The host wasn't done , though, in her crusade, bringing up the judge's stay on the district court's order that the Trump EPA "unfreeze" $20 billion in funds that Team Biden had ready to go to clean energy grants. Zeldin was off to the races in his thorough answer:

I'm glad you pointed out that the circuit court then stopped what the district court was saying. So, self-dealing and conflicts of interest, unqualified recipients, lack of sufficient EPA oversight, these were all concerns that we had. First were- had the alarm raised when a Biden EPA political appointee in December was on video saying that they were tossing gold bars off the Titanic, rushing to get billions of dollars out the door before Inauguration Day. And also said, with an eye towards getting themselves jobs at recipient NGOs. So for example, as it relates to unqualified recipients, there was one recipient NGO that only received $100 in 2023, they got $2 billion in 2024. They also have in their grant agreement requirement to complete a training in 90 days called "how to develop a budget." They were amending the account control agreements days before the inauguration, reducing EPA oversight.

Burgum said:

Again, I have to smile because, apparently... having been in the private sector for my whole life until being a governor, and then working in a state where we had to balance the budget, which is different.

I mean, if the federal government is like a ranch that, where they threw everything in the barn for 100 years, and great grandpa and grampy never threw anything away, and has accumulated everything and you never had to clean it out, that would be—that's what the federal government is. //

From administration to administration, Democrat and Republican, they have simply thrown things into the federal barn without any assessment of whether they have any purpose or use, and instead of assessing this, they hire people to manage or oversee the barn, without assessing whether its contents are even worthy of management or oversight.

Burgum continued,

And typically the federal government would send in a committee of 25 people who pick up one object, spend two weeks talking about, should we get rid of it, what did great grandpa use this for, maybe we should save it, it might be historic. What we're doing right now is emptying out the barn and deciding what should go back in. And what should go back in is what actually serves the American people. //

Take national parks for an example. There is so much overhead of people that work for the park system that don't work in a park. We could actually increase the number of people. Like this summer, we'll have more people working in Yellowstone than we had in 2020. More people working, but we could end up with fewer people across the whole park system. Because, guess what? We may not need that many people in IT, we may not need that many people in HR, there's things that we can do to streamline. And if we've got people who are in this business because they care about the environment and they care about our lands, we've got customer-facing, land-facing jobs available. We have 5,000 jobs posted to go work in the parks[..]. wildfire fighters, people that are for summer help, come work for us. But work in a job where we're serving the public as opposed to in D.C. or in a regional location, where you're just doing overhead that's part of the barn that's never been cleaned out. //

Random US Citizen
30 minutes ago
The federal government owns 640 million acres. That's almost 30% of the land in the U.S. Fully 80% of Nevada is owned by the feds. In Utah, it's 65%. While that's a lot of land to manage, that management shouldn't require 50% of its 80,000 employees to live in Washington D.C. Probably 800 of them should be in D.C. and the other 79,200 should be on or near the land that's being managed.

On Thursday, the Department of Government Efficiency revealed that three deep-blue states—California, New York, and Massachusetts—were responsible for $305 million, or 80%, of the $382 million in fraudulent unemployment payments issued since 2020.

DOGE also reported that 68% of unemployment benefits paid to parolees flagged by Customs and Border Protection as being on the terrorist watchlist or having criminal records were issued in California.

The DOGE team found that $59 million in unemployment benefits was paid to 24,500 people listed as over 115 years old. Another $254 million went to 28,000 people between the ages of 1 and 5, while $69 million was distributed to 9,700 people with birthdates more than 15 years in the future.

The report highlights one case in particular: an individual born in the year 2154—not a typo—received $41,000 in benefits.

The "initial survey of Unemployment Insurance claims since 2020" found that thousands of people with future birthdates claimed benefits.

The survey also indicated that thousands of supposedly very young and very old people had claimed benefits.

