC Newsroom:
CDC Statement on Measles Outbreak
Discussion: HuffPost and STAT
Angela Yang / NBC News:
Some people online are planning an ‘economic blackout’ Friday. What does that mean?
Washington Post:
Harsh findings on Trump's aid freeze kept secret by USAID watchdog
 

 
From Techmeme:

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

Jay Peters / The Verge:
Nintendo shares Switch 2 details: a 7.9", 120fps, 1080p display, 4K at 60fps when docked, a custom Nvidia processor, 256GB of storage, and a new Pro Controller

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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