404 Media: “NASA personnel were told to “drop everything” to scrub public sites of mentions of DEI, indigenous people, environmental justice, and women in leadership, according to a directive obtained by 404 Media. The directive, sent on January 22 and obtained by 404 Media, states:“Per NASA HQ direction, we are required to scrub mentions of… Continue Reading
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Monthly Archives: February 2025
New OPM Memo – Legality of Deferred Resignation Program
New OPM Memorandum – RE: Legality of Deferred Resignation Program – To Heads and Acting Heads of Departments and Agencies, FROM: Charles Ezell, Acting Director, U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Andrew Kloster, General Counsel, U.S. Office of Personnel Management. DATE: February 4, 2025. “On Tuesday, January 28, 2025, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (“OPM”)… Continue Reading
Lawsuits Related to Trump Admin Executive Orders
Court Watch – Seamus Hughes – We put them all in one place. Editor’s Note: Pulling thousands of pages of court records for these cases requires payment of PACER fees to the U.S. Government. To offset our costs to provide the documents free to the public, please consider a paid subscription to Court Watch. Updated… Continue Reading
PSA: Backup Your eOPF and Payroll Records
Link to entire Guide: “If you haven’t already backed up your Electronic Official Personnel Folder (eOPF) and payroll records, now is the time to do it. It’s a quick process that ensures you have all your important documents saved in one place, rather than downloading them manually one by one. This method will allow you… Continue Reading
CFPB halts work after Trump appoints Bessent as acting head
Washington Post [unpaywalled]: “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau halted much of its work to investigate and penalize corporate wrongdoing Monday, after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — tapped to lead the watchdog on an acting basis — ordered an agency-wide review to “promote consistency” with the new Trump administration. Shortly after assuming the post, Bessent and… Continue Reading
A guide to using Signal for government workers
Via Matthew Haughey – AWLN – “A friend of mine works in the federal government and wrote a guide for their fellow federal workers on how to use Signal. There are lots of good reasons for switching to Signal for messaging, and this does a great job of laying it all out. This friend doesn’t… Continue Reading
Heads Up for Government Employees – How Elon Musk Says He Catches Leakers at His Companies
This Intercept article is from December 2022 but has all the hallmarks of what Musk and DOGE are now perpetrating within our federal government agencies, using OPM, GSA and Treasury’s massive databases of fiscal, financial data and PII, on all Americans. …To begin with, a wide array of document watermarking measures can identify the source… Continue Reading
Archive of deleted CDC datasets
Internet Archive: A complete archive of all CDC datasets uploaded before January 28th, 2025. Under the direction of Trump, the CDC has been removing data related to gender, vaccines, and climate change. Continue Reading
OpenAI’s ‘Deep Research’ Gives Students a Whole New Way to Cheat on Papers
Gizmodo: “Very few former students can claim they never wrote a last-minute research paper the night before it was due. AI tools are already giving students all new ways to fake their papers. Now, OpenAI’s new “Deep Research” tool seems perfectly designed to help students fake their way through a term paper unless asked to cite… Continue Reading
Deferred Resignation Email to Federal Employees, January 28, 2025 – updated Feb 4, 2025
Via LLRX – Deferred Resignation Email to Federal Employees, January 28, 2025 – updated Feb 4, 2025 – I have updated this article with links to new documents pertaining to directives made by non government civilians to federal government employees to resign their jobs using a purported buyout offer. The emails and “offers” were not… Continue Reading
Data brokers can keep selling your social security number, says new CFPB chief
The Verge: “Treasure Secretary Scott Bessent has been named the Acting Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the bureau announced today. Bessent quickly instructed the agency to “to stop all rulemaking, communications, litigation, and other activities,” reports Bloomberg Law. A source inside the CFPB told Bloomberg Law that his order “appeared to shut… Continue Reading
Fast fires
Reuters Graphics: “Fires are growing faster in the western United States. The fastest of them – termed “fast fires” – often erupt near towns and account for most structural wildfire damage according to researchers who analyzed over 60,000 fires from 2001 to 2020. Fast fires grow about 4,000 acres or more on their fastest day,… Continue Reading
