A win! The Trump administration is backing off its demand that states hand over personal data on SNAP recipients after a lawsuit. In a sworn statement filed in federal court, the USDA said it is pausing its plan to build a national database of Americans receiving food assistance.

How Trump’s Tariff Spasms Became a Gold Rush in Congress Plus: Republicans can’t stop saying the quiet part loud.

New from @cheetah.bsky.social on congressional stock trading: "Having access to inside information that can crater or catapult markets appears to be extremely lucrative for members of Congress, some of whom outperform the world’s leading hedge funds." www.thebulwark.com/p/how-trumps...

Note: we recorded this even *before* Trump’s bonkers speech at the Justice Department today.

Trump Expands Attacks on Law Firms, Singling Out Paul, Weiss Experts have warned that the president’s efforts threaten the ability of lawyers to do their jobs and private citizens to obtain legal counsel.

President Trump on Friday opened a third attack against a private law firm, restricting the business activities of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison just days after a federal judge ruled such measures appeared to violate the Constitution.

THREAD: House GOP wants to ram through a budget package tomorrow, gutting Medicaid to cut taxes for billionaires. Seniors in hospice, disabled children, and workers without employee insurance all get screwed.

These 15 RED districts will suffer the most:

Informal Grievance Template for Adverse Personnel Actions There is a limited amount of time to oppose personnel actions. Time is short.

ATTN FEDERAL WORKERS: I’ll say this again: download all your SF-50s, performance evals, and your eOPF.

Now.

Print hard copies.

And make sure you file an informal grievance with your supervisor within 15 days of any adverse action. Here is a template: www.muellershewrote.com/p/informal-g...

How Trump’s Directives Echo Project 2025 President Trump attempted during his campaign to distance himself from the right-wing blueprint to overhaul the federal government, but many of his administration’s actions so far have mirrored it.

More than 60 major moves that President Trump and his administration have made in his first 23 days, including executive orders and agency memos, have aligned with proposals in the Project 2025 blueprint, according to a New York Times analysis.

Layoffs to hit IRS as DOGE targets tax collections Several people briefed on the matter said cuts to the IRS cuts numbering in the thousands. One target is tax collections.

The Trump administration is expected to begin laying off thousands of employees at the Internal Revenue Service, six people briefed on the matter said, as billionaire Elon Musk’s team begins to target tax collections.

The cuts could start as soon as Friday.

E.U. Expands Investigation of Musk’s X Over Illicit Content The probe is a test of the European Union’s willingness to go after X’s owner, Elon Musk, whose geopolitical influence has grown because of his ties to the incoming Trump administration.

European Union officials said they would expand an investigation into Elon Musk's platform, X, for potential violation of a law, called the Digital Services Act, intended to clamp down on online disinformation and illegal content.

I think Mark Zuckerberg is basically correct that the "fact-checking" information control response to the problem of misinformation spreading on social media has basically been a failure. But the fact that social media sharing puts people who try to be scrupulous and accurate at a competitive disadvantage to people who try to be sensationalistic and prejudice-flattering is a real problem. I sympathized with almost everything he said about this to Ezra Klein during his lib turn in 2018, as well as with almost everything he said about it to Joe Rogan as part of his MAGA turn this winter. The underlying problem is that while technological progress is good in the aggregate, not every specific innovation is good. Zuckerberg just happens to be cursed with the reality that he became very rich at a very young age by being a pioneer in a technology that is basically harmful. He strikes me as a genuinely well-meaning person, and Meta has gone on to do lots of things that are more interesting and more promising than its core Facebook/Instagram business. But there's no way around the fact that an information ecosystem based on virality - whether Facebook or TikTok or Twitter or anything else - exacerbates the flaws of establishment media rather than improving them. But then there is the specific conservative angle, which is that conservatives have come to believe (accurately) that the baseline moral values of the academic expert community are hostile to them and therefore (inaccurately) that expert views should be categorically dismissed.

- @mattyglesias.bsky.social is sharp on Zuck's latest about-face in his mailbag
www.slowboring.com/p/last-biden...

Trump Disavowed Project 2025 During the Campaign. Not Anymore. President-elect Donald J. Trump has filled his administration with people who have ties to the right-wing manifesto.

www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/u...

China Has a New Playbook to Counter Trump: ‘Supply Chain Warfare’ A series of swipes at American companies show how China could take the initiative in a new trade war, using its economic dominance to exact pain.

Very informative article on how China can respond to US tariffs — not with tariffs but with export controls that hit US supply chains. Adds to a point I've been thinking about: Trump and co have delusions of economic grandeur 1/ www.nytimes.com/2024/11/27/b...

Trump transition team ethics pledge appears to exclude president-elect | CNN Politics President-elect Donald Trump’s team submitted an ethics plan guiding the conduct of its members throughout the transition period that does not appear to include provisions for one key member of the te...

President-elect Donald Trump’s team submitted an ethics plan guiding the conduct of its members throughout the transition period that does not appear to include provisions for one key member of the team: the president himself.

Nancy Mace, now targeting transgender lawmaker, called herself ‘pro-transgender rights’ in 2023 | CNN Politics Republican Rep. Nancy Mace as recently as last year called herself “pro-transgender rights” and said she supported children exploring gender identities with different hairstyles, clothing and preferre...

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace as recently as last year called herself “pro-transgender rights” and said she supported children exploring gender identities with different hairstyles, clothing and preferred pronouns, a stark contrast to more recent comments that have put her in the national spotlight.

Trump’s Oil and Gas Donors Don’t Really Want to ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’ Fossil-fuel tycoons helped return Donald Trump to the presidency. Now, they are seeking to lock use of their products for years to come.

Trump vowed to "drill, baby, drill." But oil firms don't want to drill more. They have drilled record amounts under Biden and want help shoring up demand, and therefore prices, for the oil they already produce. ⁦‪@benmorenne‬⁩.bsky.social ⁦‪Collin Eaton www.wsj.com/business/ene...