🦴 Milk-boned

☀️ April 23, 2025 ☀️

🐾 Now Let’s Sic ‘Em! 🐾

Got milk? The FDA has suspended its national quality-control program for milk and dairy testing, thanks to a staffing crisis triggered by DOGE’s mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The program — crucial for ensuring Grade “A” milk safety — was halted because the Moffett Center lab can no longer support proficiency testing or data analysis. The cuts come amid Trump’s broader campaign to gut federal agencies, with 20,000 HHS staff already axed and a proposed $40 billion slashed from the FDA’s budget.

Also shelved: testing for pathogens like Cyclospora and bird flu in dairy. While the administration insists testing “will continue” during the transition, there’s no clear plan or timeline for restoring lab functions.

Officials now say they’re “evaluating alternatives” for next year — which sounds a whole lot like “concepts of a plan” to us.

In the meantime, milk safety rests on shaky ground, while DOGE keeps chomping through the nation’s watchdog infrastructure like a Milk-bone snack.

State of Play. Rubio Reveals State Department Reductions in DOGE-Led Overhaul.

Secretary of State & Big Boy Marco Rubio just dropped a bone-rattling reorganization plan for the State Department — slashing 15% of U.S. staff, shutting down over 100 bureaus worldwide, and muzzling key programs like diversity, democracy, and women’s rights (because who wants those things?).

It's part of the Trump’s bigger isolationist push to declaw America’s “soft power” influence and neuter international cooperation — packaged under the “‘Murica First” banner and enforced by DOGE’s shadowy grip.

Rubio pitched the move as a modernization effort, but the fact sheet reads more like a demolition order. Bureaus once tasked with promoting human rights and civilian security are being shuttered or shuffled. USAID has already been dismantled, and now a “reimagined” humanitarian office will take over what little foreign aid muscle remains. Meanwhile, legacy broadcast networks like Voice of America and Radio Free Asia — once critical for countering authoritarian propaganda — are being gutted.

And if leaks of internal drafts are true, the overhaul may actually go even further. An OMB proposal floating inside the White House aims to halve State’s budget and axe funding for both the UN and NATO too.

DOGE Parks. America's National Parks are Now Being Run By DOGE.

DOGE now has its paws all over the National Park Service, thanks to a secretarial order that handed sweeping control of the Interior Department to DOGE bro Tyler Hassen.

A former oil exec (not even joking), Hassen can now approve funding, fire staff, and shift policy across the country’s most cherished natural landmarks — all without oversight from Interior Secretary & Presidential Also-Ran Doug Burgum.

National park leadership is collapsing under these drastic changes: over 100 superintendent jobs are now vacant, critical positions remain unfilled due to an extended hiring freeze, and roughly 3,500 staff have resigned, retired, or been fired. Rangers are being benched, conservation programs axed, and cultural protections left in the wind.

With Hassen overseeing contracts and grants, and DOGE rewriting priorities behind closed doors, park managers are warning this isn’t “streamlining” — it’s a hostile takeover. It’s all a Big Fat Knope.

Buried Deep. DOGE Now Inside 19 of HHS’s Most Sensitive Systems.

DOGE — aka Co-President Musk’s shadow government — is now fully off-leash and embedded deep inside the Department of Health and Human Services, with several DOGE bros obtaining full access to 19 sensitive databases that hold personal, medical, and financial info on millions of Americans.

These aren't just boring, insignificant spreadsheets — they’re the central nervous systems of programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and grant payments to hospitals, researchers, and rural clinics.

Some access was granted without basic security training. Others were cleared to pull medical and biometric data on unaccompanied minors. The excuse? “Waste, fraud, and abuse.”

But watchdogs say that over-used phrase is being used as a skeleton key to unlock everything from foster care reports to hospital billing systems. Even internal HHS staff couldn’t name a single fraud case DOGE was specifically targeting — because the real mission may be something else entirely: mass surveillance under the guise of reform.

Check out the full exposé at WIRED, but here’s a concise list of the services and the personal info DOGE bros now have sunk their teeth into.