The DOGE post states that the survey found, "24.5k people over 115 years old claimed $59M in benefits," "28k people between 1 and 5 years old claimed $254M in benefits," and "9.7k people with birth dates over 15 years in the future claimed $69M in benefits."

"In one case, someone with a birthday in 2154 claimed $41k," the post also notes. //

That's crazy — so no one was performing any kind of a "sanity check"? And if they let these things go by which had such obvious issues and should have been immediately flagged, what about other things that were probably also fraud but perhaps not as obvious? They're supposed to be evaluating the validity of the claims, but it sounds like complete incompetence or lack of concern about the issues if this is true. And this is just what they've found so far. //

But instead of being concerned about the fraud and the waste and how to rectify it, you have the left instead attacking Elon Musk and his team, with some protesting and even attacking Tesla in order to try to stop him. One has to conclude they don't want the problems stopped. It's next-level insanity.

As the country’s largest funder of civil legal aid, LSC provides critical legal representation to low-income Americans—including veterans, families with children and seniors—who are facing life-altering civil legal challenges such as wrongful evictions, domestic violence and consumer fraud. Defunding LSC would not only deny vulnerable individuals access to justice, but would ultimately increase costs for taxpayers.

When someone is accused of a crime and does not have the resources to hire an attorney, state and federal governments provide legal representation. This is not the case when people face civil actions such as custody battles, foreclosure or denial of veterans and social security benefits. To qualify for legal aid, people must meet strict income guidelines: a family of four must earn less than $32,150 a year and an individual must earn less than $15,650.

A well-functioning legal system is fundamental to maintaining order and ensuring justice. LSC provides essential funding for legal aid organizations that assist low-income American workers and families in navigating civil legal disputes. Without this assistance, many would be left without legal recourse, exacerbating instability in communities and overburdening the courts with self-represented litigants. //

Rather than promoting progressive legal activism, as the misguided article states, LSC and its grantees are bound by strict statutory limitations (imposed by Congress) on the types of cases it can support. LSC grantees cannot engage in class-action lawsuits, lobbying, or political advocacy, and those restrictions apply to funding from any source. In other words, if a grantee accepts so much as $1 from LSC, it must abide by the same conditions that Congress imposed; it cannot raise money from other sources and engage in any prohibited activities. Moreover, extensive, multi-layered oversight mechanisms, including an independent Office of the Inspector General, review and ensure that both LSC and its grantees operate within the scope of these limitations. The idea that civil legal aid is a vehicle for partisan activism is a mischaracterization that ignores the broad restrictions set by Congress. //

Rather than eliminating LSC, a more constructive approach would be to ensure its funding is used effectively and transparently. Lawmakers should focus, as they have in the past, on strengthening accountability measures while maintaining this critical safety net that aligns with the principles of fairness, efficiency and limited government intervention. //

Reply:

Hecht and Malcolm assert that, today, Congress has finally succeeded in restricting LSC’s radical mission. Let us for a moment grant that they are correct (which they are not); is it not strange that they see no irony in urging conservatives to accept and embrace Lyndon Johnson’s original Great Society vision of federal funding for private lawsuits? As constitutionalists, conservatives flatly reject the notion that Congress, under any circumstances, should be injecting each year hundreds of millions of dollars into the private practice of law. //

Meanwhile, California Rural Legal Assistance continues to sue state entities, such as the Bakersfield City School District, for not spending enough public money on education. A generation ago, Governor Reagan wondered, as should President Trump today, what business the federal government has in financing private lawsuits against state and local entities. If a majority of Californians seek to change public policy on education, let them win at the ballot box, not in the courthouse in league with an activist judge. //

It is the same with America’s out-of-control homelessness policies, which have been pushed to extremes, ruining much of our country’s urban life. Homelessness is another public policy passion in the legal aid world and judicial activism is the approach that most LSC grantees support.

There's a guy by the name of Antonio Gracias, who, as founder and managing partner at Valor Equity Partners, has proven to be a pretty smart fellow in his own right. As a patriotic American, he was willing to work with Elon at DOGE.

