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2026 U.S. Federal Government Changes (September - December)
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May Day in Seattle, May 1, 2026 Chief Justice Roberts fears that the SCOTUS is losing legitimacy. Wonder why? https://bsky.app/profile/666therealsatan666.bsky.social/post/3mkuyy42l7k2x May 2, 2026.
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When Revision is Wrong
Historical Negationism: This involves denying the veracity of facts or manipulating data to promote a false narrative, often seen in the denial of genocides. Dishonesty and Distortion: Intentionally misrepresenting the historical record to fit a particular ideology or political agenda is a misuse of history. "Whitewashing": This occurs when negative aspects of history are minimized or ignored to make the past seem more palatable or to protect certain beliefs or groups, as noted in Quora. Lack of Integrity: When sources are misrepresented, evidence is ignored, or conclusions are predetermined to serve an agenda rather than the pursuit of truth, the historical process is corrupted. The Key Distinction
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Graphic source: Crowd Blue
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released a report linking “gender ideology” to leftwing authoritarianism and political violence – a study scientists say was poorly conducted and "nakedly political", likely leading to greater politicization of science and health.
It follows attempts by the administration to limit access to gender-affirming care – including, on Friday, an agreement reached between the Department of Justice and a New York hospital to no longer offer pediatric gender-affirming care. Dozens of hospitals stopped offering gender-affirming care after the Trump administration began investigating them for offering the standard of care.
The report is "quite an abnormal document with a number of oddities," said Daniel Aaron, an associate professor at the University of Utah's SJ Quinney College of Law.
"It likely also violates federal law because it's not peer-reviewed, and it's essentially quite an influential dissemination of information," which could mean it violates the Information Quality Bulletin, a federal regulation that requires peer review for influential scientific information from the US government, he said. “It’s actually not even health-related, so I don’t understand why this is related to HHS’s mission,” Aaron said
"By that standard, any medical recommendation becomes 'authoritarian'. Any standard set by any licensing board becomes 'authoritarian'," Konnoth said. :What we're seeing is this broadside attack on the scientific establishment more generally, and trans rights are being used as the vehicle to do this."
"I think we can draw parallels with this consistent anti-science production of information by the federal government," he said. Konnoth called it an "attempt to create an alternate scientific narrative" that affects all Americans.
“There's a targeting of these mainstream fundamental organizations that put out research that doesn't just involve trans rights, but involves broader claims about science," he said. "If we buy into their attempt to discredit the medical establishment, then we are in deep trouble - It's life-and-death for massive swathes of the American population."
Exclusive: Trump gave cash gifts of $45,000 to his executive assistant Natalie Harp and two other young White House employees, financial disclosures revealed.
Controversy: A former White House ethics lawyer said the payments may violate a law preventing federal employees’ salaries from being supplemented from outside sources.
What to know: European law enforcement agencies said that the Justice Department has not responded to their requests for help in investigations of Jeffrey Epstein and his associates.
Response: The Justice Department told The Post it doesn't comment on mutual legal assistance requests; last month a spokesperson told the Telegraph that no requests have been refused.
The latest: The AP stylebook will continue to refer to Lake Ontario as Lake Ontario, despite Trump’s order renaming it Lake America.
Similarly: The White House banned AP reporters from events after the wire service refused to use the name “Gulf of America” for the Gulf of Mexico following a Trump order.
Financial disclosures show Harp, Martin and Harris each receive $45,000 cash holiday gifts; Nauta receives $20,000 cash gift, disclosures show White House says gifts comply with ethics rules
President Donald Trump gave tens of thousands of dollars in cash gifts last year to executive assistant Natalie Harp and three other close aides working in the West Wing, according to financial disclosures released by the White House.
The payments raised ethics concerns because federal employees are generally barred by statute from receiving compensation beyond their government salaries.
The payments were equivalent to roughly one-third of the aides' federal salaries of $150,000 per year, according to the White House annual personnel report to Congress. Walt Nauta, another aide who works as the director of Oval Office operations, received $20,000 in cash, the disclosures show. His annual compensation is $175,000.
Harp drew public scrutiny last month when the Washington Post reported that she and Nauta were in a catering truck that secretly moved Trump to a flight he took in July from Turkey to the United Kingdom amid concerns about potential threats from Iran. Harp exercises control over Trump's Truth Social account, posting on his behalf and helping draft social media statements, according to a person familiar with her role.
Nauta, a former White House valet, facde accusations from federal prosecutors of helping Trump hide top-secret documents that the Republican president took when he completed his first term at the White House in 2021. Nauta pleaded not guilty, and the case was dropped after Trump returned to office.
Yesterday: Late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel said the Federal Communications Commission "threatened" him into not airing an interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico.
