A soul isn't something a person is born with but something that must be built, by effort and error, study and love.
The KGB ‘played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality’, Yuri Shvets, a key source for a new book, tells the Guardian
The rescheduled dinner was taking place in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria hotel, a smaller venue that held only about 700 people.
Fraud expert warns AI is helping criminals outpace the government: ‘Don’t have the right tools’ Fox News
The data to find Medicaid fraud already exists, but no one is using it The Hill
DOGE was supposed to be dead. Its remnants are everywhere
Washington Post – no paywall: “…DOGE has evolved from its radical cost-cutting mission, with some of its members and agenda embedded across the government, continuing to reshape the federal bureaucracy behind the scenes. “DOGE is a way of life. … It never terminates,” former DOGE staffer Katie Miller said on X on July 4, the day of its supposed expiration.
Nearly two dozen people hired or vetted through DOGE remain in government, including an influential diaspora filtered throughout the executive branch, according to a Washington Post analysis of court records and government documents.
This includes Gavin Kliger, chief data officer at the Pentagon, and Jeremy Lewin, a senior adviser to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Lewin, who oversaw much of the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, now directs the State Department’s foreign assistance programs…
But the upheaval unleashed by the U.S. DOGE Service has left an imprint on the federal government, with consequences still rippling through Washington. DOGE forcibly reworked the operations at agencies such as the Social Security Administration, where staff members were reorganized to make up for losses on the front lines.
Unemployment is up in the D.C. metro area since Donald Trump returned to the White House. Federal workers remain fearful of retaliation. Two people close to DOGE, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, said the design outfit, led by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, serves as the spiritual successor to its work.
With about 100 people and weekly meetings focused on efforts such as TrumpRx and the design of the new food pyramid, they represent an evolution of the DOGE mission, but a significant culling of its mandate…”
Skadden Said Its Trump Deal Raised No Ethical Issues. Intel’s Shareholders Disagree.
Above the Law: “There is a version of the Biglaw capitulation story where the nine firms that bent a knee to Donald Trump did some pro bono work on behalf of veterans, ate a news cycle, and moved on. That is the version the firms have been selling since jump, but the reality is quite a bit different.
Today, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Rep. Jamie Raskin, and Sen. Adam Schiff sent a letter to Skadden executive partner Jeremy London, the third such letter, for those keeping score, asking the firm to explain how it advised Intel on handing the Commerce Department a 10 percent equity stake in the company while simultaneously doing free legal work for that same Commerce Department. The lawmakers would like an answer by August 4, but, based on Skadden’s track record… they should not hold their breath…
A refresher on how we got here, because the ledger is worth restating in full. When Trump started issuing unconstitutional executive orders designed to bring the legal profession to heel, a handful of firms — Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, and Susman Godfrey — sued and are winning, repeatedly. More than twice as many bent a knee instead. Paul Weiss went first, settling six days after Trump’s executive order for $40 million in pro bono services and the elimination of its DEI programs. Skadden followedwith $100 million — preemptively, before any order existed — plus a pledge to fund at least five Skadden Fellows a year, which promptly cost the Skadden Foundation its executive director. Willkie Farr and Milbank each matched Skadden’s $100 million, also preemptively. Then Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Simpson Thacher, and A&O Shearman came in at $125 million apiece — $500 million total, with their EEOC DEI investigations conveniently evaporating in the process — and Cadwalader rounded out the group at $100 million. Kirkland, it later emerged, tried to recruit the rest of Biglaw into the deal, and it and Simpson hired a top Trump fundraiser’s lobbying shop on the way in. Grand total: $940 million in pro bono payola for whichever causes strike the president’s
