More from Trump’s first 100 days: all the news affecting the tech industry
Apparently responding to a President Trump post saying he wanted Elon Musk to be “more aggressive,” the Musk-led organization emailed federal workers — even some placed on leave — demanding “approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week” by Monday at 11:59PM ET, reports Business Insider.
“Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation,” Musk posted today, echoing his 2022 opt-in-to-stay-employed email to Twitter workers. Federal employee union AFGE said in a statement it will “challenge any unlawful terminations.”
The Securties and Exchange Commission’s investigation was related to an almost two-year-old lawsuit against the struggling NFT marketplace, but has now been dropped as the agency backs off of its campaign against digital assets, reports Axios.
The news follows yesterday’s SEC announcement it was ending a similar lawsuit against Coinbase.
Acting commissioner Leland Dudek, a data analyst at a small anti-fraud office before his ascension last week, was placed on paid leave and under internal investigation on suspicion he’d broken privacy and tax laws by “sharing unauthorized access to information” with DOGE representatives, The Washington Post reports.
Trump ousted prior acting commissioner Michelle King and gave the role to Dudek shortly after DOGE learned of the investigation, according to the Post.
[washingtonpost.com]
And things can still get worse.
Cook visited President Trump yesterday, and speaking to governors at the White House, Trump seemed to say that Cook told him that Apple is “investing hundreds of billions of dollars,” as transcribed by CBS News’ Jennifer Jacobs. I’m guessing Trump is referring to some kind of investments Apple is making in the US.
I’ve pinged Apple for comment. You can listen to Trump’s comments in context in this video.
This Wall Street Journal reports that beyond suing an ad group for an “illegal” boycott, X lawyers and executives have indicated that brands need to spend more on the Elon Musk-owned platform “or else.”
Ruben Schreurs, the CEO of an ad consulting firm, Ebiquity, is quoted saying the reason brands are choosing the route of spending a minimum viable amount on X is “Not because they want to advertise there and run their ads adjacent to the content on X, but because they are afraid of legal and political ramifications of not doing so.”
He apparently told FOX Business that it was a “great meeting.” Wonder if Trump’s tariffs came up.
Including at least one person who was fired from the Small Business Administration twice before being told she was being accepted into the messily-arranged deferred resignation program, according to a report from The Washington Post.
The Trump administration kept promising “we should have no fear that it would be honored,” said a U.S. Forest Service employee who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The employee tried to accept the resignation deal Feb. 6, only to be fired three months before she would have graduated out of her probationary status.
Managing nuclear weapons seemed like something Donald Trump and Elon Musk agreed was actually important — but according to one employee who contacted Virginia Democratic Representative Don Beyer, maybe not.
Trump plans to “all but eliminate” the Office of Community Planning and Development as part of widespread layoffs across the federal government, the New York Times reports. It would slash the workforce within that office by 84 percent, the Times says, citing a document it obtained.
The office oversees payments for recovery efforts after major disasters, opening up questions about how North Carolina communities rebuilding after the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene could be affected.
Anne Marshall, whose LinkedIn says she was director of engineering for the US Digital Service (the White House tech task force that Elon Musk took over to shield DOGE from oversight), resigned today after he sacked a third of the team.
From her farewell post:
“If DOGE truly was concerned with efficiency, they also wouldn’t have fired experts in procurement - who prevent waste up front, before the funding is committed to contracts unlikely to have successful outcomes. These are the kinds of folks DOGE should have listened to when they joined the government. But they didn’t, and they clearly still don’t understand.”
President Donald Trump says he gave Elon Musk a “big discount” in his $10 million settlement with X over his account suspension lawsuit. Musk, who’s been working in the White House and publicly (although, supposedly, not technically) leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), said he hasn’t once seen Trump do something “that was mean or cruel or wrong.” Trump also brushed off critics’ efforts to “drive us apart” by calling calling Musk president.
This isn’t much of a shock, considering Trump has been loudly considering this for weeks. But today, the Federal Highway Administration made it official by rescinding its approval for congestion pricing in New York City. Interestingly, one of reasons given for cancelling the toll was that the price was “set primarily to raise revenue for transit, rather than at an amount needed to reduce congestion.” (You’ll remember NY Gov. Kathy Hochul tweaked the price before its launch.) Data has shown that congestion pricing is succeeding in both aspects, raising needed cash for transit and discouraging drivers from entering congested Manhattan. Anyway, this seems like yet another Trump thing headed for the courts.
President Donald Trump asserted “Presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch,” including independent regulatory agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission in an executive order issued Tuesday. The order commands “so-called independent agencies” to submit “significant regulatory actions” to the Executive Office of the President before they’re officially published, and have consultations with White House staff, even though their regulatory power is supposed to be protected from presidential control.
[whitehouse.gov]
The Department of Government Efficiency website misstated its cost-savings for the federal government by several billion dollars before revising the error, The New York Times reports. The Times found that a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was initially listed at $8 billion in a government database, but was updated to $8 million in January, shortly before it was terminated. While DOGE updated the number, it didn’t acknowledge the initial error.
After frantically calling back laid-off nuclear workers last week, Donald Trump’s administration is still being hasty in its gutting of key federal workforces.
The Department of Agriculture is now trying to rehire “several” employees it fired who were working on tackling the H5N1 avian flu outbreak. The White House on Tuesday also decided at the last minute not to fire more than 1,000 probationary NASA staffers it was seeking to terminate.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) issued a memo freezing its election security efforts to review all work and positions “related to election security and countering mis- and- disinformation” at the state and local level since 2017, reports Wired. The review is reportedly set to conclude on March 6th.
The outlet writes that the memo also confirms an earlier Politico report that CISA employees associated with the work were placed on administrative leave on February 7th.