And how lucky are we?

Because what Gracias revealed he and the DOGE team found at Social Security 'by accident' after, as he said...

'There are a lot of good people in the system who pointed us in this direction and I want to honor them right now. That work in the government today. Who took risks to show us these numbers and tell us this was going on.'

...is gobsmacking.

What is the 'this' he's referring to that they found?

That the Biden administration in 2024 - one year - gave 2.1 MILLION NON-CITIZENS social security numbers.

There's only one reason to do that. //

The defaults in the system from social security to all of the benefit programs have been set to max inclusion, MAX PAY for these people and minimum collection.

We found 1.3 million of them already on Medicaid as an example. We've gone through on every benefit program we went through, we found groups from this particular group of people, this 5.5 million people in those benefit programs.

And then what was really, really disturbing us was why we're asking ourselves why. So we actually just took a sample and looked at voter registration records and we found people here registered to vote in this population. Yes.

Who did vote? We found some by sampling that ACTUALLY DID VOTE.

We have referred them to prosecution at the Homeland Security Investigation Service. Yeah. Already, already. That is already happening right now. The truly disturbing thing though, I just want you to know this, a truly disturbing thing to me, and the darkest thing about this, to me, the voter fraud is terrible.” //

MUSK: "People think that Biden was asleep at the switch. They weren't asleep at the switch. It was a massive large scale program to import as many illegals as possible, ultimately to change the entire voting map of the United States and disenfranchise the American people and making it a deep blue one party state from which there would be no escape."

GRACIAS: "Human Traffickers made $13-15B off of this. This is a human tragedy. We created a system that created an incentive for people to come here and get taken advantage of by these traffickers."

MUSK: "This is not made up by the right. This is absolutely true...The real reason for these attacks and the burning of the cars, is that we're going to turn off the payments to illegals...I think this is the biggest voter fraud in the history of America by far. If the machine behind the Kamala puppet had won then they would have legalized all the illegals and there would be no swing states."

BILL MAHER: "Why do we need to subsidize? We're so polarized. These outlets became popular at a time when Republicans and Democrats didn't hate each other and weren't at each other's throats and didn't think each other was an existential threat. In that world, you can't have places like this, I think, anymore. They have to be private.". //

COUltraMAGA
6 hours ago
I hate that equivocation of Maher’s. “We all hate each other”.

It’s like the Paly’s and Israelis. If the Paly’s let down their arms, there would be peace. If the Israelis did, they would cease to exist.

If the Dems stopped being insane and terrorist sympathizers…we could have a great country. If the Republicans stopped trying to g to fight their insanity, we would cease to be a country.

Our fight matters, and it’s not because we ”hate each other”, Maher.

Fox News Senior Correspondent and host of "Special Report" Bret Baier sat down with Elon Musk and the entire DOGE team on Thursday. This is a step up from the individual interviews done with Musk and one or two of the members. While their work overlaps all of the government agencies, each DOGE member spoke to the findings at particular agencies like the Social Security Administration, the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Health, the Department of the Treasury, and the Department of the Interior.

Baier kicked off his questioning with Musk, asking what are the DOGE budgetary savings goals and what he thinks he's achieved thus far?

For the life of me, I really don't understand why it is in our interests to fund research at foreign universities using federal funds. Research funding is a zero-sum affair. Doling out $386 million to Australian universities means that money will not be available for funding opportunities for American scientists or world-class scientists living in other countries who want to come to America. We should've learned the folly of pushing our research dollars into foreign universities where we can't control what goes on with our Wuhan Institute of Virology tragedy.

As the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) looks to slash waste and correct inefficiencies, one DOGE adviser revealed it's "hard to really grasp the scale" of problems facing the IRS.

"A huge part of our government is collecting taxes. We cannot perform the basic functions of tax collection without paying a toll to all these contractors. We really have to figure out how to get out of this hole. We're in a really deep hole right now," DOGE representative Sam Corcos said on "The Ingraham Angle" Thursday.

