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USAspending Data Sources and SAM.gov

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“USAspending.gov links data from many government systems, including agency financial systems and governmentwide award systems. Scroll below to learn more about these systems, as well as the context for this historic initiative to provide federal spending transparency.” Try searching for contracts by vendor name such as AWS, Inc., Space Exploration Technologies Corp., Tesla Laboratories, Inc. #Billionaires [DOGE] earning #billions from federal government contracts while slashing federal employee jobs and associated services, including health, food and nutrition, transportation, financial services, defense, education, labor….and critical foreign aid programs.

See also The System for Award Management (SAM.gov) is an official website of the U.S. Government. There is no cost to use SAM.gov. You can use this site to:

  • Register to do business with the U.S. Government
  • Update, renew, or check the status of your entity registration
  • Search for entity registration and exclusion records
  • Search for assistance listings (formerly CFDA.gov), wage determinations (formerly WDOL.gov), contract opportunities (formerly FBO.gov), and contract data reports (formerly part of FPDS.gov).</
  • View and submit BioPreferred and Service Contract Reports
  • Access publicly available award data via data extracts and system accounts

How Trump Could Remake the Supreme Court for a Generation

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The Nation: Donald Trump is poised to become the first president since FDR to have appointed the majority of high-court justices. His potential picks are terrifying.This article appears in the March 2025 issue, with the headline “The Supreme Trump Court.” Donald Trump’s first term as president gave the republicans control over the most dangerous body… Continue Reading

Trump Administration Foreign Policy Tracker: February

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FDD: “Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Trump Administration Foreign Policy Tracker. As readers of our Biden Administration Foreign Policy Tracker will know, this is a monthly publication in which FDD’s experts and scholars assess the administration’s foreign policy. They provide trendlines of very positive, positive, neutral, negative, or very negative for the areas… Continue Reading

The Fragile States Index

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“The Fragile States Index is based on a conflict assessment framework – known as “CAST” – that was developed by FFP nearly a quarter-century ago for assessing the vulnerability of states to collapse. The CAST framework was originally designed to measure this vulnerability and assess how it might affect projects in the field, and continues… Continue Reading

Project 2025 Executive Action Tracker

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“The Center for Progressive Reform and Governing for Impact are monitoring the Trump administration’s implementation of Project 2025, tracking the authoritarian blueprint’s executive action proposals across 20 federal agencies. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is the conservative movement’s blueprint for weakening our government and building an authoritarian presidency. To monitor the Trump administration’s regulatory and… Continue Reading

Federal Court Rules Backdoor Searches of 702 Data Unconstitutional

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EFF: “Better late than never: last night a federal district court held that backdoor searches of databases full of Americans’ private communications collected under Section 702 ordinarily require a warrant. The landmark ruling comes in a criminal case, United States v. Hasbajrami, after more than a decade of litigation, and over four years since the… Continue Reading

NSA Warns iPhone And Android Users – Disable Location Tracking

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Forbes: “…NSA warns that “mobile devices store and share device geolocation data by design…Location data can be extremely valuable and must be protected. It can reveal details about the number of users in a location, user and supply movements, daily routines (user and organizational), and can expose otherwise unknown associations between users and locations.” EFF:… Continue Reading

Search the BIRLS Database

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“Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA). It provides an index to basic biographical information on more than 18 million deceased American veterans who received some sort of veterans benefits in their lifetime, including health care, disability or life insurance policies, educational benefits (the GI Bill), mortgage assistance (VA loans), and more. The BIRLS database includes… Continue Reading

Study Finds TikTok Is Likely Vehicle for Chinese Propaganda

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Network Contagion Research Institute & Rutger – Information Manipulation on TikTok and Beliefs About China, December 2024. “Three studies explored how TikTok, a China-owned social media platform, may be manipulated to conceal content critical of China while amplifying narratives that align with Chinese Communist Party objectives. Study I employed a user journey methodology, wherein newly… Continue Reading

A whole mess of TikTok trial briefs

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The Verge: “The Supreme Court will consider TikTok’s case against a divest-or-ban law early next year, and a wave of filings has hit the docket this afternoon — from the parties involved as well as numerous institutions and public figures, including President-elect Donald Trump. If you want a firsthand look, the full list is linked… Continue Reading

Mass Hysteria Over Drones Flying in the Night Sky? It Didn’t Have to Be This Way

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EPIC: “Recent nighttime drone sightings in New Jersey and other places have gained national attention because of the mystery that surrounds the drones—Who is flying them? What are the drones doing? Why are the drones appearing now? Numerous theories popped up to fill the void left by the lack of information—from alien invasion to foreign… Continue Reading