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People are fighting back. But it takes time to organize.

  • Feb 4
  • 10 min read

This is not quite a continuation of the previous posts about things to know part 1 and part 2 but it is in supplement to it.


People are getting organized and fighting back. Protests are happening. Lawsuits are being filed. Hakeem Jeffries has a Dear Colleague Letter out detailing 10 things to do. Members of Congress and Senators were at USAID to protest the dismantling of the agency.


Here are some of the pushback against President Musk and FOTUS.






Sunday February 2nd we caught up with Texas Senator Roland Gutierrez to chat about what’s going on in Austin and DC right now. What matters the most to Texans! Listen to what Roland has to say! He has the beat on Texans in a way that Gov. Greg Abbott doesn’t. Roland lays it out! Not a wonder he’s so loved by so many Texans!
Enjoy this great interview.
Nancy Thompson

This public resource tracks legal challenges to Trump administration actions. If you think we are missing anything, you can email us at lte@justsecurity.org. Special thanks to  Just Security Student Staff Editors, Rick Da and Jeremy Venook, and to Matthew Fouracre.
The Tracker was first published on Jan. 29, 2025 and is continually updated.


Archivists saving the government websites.


Dorothea Salo, academic librarian and faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told The Register we've been here before, citing how the prior Trump administration all but disappeared the US Environmental Protection Agency.
"That apparently made him happy enough to try to disappear half the federal government this time," she said.
"As happened last time, lots of citizens and citizen groups are rescuing what they can. It’s organically fairly decent preservation practice – the rescued work is being duplicated in widely geographically disparate places, which lowers the odds that sheer bad luck wipes it out. The difficulty is discovery – who’s got what data [and] where? If, as I hope, US leaders someday return to a belief that government transparency is important to democracy, putting the jigsaw puzzle back together will be a huge lift.
"My heart goes out to all the federal employees, contractors, and grantees, from scientists to records managers, who are seeing senseless destruction of their work. There is absolutely nothing good or useful in this ruinous vandalism."
Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive, said that about 28 years ago, Brewster Kahle had the idea to keep a record of the web.
"Every day since then, the Internet Archive has continued that tradition, working to do a better job of archiving and making available the archives of more of the public web," he told The Register. "Generally speaking, on any given day, we archive more than a billion URLs and make those available through the Wayback Machine."
The US government, Graham said, is the largest publisher in the world and every four years since 2008, the Internet Archive has come together in collaboration with partners to archive the material on government websites.
The effort has been in three phases, he explained: Before the election, between the election and the inauguration, and this weekend.
"We kicked off phase three after the election this weekend, where we do a deep dive and work to archive much material from more than 50,000 US government websites," he said.
Pointing to various reports on the online data purge, Graham said several thousand webpages, many related to LGBTQ and DEI topics, have been removed.



Datasets aggregated on data.gov, the largest repository of U.S. government open data on the internet, are being deleted, according to the website’s own information. Since Donald Trump was inaugurated as president, more than 2,000 datasets have disappeared from the database.
As people in the Data Hoarding and archiving communities have pointed out, on January 21, there were 307,854 datasets on data.gov. As of Thursday, there are 305,564 datasets. Many of the deletions happened immediately after Trump was inaugurated, according to snapshots of the website saved on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Harvard University researcher Jack Cushman has been taking snapshots of Data.gov’s datasets both before and after the inauguration, and has worked to create a full archive of the data.

A group of researchers and students at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is gathered today for a data preservation marathon, scraping and downloading data related to health equity from U.S. government agency websites before they disappear. Their goal is to make the downloaded data publicly available through repositories such as the Harvard Dataverse.


But the Internet never forgets, and most of the removed web pages are still available to view via The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. The Internet Archive is best known for scraping and archiving as much of the Internet as it can and, thus, has saved pages from the CDC from before the president's order. Enterprising individuals can consult the archives to still get the information the CDC was forced to remove from its website. 

I'm quoted in this article. Happy to discuss what we're working on at the Library Innovation Lab if anyone has questions.
There's lots of people making copies of things right now, which is great -- Lots Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe. It's your data, why not have a copy?
One thing I think we can contribute here as an institution is timestamping and provenance. Our copy of data.gov is made with https://github.com/harvard-lil/bag-nabit , which extends BagIt format to sign archives with email/domain/document certificates. That way (once we have a public endpoint) you can make your own copy with rclone, pass it around, but still verify it hasn't been modified since we made it.

As federal employees were directed to scrub sites by Friday at  5 p.m., The 19th, alongside many other news organizations, jumped into archival action. 

Here is a sample of the government documents The 19th preserved for future access and accountability:

  • Maternal mortality data from the CDC

  • Abortion and contraception data from the CDC

  • Reports on violence against Native American women from the DOJ

  • Research studies on teens, including the mental health of girls and LGBTQ+ youth

  • Guidelines from the National Academies on how to best collect data about gender and sexuality

  • Report on women in the workforce from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

  • Information from the DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women



Here's all the information you might need.

Official website: https://eotarchive.org/

Internet Archive blog post about the 2024 archive: https://blog.archive.org/2024/05/08/end-of-term-web-archive/

Internet Archive collection page: https://archive.org/details/EndofTermWebCrawls



Indivisible has a guide to reach out to Congress to help stop Project 2025.



There are mass protests going on February 2nd (immigrants striking from work, it's why some businesses are closed), February 3rd at OPM, February 5th, and a general strike is being planned for March 15th.



WE CHOOSE TO FIGHT: U.S. SENATE IN-STATE OFFICE VISIT TOOLKIT

TOOLKIT CONTENTS:










Thousands of people protesting mass deportations planned by President Donald Trump marched in Southern California on Sunday, including in downtown Los Angeles where demonstrators blocked a major freeway.
Protesters gathered in the morning on LA’s historic Olvera Street, which dates to Spanish and Mexican rule, before marching to City Hall. They called for immigration reform and carried banners with slogans like “Nobody is illegal.”



“Can I tell you that Republicans want to see Elon go down?” she told MSNBC’s Alex Witt on Sunday. “I can. Now, will they come out publicly and say that? No, because they’re concerned about whether or not he’ll spend money in their next elections.”



A pair of labor unions has sued the Treasury Department for granting the Trump administration’s “Department of Government Efficiency” access to the federal government’s payment systems.
The American Federation of Government Employees and the Service Employees International Union filed their lawsuit on Monday, alleging Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent violated federal law meant to protect people’s sensitive personal and financial information.

