More from Trump’s first 100 days: all the news affecting the tech industry
A federal judge in the District of Columbia has granted a temporary restraining order that enjoins the Trump administration from laying off or terminating without cause any more employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as well as from deleting agency data or transferring agency funds “other than to satisfy the ordinary operating obligations of the CFPB.”
[courtlistener.com]
It is not normal for the government to get sued so hard over something that it has to appear in federal court three times in three different lawsuits in a single day. In the Southern District of New York, which is currently also dealing with an entirely different Trump-related mess, Judge Jeannette Vargas has extended a temporary restraining order barring DOGE from accessing Treasury Department systems.
U.S. District Judge Amir Ali is the third judge to press pause on Donald Trump’s sweeping freezes of government funding and the second to interrupt attempts to dismantle USAID, report Politico and the Associated Press.
While declining a request by two aid organizations to challenge the Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid executive order directly, Ali blocked State Department leaders and aides from canceling contracts and implementing stop work orders, writing:
Here, the stated purpose in implementing the suspension of all foreign aid is to provide the opportunity to review programs for their efficiency and consistency with priorities. However, at least to date, Defendants have not offered any explanation for why a blanket suspension of all congressionally appropriated foreign aid, which set off a shockwave and upended reliance interests for thousands of agreements with businesses, nonprofits, and organizations around the country, was a rational precursor to reviewing programs.
That’s just one line in this Wall Street Journal article detailing money flowing to the presidential family via crypto or other means. Another section highlights Melania Trump’s documentary pitch to Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez during their December visit preceding Amazon’s $40 million deal that reportedly nearly tripled the next-closest offer.
But if you wondered how that January 6th Twitter lawsuit got settled, we have an answer:
The settlement talks with X began after the election and were more informal, with both Trump and Musk personally involved in hammering out the $10 million number, people familiar with the matter said.
Ars Technica reports that the agency has removed a 2022 dataset of car crash fatalities that had some unique statistics:
The uncensored data showed that unlike prior years, 22 car crash victims were documented using a category in 2022 for sex that had never been tracked previously, “Other (e.g., “X”, Non-Binary, Not Specified, etc.).”
According to Ars, the data might have been removed to comply with the Trump Administration’s order to define gender as binary.
[arstechnica.com]
On top of apparently flouting judicial demands involving the Treasury and USAID, the Trump administration is allegedly still freezing scientific grant funding in spite of a court order:
The federal judge overseeing the case brought by 22 states found that the Trump administration had not fully complied with the January 31 order. The judge issued a new order directing the Trump administration to “immediately end any federal funding pause.” According to an NIH source, no action was taken in response to the new order.
Notes from another week of Musk’s coup.
President Trump said he instructed the US Treasury Secretary to stop the “wasteful” production of new pennies, adding that they “cost us more than 2 cents” to mint. As noted by the NYT, it’s not exactly clear whether Trump has the authority to do this, as Congress is tasked with overseeing the production of coins.