Big picture: ABC, which hosts Kimmel's show, has clashed with the FCC under Trump. Last year, the network briefly suspended Kimmel’s show because of FCC pressure.
New: After Trump suggested he may rename New Mexico "New America," congressional leaders from the state asked Google and Apple not to rename the state on their maps.
Context: The companies switched the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario to Trump’s preferred names on their maps after the president issued orders renaming the bodies of water.
Limits: Unlike with bodies of water, Trump lacks the authority to rename a state, but he can order federal agencies to use a different name.
Exaggerations about jobs and the economy
VANCE: "We've created 1 million new jobs, and unlike the last administration, where most of the job growth went to illegal aliens, 100% of the job growth in the United States of America is going to American citizens."
THE FACTS: Overall, the United States has added 807,000 jobs since Trump took office for his second term, close to Vance's claim of 1 million. But by historical standards, it's not a particularly large increase.
SCOTT BESSENT, treasury secretary, speaking Wednesday: "Under this president, more Americans are working than ever before." THE FACTS: This is true, but missing context. The economy adds jobs most months, so U.S. payrolls are continually hitting new highs. Jobs have increased in the United States in 65 of the past 80 years.
THE FACTS: Trump has cited an increasingly higher number for investments in the U.S. throughout his second term, claiming on Wednesday that the number could go up to $25 trillion. But he has presented no evidence that he has secured this amount of funds from either foreign or domestic sources.
Based on statements from various companies, foreign countries and the White House's own website, that figure appears to be highly speculative and far higher than the actual sum. The White House website offers a far lower number, $11.2 trillion, and that figure appears to include some investment commitments made during the Biden administration.
TRUMP: "The stock market has set 80 all-time record highs."
THE FACTS: It's unclear what exact stock market measure Trump is referring to. But the S&P 500 - an index for the biggest public companies in the U.S. - has hit a record 66 times since the start of Trump's second term in January 2025, including 27 new highs since the start of this year, per a count from investment research firm CFRA. It's hit 76 records since the 2024 presidential election.
U.S. stocks soared to their last record on Aug. 13, as part of a broader rally driven by a surge in company profits and then-easing oil prices. But renewed fighting between the U.S. and Iran, as well as an escalation in supply chain disruptions elsewhere, has led to more market volatility since. This week, for example, the international benchmark for crude oil soared past the $100 mark for the first time in months.
Beyond the war, some of the biggest market swings this year have resulted from the frenzy ( and skepticism ) around the value of artificial-intelligence technology.
2020 election redux. TRUMP: "When I'm on the ticket, Republicans always do very well. We won the presidency three times."
THE FACTS: Trump won the presidency in 2016 and 2024, but he did not prevail in the 2020 race, despite his repeated claims otherwise.
Biden earned 306 electoral votes to Trump's 232, achieving victory by prevailing in key states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia. The Democratic candidate also earned over 7 million more popular votes than Trump.
Trump's allegations of massive voting fraud have been refuted by a variety of judges, state election officials and members of his first administration who were in office during the 2020 election.
Last night: Trump asked the GOP;s midterm convention to pledge "to the greatest president" that they will vote in the midterms even if they are not registered to vote.
And: Trump called on them to pledge they will "cheat like hell, like they do," a nod to his baseless claims of widespread Democratic voter fraud.
Kyle Cheney @kyledcheney.bsky.social JUST IN: A federal judge concludes that DHS leaders arbitrarily decided to cut FEMA staff by 50% even though it damaged the agency's ability to fulfill its mission — and leaders hid their comms about it on auto-delete Signal chains.
Maha adherents were frequently drawn in from social media with the promise of enacting change: fighting for cleaner water and air, healthier food systems, better healthcare. "But the people at the top of that movement very much used it as a political movement," Knurick said.
That's how the movement that prioritizes cleaning up environmental toxins is partnered with an administration that's ignoring environmental regulations, Knurick said. "Those things don't align, and I can go down the list where most of what the Maha movement says they want is not aligned with the actual policies we're seeing come out of this administration." It does make it difficult to preach healthy eating when those foods are just inaccessible to a big portion of this country Jessica Knurick.
As diseases loom, CDC's response to measles deaths stirs fears about agency's reliability NPR, September 11, 2026.
"Red flag. Red alert," says Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who resigned last year as the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protest what he called political interference at the agency.
Daskalakis and other independent public health authorities around the country are alarmed by how the CDC handled two deaths that Pennsylvania state officials recently blamed on measles. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took the unprecedented step of questioning the deaths, and the CDC removed them from the agency's website. "When they raise doubt on the adjudication that a state may have made around a death, that is highly problematic," says Daskalakis. "This is dangerous."