Department of Government Efficiency @DOGE
·
There is a pattern across all agencies where IT “modernization” contracts do not pay for outcomes/performance; instead, they pay for time. Therefore, the incentive is for contractors to “never finish,” resulting in incredible waste.

As an example, IRS modernization started in 1990 to be delivered in 1996. Today, the work is not complete and the contractors say it’s still 5 years away. 29 years behind schedule and ~$15b over budget. Everyone loses, except the government contractors.

This must change. This week, the IRS froze ~$1.5B in modernization contracts, none of which have any effect on tax filings. All of those contracts will then either be cancelled or the contract terms will be changed to pay-for-performance.
9:25 AM · Mar 21, 2025 //

The U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) launched a chaotic, short-lived rebellion against Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Monday, sabotaging their own building and communications infrastructure in a failed attempt to resist a Trump administration takeover, sources exclusively told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The standoff stemmed from President Donald Trump’s Feb. 19 executive order demanding the dramatic downsizing of numerous federally-funded organizations, explicitly requiring USIP to reduce its operations and personnel to the minimum levels required by law. //

Further reinforcing the deliberate, calculated nature of the rebellion, an internal memo from Feb. 6 titled “External Agency Visitor Procedure,” also obtained exclusively by the DCNF, outlined detailed contingency plans for resisting the Trump administration’s attempts at a leadership transition. The document asserts USIP’s discretion over its own facilities, security protocols and access control, buttressing the leadership’s belief that they could reject external overseers.

It also postulates the institute’s control over its own physical infrastructure, implying leadership believed they had the authority to disable security systems, destroy locks and otherwise render the building inoperable as a means of resistance. The document confirms advanced planning more than ten days before Trump’s inciting executive order, contradicting the outward appearance of Monday’s showdown as a spontaneous and purely reactionary resistance.

One of the seven small federal agencies that President Donald Trump ordered downsized or eliminated on Friday was rife with corruption, with its employees hiring friends and relatives, commissioning paintings of themselves, and using government credit cards to indulge in constant luxuries.

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) occupied a nine-story office tower on D.C.’s K Street for only 60 employees, many of whom actually worked from home, prior to the pandemic. Its managers had luxury suites with full bathrooms; one manager would often be “in the shower” when she was needed, while another used her bathroom as a cigarette lounge. FMCS recorded its director as being on a years-long business trip to D.C. so he could have all of his meals and living expenses covered by taxpayers, simply for showing up to the office.

FMCS is a 230-employee agency that exists to serve as a voluntary mediator between unions and businesses. As an “independent agency,” its director nominally reports to the president, but the agency is so small that in effect, there is no oversight at all — and it showed, becoming a real-life caricature of all the excesses that the Department of Government Efficiency has alleged take place in government.

On Monday we reported on what Elon Musk termed 14 "magic money" computers spread out at various agencies that he said were issuing payments out of thin air. He said most of them were in the Treasury, but there were some in other agencies as well, such as Health and Human Services, one at the State Department, and one at the Department of Defense.

Musk added that his goal is to save $1 trillion of waste and fraud by fiscal year 2026. Musk went on to describe instances where there were software licenses and media subscriptions that outnumbered employees in a department. Musk also stated that DOGE has found "twice as many government credit cards as there are humans." //

Pulte then explained he was in "second headquarter[s] at Freddie Mac," and again no one appeared to be there -- the desks were "clean," he said. He went to a cafeteria where the staff was working five days a week, but the cafeteria was empty because the workers weren't there five days a week. That doesn't make a lot of sense.

Pulte told Laura Ingraham that at Fannie Mae there were about 2,900 people who were supposed to work in the building, but that it turns out only about 49 were showing up full-time. He said on average that was the highest number they found. He said Freddie Mac had a similar problem and they were going to fix it. So what's happening with all those workers who aren't showing up? Are they working from home or are they not even needed?