~


“People who must share information with the federal government should not be forced to share information with Elon Musk or his ‘DOGE,’” the complaint states. “And federal law says they do not have to.”
The unions were joined in the lawsuit by a labor-backed advocacy group called Alliance for Retired Americans, which said the Treasury Department had endangered the data of its members receiving Social Security benefits.



Approximately two dozen individuals protested outside of the Office of Personnel Management on Sunday afternoon in Washington, D.C., following a Reuters report that associates of Elon Musk, who have taken leadership positions at the federal government’s human resources agency, “have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees.” 
Protestors carried signs that read “fork this” and “get the fork out of my data.” They also chanted slogans with the actual expletive as well as “robbery in progress.”
Stephanie LaTour, who spent more than 30 years as a government lawyer, traveled from Brooklyn to protest and was joined by friends. 
“They now have the records of millions of federal employees — access to, control over — which is really like a sort of a cyber coup,” she said. “And so I really wanted to protest, and I thought ‘You know, I’m just going to drive to DC.’ And I just got in my car and drove down here.” 



The goal has always been clear: destroy functioning government, cripple the nonprofit sector and obliterate the hard-earned bonds and benefits of 80 years of post-war American progress.
There’s no hiding from this, because it will touch every aspect of life in the U.S. Just this week, the Trump Administration illegally halted Medicaid and Head Start payments, halted veterans benefits, stopped SNAP benefits for hungry families, launched invasive immigration raids designed to terrorize communities, froze federal grants to nonprofit organizations providing direct service, cut off loans to small businesses, attacked advocacy organizations, banned transgender people from serving in the military and even went so far as trying to silence the history of the Tuskegee Airmen as part of his capricious and bigoted campaign to end DEI programs.

~


As Democracy Docket and legal and justice organizations are showing, there is still life left in the U.S. court system — and frankly, given current radical majorities in the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, the courts are our best public options for throwing sand in the gears of the extremists seeking to destroy civil society. But I think there’s a strong adjunct role for most of us building anti-MAGA strength in the 21 months left till the U.S. midterm elections in 2026. 

  1. Our nonprofit sector must band together to oppose the dismemberment of American society. This means working within sectors, but also across sectors — health care with higher education, justice reform with direct services to underserved populations and the arts with everybody. We are starting to see more coalition work (particularly in my home metro area of New York) and collective action, rather than pure competition for grants and philanthropic dollars. This is a time to ramp up more of this, and be ready to stand in partnership with the best of government — and in stoic opposition to the worst.

  2. Political donors of the center-left should adjust their giving habits to support more oppositional causes, perhaps shifting from purely candidates and committees to investments in independent media, regional 501c4 organizing work and legal funds fighting Trump orders directly. This goes for the big donors from groups like the Democracy Alliance to small donors used to responding to the ever more tasteless email campaigns of the big congressional committees and PACs. This is the time to change the model.

  3. Individuals must speak up and speak out in their communities. Yes, the latest outrage can be numbing — don’t spend a day on Facebook debating the ludicrous “Gulf of America” malarkey — but the attempted structural changes should be loudly and vociferously opposed. Talk to friends. Use social media wisely (pick your platforms well). Know your material, and be blunt with both public officials (especially Democratic leadership) and with the news media. Most of all, don’t wait with your head under the covers, because that simply won’t work. Sometimes we’re called to act, and that time is now.




Trump’s goal this time is to remake the American government to enhance his power. He isn’t the first modern right-wing populist to attempt this — he is following a playbook pioneered by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. I lived through Orbán’s power grab as a member of Hungary’s parliament and have been researching populism since. I’ve learned a few things along the way that might help Trump’s opponents understand how he won and how they can fight back.








Faith-based refugee agencies operating in the U.S. ramped up their efforts to assist as many refugees as possible before Trump returned to office, fearing he would eliminate the refugee program. But Soerens said World Relief and other groups were caught off guard on Friday by a federal memo instructing them to stop working with refugees already in the United States.   
World Relief and other refugee resettlement groups, including Catholic Charities, Church World Service and HIAS, receive federal funding to help refugees. They also raise funds from private donors to assist refugees and recruit volunteers from houses of worship.
That volunteer work will continue, said Soerens, who also said that volunteers and private donations will be needed now more than ever. “I don’t think that the government has any authority to tell us, or any church, don’t bring your refugee friends to the grocery store,” he said. “Or don’t help them go to their medical appointments.”

~


“I think that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops needs to actually look in the mirror a little bit and recognize that when they receive over $100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants, are they worried about humanitarian concerns?” he told “Meet the Press,” mischaracterizing refugees’ presence in the U.S. as illegal. “Or are they actually worried about their bottom line?”
Faith-based groups that resettle refugees —who are legal immigrants —have faced similar criticism.
Dawood said that Christian critics of the refugee program might want to go back to the Bible to read its passages about welcoming refugees, and, citing his hero, Ronald Reagan, said, “America is the city on a hill, and America is to be honored and blessed by accepting those refugees.”



Take a look at this CIA handbook on sabotage that was used against fascism in WWII. It is the most popular ebook online right now.




Be careful leaking!









 
 
 

Dept of Education is now in President Musk's crosshairs

  • Feb 4
  • 5 min read

Pay attention to the Dept of Education.



President Donald Trump has directed the federal government to begin a campaign to monitor and influence K-12 curriculum — a move that former Education Department staff describe as unprecedented interference into the country’s education system with the purpose of targeting marginalized groups, particularly transgender students.  
In an executive order signed Wednesday, Trump instructed the secretary of education, secretary of defense and secretary of health and human services to work with the attorney general to enforce “patriotic education” and eliminate federal funding for schools promoting “indoctrination” based on “gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.” 
These and other terms used in the order echo attempts by Republicans in red states to restrict teaching critical race theory, Black history, intersectionality and social justice, and to ban classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity. For example, “discriminatory equity ideology” is defined within the order as, among other things, the belief that “the United States is fundamentally racist, sexist, or otherwise discriminatory.”



President Donald Trump is preparing an executive order aimed at eventually closing the Education Department and, in the short term, dismantling it from within, according to three people briefed on its contents.
The draft order acknowledges that only Congress can shut down the department and instead directs the agency to begin to diminish itself, these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal issues.
That work is underway already. The new administration has been trying to reduce the workforce by putting scores of employees on administrative leave and pressuring staff to voluntarily quit.
And roughly 20 people with Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” known as DOGE, have begun working inside the Education Department, looking to cut spending and staff, according to three people familiar with the situation and records obtained by The Washington Post.
At least some DOGE staffers have gained access to multiple sensitive internal systems, the people said, including a financial aid dataset that contains the personal information for millions of students enrolled in the federal student aid program.
The DOGE probe, which began last week, is a prelude to a more dramatic effort to make good on one of Trump’s campaign promises: eliminating the Education Department altogether.