Usually, when someone dies from measles, the state where the tragedy happened determines the cause of death and reports the death to the CDC so the agency can alert the public, doctors and health officials around the country. The CDC usually defers to the state's determination.
So Kennedy's public dispute with the state and the CDC's response is concerning for what it may mean for the relationship between states and federal health officials, who have to work closely to protect the public, Daskalakis and others say. That relationship has already become strained under the Trump administration.
"What we have been seeing, that got amplified even more with these measles cases, is a breakdown in the coordination and trust between states and the federal government," says Dr. Anne Zink, "That to me is a significant concern. These partnerships are critical and essential to making us healthy and well." Zink and others also worry about whether the public, state and local health officials, doctors and others will be able to trust federal health data about measles as well as other diseases, such as flu, COVID-19 and RSV. Could CDC succumb to pressure to suppress information to minimize concerns about those diseases and the impact of falling immunization rates? Kennedy has long questioned vaccines.
"We need to have good solid evidence-based national data. And I'm obviously concerned that it will happen again for other infectious diseases," says Dr. Georges Benjamin, who heads the American Public Health Association. "If it happens with flu and with COVID, the question is: Who can we rely on for the data on a national level. More people will get sick and more people because they won't know what to do. They won't know who to trust. And that is the problem here."
Many also worry about what this means for the effectiveness of the new CDC director, Dr. Erica Schwartz, who recently took over after a tumultuous year that has left the CDC demoralized and diminished. Many hoped Schwartz , a well-respected physician and attorney with solid public health experience, would restore the CDC's morale and credibility by pushing back against political pressure. But many say the way the CDC handled the Pennsylvania measles cases doesn't bode well for Schwartz pushing back against political pressure.
"We are seeing a pretty compromised CDC and a director who is at best facilitating non-scientific behavior and at worst colluding with non-scientific behavior," says Daskalakis. Others agree.
"What the director should be doing instead of looking into these disease counts is responding to the outbreak itself," says Dr. Debra Houry, who resigned as the CDC's chief medical officer at the same time as Daskalakis for the same reasons. "I haven't heard from her talking about the importance of getting kindergarteners vaccinated when we're seeing declining rates. It's back to school time around the United States. We need her to step up publicly to talk about what can be done."
New: The Trump administration repealed a limit on power plants' carbon dioxide emissions that was introduced during Joe Biden's presidency.
Background: Power plants are second to transportation in carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S., and the Biden administration said the rule would save thousands of lives. Why: The Trump administration argues the move will reduce electricity costs for consumers.
What to know: Umar Kremlev, a Russian businessman with ties to the Putin administration, paid for some of the festivities at Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding in May.
Details: Kremlev's contribution was first reported by ProPublica, which said the cost ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
New: Trump agreed to Democrats’ demands for stricter ethics rules for federal officials in the Clarity Act, which would introduce the first comprehensive federal regulations for cryptocurrency.
The change: The bill would now give state attorneys general the authority to sue federal officials who violate the bill’s ban on creating or sponsoring digital assets while in office.
Today: President Donald Trump said the justices he appointed "are not the people I interviewed to serve," after the court blocked his attempt to restrict mail ballots in the midterms.
Caveat: The Supreme Court did not specify a vote count in its ruling, making it unclear how many justices were in the majority.
What we know: Of the justices Trump appointed, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh submitted a concurring opinion. Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett did not register dissents.
The latest: The Kennedy Center board, dominated by Trump appointees, voted today to close the venue. Trump said that renovations cannot start until a federal appeals court rules on a name change for the venue.
Also: Judge Christopher Cooper today ruled again that the Kennedy Center board cannot add Trump's name to the building.
Today: The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a report detailing the cost of the Iran war, finding it cost the United States $38 billion from late February to Aug. 1.
And: The report estimates the war will cost continue to cost about $2 billion to $3 billion per month.
Yesterday: The Pentagon's inspector general released a report revealing hundreds of buildings and structures on U.S. bases have been damaged by Iranian strikes in recent months.
More: The report also revealed that Iranian strikes have caused about $184 million worth of damage at U.S. diplomatic facilities and that the U.S. is facing "strategic inventory shortfalls" of munitions.
Today: Citing inflation concerns, the Fedraised interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point, bringing the upper bound to 4 percent and the lower bound to 3.75 percent.
Big picture: This is the first interest rate hike since 2023, and it was unanimously approved by the Fed's board despite President Donald Trump’s calls for interest rates to be lowered.
Exclusive: National Park Service officials wrote in a document obtained by The Post that Trump's proposed triumphal arch will adversely affect the Lincoln Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery and other historic sites.
But: The officials said in the document that the "adverse effects cannot be avoided" and that the project must proceed.
The latest: Kennedy Center trustee Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) filed an emergency motion in federal court requesting that center officials explain why they closed the venue despite a court order.