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
·
Gross! The ordinary people and the unlicensed peasants are able to speak with and even influence elites in DC who are running the government. The NYT is horrified.
3:36 PM · Feb 26, 2025. //

The article attempts to put reasons why these things should be there, but only makes it more obvious that Musk is doing the people's work.

And that's exactly what's happening here. Rufo and Raichik are oftentimes passed the information from people like you and me. Using their platforms that they built over time, they drag these things into the light where Musk can see it more clearly, then Musk gets his team on it and elevate it to someone with the authority to destroy it, sometimes that person being Trump himself.

It's not just these two, either. Musk doesn't just interact with influencers. He interacts with people of all stripes, taking their advice, listening to their suggestions, and acting accordingly.

And this is what truly drives the left bonkers.

The left values authority, and no one has more authority than over-educated elites. They're the ones who know best! How dare the unwashed take control of something they're not qualified to run?

But that's exactly how America functions.

Rep. Tim Burchett: Mr. Roman, are you aware that we are sending $40 million a week to the Taliban?

Gregg Roman: Yes, sir.

TB: Can you name other instances of foreign aid going to terrorist organizations?

GR: We have assisted Al-Shabaab in Somalia, there's been instances of the Hamzi network in Sudan, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Kata'ib Hezbollah, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham in Syria. Dozens of terror organizations have received indirect assistance from US foreign aid.

TB: Could you elaborate a little on the mechanisms in place to stop foreign aid from going to terrorist groups and why are they not working if we have any in place? (Goes on to explain a graphic display of terrorist weapons and explosives.)

GR: Let's use Gaza as our case study. $2.1 billion in American taxpayers' money to Gaza since October 7th when Hamas invaded southern Israel. USAID money was going in terms of an emergency use authorization to try to go to parties that USAID formerly had a relationship with in the Gaza Strip. That had to have been vetted by (Office of Foreign Assets Control) OFAC, they should have been vetted against the special designated terror list from the State Department and from other Treasury organizations. Waivers were granted because they said that there was an emergency use to have that money come into Gaza, thereby jettisoning the usual, typical screening procedures. As a result, 90 percent of aid that was going from the United States by way of its agents in Gaza ended up in Hamas-controlled areas.

It seems USAID security was trained for every contingency except that of an American citizen showing up at an American government agency — an agency, mind you, that is supposed to be something like the governmental equivalent of Samaritan’s Purse — and asking mundane questions.

One of the two receptionists invited me to sit down to prevent me from overhearing the phone conversation. As the security guard spoke quietly and nervously on the phone, a host of people came and went through the foyer. Whatever they were doing here, shut down they were not. //

This accusation was quickly dropped in favor of another: espionage.

I freely admitted it to the NSA man: “Yes, I am spying. On my government, not yours” — a cheeky reply but one that clearly caused some consternation.

“Do you have an Egyptian government permit to take photos of Egyptian government buildings?” he asked.

“No.” He briefly looked triumphant. “But I’m not taking photos of Egyptian government buildings. That,” I pointed in the direction of USAID, “is an American government building, and I am an American.”

Annoyed, he left again, pacing on the phone. They clearly did not know how to proceed, and while being charged with espionage is a terrifying prospect, I knew it was problematic for them because it would be a tacit admission that there was more than pallets of rice and canned goods behind the high spiked walls of USAID in Egypt. //0

Safely out of the country, there are several takeaways from this incident. The first is that this is how an intelligence agency behaves, not a benevolence arm of the United States. USAID security guards had been embarrassed by my previous visit where I had breached their security, not by force but with their assistance. This was, for them, a kind of payback. But neither Cairo police nor the NSA had any interest in that. Indeed, they treated USAID security contemptuously.

The second is that I was, I think, dealing with three governments: the authentic U.S. government represented by the naïve fellow who took my call at the U.S. Embassy, the Egyptian government represented by Cairo police and the state security apparatus, and the shadow government represented by whoever it was inside USAID that had the NSA on speed dial. President Trump doesn’t yet have all his own people in place, and the deep state, as real as any branch of government, is deeply embedded. Nowhere is that truer than in the corrupt USAID.

