Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) sent messages to all members of Congress terminating their positions, stating “Your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment.” All Democratic and independent members of Congress, as well as two Republicans, found themselves locked out of their offices after everything inside had been confiscated.   read more

The House approved three bills Thursday setting up federal grants and taking other steps to battle the drug epidemic, the last of 18 measures on the issue the chamber overwhelmingly passed this week. Members of both parties hailed the measures, though Democrats complained that none provided any money for the programs and anti-drug advocates called the bills a needed but modest first step.   read more

Despite Monsanto’s claim that its Roundup weed-killer is “safe enough to drink,” four Nebraska farmers say the widely used herbicide gave them non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. All four of the plaintiffs say they were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma after being exposed to Roundup year after year. They claim, among other things, that Monsanto mislabeled the product, in defiance of the “body of recognized scientific evidence linking the disease to exposure to Roundup.”   read more

Detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, could plead guilty to criminal charges in civilian court via remote videoconference under a provision being considered by the Senate that could open a new avenue to whittling down the prison’s remaining population. The Senate Armed Services Committee announced late Thursday that it had included the provision in the annual National Defense Authorization Act.   read more

The Obama administration is beginning a major project to better understand microbes, and even control them. The National Microbiome Initiative announced by White House science officials Friday aims to bring together scientists who study the microbes that live in the human gut and in the oceans, in farm soil and in hospitals — to speed discoveries that could bring big payoffs.   read more

Remember how scathing Republicans were about President Obama’s handling of Ebola? Yet Obama’s approach was spectacularly successful. Republicans are now again trying to block a sensible effort to address a public health crisis, this time a Zika virus outbreak that is steadily moving to the continental U.S., bringing with it calamitous birth defects. In February, Obama urgently requested more than $1.8 billion to address Zika, and Congress since then has done nothing but talk.   read more

The former detainees sued CACI in 2008. They claim employees of the company, which was hired to conduct interrogations at the U.S. prison in Iraq, conspired to have soldiers torture them. The plaintiffs say they were subjected to electrical shocks, sexual violence and forced nudity, and were deprived of food, water and oxygen. In the appeals hearing, Judge Keenan asked O'Connor why the private contractor should get more protection than the military for clear violations of laws against torture.   read more

"My interest, first and foremost, is transparency," said Leopold. "My case before the District Court was the best chance of ensuring this information would be revealed. That's a fact. It's too bad the ACLU didn't agree. Ultimately, it's the public who ends up shortchanged." Said ACLU's Jaffer: "We have invested more than five years in this suit, and in two related suits in New York, because we continue to believe that the government owes the public a fuller account of its drone policies."   read more

Three transgender rights advocates called on the department to abandon its proposed changes. Only Idaho, Ohio and Tennessee have legal policies against changing gender listings on birth certificates. "It really stands against where most of the country is on updating identity documents to accurately reflect who people are," said Arli Christian. Stephanie Mott predicted that the changes will cause more transgender youth to attempt suicide because the state will be rejecting their identities.   read more

When it comes to emojis, women can be brides or princesses, paint their fingernails and go dancing in a red dress. If those sound like roles determined by the patriarchy, well, it’s not a new complaint. But it may be changing. “Isn’t it time that emoji also reflect the reality that women play a key role in every walk of life and in every profession?” said a Google proposal. The proposed emojis include women in business and health care roles, at factories and on farms, among other things.   read more

As Obama prepares to leave office, a group of lawyers is calling on Obama to revoke the Bush legal memo, which they argue has been used by religious groups to refuse services, including contraception for trafficking victims, that conflict with their beliefs. As a presidential candidate in 2008, Obama criticized the Bush Justice Dept. for drafting it, but as president failed to follow through. “Leaving it in place tarnishes the civil rights record of the Obama administration,” Garrett said.   read more

The defense lawyers said they were not permitted to say what the evidence was, or what exactly happened to it, because the underlying issue was classified. But they characterized it as “favorable” to the defendants and “important or even critical” to any eventual trial. The defense said it was informed that Pohl had approved a plan by the government to give the defendants a government-prepared “summary of a substitute” for the original, classified evidence that is no longer available.   read more

Texas now has one of the biggest citizenries in the country authorized to carry concealed and unconcealed firearms. The 1 million are made up of 268,200 women and 749,418 men, according to the Department of Public Safety. Most of those men and women — 873,166 — are white. Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, is one of them. More people are licensed to be armed in Harris County, Texas, than in the entire state of Louisiana.   read more

All in all, it's some of the worst of times for Republicans who promised to clean up state government after seizing control from Democrats. "I never recall when the top leaders of all three branches of government were simultaneously accused of improper behavior," said retired political scientist Bill Stewart. It's hard for state government to concentrate on issues like Medicaid or the prison system when so many officials are fighting for their jobs, he said. "It's definitely a traumatic time."   read more

The move to rethink "healthy" comes as dietary trends have shifted, with more people expressing concern about sugar and questioning low-fat or low-calorie diets. But any change in the term's regulatory definition could take years. The FDA's final rule on gluten-free labeling, for instance, took more than six years to complete. In a statement Tuesday, the FDA also noted that foods that do not meet all the current regulatory criteria for the term "healthy" are not necessarily unhealthy.   read more

"This is an epidemic by any definition," said Dr. Gary Smith. Most cases involve swallowing liquid nicotine. Monthly calls about young kids' swallowing, inhaling or touching e-cigarettes climbed from 14 early on to 223 by the study's end. Calls totaled 4,128 during the study. Most children were age 2 or younger. The cases represent 14% of the nearly 30,000 calls about kids' exposure to tobacco products during that time. Dr. Joan Shook called the poisonings "a huge public health issue."   read more

The unusual case involves whether two lawyers should be held in criminal contempt for revealing details about the role of Felix Sater, a former Trump business associate, in orchestrating a Mafia-linked stock fraud scheme. The AP reported that, even after learning about Sater's criminal background, Trump tapped Sater to prospect for business on his behalf, giving Sater the title of senior adviser and an office in the Trump Organization's headquarters near to his own.   read more