Feb 2026

A new report issued by the U.S. Government Accountability Office determines that the Trump Administration’s attempts to dismantle the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) within the Department of Education have cost the federal government more than $28 million. The Department of Education has been blocked from implementing a reduction in force that would reduce the office to 10% of its former size but it has effectively eliminated civil rights enforcement at the agency.

The Trump RX site formally relaunches with a lookup option to find savings codes for various prescriptions. Like many other National Design Studio sites, it features a mix of Apple Store-style titles and text styling alongside gilt images of an American map and an eagle and bombastic language extolling Trump himself. In a first for NDS sites, it also features a site search to look up specific medications, each of which has their own page URL.

A federal judge ruled that Elon Musk and senior State Department officials must sit for depositions about their roles in dismantling USAID. The judge cited the lack of documentation and no cooperation from other State Department staff as the reason there was “no alternative” to ordering the depositions.

EO 14385: Protecting the National Security and Welfare of the United States and its Citizens from Criminal Actors and Other Public Safety Threats

Adam Bhaloo starts at NDS.

The head of the Pentagon’s division for Responsible AI announces his resignation in a LinkedIn post. He stepped down over concerns that safety and governance were being sidelined in the Department of Defense’s push to expand AI usage. He also had circulated memos critical of xAI’s Grok model for its security and ethics.

After pausing its actions because of a major winter storm, FEMA plans to resume an ongoing staffing reduction for Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery (CORE) employees, who typically work in term-limited roles. Much like the Trump administration’s mass firing of probationary employees last year, this reduction is targeting an entire class of federal employees for termination regardless of how good they are at their job. Up to half of FEMA’s workforce are CORE employees, and it’s unclear if these reductions are being driven by FEMA or DHS leadership.

The news site Nextgov reports that the National Design Studio’s new site realfood.gov is directing users directly to Elon Musk’s Grok AI product. After being contacted by reporters for comment, the link is instead labeled as “Ask AI” but stll points to the Grok site.

The CIO Council launches a new version of its website cio.gov which has been redesigned by the National Design Studio. This site also includes a new design system, which outlines a new style for websites but it lacks instructions, standardized CSS tags or web components found in other design systems like the US Web Design System and it has poor scores for accessibility. Nevertheless, with this launch, the National Design Studio has rebuilt a site with dozens of pages and has also implemented a site search for the first time.

Ruling in American Council of Learned Societies/Authors Guild v. NEH, Judge Colleen McMahon rejects an argument by the government that a spreadsheet listing all of the DOGE staff and their positions and detailing arrangement must remain sealed for their personal safety. She orders them and a series of text messages made by DOGE staffers Nate Cavanaugh and Justin Fox must be entered into the record by February 17th.

Speaking at an industry conference, the CIO for the IRS reported that the agency has lost nearly 40% of its IT staff and nearly 80% of its IT executives as a result of DOGE’s various actions to target staffing in the federal government.

Greg Barbaccia starts as Deputy FAS Commissioner / Acting Administrator, Technology Transformation Services at GSA.

Thomas Shedd demoted to Senior Advisor for Fraud Prevention at GSA

Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit, White House OSTP Director Micheal Kratsios announces that the Peace Corps will launch a new Tech Corps initiative to promote AI worldwide. Volunteers will be deployed to countries participating in the American AI Exports Program, service for 12-27 months overseas. The launch includes a new site for signups that looks like it was developed by the National Design Studio.

In a tweet on his personal account on X, Edward Coristine claims that the source code for freedom.gov will be open-sourced for public review.

In a tweet on his personal X account, National Design Studio member Tyler Kim confirms that the content on cio.gov was “almost entirely generated by our internal ai agent system [end-to-end].”

The judge in Center for Taxpayer Rights v. IRS responds to a request by the plaintiffs for expedited discovery of more documents. In her ruling, she notes that she is troubled by the fact that the IRS took 3 weeks to inform the court and plaintiffs about the bug that allowed ICE to present fake addresses in its requests but receive records anyway. She declares that the IRS broke the law “approximately 42,695 times,” but that the request for expedited discovery is ultimately up to the appeals court hearing the case to decide.

Posting with the title of Director of Engineering, Edward Coristine publishes a blog post on the National Design Studio website about how NDS is elevating the importance of accessibility in its designs and citing its work on trumprx.gov specifically.

Tyler Kim starts at NDS.

Michael Grimes leaves role as Executive Director, US Investment Accelerator at Commerce (exits govt. service)