By Jade Walker

Maurene Comey, a federal prosecutor in the cases against accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, has been fired. Although a reason for the dismissal was not immediately clear, she is also the daughter of James Comey, who is the former director of the FBI and a critic of President Donald Trump. 

Here's what else you need to know to get up to speed and on with your day.

A view of the Senate floor on Wednesday. Senate TV

DOGE cuts

In a 51 to 48 overnight vote, the Senate passed the spending cuts that were proposed by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and sent the package to the House. Two Republicans — Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — opposed the measure and raised concerns about the potential for adverse consequences. The bill would slash $9 billion in federal funds that Congress had already approved. Roughly $8 billion will be pulled from US Agency for International Development (USAID) programs and another $1.1 billion will be withdrawn from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund NPR and PBS. The DOGE cuts must pass in the House by Friday.

USAID

The US plans to destroy nearly 500 metric tons of taxpayer-funded emergency food, the State Department confirmed. The nutrient-dense biscuits, which have been sitting in a Dubai warehouse for months, were supposed to help feed starving people around the world. The destruction of the critically needed food would not have happened prior to the Trump administration’s destruction of the US Agency for International Development, a former USAID official said. Two rations of biscuits a day are enough to stop people from dying, they added. Now that the food is about to expire, it must be destroyed; that will cost American taxpayers another $100,000. “This is the definition of waste,” the former official said.

Iraq fire

At least 61 men, women and children perished in a massive fire that ripped through a 5-story shopping mall in eastern Iraq on Wednesday. According to a statement from Iraq’s Ministry of Interior, the bodies of 14 people remain unidentified. “Despite the severity of the situation, Civil Defense teams heroically managed to rescue more than 45 people who were trapped inside the building, with remarkable dedication and courage,” the interior ministry said. The cause of the blaze was not immediately known. The building, which housed a restaurant and a large supermarket, had only been open for seven days. The region’s governor has declared three days of mourning for the victims.

Flood risk research

The Trump administration has paused work on a new database that is designed to provide Americans with precise estimates about their risk of experiencing flash floods. The database would, for the first time, take climate change into account when making precipitation frequency estimates, which would help people plan for the future when designing and building infrastructure projects. “This is about engineers and businesses and public works, making the best informed decisions possible so that we’re not in a situation where we build something today, and in 20 years we have to go back and retrofit it,” said Dan Walker, co-chair of the American Society of Civil Engineers-NOAA task force on climate resilience in engineering practice. A National Weather Service spokesperson said the work on the database is under review.

Syphilis

Certain supplies of a long-acting injection of penicillin have been recalled. Although there were no reports of adverse events related to the Bicillin L-A shots, some lots were found to be contaminated with floating particles. Now, drugmaker Pfizer is warning doctors that it expects to run low on supplies of the medicine. Benzathine penicillin G, sold as Bicillin, is used to treat a number of common bacterial infections, such as strep throat, in adults and children. It is also the only medicine that’s approved and recommended to treat syphilis during pregnancy. Over the past decade, rates of congenital syphilis in the US have increased from 335 in 2012 to more than 3,800 in 2023, the CDC reported. Without treatment, syphilis during pregnancy can cause miscarriages and stillbirths. In babies, syphilis can lead to vision and hearing problems as well as deformities of the bones and teeth and death.

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$31.5 billion

That’s how much Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said it’ll cost to build a new air traffic control system for the country. 

“We’re lawmakers. We should be legislating. What we’re getting now is a direction from the White House and being told, ‘This is the priority. We want you to execute on it. We’ll be back with you with another round.’ I don’t accept that.”

— Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, in a floor speech about advancing the DOGE spending cuts.

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 Things AM is edited by CNN's Andrew Torgan.

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