Attention to the Unseen

The Guardian reports: An international neo-Nazi terrorist group with origins in the US appears to be quickly rebuilding its global and stateside ranks, according to information obtained by the Guardian from its digital accounts. Founded in 2018, the Base has been the intense focus of a years-long FBI counter-terrorism investigation that has resulted in more than a dozen of its members arrested. It has plotted an assassination, mass shootings and other actions in Europe, which made it a proscribed terrorist…

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The Associated Press reports: Key U.S. agencies, including the FBI, State Department and the Pentagon, have instructed their employees not to comply with cost-cutting chief Elon Musk’s demand that federal workers explain what they accomplished last week — or risk losing their jobs. That resistance has intensified a pervasive sense of chaos and confusion, while highlighting a potential power struggle among President Donald Trump’s allies, that is affecting federal employees across the country as a new workweek is about to…

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The Guardian reports: Donald Trump’s administration could rack up a “monumental” bill and is breaking the law by firing government workers on spurious grounds, according to a top labor lawyer. Officials have cited “poor performance” when terminating thousands of federal workers. In many cases it’s not true, according to employees embroiled in the blitz, many of whom are now seeking legal advice. Jacob Malcom was acting deputy assistant secretary for policy and environmental management, and director of the office of…

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CNN reports: The Trump administration’s swift, sweeping cuts to the federal workforce is set to derail the livelihoods of potentially thousands of military families. The turmoil within the military community caused by the recent firings of probationary employees, looming terminations and a rolling series of deadlines for federal employees to return to work should not be surprising. For decades now, the federal government has marketed itself as the employer of choice for military spouses, who are unemployed at five times…

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By Avi Asher-Schapiro, Andy Kroll and Christopher Bing This story was originally published by ProPublica While Elon Musk and his underlings demand budget cuts and layoffs across the federal government, funding for their agency — the Department of Government Efficiency — has soared to nearly $40 million, ProPublica found in a review of Office of Management and Budget records. Billionaire investor Musk has called DOGE “maximally transparent.” President Donald Trump has said that some 100 people work for the group,…

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Wired reports: As Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency rampages through the US government, its access to sensitive data is alarming federal agencies and Americans who interact with them. In the month since the Trump administration began its purge of federal workers, opponents fighting DOGE in court have been pinning their hopes of stopping the world’s richest man on a 50-year-old law. In just a few weeks, DOGE staffers have accessed federal employee records at the Office of Personnel Management, government payment data at the Department of the…

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Gizmodo reports: Off in the depths of the QAnon and PizzaGate corners of the internet, conspiracists swear Donald Trump is quietly preparing charges to bring down notorious sex trafficking circles operated by celebrities. Back in reality, the Financial Times reports the Trump administration is pressuring Romanian authorities to let Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate travel freely despite facing charges of sexual misconduct and human trafficking. Per the report, Trump officials have been pushing for Romania to return the Tates’ passports and lift…

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In his 1500-page manifesto, “A European Declaration of Independence,” Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist who murdered 77 people on July 22, 2011, in the section headed “Because our survival depends on it,” writes, “He who saves his country, violates no law,” which has been attributed (without evidence) to Napoleon. Donald Trump has now emphatically made the same declaration. The New York Times reports: President Trump on Saturday posted on social media a single sentence that appears to encapsulate his…

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The Associated Press reports: Pam Bondi had insisted at her Senate confirmation hearing that as attorney general, her Justice Department would not “play politics.” Yet in the month since the Trump administration took over the building, a succession of actions has raised concerns the department is doing exactly that. Top officials have demanded the names of thousands of FBI agents who investigated the Capitol riot, sued a state attorney general who had won a massive fraud verdict against Donald Trump…

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Trevor W. Morrison and Richard H. Pildes write: For an official to stand in continued, open defiance of a court order, he might have to defy the entire judicial system. At that point, there is no question we would be in a constitutional crisis, and the courts could well run out of options. Here, the resolution of an ultimate confrontation between the branches, which would dominate the news, would also depend on the response of a range of actors in…

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