Background: A federal judge ordered the Kennedy Center to remain open in May after the center’s board attempted to close for renovations. The board voted again yesterday to close.
The signs: In July, Trump ordered signs decrying alleged bias at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to be placed outside of the museum.
Now: Interior Secretary Doug Burgum disclosed that his department is preparing the signs, expected to cost about $7,000 each, in a letter to Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) this month.
Yesterday: A federal judge ruled that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement likely violated the First Amendment rights of an ICE critic when agents delivered a warning to his house.
Background: ICE agents tracked down David Streever to have him sign a letter warning that an email he sent ICE's leader was potentially criminal. Streever sued, saying the email was protected speech.
The tracking tool is called Lost Funds.
"By bringing thousands of funding disruptions from the Trump administration together in a publicly accessible, verified database, Lost Funds puts the magnitude of their impact on full display," Scott Delaney, co-founder of Grant Witness, said in a statement. The $177 billion finding represents nearly 10% of federal discretionary spending, the groups said.
The tracker's organizers said the disrupted grants were beyond the kind of cuts that typically happen when administrations change.
"Lost Funds shows the extraordinary scale and real human impact of these disruptions, and how states are once again on the front lines protecting their residents," said Kelly Rader, States United Democracy Center’s research director. In some cases, courts have ruled against the administration’s grant funding cuts.
The new tool, which is being made available for public use, relies on data from USASpending.gov, an open data source of federal spending information, according to the groups’ methodology. They said the tracker would be updated regularly as the administration takes new action and lawsuits move through the courts.
The ad: Addressing Trump in a campaign ad released today, Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Florida) tells the president,"Some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far."
More: Salazar also says in the ad that the "same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed." Salazar is seeking reelection in a district that is 74% Hispanic.
Pennsylvania health department says it was requesting emergency CDC assistance known as Epi-Aid; State says it will rescind CDC Epi-Aid request if agency does not recognize four measles-associated deaths; Status of measles deaths has become focus of a standoff between Pennsylvania governor and US health secretary
The state's measles outbreak has become the focus of a standoff between US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat. Kennedy has cast doubt on whether deaths reported in US measles outbreaks since he took office were due to the virus or another cause, and instructed the CDC not to include the Pennsylvania fatalities in a national tally.
Disease experts say the move represented highly unusual interference by a health secretary in the determination by state health officials and could minimize the risks of measles in the eyes of the public. Kennedy has accused Shapiro of politicizing the outbreak in his state and of failing to request federal help.
In a letter sent to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Erica Schwartz on Wednesday evening, reviewed by Reuters, Pennsylvania secretary of health Debra Bogen said the state had begun the process to request emergency assistance from the CDC, known as Epi-Aid.
"The CDC's choice not to publicly recognize the deaths undermines our response," Bogen wrote. "For this reason, if CDC is unable to transparently and accurately communicate information about those measles-associated deaths, the Department will respectfully rescind our request for a CDC Epi-Aid."
Shapiro has criticized Kennedy, a long-time anti-vaccine activist who has promoted policies to reduce US childhood immunization, for amplifying public fears about vaccines without scientific evidence. Kennedy and Schwartz have blamed Shapiro for not accepting their offers of Epi-Aid, a form of short-term CDC assistance during public health emergencies. The agency sends experts to the site of a disease outbreak, typically for one to three weeks, to provide additional support to state and local health departments.
Pennsylvania's outbreak has since ballooned, growing to more than 700 confirmed cases across 37 counties and four measles-associated deaths, according to the state health department. It is the latest state to grapple with the worst US resurgence of measles in more than three decades, fueled by rising vaccine hesitancy, and coincides with President Donald Trump's return to office in early 2025.
The disease's spread in Pennsylvania is accelerating and could be 10 times larger than the official numbers, said Matthew Ferrari, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Penn State. Still, the state's caution on CDC deployment is understandable, Ferrari said, as it could cause more problems if state and federal political leadership are not aligned on an issue as critical as what counts as a measles-related death.
The state "doesn't want someone coming in, giving them advice and also telling them that the things that they're experiencing are not as severe as they're seeing with their own eyes," he said. If the CDC ultimately doesn't provide more assistance, he said, public health experts from other states could help.
Exclusive: Five U.S. officials told The Post there have been at least 22 U.S. military fatalities in the war with Iran, four more than the Pentagon has reported in its public database.
More: A sixth official said 23 service members have been killed in the region since the war began, along with three U.S. contractors.
Today: President Donald Trump accused CNN, MS NOW and Politico of reporting "FICTION and LIES" about him, and said he was banning them from the White House.
And: Trump said he will announce bans of "Other Fake News Media Outlets" in the latest escalation of his longtime media feud.
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