~


The order is expected to direct the Education Department to develop a legislative plan to present to Congress. But it also will instruct the department to come up with a plan to diminish its staff and functions.
It was unclear how detailed the order will be, but people briefed and others who follow the Education Department closely said they expect the agency will try to move various functions to other federal departments. Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a second Trump term, detailed where different pieces of the department might land if it were closed.
For instance, Project 2025 recommended that the student loan program move to the Treasury Department and civil rights enforcement shift to the Justice Department.
But even those moves would require congressional action, experts said. The 1979 law that established the department specifies that the agency “shall” include many of its major responsibilities, including an Office for Civil Rights and an Office of Elementary and Secondary Education.

A separate statute, the Higher Education Act, specifies that the federal student aid office be housed in the Education Department. There has been some bipartisan interest in moving some of these functions out of the department in the past, but it’s unclear if Democrats would go along in this environment.
Trump and his team probably understand they will not be successful in tearing the Education Department to pieces by executive order, said Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank. But he said the move will please Trump’s base and test the limits of presidential power.
“What will be interesting is if he orders parts of the department to be moved to other agencies, in violation of the statutes,” Petrilli said. “Then that’ll be a test, and we’ll see what happens in the courts.”
Already, the National Student Legal Defense Network, an advocacy group, is exploring legal challenges to any effort to dismantle the agency.

“Effectively shutting down the Department of Education through Executive Order or mass firings is a recipe for chaos that will disrupt the lives of students across the country,” said Aaron Ament, a former Obama administration official who is president of the group. “Trying to do so without Congress is not only shortsighted but illegal and unconstitutional.”
Still, Petrilli pointed to the ongoing saga at USAID, which Trump — working through Musk — effectively closed and merged with the State Department over the weekend.

~


Closing the department has been an off-and-on Republican goal since it was created in 1979. During his campaign, Trump repeatedly promised to “return” responsibility for education to the states, a misleading sentiment echoed by many other GOP candidates. (States and school districts, not the federal government, operate public schools.)
The department administers federal grant programs, including the $18.4 billion Title I program that provides supplemental funding to high-poverty K-12 schools, as well as the $15.5 billion program that helps cover the cost of education for students with disabilities. The department also oversees the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program and sets rules for what colleges must do to participate.
And the agency is charged with enforcing civil rights laws that bar discrimination in federally funded schools on the basis of race, sex and other factors. Executive orders signed after Trump took office suggest the department will use its authority to deny federal funding to schools that teach certain things about race and gender. Another executive order banning transgender girls and women from competing on women’s sports teams is expected as soon as this week.
Americans have mixed and partisan views of the Education Department, according to a 2024 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. It found that 44 percent had favorable views of the agency and 45 percent had unfavorable views. But among Republicans and those who lean Republican, 64 percent viewed the agency unfavorably, compared with 26 percent of Democrats and those who lean Democratic.




A lawsuit filed Monday against the University of California launched a new salvo in the assault on affirmative action, accusing one of the country’s largest public university systems of illegal racial discrimination in admissions.
The complaint, filed in federal district court in California, alleges that the universities unfairly give admissions preference to Black and Hispanic applicants in violation of antidiscrimination laws.
The plaintiff, a group called Students Against Racial Discrimination representing White and Asian would-be applicants, seeks to force a change in the admissions practices and ensure compliance with federal antidiscrimination law and the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, according to the lawsuit. If successful, the lawsuit would stop the schools from considering or asking about race during the admissions process.

~


“Since the consideration of race in admissions was banned in California in 1996, the University of California has adjusted its admissions practices to comply with the law,” the spokesman said in an email Monday. “UC undergraduate admissions applications collect students’ race and ethnicity for statistical purposes only and they are not used for admission.”
“More lawsuits are coming,” said Jonathan Mitchell, an attorney for the plaintiffs. “Universities continue to defy the law by using race and sex preferences in student admissions and faculty hiring. We will keep suing them until they adopt colorblind admissions and rid themselves of every last vestige of these odious and discriminatory practices.”




 
 
 

20 things you need to be aware of pt 2

  • Feb 4
  • 27 min read

Our meeting is tomorrow night and as I was trying to write up what to discuss I realized it was just a list of things of what President Musk and FOTUS has been doing in the past 2 weeks.


So here is a list of things you should be aware of pt 2:



10) Canada has retaliated with tariffs on Musk businesses such as Tesla and Starlink.



President Donald Trump’s trade war against Canada, Mexico and China could be waged at the cost of not only American consumers but also one of his closest allies: Elon Musk. Both SpaceX and Tesla (TSLA), two companies owned by Musk, rely on global supply chains and could suffer from retaliatory measures from tariff-impacted countries. Repercussions stemming from Trump’s proposed tariffs have already spooked investors in Tesla, which saw its shares fall by more than 6 percent today (Feb. 3).

~


In response to Trump’s tariffs, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a 25 percent tariff on $30 billion worth of goods imported from the U.S. effective tomorrow. Canada plans to levy further tariffs on $85 billion worth of U.S. imports. In 2023, Canada imported around $332 billion worth of goods from the U.S. and exported $406 billion worth of goods to the country.

~


Some local officials are taking retaliatory measures a step further. Ontario premier Doug Ford today announced on X that he will “ripping up” the province’s $68 million contract with SpaceX’s Starlink, a satellite-based internet service. The deal was struck in November to provide high-speed internet access to rural, remote and northern communities.
“Starting today and until U.S. tariffs are removed, Ontario is banning American companies from provincial contracts,” Ford said in an X post, adding that the province won’t do business with people interested in “destroying our economy.”

~


Musk’s close ties with Trump has made him as a strategic target in the trade war. Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s former deputy prime minister, proposed a 100 percent tariff on Tesla vehicles alongside levies on U.S. alcohol. “We need to look through and say who is supporting Trump and how can we make them pay a price for a tariff attack on Canada,” said Freeland during a Jan. 31 interview with The Canadian Press. Freeland is running to replace Trudeau as the Liberal Party leader.


