https://www.wsj.com/tech/doge-staffer-resigns-over-racist-posts-d9f11a93?mod=hp_lead_pos3
A key DOGE staff member who gained access to the Treasury Department’s central-payments system resigned Thursday after he was linked to a deleted social-media account that advocated racism and eugenics.
US tech billionaire Elon Musk said Friday he was reinstating a deputy who quit a job giving him access to the sensitive personal data of millions of Americans after the staffer was linked to a racist social media account.
Marko Elez, 25, resigned from Musk’s self-styled Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Thursday when The Wall Street Journal uncovered a welter of offensive posts on the account, including a boast from last July stating, “I was racist before it was cool.”
Musk — US President Donald Trump’s close confidante and point man on spending cuts — asked his 216 million X followers if he should reinstate “@DOGE staffer who made inappropriate statements via a now-deleted pseudonym.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/02/05/florida-surgeon-wrong-organ-lawsuit/
Thomas Shaknovsky removed a man’s liver instead of his spleen, and then the Florida hospital repeatedly lied about it, the lawsuit claims.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/its-trumps-world-and-kanye-west-is-free-to-post-what-he-wants/
In the space of 11 hours, Kanye West broke almost every taboo.
Through 57 posts, the polarizing rap mogul launched an incredibly offensive machine-gun tirade of attacks on Jews, gays, feminists, the overweight, the mentally challenged, the woke, and other rappers. He supported Diddy. He lionized Adolf Hitler.
This time last year, there would almost certainly be serious consequences for any one of these posts.
“Ye” has a voice and now it is unfiltered. Elon Musk has other matters on his mind. He has made it clear he has no intention of censoring anybody on his X platform.
Amid the flurry of insults, West leaves his followers in no doubt that he is not backing down this time.
“If I get taken off of streaming services it’s only going to make me richer,” he wrote in one of his later, lower-case tweets. “Any and every control tactic you have at this point only makes me richer.”
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5134297-donald-trump-time-magazine-elon-musk-influence/
President Trump weighed in on Time Magazine’s reveal of a cover featuring tech billionaire Elon Musk, seemingly mocking the outlet that named him its “Person of the Year” in 2024.
Asked on Friday if he had a reaction to the photo illustration of Musk behind the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk, Trump shook his head.
“No,” he said during a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, “Is Time Magazine still in business? I didn’t even know that
The three hostages who were freed from Gaza on Saturday morning are suffering from “severe malnutrition” and lost significant body weight during their 491 days in captivity, the Health Ministry said on Saturday evening, after initial medical checks in the hours following their release.
“These are difficult scenes,” Health Ministry representative Dr. Hagar Mizrahi said at a press conference from Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, where two of the released hostages were beginning their recovery.
The three hostages freed by Hamas — Eli Sharabi, 52, Or Levy, 34, and Ohad Ben Ami, 56 — looked emaciated and unsteady on their feet as they were released by the terror group, 16 months after they were kidnapped from Kibbutz Be’eri and the Nova music festival.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/403603
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar posted a video accusing Hamas of starving the hostages released today, claiming they looked dangerously emaciated while the Hamas forces appeared well-fed.
''For over a year, the international community has danced to the tune of the false propaganda of so-called starvation in Gaza but the images we saw today don't lie - Hamas terrorists and other Gaza residents look perfectly fine
https://www.newsweek.com/israel-shows-shocking-images-three-hostages-released-hamas-2028237
They were also made to pose holding certificates and speak in an apparently staged interview by Hamas militants, where they reportedly called for Israel to stop the war and stick to the ceasefire.
Photos of the event were released later in which all three men are visibly thin and frail.
Responding to the images, Netanyahu said: "We will not gloss over the shocking scenes that we saw today."
https://time.com/7213409/elon-musk-us-government-trump/
The standoff at 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue was not much of a spectacle. On the first day of February, a handful of men working for Elon Musk had come to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a few blocks from the White House, demanding full access to its headquarters. The agency’s staff refused. No guns were drawn. No punches thrown. Nobody involved the police. But in these early days of the Trump Administration, perhaps no other scene revealed more clearly the forces reshaping America’s government.
On one side stood an institution with a 64-year history, a $35 billion budget, and a mission enshrined in federal law. On the other stood Musk’s political wrecking crew. They identified themselves as members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a collection of temporary staffers with no charter, no website, and no clear legal authority. Its power derives from Musk, the wealthiest person on the planet, who has been deputized to dismantle vast swaths of the federal bureaucracy—slashing budgets, gutting the civil service, and stripping independent agencies of the ability to impede the President’s objectives.
https://www.newsweek.com/federal-workers-sue-trump-usaid-2027654
The lawsuit on Thursday marked the latest in a series of legal actions that federal workers have filed against the Trump administration over a host of issues, including President Donald Trump's executive orders, the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE's) access to sensitive payment and employee systems, and the White House's offer of deferred resignations to more than 2 million government employees.
The suit was filed shortly after the Trump administration proposed a plan to drastically cut USAID staff across the globe, which would leave the agency with less than 300 workers, compared to the thousands it had before Trump took office. USAID is responsible for distributing billions of dollars in foreign assistance to war-torn countries and populations facing poverty and disease.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit described Trump and his administration's actions as "unconstitutional and illegal," adding that they have "systematically dismantled" USAID.
With Donald Trump’s return to power has come an upswell of enthusiasm for tariffs and arguments in their favor: They’ll usher in an economic “golden age,” don’t cause inflation, are paid by foreigners instead of Americans, and are an effective cudgel in political disputes.
Most economists disagree, but who listens to economists these days? To test these claims we need “natural experiments”: events where the effect of tariffs isn’t confounded by other stuff like promised cuts to taxes and regulations. The 72 hours in which Trump was on track to hit Canada and Mexico with 25% tariffs is one such experiment.
All the reasons Trump’s government investment fund is a very bad idea.
The answer is plenty, which is why President Trump’s proposal Monday to create a new sovereign wealth fund deserves to die in Congress. His executive order included scant details. But it said the fund would “promote fiscal sustainability,” “establish economic security for future generations, and promote United States economic and strategic leadership internationally.” More likely, it would take resources from the private economy, fund political boondoggles, and mess with the business decisions of private companies.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-841053
If US President Donald Trump’s grand statements of a plan to transfer 1.8 million Palestinians from the uninhabitable Gaza Strip hadn’t been said this week, public discourse would have focused much more than it had on a terrifying number: Seven.
Six Arab Israelis were killed in criminal violence incidents in the span of 24 hours between Sunday and Monday this week, with one more on Tuesday in what police suspect was a revenge hit.
Israel Police said last week that it was launching what it called a “large-scale” operation to combat crime in the sector; these seven deaths came one week later.
