Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Democratic Staff, is surveying the impact of the Trump Administration’s mass firings of federal employees from science agencies. If you were terminated from your position since January 20, 2025, please fill out this brief survey. While anonymous submissions will be helpful to the Committee’s efforts, we encourage you to leave your contact information if you are open to having a confidential conversation with Committee staff.
Falsehood of DOGE savings tracker that wants you to think it’s transparent
Fast Company: “The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has updated its website, and in theory, it’s a model of government transparency. The site lists savings the department claims to have made from cuts, along with bar charts and tables that purport to show the department’s work and the size and scope of the federal government. But there’s a big problem: You can’t trust the numbers.
The website’s homepage is a feed of DOGE’s X posts, and there are pages that claim to show savings, list government spending, and number the size of the executive branch workforce, its total wages, and federal regulations. When the site was updated this week with new data, DOGE initially showed what it claimed was more than $16 billion saved from spending cuts. But the biggest line item in the department’s so-called wall of receipts incorrectly stated an $8 million contract canceled for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was for $8 billion. That error alone cuts the savings DOGE claims to have achieved roughly in half…”
See also Elon Musk’s DOGE is going after the agencies that regulate his companies – Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has started slashing big chunks of the agencies that regulate at least two of his companies, Tesla (TSLA) and Neuralink.
Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy
EXECUTIVE ORDER February 19, 2025. By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1. Purpose. It is the policy of my Administration to dramatically reduce the size of the Federal Government, while increasing its accountability to the American people. This order commences a reduction in the elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the President has determined are unnecessary.
Reducing the size of the Federal Government will minimize Government waste and abuse, reduce inflation, and promote American freedom and innovation.
Sec. 2. Reducing the Scope of the Federal Bureaucracy. (a) The non-statutory components and functions of the following governmental entities shall be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law, and such entities shall reduce the performance of their statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law:
- the Presidio Trust;
- the Inter-American Foundation;
- the United States African Development Foundation; and the United States Institute of Peace;
- the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development shall terminate the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid;
- the Director of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection shall terminate the Academic Research Council and the Credit Union Advisory Council;
- the Board of Directors of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation shall terminate the Community Bank Advisory Council;
- the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall terminate the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Long COVID; and the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services shall terminate the Health Equity Advisory Committee.
Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, and the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy shall identify and submit to the President additional unnecessary governmental entities and Federal Advisory Committees that should be terminated on grounds that they are unnecessary…
The untold history of how the internet almost didn’t happen
Inc. Magazine: “My name is Christine Haughney Dare-Bryan, and my dad is a founding father of the internet. From 1979 through 1981, my father, Major Joseph Haughney, ran one of the earliest versions of the internet, called the Arpanet. Back then, the Arpanet was a military-run project that allowed academics to do research if they had a defense angle. But of course, it wasn’t long before word got out about how much fun could be had on the Arpanet.
The Arpanet started filling up with people meeting, debating their favorite Chinese restaurants, and even falling in love — all online. That’s what drove my dad crazy and frankly scared him. He drafted letters, articles, and reports warning of the “computer freaks” he feared could turn his beloved Arpanet into something incredibly destructive. Like any well-meaning dad, my father tried to protect me from many things.
He applied that same protective instinct to the broader world, being the internet’s original content moderator — the Cassandra warning about online harm, the “not on my watch” guy trying to rein in a raucous crowd. For years, my dad encouraged me to tell the story of his work during that time. He hinted at the egos and the infighting that took place with every step of innovation that led to the modern economy and the world we live in now. But I always told him I was too busy for his story. His worries were overblown.
The internet economy was an invention I saw drive my career, where businesses were built and fortunes were minted. Then I became a tech editor who has shepherded dozens of stories about the terrible things that have happened on the internet. I also became a mom trying to keep up with what the internet has done to my own children.
Now that my father has dementia, time is running out to find out what happened in those early days. So I spent the past 10 months traveling the country interviewing my father and other people he worked with who built the first internet, sent some of the first messages, and conceived of the precursors to wireless to collect their stories before it’s too late.
I learned about the battles for credit that some founders have even waged on their deathbeds, explored whether the French actually deserve more credit for the internet, and studied how much some founding fathers foresaw the consequences of their early inventions. This podcast is a tribute to my dad in his final days to let him know how much this history matters and to honor his role in creating the world we live in now…”
