I would like to nominate Maxwell Smart for national security advisor.

So DOGE terminates lease on FDA quality lab in St. Louis and 29 other sites. This is a major concern for drug safety in America. 🦶🔫 Here's why:

⚡️'Putin will wage war against NATO,' Zelensky tells NBC News. Russia is training 150,000 troops in Belarus for a large-scale operation that could happen as early as this summer, Zelensky said. "There are risks that this can be Poland and Lithuania."

The US health department fired employees Saturday across some of its biggest agencies including Medicare, Medicaid and the FDA. trib.al/99QFCR9

SCOOP: The top US election security watchdog has frozen all of its efforts to aid states in securing elections. The move represents the first major example of the country’s cyber defense agency accommodating Trump’s false claims of election fraud and online censorship.

This whole "Gulf of America" brouhaha could have easily been resolved if they just took my suggestion to split the difference, find something we can all agree on, and call it the "Gulf of Avocado."

MONTREAL – Stéphane Pascalon’s Tesla fan club brings people together to share their pride for the company’s cars, but that pride has turned into shame for some, and now the club plans to distribute hundreds of bumper stickers so owners can distance themselves from CEO Elon Musk.

Remember that even cutting government personnel by one-fourth would only reduce federal spending by about 1 percent. And the whole point of these indiscriminate cuts is just to make way for renewing tax cuts heavily skewed to benefit the wealthiest.

Nearly 1,300 probationary employees at the CDC — roughly one-tenth of the agency’s workforce — are being forced out under the Trump administration’s move to get rid of all probationary employees.

As the Washington Post points out, even cutting government personnel by one-fourth would only reduce federal spending by about 1 percent. And the randomly inflicted damage will be great.

At least this is one layoff that wasn’t orchestrated by Elon Musk.

Trump and Musk haven’t found any evidence of waste or fraud in the government … oh wait, here’s some.

Blue Origin is bracing for a large reduction in its workforce, people familiar with the matter said, in a sign the Jeff Bezos-backed space company is looking to cut costs and focus resources on ramping up rocket launches after years of R&D work.

Probably not the Nobel, but he’s a shoo-in for the Needy Narcissist award.

As Trump's slash-and-burn campaign to remake the government has begun to affect their states and districts, some Republicans have tried to push back. They have sought carve outs and special consideration for agriculture programs, scientific research and more. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/12/u...

Putin began the all-out war on Ukraine almost three years ago. I very much hope I'm wrong, but I'm very worried that Trump has begun the all-out betrayal of Ukraine today.

Tom Friedman rightly says "Trump’s proposal is the single most idiotic and dangerous Middle East 'peace' initiative ever put out by an American president." www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/o...

There is no content on the doge website other than a name and motto

WSJ: Some congressional Republicans who for years wanted to curb USAID’s activities are now watching its sudden collapse with alarm, saying they worry about the fate of programs they see as playing a critical role in protecting U.S. national security and countering China. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Red-state politicians may wake up to the NIH budget cuts when they realize the top 50 recipients of NIH research grants include Washington University (MO, #5), Duke & UNC Chapel Hill (NC); Vanderbilt (TN); Emory (GA); Baylor & UT Southwestern Medical (TX); others in Florida, Ohio, Indiana and Utah.

Yeah, and she was a heck of a reporter when she worked at the Seattle Times.

Trump Claims He Can Overrule Constitution With Executive Order Because Of Little-Known ‘No One Will Stop Me’ Loophole

Sen. Patty Murray calls the sudden switch illegal and adds, "Trump and Elon are functionally forcing an indiscriminate funding cut for research institutions across the country that will be nothing short of catastrophic for so much of the lifesaving research patients and families are counting on."

🤷🏻

The WSJ reporter targeted by Musk was one of the most impressive young journalists I ever worked with, and it’s not surprising she dug up the slimy posts of that DOGE operative, so offensive that even his bosses fired him (until they reversed themselves).

“Musk’s call for this journalist’s firing contradicts his self-proclaimed free speech advocacy and reveals his hypocrisy.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/b...

Another blow for Boeing looms. Don't waste time wondering what Musk thinks about this.

I have no problem with 25-year-old DOGE apparatchik Marko Elez being fired. But Elon Musk has said things as bad as Mr. Elez, and more often and more consequentially. The DOGE fish rots from the head down. So the question is: Why is it ok that Musk himself is a "special government employee"?

BREAKING NEWS: Secretary of State Marco Rubio approved less than 300 essential personnel as USAID staff in the U.S. and overseas rush to rapidly close missions and leave jobs by midnight Friday.

Mar-a-Gazo ….

Get ready for our government to zero out the budget for tracking killer asteroids because it contains the words ‘climate’ and ‘transition’.

Kansas City Chefs! That’s one of the alternatives offered by people who call the team’s current name an insult to history and identity.

Ice press releases have reached the first page of Google search results, making it seem like enforcement actions just happened, when in actuality they occurred months or years ago.

“…you must be aware that it is not a crime for anyone — whether WIRED journalists, X posters, or otherwise — to identify individuals openly conducting government work that is of the utmost public concern.”

Move fast and break things is not the motto you want to adopt at a regulatory system that, as challenged as it may seem at times, is extremely functional.

So this will be the 53rd state? Or is it 54th after the Panama Canal? Trump the sequel has clearly jumped the shark.

Trump and his Mideast envoy, Steven Witkoff, are both former real estate developers, and have focused on the physical state of Gaza as though it were a redevelopment site. Trump referred to Gaza as “a phenomenal location" adding, “some fantastic things could be done with Gaza.” wapo.st/4hFz4Rm

Americans Start Stockpiling Moose Ahead Of Tariffs theonion.com/americans-st...

What?! With whose money? Surely he can’t just order tens of billions of dollars into some fund that Congress didn’t create.

The prime minister will tell European leaders they need to "step up" during talks in Brussels.

“Every Republican senator who votes for Patel is abdicating his or her constitutional responsibility. And for what? To please a lame-duck bully? … It took immense courage to create our constitutional republic, and now immense cowardice is placing our system of justice under threat.” David French NYT

Much like the legal settlements of nonsense cases, this is yet another example of right wing virtue signaling and not because this is a place to do effective marketing.

Reminds me of that Vietnam-era Pete Seeger song that goes, "We're waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool says to push on." www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/u...

LA Times Flips Anti-RFK Jr. Op-Ed Into Pro-Kennedy Propaganda Presumably this was done by the paper's owner, who now dictates op-ed headlines. He then leveraged the transformed op-ed into his own pro-Kennedy proclamation. www.techdirt.com/2025/01/31/l...

One helicopter accidentally hitting a commercial aircraft is not an indictment of Trump’s presidency or a reason for him to resign. Trump’s horrific response to the accident is.

More and more questions are being raised about the legality of the Trump administration's offer to nearly all federal workers to resign now and keep their pay through Sept. 30.