Hello, and welcome to my latest NNR/health compromise! Many folks reading this likely already know that I slipped on some black ice and broke two ribs earlier this week (and yes, it’s about as fun as it sounds). But way, way too much is going on for me to do nothing. Thus I present: The Year 9, Month 1 lightning round!
There are a lot of developing stories to keep track of right now, and many of them have common themes. We’re going to spend a few minutes on each story I’m tracking–mostly involving health, civil rights, and dismantling of government–so that it’s easier to see the overall picture. It’s an experiment, so please let me know if it’s useful!
Tracking Threads:
- DOGEshift. Over the past few weeks, Elon Musk and his juvenile cronies have been sticking their noses into many, many spaces where their noses do not legally belong and spreading germs all over the government. At first, there were a lot of stories about them seizing assets from and/or access to financial and HR systems within our government–which then led to offering staff buy-outs and straight-up firing thousands of people across numerous agencies. Of note, they’ve basically shut down the CFPB, a semi-independent consumer finance bureau which would be in charge of monitoring all of this. They have also cut massive swaths out of the functionality of many necessary federal agencies, such as billions in NIH research funding, countless Department of Education contracts, and basically all of USAID. (They’re similarly expected to turn their eyes to the IRS in the coming week). By now, Musk is now being pretty upfront about wanting to “delete” whole agencies, and an EO issued this past week instructs all agencies to let Musk gut them–among other things, it requires each agency to “hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart.” Many of the targeted cuts personally benefit Musk in one way or another, and the administration has also fired top officials in several different government watchdog groups. Needless to say, none of this is legal at all, but this administration appears to ignore temporary restraining orders with some frequency, and not all judges are ruling on the side of law, so it’s unclear how effective legal challenges will be.
- From the Department of Destroying Health. In addition to all of the Week 1 health garbage (which included funding freezes, communication freezes, the dismantling of foreign aid, and the scrubbing of federal data), Robert F Kennedy Jr was confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services this past Thursday. Trump celebrated by issuing another batshit health EO which instructs a taskforce to “look into” the validity of children taking psych meds such as antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and stimulants. (I will share for free that this one really gets under my skin.) This EO joins an earlier EO that banned adolescent access to gender-affirming care (which is already paused by judicial order) as well as Musk’s actions to fire thousands at NIH and CDC.
- Illegal International/Imprisonment Changes. In the immigration/criminal space, the administration has started moving immigration detainees to Guantanamo Bay and threatened to start holding U.S. prisoners in El Salvador. Conversely, several DOJ staff have resigned this week because they were told to drop corruption charges against NYC mayor Eric Adams due to, I dunno, vibes. (This comes on the tail end of firing a bunch of federal prosecutors because they worked on the January 6 case.) In other international news, Trump said he would “end” the war in Ukraine by negotiating with Putin, which apparently involved demanding half of Ukraine’s mineral rights. He also imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum and additional tariffs on China. Finally, the administration is now using their renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as a litmus test for reporters, and is barring the Associated Press from White House access due to their refusal to use the made-up name.
So that’s the lightning news, and I’m sorry, there are still no news refunds. For making it through, you deserve this science ferret and a more functional government. I’ll be back next time, hopefully with the full news, and I hope you will be back as well–but in the meantime, feel free to ping the National News Roundup ask box, which is there for your constructive comments. Send me questions! Send me feedback! Send me a speedy recovery time!
National News Roundup 