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The New York Times – unlocked: “President Trump has moved swiftly to wage his war on the federal bureaucracy, defying norms and legal limits. On Feb. 13, his administration escalated those efforts by starting to terminate most of an estimated 200,000 probationary employees, who were recently hired or promoted to a new position and have …
Washington Times: “President Trump on Tuesday [February 18, 2025] signed an executive order [Ensuring Accountability For All Agencies] declaring that only the attorney general or the president, instead of federal regulators or bureaucrats, can speak for the U.S. when interpreting the meaning of laws carried out by the executive branch. The order was among three …
Popular Information: “The largest measles outbreak Texas has seen in over 30 years is sweeping through the western part of the state. According to information released yesterday by the Texas Department of State Health Services, 58 cases have been confirmed throughout five counties. The total number of cases is likely much higher, however, with “health …
The Verge – [unpaywalled] “Violent metaphors abound for what’s happening in Washington: Elon Musk and his allies have taken a “slash-and-burn” approach to the government and a “sledgehammer” to government institutions, doing away with supposed waste and excess while leaving the fundamental structure intact. All of this is being done with the stated goal of …
CAP: “The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act has been reintroduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. This legislation would require all Americans to prove their citizenship status by presenting documentation—in person—when registering to vote or updating their voter registration information. Specifically, the legislation would require the vast majority of Americans to rely on a …
Kottke.org: Professor Christina Pagel of University College London has mapped the actions of the Trump administration’s first few weeks into a Venn diagram (above) with “five broad domains that correspond to features of proto-authoritarian states”: Undermining Democratic Institutions & Rule of Law; Dismantling federal government Dismantling Social Protections & Rights; Enrichment & Corruption Suppressing Dissent …
Ars Technica: “Condé Nast and several other media companies sued the AI startup Cohere today, alleging that it engaged in “systematic copyright and trademark infringement” by using news articles to train its large language model. “Without permission or compensation, Cohere uses scraped copies of our articles, through training, real-time use, and in outputs, to power …
“USAspending.gov links data from many government systems, including agency financial systems and governmentwide award systems. Scroll below to learn more about these systems, as well as the context for this historic initiative to provide federal spending transparency.” Try searching for contracts by vendor name such as AWS, Inc., Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Tesla Laboratories, Inc. …
Josh Marshall: “This new EO signed today appears to create DOGE as a shadow government across the entire federal government. Each agency/dept will be assigned a DOGE minder who will work with the Secry or Director and essentially be in charge of all new hiring and/or firing. People have been saying the Elon is President. …
The New Yorker – unpaywalled – “To run his agency [DOGE], Musk brought on a group of tech-company managers and inexperienced twentysomethings whose credentials included internships at SpaceX. We watched as this crew began interrogating federal employees about their jobs, interfering with the system that controls payments at the Treasury Department, and trawling government budgets …
CRS Report – Current Federal Civilian Employment by State and Congressional District, Updated December 20, 2024: “The federal government employs more than 2 million civilians who live and work in every state and U.S. territory. As Congress considers the impact of federal appropriations at the national, state, and local levels, Members may seek information on …
How to ensure data cannot be recovered from electronic storage media. In this guidance What is electronic storage media? What is sanitisation? Before you sanitise Preparing ESM for re-use Disposing of ESM This guidance is for organisations who need to ensure that data held on electronic storage media can’t be read by unauthorised parties after …