Effective February 4, 2025, the government is imposing 25 per cent tariffs on $30 billion in goods imported from the United States (U.S.).
These tariffs only apply to goods originating from the U.S., which shall be considered as those goods eligible to be marked as a good of the U.S. in accordance with the Determination of Country of Origin for the Purposes of Marking Goods (CUSMA Countries) Regulations.
These countermeasures are effective immediately and will remain in place until the U.S. eliminates its tariffs against Canada. Canada’s countermeasures do not apply to U.S. goods that are in transit to Canada on the day on which they come into force. Additional details on the administration of these tariffs are available on the Canada Border Services Agency website: Customs Notices.



In an interview with The Canadian Press, Freeland emphasized the need for a strategic response to Trump’s tariff policies. “We need to be very targeted, very surgical, very precise,” she said. “We need to look through and say who is supporting Trump and how can we make them pay a price for a tariff attack on Canada.”



Tesla shares declined about 5% on Monday to close at $383.68 after President Donald Trump announced plans for extensive tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico and China.
The stock was also hit by declining registrations for Tesla vehicles in France, Sweden and Norway. Tesla fell more than its megacap peers, with Apple’s stock suffering the next-biggest drop at more than 3%.



Tesla’s stock (Nasdaq:TSLA) moved lower once again Monday, falling almost 5% in midday trading, the continuation of a fairly steady decline since Donald Trump took office.
Shares of the automaker (trading at around $384 per share in midday trading) are down more than $43 a share since their close on January 17, a dip of more than 10%. That comes as CEO Elon Musk has been spending a large percentage of his time running the Department of Government Efficiency in Washington, D.C., and not focusing as heavily on Tesla.
The steady drop in Tesla’s stock is likely due to a variety of factors. Monday’s decline follows news that Tesla has lost market share in Sweden and Norway, despite a large increase in overall car demand.
In January, Tesla sold 405 new vehicles in Sweden, a 44% drop from the year prior. Norway was down 38% with 689 vehicle sales.


11) Canadian businesses are pulling American products and Canadians are booing the US Anthem at sports games. There have also been calls for Canada to pull the electricity on the Superbowl.



"No doubt, it's a big opportunity ... to showcase true nationalism, and it's supporting Canadian jobs, local manufacturing," said Bromlyn Bethune, the president of Toronto-based Steam Whistle Brewing.
Her comments came on the heels of Ontario Premier Doug Ford's Sunday announcement revealing that he would take aim at the nearly $1 billion worth of U.S. wine, beer, spirits and seltzers sold in the LCBO every year.
The more than 3,600 products from 35 U.S. states are due to leave the liquor store on Tuesday, when U.S. President Donald Trump's promised tariffs on Canadian goods come into effect.
"There’s never been a better time to choose an amazing Ontario-made or Canadian-made product," Ford said in a statement.
British Columbia, Quebec, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador all made the same move as Ford over the weekend.
Some shelves at B.C. government liquor stores were empty Sunday, with signs urging customers to buy Canadian products instead.


Canadians have begun organizing efforts of their own to counteract U.S. tariffs imposed Saturday by President Donald Trump, with some heeding calls by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who quickly announced retaliatory levies against the U.S., to buy Canadian and boycott U.S. goods as much as possible.
Giancarlo Trimarchi, past-chair of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers and president of Vince's Market in Sharon, Ont., said he has begun creating "Made in Canada" tags to be placed alongside Canadian products at supermarkets.


Gary Sands, vice president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers (CFIG), told Newsweek on Monday that Trump's move has already sparked an "unprecedented" demand by consumers wanting to know whether products are made in Canada or not.
He did not expect retailers to boycott American products although he said the movement among consumers to shun U.S.-made could grow. "They want very visible signs of what is Canadian when they're walking into the store," he said.



Canadians have canceled trips south of the border, boycotted U.S. alcohol and other products and even booed at sporting events after U.S. President Donald Trump announced 25% tariffs on most of Canada's goods on Saturday.
Though Trump had pledged to put tariffs on Canada and Mexico before taking office, the perceived act of economic warfare on a country that is so close to the United States culturally and geographically still came as a shock to many Canadians.



Fans at a Toronto Raptors game continued an emerging trend Sunday of booing the American national anthem at pro sporting events in Canada.
Fans of the NBA’s lone Canadian franchise booed the anthem after similar reactions broke out Saturday night at NHL games in Ottawa, Ontario, and Calgary, Alberta, hours after U.S. President Donald Trump made his threat of import tariffs on America’s northern neighbor reality.


Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, plans to rain economic punishment on Americans if President Donald Trump targets Canada in a trade war.
Ford has threatened to cut power transmission to U.S. homes and businesses and banish U.S. liquor from Ontario shelves. Wearing a MAGA-like hat reading “Canada Is Not For Sale,” Ford has pledged to target red states with dollar-for-dollar retaliation. In an interview Wednesday, he described himself matter-of-factly as a brawler with a reflex for combat.

~


Standing apart from the servile menagerie of world leaders, billionaires and executives who are seeking Trump’s favor through flattery, Ford is making his own bet — that the American president will respect grit, bluntness and macho theatrics more than pleading gestures of submission.
It is a risky strategy, seemingly anchored in Ford’s confidence that he understands Trump on a deeper level than his colleagues in the governing class. If Ford is wrong in his assessment of Trump, his peace-through-strength strategy could inadvertently accelerate a trade war that Ford views as irrational. He is emphatic that he does not want to carry out any of the threats he’s leveled at Washington.




As tempting as it may be to take a tit-for-tat approach to the possible United States tariff war against Canada and turn off the lights to the country’s northeastern states, Concordia University economic professor Moshe Lander warns we may want to take the high road – for our own benefit.
“If you really want to get people’s attention, you can turn out the lights,” he said. “That would certainly make the U.S. take notice but I have a feeling that they [Canada] would lose the PR battle.”






12) Musk's criminal gang that took over Treasury have been identified and Musk is claiming this is a crime. US Attorney accepts Musk as President and tells him to use them to find the culprits and prosecute.




A 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies, has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government, three sources tell WIRED.
Two of those sources say that Elez’s privileges include the ability not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: The Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Housed on a top-secret mainframe, these systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy.

~


“You could do anything with these privileges,” says one source with knowledge of the system, who adds that they cannot conceive of a reason that anyone would need them for purposes of simply hunting down fraudulent payments or analyzing disbursement flow.

~


A source says they are concerned that data could be passed from secure systems to DOGE operatives within the General Services Administration (GSA). WIRED reporting has shown that Elon Musk’s associates—including Nicole Hollander, who slept in Twitter’s offices as Musk acquired the company, and Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer who now runs a GSA agency, along with a host of extremely young and inexperienced engineers—have infiltrated the GSA, and have attempted to use White House security credentials to gain access to GSA tech, something experts have said is highly unusual and poses a huge security risk.