Attack Dogs. ACLU Sues Over DOGE Surveillance Schemes.

On the flip-side of the privacy issue…

The ACLU has filed a federal lawsuit to sniff out whether DOGE has been snooping where it shouldn’t — namely, digging through sensitive personal data held by the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

The watchdog group is demanding transparency on whether DOGE accessed or attempted to access private health records, financial information, or Social Security data — especially with concerns mounting over the use of AI for political surveillance.

Despite urgent FOIA requests filed with over 40 federal agencies back in February, the SSA stonewalled the ACLU’s appeal and the VA never even fetched the paperwork. Meanwhile, DOGE bros are allegedly working around a judge’s order barring access to SSA systems. Now the ACLU wants answers in court: Who gave DOGE the access and what have they been doing with our data?

"White House Threatens to Seize Wages For Student Loans In Collection"
Starting May 5, the Trump administration will unleash federal debt collectors on millions of borrowers who’ve defaulted on their student loans — many of whom haven’t made payments since the pandemic pause. DOGE-backed Education Secretary & A-1 Sauce Expert Linda McMahon confirmed the government will start garnishing wages, seizing tax refunds, docking Social Security checks, and intercepting federal salaries — up to 100% in some cases. Over 5 million borrowers are already in default, with millions more close behind. Those hit will get 30 days’ notice before their paychecks are clipped, but the leash is tightening fast.

“RFK Creating National Registry as Part of Massive Autism Study”
NIH is handing over a sweeping set of health records — from pharmacies, smart watches, veterans’ clinics, and more — to support RFK Jr.’s autism research. Up to 20 external research teams will analyze the data, though details on selection remain vague. NIH Director & Self-Described “Fringe Epidemiolotist” Jay Bhattacharya says the project could unlock insights on autism and chronic illness. Critics and sane people, however, blast Kennedy’s view of autism as a "preventable disease" as harmful and stigmatizing. And what’s more comforting than an unelected bureaucrat building a national registry based on your medical data? It’s so nostalgically vintage, so very Third Reich.

“Court Forces Trump to Give Migrants 21-Day Deportation Warning”
A federal judge ruled Trump’s team must give Venezuelan migrants 21 days’ notice before any deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. That means no more secret roundups or midnight flights — migrants get time to challenge their removal. Another judge hinted at a similar 10-day rule in New York, warning this isn’t the Middle Ages. Trump’s plan to fast-track deportations using an 18th-century wartime law during peacetime is now legally shaky. Courts say mass expulsions without due process don’t fly… literally.

“Medicaid Funds Secretly Routed to DeSantis-Linked Charity”
Despite public claims to the contrary, a newly revealed document shows $10 million sent to Casey DeSantis’ Hope Florida charity came straight from a Medicaid settlement — meaning taxpayer money, not a voluntary donation. The DeSantis administration quietly redirected those funds after Centene, a major Medicaid contractor, was caught over-billing the state. That money then flowed to shadowy nonprofits and into a political committee tied to DeSantis’ inner circle. Lawmakers now say the governor either lied or was "misinformed by his shrinking circle."

“Trump's VA Tells Workers to Report ‘Anti-Christian’ Coworkers”
The Department of Veterans Affairs is now asking employees to report colleagues for alleged “anti-Christian bias,” under a new Trump-era taskforce. Staff are told to email names, dates, and locations of incidents — ranging from policy decisions to vaccine mandate exemptions and refusals tied to abortion or hormone therapy. This comes after Trump’s executive order declaring war on supposed anti-Christian discrimination in government, with AG Pam Bondi leading the charge. Critics call it a cover for Christian nationalism, not religious freedom. It all strangely feels like Nazism and McCarthyism at the time.

Well, that was a lot to chew on… Again.

So as your reward, here are a few treats.

Some doggy goodness to calm your nerves… lift your spirits… and get you through to tomorrow…

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🙌 Thanks for reading. See you on Thursday.  

🐾 And until then, do your best to stay pawsitive!