Favorite Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the bloated Pentagon budget is a thing of the past. He has welcomed the cost-cutting efforts of Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency on social media, while making a major show of canceling $580 million in Defense Department contracts and grants. The “total cuts” to the…
Favorite Earlier this month, all of the employees at 18F, a unit of government technologists under the General Services Administration, awoke to a surprise. The entire department — which helps build, buy, and share technological products across government agencies — discovered they’d been placed on administrative leave. 18F, named after its headquarters at 18th and…
Favorite When the Drug Enforcement Administration’s access to a secret trove of billions of American phone records was exposed in 2013, the Obama administration said the data had been collected under a perfectly legal program. Civil liberties advocates, however, were not convinced about that the data collection program — which let the DEA see who…
Favorite During a bizarre live ad for Elon Musk’s car company on the White House lawn Tuesday, President Donald Trump said people protesting at Tesla dealerships around the country would be treated as domestic terrorists. A reporter asked Trump what he would do about the Tesla protests, noting that some commentators had suggested that protesters…
Favorite Protesters demonstrate in front of police along the perimeter of the Columbia University campus in NYC on April 30, 2024. Photo: Melissa Bender/NurPhoto via AP Columbia University could hardly have been more draconian in the last year and a half since students began speaking out against Israel’s assault on Gaza. In early November 2023,…
Favorite The cryptocurrency investors and executives who crowded into the White House for a summit with Donald Trump on Friday represented billions in net worth. They also represented more than $11 million in donations to Trump’s inaugural committee, a review of the guest list by The Intercept shows. The list of invitees to the crypto…
Favorite The Trump administration is planning to sell a major IRS computing center crucial to processing the tax returns of millions of Americans — just in time for tax season. The IRS Enterprise Computing Center in Martinsburg, West Virginia, is included on a list of over 400 “empty and underutilized” federal properties marked for liquidation.…
Favorite Now that Republicans have won control of government in Washington, they’re shifting their sights to a progressive enclave in Pennsylvania. Major donors to President Donald Trump are pouring money into the race to unseat Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, lining up behind his Democratic primary opponent, Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor. Three months ahead of…
Favorite Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency began its cost-cutting efforts by dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, which spends about $22 billion per year, about 0.3 percent of overall federal spending. DOGE has since targeted agencies focused on children’s education, protecting the natural world, and food safety. But after more than a…
Favorite Americans who couldn’t defeat President Donald Trump in the voting booth are planning on Friday to fight back — with their pocketbooks. The People’s Union USA, a movement led by a former drum instructor John Schwarz, organized a 24-hour “economic blackout” that calls on American consumers to make no purchases, especially from major retail,…
