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Nearly 40% of the federal contracts that the Trump administration claims to have canceled as part of its signature cost-cutting program aren’t expected to save the government any money, the administration’s own data shows.The Department of Government Efficiency run by Elon Musk last week published an initial list of 1,125 contracts that it terminated in recent weeks across the federal government. Data published on DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” shows that more than one-third of the contract cancellations, 417 in all, are expected to yield no savings.That’s usually because the total value of the contracts has already been fully obligated, which means the government has a legal requirement to spend the funds for the goods or services it purchased and in many cases has already done so.“It’s like confiscating used ammunition after it’s been shot when there’s nothing left in it. It doesn’t accomplish any policy objective,” said Charles Tiefer, a retired University of Baltimore law professor and expert on government contracting law. “Their terminating so many contracts pointlessly obviously doesn’t accomplish anything for saving money.”Dozens of them were for already-paid subscriptions to the Associated Press, Politico and other media services that the administration said it would discontinue. Others were for research studies that have been awarded, training that has taken place, software that has been purchased, and interns that have come and gone.An administration official said it made sense to cancel contracts that are seen as potential dead weight, even if the moves do not yield any savings. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.In all, DOGE data says the 417 contracts in question had a total value of $478 million. Dozens of other canceled contracts are expected to yield little if any savings.“It’s too late for the government to change its mind on many of these contracts and walk away from its payment obligation,” said Tiefer, who served on the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.Tiefer said DOGE appeared to be taking a “slash and burn” approach to cutting contracts, which he said could damage the performance of government agencies. He said savings could be made instead by working with agency contracting officers and inspectors general to find efficiencies, an approach the administration has not taken.DOGE says the overall contract cancellations are expected to save more than $7 billion so far, an amount that has been questioned as inflated by independent experts.The canceled contracts were to purchase a wide range of goods and services.The Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded a contract in September to purchase and install office furniture at various branches. While the contract does not expire until later this year, federal records show the agency had already agreed to spend the maximum $567,809 with a furniture company.The U.S. Agency for International Development negotiated a $145,549 contract last year to clean the carpet at its headquarters in Washington. But the full amount had already been obligated to a firm that is owned by a Native American tribe based in Michigan.Another already-spent $249,600 contract went to a Washington, D.C., firm to help prepare the Department of Transportation for the recent transition from the Biden to the Trump administration.Some of the canceled contracts were intended to modernize and improve the way government works, which would seem to be at odds with DOGE’s cost-cutting mission.One of the largest, for instance, went to a consulting firm to help carry out a reorganization at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, which led the agency’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The maximum $13.6 million had already been obligated to Deloitte Consulting LLP for help with the restructuring, which included closing several research offices. Foley reported from Iowa City, Iowa. Ryan J. Foley, Associated Press
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Investors in cryptocurrencies are seeing red today. In the past 24 hours, the prices of most major cryptocurrencies and meme coins have plummeted. This includes crypto heavyweights like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP as well as popular meme coins like Dogecoin (DOGE) and TRUMP. Heres what to know about the biggest losers and possible reasons behind the crash. Bitcoin drops below $90K for the first time since November Unsurprisingly, the crypto that is getting the most headlines today is Bitcoin, which as of the time of this writing currently sits at around $89,000 per coin. Thats a 7% drop in the last 24 hours alone. It also represents of few other ignominious milestones for the cryptocurrency king as of late. First, todays decline marks the first time that Bitcoin has fallen below $90,000 since November 2024, after Donald Trump’s election victory sparked a crypto rally. Second, Bitcoin is now also down 20% since another important Trump marker: his inauguration day on January 20. On Trumps inauguration day, Bitcoin had hit an all-time high of over $106,000. The postelection victory and post-inauguration gains were largely fueled by the belief that a Trump presidency would be good for the crypto markets in general. But its not just Bitcoin that is plummeting today. Other cryptocurrencies are as well. Those include (as of the time of this writing): Ethereum, which is down almost 10% in the past 24 hours (and down over 27% in the past month). XRP, which is down over 12% in the past 24 hours (and down over 31% in the past month) Solana, which is down almost 12% in the past 24 hours (and down over 46% in the past month) Dogecoin, which is