Elon Musk’s takeover of federal government infrastructure is ongoing, and at the center of things is a coterie of engineers who are barely out of—and in at least one case, purportedly still in—college. Most have connections to Musk, and at least two have connections to Musk’s longtime associate Peter Thiel, a cofounder and chair of the analytics firm and government contractor Palantir who has long expressed opposition to democracy.
WIRED has identified six young men—all apparently between the ages of 19 and 24, according to public databases, their online presences, and other records—who have little to no government experience and are now playing critical roles in Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, tasked by executive order with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The engineers all hold nebulous job titles within DOGE, and at least one appears to be working as a volunteer.

The engineers are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran. None have responded to requests for comment from WIRED. Representatives from OPM, GSA, and DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.
The six men are one part of the broader project of Musk allies assuming key government positions. Already, Musk’s lackeys—including more senior staff from xAI, Tesla, and the Boring Company—have taken control of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and General Services Administration (GSA), and have gained access to the Treasury Department’s payment system, potentially allowing him access to a vast range of sensitive information about tens of millions of citizens, businesses, and more. On Sunday, CNN reported that DOGE personnel attempted to improperly access classified information and security systems at the US Agency for International Development and that top USAID security officials who thwarted the attempt were subsequently put on leave. The Associated Press reported that DOGE personnel had indeed accessed classified material.


As a cabal of Elon Musk flunkies works around the clock to infiltrate and sabotage various federal agencies on behalf of President Donald Trump, the world’s richest man — just named a special government employee — is warning along with Washington allies that the consequences for publicly naming these staffers may be severe.
On Sunday, with Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) seizing control of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the billionaire vowing to eliminate it altogether, Wired reported the identities of six software engineers with jobs in his wrecking crew. They span in age from 19 to their mid-twenties and have minimal government experience (if any), though most have connections to either Musk or his onetime PayPal colleague Peter Thiel, another right-wing Silicon Valley billionaire whose data analytics firm Palantir holds valuable U.S. defense contracts. They are Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier Cole Killian, Gavin Kliger, and Ethan Shaotran.
These young men have been involved in Musk’s sweeping efforts to gain access to the communication systems, personnel files, and other sensitive information at agencies including USAID, the Treasury Department, the Office of Personnel Management, the General Services Administration, and the Small Business Administration, in certain cases freezing employees out of their work accounts and putting others on leave. Some DOGE and State Department representatives were at first barred from USAID headquarters in Washington on Friday night and threatened to call U.S. Marshals if they were not given entry; security guards eventually relented. On Monday, the agency’s staffers were locked out of the building, triggering a protest outside that was attended by Democratic lawmakers.

Musk, who professes to champion free speech but has typically clamped down on content shared via his social media platform X if he doesn’t want it publicly disseminated, has already moved to silence those who share the names of DOGE team members carrying out his orders to wrest control of the levers of federal spending. On Sunday night, after Democrats of the House Foreign Affairs Committee posted on X that “DOGE’s attempt to bulldoze its way into classified systems is part of a broader agenda to dismantle U.S. foreign aid and soft power,” another user on the site, with a paid verified account, replied, “Here’s a list of techies on the ground helping Musk gaining and using access to the US Treasury payment system,” and named the six men identified in the Wired article. Musk shot back, “You have committed a crime,” though there is no law against reporting the names of individuals with a government-affiliated task force. The post was then removed and replaced with a message saying that it had violated X rules. Then the account itself was suspended.

On Monday, a key Trump appointee, interim District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, signaled that he was prepared to back Musk’s censorship with the resources of the Justice Department. “Dear @elon,” he wrote on X, tagging an account that does not belong to the site owner. “Please see this important letter. We will not tolerate threats against DOGE workers or law-breaking by the disgruntled. All the best. Ed Martin.”
The extraordinary letter the attorney shared stated in part: “I recognize that some of the staff at DOGE has been targeted publicly. At this time, I ask that you utilize me and my staff to assist in protecting the DOGE work and the DOGE workers. Any threats, confrontations, or other actions in any way that impact their work may break numerous laws.”





13) Pentagon boots NBC news and others in favor of Matt Gaetz's OANN.



NBC News, The New York Times, NPR and Politico must vacate their office spaces in two weeks for other news organizations — including at least one that did not request to be added.
In addition to NBC News, The New York Times, National Public Radio and Politico must vacate their dedicated workspaces. The news organizations learned about the new directive in a memo sent to the press corps without being individually notified, and an accompanying email included a message that read, in part, “no additional information will be provided at this time.” 
“For over a half-century, the Pentagon Press Corps has benefited from working out of individual office spaces that provide coveted and open access to some of the Department’s top military and civilian leaders,” read the memo Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot sent to the Pentagon Press Association. 

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The move by Pentagon officials comes seven days after the Senate confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth by the narrowest of margins. It followed weeks of coverage about his behavior and treatment of women, including allegations that his alcohol consumption alarmed colleagues and his second wife feared for her safety around him. Hegseth has denied the allegations. 
NBC News reported on some of the allegations against Hegseth.  
The memo identified the rotating organizations by medium — selecting one each from TV, print, radio and online news to swap in and out. It said the news organizations rotating out had two weeks to vacate their spaces. 
The new outlets rotating in are One America News Network — which will take NBC News’s spot — the New York Post, Breitbart News Network and HuffPost.  

~


Three of the new outlets are conservative, while HuffPost leans progressive.  
HuffPost does not have a Pentagon correspondent, and the site did not request a space, spokesperson Lizzie Grams said.  
“If the Trump administration and Secretary Hegseth are interested in more hard-hitting coverage of their stewardship of the Defense Department from HuffPost, we are ready to deliver,” Grams said. 


14) Musk decided to destroy USAid. Everything online is gone and staff were told not to come to work.



Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Sunday slammed the Trump White House’s reported placing on leave of two top security chiefs at the U.S. Agency for International Development after they reportedly declined access to classified materials to staffers from the Elon Musk-led, spending-slashing-seeking non-official Department of Government Efficiency.
“This is a five alarm fire,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on social media.
“The people elected Donald Trump to be President ― not Elon Musk,” she continued. “Having an unelected billionaire, with his own foreign debts and motives, raiding US classified information is a grave threat to national security.”



