“It’s weird.” “It seems messy.” That’s what experts had to say about the $1.3 billion contract handed to a tiny firm called Acquisition Logisitics to run a detention facility at Texas’ Fort Bliss Army base.

The Education Department laid off nearly everyone at the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.

The US has finalized its $20 billion bailout for Argentina. Too bad it only benefits one American: a billionaire hedge fund manager, who has placed large bets on the future of the Argentine economy.

Rubio says that El Salvador has agreed to accept deportations of American citizens www.pbs.org/newshour/pol...

We are governed by a petty, thin-skinned, grievance-filled, insecure man-child.

I think we’re getting the answer to “How could someone have bankrupted a casino?”

US appears set on crushing Ukraine capacity to force Zelensky to submit. Never mind that this is a bonfire of leverage versus Russia, which has every reason to believe it can dictate terms or reject a ceasefire in the knowledge that Trump is likely to blame Ukraine. Criminally bad negotiating.

NYT has a scan of the original Enrich memo www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

12.5–17.9 million cases of malaria with an additional 71,000–166,000 deaths annually

An additional 200,000 paralytic polio cases a year

"The memo projected that nearly 17 million pregnant women would not be able to reach life-saving services if USAID programs were permanently halted"

"more than 11 million newborns would not get critical postnatal care. An estimated 1 million children would not be treated annually for severe acute malnutrition"

NEW: The Trump admin has informed NOAA that two buildings that are critical for weather forecasting will have their leases canceled. If this comes to pass, it's a really big deal. Includes weather fcst nerve center in College Park, Md.: www.axios.com/2025/03/03/d...

The national Archivist has important roles in other areas besides presidential documents… and we should be alarmed. action.everylibrary.org/we_should_al...?

To mark "Trump will declare a national emergency for mass deportations" day: here is the initial spreadsheet of our crowd-sourced *local* immigration advocacy/support organizations. Please share widely, put to good use, and keep letting me know about more organizations folks can connect with.

New: Last night, hundreds of CDC post-doc fellows were fired, including all in the group who call themselves the "disease detectors," and are the future of public health lab leaders. One senior official told me, "It is going to cripple public health for decades." www.nbcnews.com/politics/dog...

The irony of the richest man in the world almost single-handedly destroying an agency designed to help the world’s poor, so that the U.S. federal budget has more room for another giant tax cut for the richest man in the world and his pals, should not be lost on anyone. [Cartoon by Mike Luckovich]

Mike Pence just reposted an old article he wrote about the limitations on the powers of a president. For some reason. Here is a part of it.

LOUISIANA: “Half a billion dollars to send thousands of kids to private schools… voucher students fare worse on state tests than public school peers…” Same story everywhere. But @GovBillLee does not care. #LeesVoucherScam www.nola.com/news/educati...

Last night, we broke the news that the top US election security watchdog has frozen all of its election security work and is reviewing everything it has done to help state and local officials secure their elections for the past eight years. https://wrd.cm/3QkfGh3

The @wired.com of DOGE.gov is superb, but misses a trend: we are no longer just seeing state power on social media, but the emergence of state social media on X that will superchange propaganda campaigns, crowd out journalism, & drown democracies in mistruths. civic-texts.ghost.io/the-truman-c...

Awful: Internal USAID memo instructs employees to refrain from talking to the media about cuts in assistance to the most vulnerable or they may get fired, WaPo reports. Trumpworld knows this is a big political problem for them. Keep the focus on it. New piece: newrepublic.com/article/1915...