down almost 11% in the past 24 hours (and down over 42% in the past month) Official Trump, which is down almost 14% in the past 24 hours (and down over 56% in the past month) But what exactly is causing todays crypto crash? While the digital assets do tend to be highly volatile anyway, the general consensus among crypto industry watchers is that two main events could be contributing to the plunge. Trumps tariffs lead to macroeconomic uncertainty While Trumps election victory was hailed as the best possible outcome for the crypto industry, it now appears that Trump could be doing more harm than good for digital currency markets. Thats because since Trump was sworn in, he quickly set to initiating tariffsor at least threatening toagainst Americas major trading partners, including China, Mexico, Canada, and nearly every other country in the world. Many fear these that tariff threats may lead to an all-out trade war between America and other major economies. Indeed, as BeinCrypto points out, after Trump seemed to confirm yesterday that the tariffs on Mexico and Canada would be moving ahead, Bitcoin sank and crypto markets saw almost $1 billion in liquidations. When there is macroeconomic uncertaintylike the kind generated by potential trade warsinvestors usually seek to lock in gains where they can by selling assets that have had good returns as of late. Larger anxieties about where the economy may be headed may be driving many crypto investors to take their profits now to buffer any losses in the future. The Bybit hack reminds crypto investors they are vulnerable It’s not just Trumps actions that are rattling crypto investors. Last week, the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit was hacked, leading to $1.5 billion dollars of cryptocurrencies being stolen. It is reportedly the largest crypto heist on record and is believed to have been carried out by actors in North Korea, reports CNN. Major crypto heists in the past have rattled investor confidence, and this one is no different. Heists such as this remind investors that cryptocurrencies are more readily at risk of theft than other assets, such as stocks or properties. To put the Bybit hack into greater perspective, Reuters reports that in all of 2024, there was $2.2 billion worth of crypto stolen. The ByBit hack signals that 2025 may be an even bigger year for crypto heists.
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E-Commerce
After 16 years of experiments to bring Photoshop apps to the phone, Adobe is launching its most convincing attempt yet. Called Photoshop Mobile and available in the App Store today, its Adobes first earnest attempt to build a Photoshop on mobile with the same unique powers that have made it so popular on desktop.This new Photoshop has been built from the ground up specifically for the phone, where it can sync seamlessly with Photoshop versions on the web and desktop. (An Android version is due this summer.) Pros will appreciate a few big technical headlines: You can have an unlimited number of layers, and there is no restriction on file sizes. (Vector drawing tools arent in this initial release, but Im told Shapes are coming soon.) Casual editors will want to know that the app is free to use, though many features will be tucked inside an $8/month subscription that comes paired with access to Photoshop on the web. Not all of Photoshop is in here, but were very confident in the foundations that we have that people are going to be able to use, says Matthew Richmond, VP of design for Creative Cloud Pro products and 3D at Adobe. A big part of this is the focus on the next-gen users, the individuals where, in a lot of cases [the phone is] their only computer.Truth be told, phones have been fast enough for Photoshop for years. The big breakthrough that made Photoshop on iPhone is beyond technical specs. Its the apps entire UX thatat least as I squinted through a webcam demolooks powerful, quick, and easy to learn. Its the first time Ive seen a permutation of Photoshop on a small screen that just seemed right, even if it looked new.A brief history of Photoshop on mobileAdobes first attempt at Photoshop on smartphones started in 2009, with a Photoshop.com mobile app. It was essentially an extension of the Camera app, and it allowed use of only the most basic controls, like cropping, rotation, and color. It was followed by Photoshop Mix (2014), Photoshop Fix (2015), and, finally, Photoshop Express, which lives on today. With all respect to Express, its not really Photoshop. You only need to load it for a few minutes to realize its extreme limitations: namely, building and managing layers and applying masks, when the app is really more focused on creating social-ready image and text layouts. Photoshop Mobile is different. Its the companys first smartphone app to take the core UX metaphor inside Photoshopof creating layers, masking out bits of images, and applying different appearances at each leveland bringing it to a small touchscreen. This approach to image editing is foundational, not just to Adobes own software but also to the very way artists and designers have constructed images for centuries. Its the fundamental framework of putting one color or cutout atop another that makes Photoshops approach to digital craft work at all. [Image: Adobe]Photoshops new Select and do UXThe brilliance of the app is that instead of drop-down menus and palettes of tools on the screen, it starts with your fingeran approach to UI that Adobe calls select and do. The idea is that you can tap on whatever part of the image you want, and youll be ushered through a workflow suggesting options for your next steps.In Photoshop desktop, and even in the tablet version, selection tools are hidden behind drop-down menus. You might even need