President Donald Trump’s “government efficiency” cheerleader Elon Musk proposed simply ignoring all federal regulations during a public call shortly after midnight Monday morning.
Musk, whose newly formed “Department of Government Efficiency” team has in recent days executed a dramatic power grab at several government agencies, called for “wholesale removal of regulations.”

~


Later, Ramaswamy — who briefly co-led Musk’s White House DOGE project — said, “I think it’s possible now, it’s actually possible” thanks to Trump’s second term and a conservative-dominated Supreme Court.
Musk replied, “If it’s not possible now, it’ll never be possible. This is our shot. This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have. And if we don’t take advantage of this best hand of cards, it’s never going to happen, so we’re going to do it.”
“Now or never,” Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Ramaswamy agreed. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) also spoke on the call.

~


Federal regulations, which are enforced by the executive branch agencies, govern everything from pollutants to construction safety to banking requirements. Musk, the world’s wealthiest man and a key player in several industries, would benefit immensely from the ability to pick and choose which regulations to follow.
Musk on the call also appeared to claim credit for the shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S.-funded aid agency that oversees humanitarian projects around the world, calling it a corrupt “ball of worms.” Shortly after the call, he wrote on X that “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
He said on the call that “we’re shutting it down” and that Trump “agreed that we should shut it down” — though the executive branch’s legal authority to do so without congressional action is highly in doubt, as the agency’s existence is established in law. Trump on Monday said he didn’t need an act of Congress to shut down USAID.


Staffers of the U.S. Agency for International Development were instructed to stay out of the agency’s Washington headquarters on Monday, according to a notice distributed to them, after billionaire Elon Musk announced President Donald Trump had agreed with him to shut the agency.
USAID staffers said they also tracked more than 600 employees who reported being locked out of the agency’s computer systems overnight. Those still in the system received emails saying that “at the direction of Agency leadership” the headquarters building “will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, Feb. 3.”



Created in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, the U.S. Agency for International Development emerged from an effort to separate military and non-military assistance and revamp how the U.S. distributed foreign aid.
Kennedy argued that the U.S., as the wealthiest country on Earth, had a moral and financial obligation to provide foreign aid. It was also politically advantageous to the U.S. to fund projects in poorer countries, he said, to try to prevent the collapse of "existing political and social structures which would inevitably invite the advance of totalitarianism."
In 1971, at the height of the Vietnam War, the Senate rejected a foreign aid bill, in part over growing concerns that foreign assistance wasn't helping U.S. interests abroad. Congress later refocused U.S. foreign aid efforts on projects designed to tackle specific issues, such as agriculture, family planning and education.

~


An archived post on USAID's website, which vanished in recent days, said the agency responds to an average of 75 humanitarian crises each year, and has recently provided support during ongoing emergencies in Haiti as well as countries in Africa and the Middle East.
Other issues the agency has been working on include food security, climate change and global health. Experts have noted that a key component of USAID's work is preventing disease outbreaks and epidemics from reaching the U.S.



Over the last two weeks, President Donald Trump's administration has made significant changes to the U.S. agency charged with delivering humanitarian assistance overseas that has left aid organizations agonizing over whether they can continue with programs such as nutritional assistance for malnourished infants and children.

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On his first day in office Jan. 20, Trump implemented a 90-day freeze on foreign assistance. Four days later, Peter Marocco - a returning political appointee from Trump's first term - drafted a tougher than expected interpretation of that order, a move that shut down thousands of programs around the world and forced furloughs and layoffs.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has since moved to keep more kinds of strictly life-saving emergency programs going during the freeze. But confusion over what programs are exempted from the Trump administration's stop-work orders - and fear of losing U.S. aid permanently - is still freezing aid and development work globally.
Dozens of senior officials have been put on leave, thousands of contractors laid off, and employees were told Monday not to enter its Washington headquarters. And USAID's website and its account on the X platform have been taken down.
It's part of a Trump administration crackdown that's hitting across the federal government and its programs. But USAID and foreign aid are among those hit the hardest.

~


Sub-Saharan Africa could suffer more than any other region during the aid pause. The U.S. gave the region more than $6.5 billion in humanitarian assistance last year. HIV patients in Africa arriving at clinics funded by an acclaimed U.S. program that helped rein in the global AIDS epidemic of the 1980s found locked doors.
There are also already ramifications in Latin America. In Mexico, a busy shelter for migrants in southern Mexico has been left without a doctor. A program to provide mental health support for LGBTQ+ youth fleeing Venezuela was disbanded.
In Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Guatemala, so-called "Safe Mobility Offices" where migrants can apply to enter the U.S. legally have shuttered.
The aid community is struggling to get the full picture-how many thousands of programs have shut down and how many thousands of workers were furloughed and laid off under the freeze?



In May of 2023, Beattie wrote: “Middle class and working class white men are treated far worse in America than Uiguhrs are in China,” a reference to the Turkish-descendent ethnic group targeted by Chinese government’s ethnic cleansing campaigns. 




15) Trump takes a page out of the Middle East dictators and signs an EO to create a Sovereign Wealth Fund to own state-media.



Eyebrows were raised as billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch was pictured with President Donald Trump on Monday in the Oval Office.
The powerhouse behind Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and New York Post attended a White House event where Trump signed an executive order establishing a U.S. sovereign wealth fund.


Sovereign wealth funds are investment vehicles owned by countries. Most act as an investment account, or as a development tool, or a combination of the two. They are designed to be a nest egg, allowing current money to be deployed in a way that benefits future generations.
Unlike pension funds where people withdraw money for their own spending needs, SWFs are supposed to invest for the collective good of a nation. But SWFs also often invest in financial products and buying stakes in companies, which can provide financial benefits well into the future and fund government budgets or social programs.

~


Trump did not give an initial size or target amount for the US sovereign wealth fund. However, when talking about the subject in September, he said an American SWF should approach, or exceed, $2tn.
Currently, the largest such fund is Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global with $1.74tn in assets, followed by the China Investment Corporation with $1.33tn in assets, according to the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, a data provider.
Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore are among countries with prominent sovereign wealth funds, with between $801bn and $1.06tn in assets, the institute said.


The text of the executive order was sparse on details, and simply directed the Treasury and Commerce Departments to submit a plan for such a fund within 90 days, including recommendations on "funding mechanisms, investment strategies, fund structure, and a governance model."

Typically such funds rely on a country's budget surplus to make investments, but the U.S. operates at a deficit. Its creation also would likely require approval from Congress.




16) Trump announces a 30 day pause to the tariffs after the markets start to crash, but not China. And pretends he won something but it's just business as usual with no changes.




