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

A Department of Health and Human Services appeals board ended the 33-year-old restriction on Medicare payments for gender-reassignment surgery after a suit by a transgender woman who’s an Army veteran. Denee Mallon, who was born a male, had appealed a Medicare denial of the surgery. "I expect a certain amount of criticism because of my age—generally you’re considered over the hill at 70."   read more

Bell's main contribution in 2012 was bundling contributions to Obama’s re-election effort. According to The New York Times, she raised more than $2.1 million during 2011 and 2012. Bell ran into trouble during her nomination hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Bell had no experience with foreign service or special knowledge about the nation, Hungary, in which she had been nominated to serve. Apparently she had also spent little time studying about U.S.-Hungary relations.   read more

A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled last week that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) can’t hold immigrants more than six months without a bond hearing. For now, the ruling applies only to those held in Massachusetts, which comprises the class in the suit filed by Mark Reid, a U.S. resident born in Jamaica who was held more than a year while ICE attempted to deport him for non-violent drug convictions.   read more

A strong majority of Georgia residents favor expanding Medicaid eligibility as called for under the Affordable Care Act. But Republican lawmakers have taken steps to ensure that such expansion does not happen anytime soon. Expanding Medicare would give half a million of those Georgians health care. Women in particular suffer from lack of medical care in Georgia. More women die of pregnancy-related causes in Georgia than in all but two other states.   read more

Lake City, a small Appalachian community (population: 1,781) beset by unemployment and methamphetamine use, has been approached by a developer wanting to spruce up its downtown and build an amusement park and water park. The catch is that the city must change its name to Rocky Top. If you’ve ever watched a University of Tennessee football game, you know what “Rocky Top” is. The song by that name has been used to cheer on the Volunteers since the 1970s.   read more

Among those he represented during his years at the two firms were You Tube/Google, successfully defending them in a $1 billion copyright infringement suit brought by Viacom; Philip Morris, successfully defending the tobacco in an action relating to punitive damages; Las Vegas Sands Corporation CEO Sheldon Adelson in a billion-dollar dispute over ownership of the Venetian Macao hotel and casino; and ex-New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.   read more

Mukantabana began teaching history at Cosumnes River College in Sacramento in 1994. That was also the year of the Rwandan Genocide, in which thousands of Tutsi were massacred by members of that country’s Hutu majority. The same week that she was hired by Cosumnes River, she learned that among those killed were both her parents, three sisters, two brothers, six aunts, four uncles and all of her nieces and nephews.   read more

Standing 30 feet from the officer, Gericke pointed her video camera, which was later found to be not working and failed to record events. Sergeant Joseph Kelley did not instruct Gericke to put the camera away while dealing with her friend, Tyler Hanslin, who was stopped for a traffic violation. But a second officer at the scene, Brandon Montplaisir, arrested Gericke for unlawful interception of oral communications and seized her camera.   read more

One location already recognized on the federal government’s National Register of Historic Places is the former Washington D.C. home of Dr. Franklin E. Kameny, who became an early gay rights activist after he was fired from his job as an Army astronomer in 1957 for being homosexual. Fire Island’s Cherry Grove Community House & Theater, are also both on the National Register of Historic Places.   read more

Borrowing a page from the Cold War, members of Congress from both parties have suggested that the city of Washington, D.C., rename the street in front of the Chinese embassy after a renowned political dissident locked away in prison. In 2009, Liu Xiaobo was charged and convicted of trying to subvert the Beijing government, resulting in an 11-year sentence. The following year he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.   read more

Cormack was executive assistant in the Office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. In July 2011, Cormack became principal deputy coordinator of the Bureau of International Information Programs. On April 15, 2013, she was promoted to acting coordinator for international programs after a critical report by the State Department’s Office of Inspector General led to the resignation of Coordinator Dawn McCall.   read more

Gulyamov moved to Brussels in 2010 to head the Uzbek mission to Belgium, as well as be his country’s representative to the European Union and to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Since being posted to Washington in 2013, Gulyamov has spent much of his time promoting U.S.-Uzbekistan trade. He has taken criticism for his country’s practice of using child labor to plant and harvest crops, as well as other human rights violations.   read more

Bolstering allegations that have rocked the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) with scandal, a “scathing” new report from the agency’s inspector general (IG) concluded that a Veterans Affairs hospital in Phoenix generated falsified data to hide treatment delays for veterans seeking medical care. The report also disclosed that the Phoenix VA Health Care System failed to put at least 1,700 patients on the official waiting list for doctors’ appointments.   read more

The Medicare overcharges were discovered by the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services. Auditors determined that the excess billing amounted to $6.7 billion in 2010 alone. After receiving the audit’s findings, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which runs Medicare, announced it would not review the billings of doctors who use Level 5. The reason: It is not cost effective.   read more

Five major derailments in the last five years have all involved the DOT-111 tank car, which has been in use since the 1960s. Despite the problems posed by the DOT-111’s use, the industry continues to employ 200,000 of them, with nearly 80,000 carrying crude oil. Last year was particularly bad for railway accidents involving oil, with more oil spilled in 2013 than all previous years combined going back to 1971.   read more

Officials with the U.S. Department of Justice said they would make public parts of the internal document written in July 2010 by then-federal lawyer David Barron that justified the use of drones or other means to kill U.S. citizens. The declaration came as the U.S. Senate was considering Barron’s confirmation as a judicial appointee. Now, with Barron’s place on the federal bench secure, the Justice Department says it needs to censor some sections of the memo.   read more