to watch a tutorial to discover that they exist.On Photoshop mobile, youre urged to start selecting right away. A select area button sits at the bottom of the screen. Tap on that, and youre offered all sorts of ways to select (like draw a circle, or use the classic Magic Wand). You can even zoom in to the pixel level to make adjustments on what you select. But its newest option is called tap select. And it means that you can simply tap on a photos subjects (people, buses, plants) to highlight them, so editing on a phone stays easy. Richmond says it was this and related breakthroughs in touch accuracyborn from the most recent AI technologiesthat convinced Adobe that real Photoshop Mobile was feasible. Once something is highlighted, a new menu appears to help with wayfinding in the app. Adobe uses a combination of proven workflows and contextual UI to guide you to your next step. In this case, options appear to modify just this highlighted portion of the image (perhaps you want to use generative fill on that area, or change the color). Select whatever option you like, and that work becomes a new layer.[Image: Adobe]And gosh, those layers look lovely. They appear on the right side of your screen as thumbnails, always in reach. And you tap in to adjust their properties or reorder them on the stack, just like you can on a desktop. Still, the experience is specifically not the desktop. Yes, Adobes tens of thousands of fonts and Stock gradients and images are available for building new layers and masks. But no, you dont have every possible button you can imagine there all the time. And countless sub-featuresespecially appearance optionshave been left out of the mobile app. Adobe has limited functionality in part just to ship v1.0 of the product, and in part because it believes that this more focused approach to workflows can bring in a new generation of users to Photoshop, coaxing them ahead with a project to discover the power of selection tools and layering from the jump.Its figuring out how to play this kind of musical instrument, says Richmond, explaining that the notes in Photoshop are layers, selections, masks, and appearance.He adds: Weve been . . . trying to figure out if there are easier, faster ways to get started and really understand these concepts, because once you unlock them, its open-ended exploration.The business impact of Photoshop MobileMake no mistake: Adobe needs Photoshop on the iPhone to woo the majority of creators todayfrom a generation of young designers hooked on the quick construction tools of Canva to content creators who use a sea of different apps and, often, social medias own design tools to create their statement. Quite simply, it does not matter if Photoshop and the accompanying Creative Cloud is the most powerful editing software in the world on a desktop for a world hooked on good-enough production on a phone.However, the company is banking on the mobile market expanding its potential audience, because even as were nearly two decades into modern smartphones, there still isnt a perfect analog for Photoshop on phonesthe kind of ubiquitous software that allows deep-editing capability in a world reliant on filters and pre-chewed layouts.Creators, whether or not they become professionals, really have that desire to express themselves in a unique way, says Ashley Still, GM of Adobe Creative Cloud. They want to make sure that the content theyre creating is not just another template, that it represents their unique voice.Still is confident in the higher end of the mobile market after studying the publics response to Adobe photo editing program Lightroom on mobile. Originally launched in 2015, the app has been a success story for the company. Lightrooms users on mobile now outnumber its users on desktop, and Still believes the same will prove true for Photoshop in the next few years.Then, with Lightroom, Photoshop, and Express, she imagines a new creative workflow coming to the phone, where you can touch up an image in Lightroom, edit it with layers in Photoshop, then add text and other production elements in Express. Firefly image generation can sneak into this loop, too, turning ones phone into a fairly capable Adobe editing suite. In some ways, that sounds like Adobes strategy from a decade ago, when it was launching micro apps that handed off specialized functions to slice and dice media. The difference now, however, is that Adobes mobile apps are growing more capable and equivalent in scope to their desktop counterparts. Its hard to make a single app best at everything, Still concedes, noting, a lot of the magic is also going to happen with workflows across the applications. Adobe imagines that pro users, in particular, will choose to start a project on their phone but fine-tune it on a desktop. The company does not want to be prescriptive, Still insists, saying that Adobe apps wont offer complete feature parity across surfaces, but they should be optimized for where you meet them.[Image: Adobe]One of the things that I think we also didnt get quite right with [Photoshop on] the iPad is the expectation that we set within the community of the roles that these different devices play, she says.The challenge for Adobe now is, first, getting a working Photoshop app on Android, where the majority of smartphone users in the world reside. And then, second and more ongoing, figuring out how well all of its Photoshop select and do workflows really operate in the wild, while folding in the most demanded, most feasible add-ons into the product in a monthly release cadence.Theres a line in the sand where, like, we cant keep it inside the building anymore, says Richmond. We need to put it out there so we can see what happens at scale.
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