Fox News viewers were given an unexpectedly honest look at the potential toll of the tariffs announced by President Donald Trump on Saturday and how the decision may impact them personally by increasing the cost of household staples.
As Fox News anchor Jon Scott interviewed Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), some two dozen products and companies flashed across the screen, from everyday items such as maple syrup, ground beef and strawberries to big-ticket purchases such as vehicles.
“It seems like virtually every sector of the American economy potentially could be targeted by these tariffs and the tariffs that Mexico and Canada have now announced that they will institute against U.S. goods,” Scott said.


Stocks tumbled on Monday as Wall Street braced for the impact of steep new tariffs ordered by President Trump, with mounting fears the new import duties could spark a trade war that could crimp corporate profits and dampen consumer spending.


The stock market fell on Monday amid uncertainty about the fate of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on Canada, Mexico and China over the weekend.
Soon after a market decline began early Monday morning, Trump paused the tariffs on Mexico for one month following a conversation with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, prompting the stock market to recover some of its losses.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid about 150 points, or 0.35%, in early trading on Monday. The S&P 500 dropped 0.7%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq ticked down 1%.
Traders demonstrated their jitters with a selloff of U.S. auto companies, which hold deep ties to suppliers in Canada and Mexico. Shares of General Motors fell 2%, while Ford saw its stock price drop 1.3%.
The market downturn extended worldwide. Japan's Nikkei index fell 2.5% on Monday, and the pan-European STOXX 600 dropped about 1%.


Earlier in the day, Trump talked to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and agreed to put planned tariffs on Mexico on hold for a month. The White House confirmed the move.
In a post on X, Sheinbaum said: "The tariffs are on pause for one month from now." Sheinbaum said her government had agreed to send 10,000 national guard troops to the border to prevent drug trafficking, specifically fentanyl. And the U.S. will work to stop weapons trafficking to Mexico, she added.

~


Canada's Prime Minister Trudeau spoke to Trump twice over the course of the day. Trudeau wrote on X Monday afternoon that Canada had committed more resources to border security and to fighting fentanyl trafficking, the ostensible reason for the proposed U.S. tariffs.
Canada had promised retaliatory tariffs, with the possibility of an escalating trade war. These will also be paused 30 days.
President Trump confirmed the news in a post on his Truth Social site . When he was asked earlier in the day by reporters what Trudeau could do to change his mind, he said that he'd like to see Canada become the 51st state, which is overwhelmingly opposed by Canadians.

~


Over the weekend, Trump had said that a 25% import tax on goods from Mexico and Canada, alongside 10% tariffs on goods from China, would go into effect on Tuesday.
According to Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokesperson, Trump is also due to talk to Chinese President Xi Jinping in the next 24 hours.
Mexico has been warning that a tariff war between the two countries would have huge effects, not just for U.S. consumers but also for American companies manufacturing in Mexico.
The largest exporter in Mexico, for example, is the U.S. car company General Motors. Mexico is the No. 1 provider of cars and car parts for the United States. It's the largest provider of TV and computer screens and one out of every three refrigerators in the U.S. comes from Mexico.



“He understands that, like, conflict drives attention, so he’s picking fights, because that is what drives attention,” Hayes said on an MSNBC panel Sunday. “But the scarier thing here, and this is the thing that hasn’t set in — it hasn’t set in when you talk to Republicans, people on Wall Street — he has a pathological obsession with tariffs.”
“He understands that, like, conflict drives attention, so he’s picking fights, because that is what drives attention,” Hayes said on an MSNBC panel Sunday. “But the scarier thing here, and this is the thing that hasn’t set in — it hasn’t set in when you talk to Republicans, people on Wall Street — he has a pathological obsession with tariffs.”“Like, he genuinely, truly believes,” he added. “Like, yes, it’s part stunt. Yes, it’s part demonization. But also, you can’t move him off this idea, this rock-headed idea, that tariffs are the solution to all of America’s problems.”

~


Hayes said it was “so strange” that Americans cited inflation and high prices as a top election concern, but Trump won after “explicitly running on an agenda and campaign promised to raise prices.”
“This was clear as day, and for some reason, no one, like, listened,” he said. “The Wall Street, up until yesterday, was saying the tariffs aren’t going to happen. He clearly believes in tariffs.
“He also seems to have a vendetta against our closest allies,” he added, questioning the lesser tariff on China versus Canada.
Fellow MSNBC host Alicia Menendez argued Trump’s tariffs are “not really about trade.”
“This is about him trying to villainize some of our greatest trade partners and allies, and especially, I think, in the case of Mexico, to sort of reframe this as a question that’s really about immigration and fentanyl, when it has nothing to do with that,” she said.



US dollar rises as China tariffs kick in, and Asia-Pacific markets rally – business live
Asia-Pacific markets are ralling (though China's still closed)
Asia-Pacific markets are rallying this morning, despite the trade war breaking out between China and the US.
In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng share index has jumped by almost 2.5% while South Korea’s KOSPI has jumped 1.3%.
This suggests relief that Donald Trump delayed the tariffs on Mexico and Canada yesterday, and hopes that he might reach a similar agreement when he speaks with China’s president, Xi Jinping, later this week.
Chinese markets remain closed due to the Lunar New Year holiday and will reopen tomorrow, giving traders a chance to react to the tariffs imposed by Washington DC and Beijing today.



17) Democrats are fighting back. Congress and Senators went to the USAid to demand entry. They were turned away, but have got the press attention. Even MAGA constitutionalists are freaking out about Musk taking out USAid. But Rubio is claiming the remains as USAid is now somehow part of the State Department because Trump wrote a EO saying it was.



After initially being slow to respond last week, Congressional Democrats on Monday vowed to use what power they have in the minority to fight back against President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the federal government without approval from Congress.
They have some leverage: Trump needs the Senate to approve his nominees, and Democratic votes will be needed to fund the government once it runs out in March.

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In the Senate, Democrats hold sway over the federal budget process as well as approval of Trump’s executive nominees. They can’t block his picks outright since Republicans control 53 seats — more than the simple majority required for confirmation — but they can drag the process out and force the GOP to burn valuable floor time. It’s a tactic Republicans used repeatedly under Joe Biden’s administration.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), for example, is planning to place a hold on all of Trump’s nominees to the State Department until his administration ceases its efforts to eliminate the U.S. Agency for International Development, including typically uncontroversial diplomatic postings. Over the weekend, billionaire Elon Musk announced that the Trump administration is shuttering the agency despite not having the legal authority to do so. USAID is the world’s largest provider of humanitarian aid. It was established by Congress and would require an act of Congress to undo.



Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that the U.S. Agency for International Development has been rolled into the State Department, with Rubio now its acting director as a result of some legally questionable maneuvers.
“I’m the acting director of USAID,” he said. “I’ve delegated that authority to someone, but I stay in touch with him.”

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Rubio further accused the agency that now reports to him of “insubordination” for being uncooperative “with people asking simple questions.”
The secretary did not elaborate on who was asking the questions but was presumably referring to Elon Musk, who went on a tirade against the agency over the weekend.
The agency’s website disappeared Saturday without explanation after Musk called it “a criminal organization” on social media and said it was “time for it to die.”
Scientists, perhaps more than any other profession, are trained to “learn and validate conclusions drawn from observation and experimentation,” says Keutsch. That applies to the current situation. And what they observe during this pause of chaos does not portend well for the future of the United States as a pinnacle of scientific excellence.
“If people want the United States to head toward being a second-class nation, this is exactly what to do. If the goal is, in fact, to make America great, this is not a way to do it,” says the genetics professor. “This is not a rational, thoughtful, effective thing to do. It will merely destroy.”










18) Consumer Financial Protection Agency is being dismantled.



Scott Bessent, who was confirmed as Treasury secretary last week, has been named acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Bessent replaces Rohit Chopra, who was fired on Saturday.
In an internal email shared with NPR, staff members were instructed to immediately cease much of the bureau's work, including issuing or approving proposed or final rules or guidance, and suspending the effective dates of all final rules that have been issued but have not yet become effective.
Staff members were also instructed not to commence or settle enforcement actions, nor to issue any public communications of any type, including research papers. The directive was made "[i]n order to promote consistency with the goals of the Administration," the email said.
Bessent, a wealthy hedge fund manager, was already expected to be a business-friendly choice to lead the Treasury. Now he will lead the CFPB, the federal consumer watchdog, at least for a time.

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"I look forward to working with the CFPB to advance President Trump's agenda to lower costs for the American people and accelerate economic growth," Bessent said in a statement.
CFPB has had several lawsuits underway, including enforcement actions against Capital One, Walmart, and Zelle and its parent banks.

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"Shutting down CFPB enforcement actions that are on the verge of delivering money into the pockets of working people is at odds with President Trump's claim that he wants to lower costs for families," Warren said in a statement.
Chopra had led the bureau since 2021 and frequently took on big banks. Under his leadership, the CFPB issued a number of regulations, including limiting overdraft fees, capping credit card late fees and banning medical debt from appearing on credit reports.
The Consumer Bankers Association, which represents retail banks, cheered the choice of Bessent and suggested he should rescind certain rules promulgated during the Chopra era.

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"While [Trump] parades a crowd of corporate lobbyists, billionaire donors, and Wall Street insiders like Scott Bessent to lead our country, we're looking at the end of basic protections for American consumers," said Tony Carrk of Accountable.US, a corruption watchdog group, in a statement.
The CFPB is an independent bureau within the Federal Reserve System. It's funded outside of the congressional appropriations process, and its funding comes from the Fed. The bureau was created in 2010 by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.


19) Federal Judges do their job to uphold the law.





A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has issued a temporary restraining order against a Trump administration effort to freeze funding for federal grants and other programs.
Monday's order by U.S. Judge Loren AliKhan comes in response to a memo released by the Office of Management and Budget last week directing the funding pause. The memo spurred a legal challenge from a group of nonprofits, prompting the judge to initially order a temporary stay. The White House later said the memo was rescinded but vowed to continue its efforts to review federal funding.

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The temporary restraining order expands the scope of the initial pause the court put in place last week, just as the funding freeze was set to take effect.
In her latest order, AliKhan blocked the administration "from implementing, giving effect to, or reinstating under a different name the directives" in the original OMB memo.
It also directs the OMB — which is part of the executive branch — to provide the court with a status report on its compliance by Friday. The judge also noted that any open awards that were previously frozen must be released.
In her decision, AliKhan faulted the administration for an effort to "run roughshod over a 'bulwark of the Constitution' by interfering with Congress's appropriation of federal funds." The administration's plan, she added, "attempted to wrest the power of the purse away from the only branch of government entitled to wield it."
The White House said it would not comment on pending litigation.


The Trump administration's "temporary pause" and review of federal financial assistance has now earned two sweeping temporary restraining orders that instruct the executive branch to release any frozen funds—though some nonprofits and lawmakers say that funds are still being held back in defiance of the courts. 
The orders were handed down Friday afternoon by Judge John J. McConnell, Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, and on Monday afternoon by Judge Loren AliKhan, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. 
Each instruct the executive branch not to resurrect the pause, as outlined in last week's memo, "under a different name." 



An appellate court in New York reversed a lower court overturning the state’s John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act (NYVRA) — a law that grants voters additional protections not covered by federal law.
The four-judge panel in the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second Department, ruled unanimously that the Town of Newburgh failed to show how remedying vote dilution in accordance with the NYVRA would violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. 
The judges also concluded that the trial court had no authority to strike down the entire NYVRA or bind other courts and parties from contemplating challenges under the NYVRA, particularly when only the vote dilution provisions were being considered. 








20) El Salvador may be the destination for most ICE deportees as El Salvador's president has offered to take in everyone, even US Citizens.



U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said late Monday that El Salvador’s president has offered to accept deportees from the U.S. of any nationality, including violent American criminals now imprisoned in the United States.
President Nayib Bukele “has agreed to the most unprecedented, extraordinary, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world,” Rubio said at a signing ceremony for an unrelated civil nuclear agreement with El Salvador’s foreign minister.
“He’s also offered to do the same for dangerous criminals currently in custody and serving their sentence in the United States even though they’re U.S. citizens or legal residents,” Rubio said. He had just met with Bukele at his lakeside country house outside San Salvador for several hours.
After Rubio spoke, a U.S. official said the Trump administration had no current plans to try to deport American citizens, but said Bukele’s offer was significant. The U.S. government cannot deport American citizens and such a move would be met with significant legal challenges.

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Rubio said Bukele then went further and said his country was willing to accept and to jail U.S. citizens or legal residents convicted of and imprisoned for violent crimes.
Human rights activists have warned that El Salvador lacks a consistent policy for the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees and that such an agreement might not be limited to violent criminals.
Manuel Flores, the secretary general of the leftist opposition party Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, criticized the “safe third country” plan, saying it would signal that the region is Washington’s “backyard to dump the garbage.”






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