This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss “staying out of politics” and what it means to be a tech news publication. EMANUEL: I’m very proud of our output for the last few weeks. When…

While responding to the most damaging wildfires in the history of California, FEMA employees received an order “for immediate compliance” this week that states they must immediately change their vocabulary to comply with the Trump Administration’s preferred terminology on gender and immigration.  For example, FEMA employees are no longer allowed to call undocumented immigrants “migrants”…

Wednesday night, ABC News reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio “has been the acting archivist” at the National Archives and Records Administration “since shortly after President Trump’s inauguration.”  The idea that Rubio might be their new boss—and has been their boss, apparently, for weeks—is news to National Archives employees and apparently to its current…

A New York state senator is trying to introduce the same age verification legislation that has resulted in massive porn sites—including Pornhub and its network of sister sites—going dark across much of the U.S. south and midwest.  The bill, introduced by Republicans Jake Ashby and Assemblywoman Mary Beth Walsh, is almost identical to every other…

Employees working for the agency now known as DOGE have been ordered to stop using Slack while government lawyers attempt to transition the agency to one that is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, 404 Media has learned. “Good morning, everyone! As a reminder, please refrain from using Slack at the moment while…

If there’s one thing I’d hoped people had learned going into the next four years of Donald Trump as president, it’s that spending lots of time online posting about what people in power are saying and doing is not going to accomplish anything. If anything, it’s exactly what they want. Trump’s second presidential term has…

We dedicate the whole free section of this episode to Musk’s takeover of the federal government. We got audio from a meeting in which a Musk ally laid out their plans for AI across the government, and revealed who is now the head of HR for DOGE. In the subscribers only section, we talk about…

Thomas Shedd, a Musk-associate and now head of the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), told government tech workers in a meeting this week that the administration plans to widely deploy AI throughout the government. Shedd also said the administration would need help altering login.gov, a government login system, to further integrate with sensitive…

NASA personnel were told to “drop everything” to scrub public sites of mentions of DEI, indigenous people, environmental justice, and women in leadership, according to a directive obtained by 404 Media. The directive, sent on January 22 and obtained by 404 Media, states: “Per NASA HQ direction, we are required to scrub mentions of the…