“Two members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team working at the Social Security Administration were secretly in touch with an advocacy group seeking to “overturn election results in certain states,” and one signed an agreement that may have involved using Social Security data to match state voter rolls, the Justice Department revealed in newly disclosed court papers.
Elizabeth Shapiro, a top Justice Department official, said SSA referred both DOGE employees for potential violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from using their official positions for political purposes.
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Also among the corrections: DOJ revealed that a DOGE team member was briefly granted access to private Social Security profiles even after a court prohibited it. Shapiro said the access was never “utilized.” And in another instance, a DOGE team member had access for two months to a “call center profile” that contained private information.
“It is unknown at this time whether any [private information] was accessed,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro also revealed that despite prior assertions in court, SSA’s DOGE team members “were using links to share data through the third-party server ‘Cloudflare.’”
“Cloudflare is not approved for storing SSA data and when used in this manner is outside SSA’s security protocols,” Shapiro indicated.”
Trump says a lot of things, and a lot of it is nonsense. Some of it turns into serious policies with huge consequences. But even the things he says that don’t come true have large consequences because he is president. Investors, businesses, and consumers have to make decisions, and Trump’s actions can impact that, so they have to deal with his words and the potential consequences. Even dealing with just his words, costs companies tons of money.
“Trump announced plans in June to undo the name changes of nine Army bases, ignoring the recommendations of an independent commission. Service officials found other soldiers with similar names to help justify the reversal and get around the legal restrictions. Fort Hood in Texas — originally named for Confederate General John Bell Hood, for example — was renamed for World War I Col. Robert Hood.
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Changing the base titles away from the Confederate names cost almost $40 million in 2023. Administration officials have not said how much reverting back to the controversial names has cost.
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Wright is seeking to keep numerous units operating across the country, including coal-fired plants in Michigan and Washington state, and gas- and oil-fired units in Pennsylvania. In several cases, the Energy Department issued extensions on orders to go beyond an initial 90 days. The most recent order — issued days after halting five major offshore wind projects under construction — keeps a damaged and aging coal plant operational in Colorado. The order was issued one day before the unit was slated to close permanently.
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FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, including Reps. Jack Bergman (R-Mich.) and Lou Correa (D-Calif.), are working with Kennedy to fast-track psychedelic medicine research.
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in July, ICE quietly adopted a policy that radically transformed the treatment of all immigrants living in the United States: Rather than the presumption that they would live freely — unless an immigration judge determined they were dangerous or likely to flee their proceedings — ICE would instead classify them as “applicants for admission,” a legal designation that requires them to be locked up without the opportunity for bond.”
Trump will brutally insult reporters on camera, and then off camera say something like, “we’re still good right?”
Trump tried to get the military options to attack Venezuela in his first term, but his high military officials didn’t follow the order to get him the military options, and Trump seemed to have forgotten that he asked.
“Federal immigration officers are asserting sweeping power to forcibly enter people’s homes without a judge’s warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo obtained by The Associated Press, marking a sharp reversal of longstanding guidance meant to respect constitutional limits on government searches.
The memo authorizes ICE officers to use force to enter a residence based solely on a more narrow administrative warrant to arrest someone with a final order of removal, a move that advocates say collides with Fourth Amendment protections and upends years of advice given to immigrant communities.
The shift comes as the Trump administration dramatically expands immigration arrests nationwide, deploying thousands of officers under a mass deportation campaign that is already reshaping enforcement tactics in cities such as Minneapolis.”
“”State capitalism is a two-way street. Many businesses, by aligning themselves with Trump’s agenda, elicit better treatment—in their ability to sell to China, the tariffs they pay, how they are regulated, and what mergers are allowed,” wrote Greg Ip, The Wall Street Journal’s chief economics commentator, in a recent piece about how CEOs are navigating Trump’s state capitalism. “In other words, state capitalism doesn’t just serve the interests of the state, but of favored capitalists.”
And the Trump administration does not seem likely to place its own limits on this behavior. Asked recently about the logic behind these acquisitions, Trump said, “We should take stakes in companies when people need something.” That’s an answer that lacks any limiting principle.”
“Nicaragua is run by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, a husband and wife who take the term “power couple” somewhat literally. They are now co-presidents of the Central American nation of 7 million. Over the years, they’ve rigged elections, wrested control over other branches of the government and crushed the opposition, while apparently grooming their children to succeed them. It has been a strange and circular journey for a pair of one-time Sandinista revolutionaries who previously fought to bring down a dynastic dictatorship.
Hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans have fled the impoverished country, some to the United States. Meanwhile, the regime has enhanced ties to Russia, China and other U.S. adversaries, while having rocky relations with Washington. Nicaragua is part of a free trade agreement with Washington, but it has also faced U.S. sanctions, tariffs and other penalties for oppressing its people, eroding democracy and having ties to Russia. Even the current Trump administration has used such measures against it, but the regime hasn’t buckled.
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Unlike Venezuela, Nicaragua isn’t a major source of oil, the natural resource Trump covets most. It has gold, but not enough of that or other minerals to truly stand out. (Although yes, I know, Trump loves gold.) It’s also not a major source of migrants to the U.S.”
“A ballooning Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget. Hiring bonuses of $50,000. Swelling ranks of ICE officers, to 22,000, in an expanding national force bigger than most police departments in America.
President Donald Trump promised the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history, but achieving his goal wouldn’t have been possible without funding from the big tax and spending cuts bill passed by Republicans in Congress, and it’s fueling unprecedented immigration enforcement actions in cities like Minneapolis and beyond.”
Trump appears to personally want Greenland because he thinks expanding the territory of the United States is cool and because he’s mad about not getting the Nobel Peace Prize.