The third is the desperate attempts to get me to enter the USAID compound. One had the feeling they were trying, to quote Fox, to “Jamal Khashoggi” me. Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist, entered a Saudi consulate in Istanbul of his own accord and was there murdered by his own government.

Finally, this was a monumentally stupid response. Had the USAID office, on my first visit, simply said something like, “Yeah, President Trump is slashing the USAID, and we are in the process of closing shop,” there would be no story here. But the fearful, reactionary response smells of corruption. This was the Streisand effect, initiating calls from high in our government to ask: What the hell is going on at USAID in Egypt?

I will leave that question unanswered. But with war in Gaza, Trump’s plan to resettle Palestinians, and mounting evidence that USAID has been funding not only the invasion of the United States by illegal aliens but the very demise of our republic and even terrorism, the destruction of this rogue agency cannot come soon enough.

Charlie Kirk

@charliekirk11
·
Follow
For the first time in my lifetime we have an administration that is dead serious about rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in government so the next generation doesn’t live as debt slaves.

Every expense must be justified—with our tax dollars you are guilty until proven innocent.

5:11 PM · Feb 24, 2025. //

The thing to realize about the government is that it's not a citizen of the United States, and thus isn't subject to the same rights as we are. In fact, the government doesn't technically have any rights, it has allowances as agreed upon by the people of the United States of America. It has certain powers, to be sure, but these powers can be increased, decreased, or eliminated as the people see fit.

As you can see, this is exactly what's happening with DOGE. The people demanded a reduction in government power and a removal of waste, and that's exactly what's happening. Even as the Democrats and leftists cry foul, the government is losing its power.

There is a simple truth buried here.

If a government is unable or unwilling to reveal how it's using the money it takes from us with the threat of punishment for not giving up, then it's not our government. //

. In fact, government is often times a necessary evil, born out of a need to inhibit the worst impulses of man, whether those impulses be foreign or domestic. It is a system necessary for civilization to happen in an imperfect world, but it's the fact that we have an imperfect world that the system we create to curb is itself imperfect, and thus needs to be monitored, audited, and sometimes destroyed, at least in part so as not to have to be destroyed in its totality.

JHW252
7 hours ago
Has anyone noticed that no one in Congress from either side of the aisle has acknowledged that the oversight occurring by Musk and his team was the job they were elected to do ?
The entire Congress should be embarrassed and humiliated that their incompetence and malfeasance has cost the taxpayers millions.
Politicians have hides like rhinoceroses my father used to say. //

Sane & Logical
8 hours ago edited
I didn’t hear her going on about how bad it was for the Keystone Pipeline employees who lost their jobs. Or any other number of private sector employees who had lost jobs because of government shutting down coal and gas companies.
As far as I am concerned, government employees should not be paid more than the average private sector worker. And no lavish bonuses or benefits. They are supposed to be public servants.
Also need to get rid or all the lifetime pensions, perks, and benefits for members of congress and senators.

Steamfish Sane & Logical
8 hours ago
Nor did she shed a tear over military personnel and defense contractor employees who were sacked for refusing The Holy Vax.

Autism Capital 🧩 @AutismCapital
·
🚨NEW: Elon Musk comes out on stage at CPAC 2025 and is presented a golden chainsaw by Argentinian President, Javier Milei, and yells, “THIS IS THE CHAINSAW FOR BUREAUCRACY!” 🔥

10:48 PM · Feb 20, 2025. //

If he hadn't done enough already by reviewing finances with his team, now Trump has also tasked them with reviewing regulations in accordance with a new executive order. //

review regulations, with emphasis on those that are cost heavy.

Any regulations that aren’t in line with the Trump administration policy will be rescinded or modified, including those determined to be based on “unlawful delegations of legislative power,” that inflict costs on private parties that don’t also benefit the public, that harm national security interests, and other criteria.

Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger
·
The New York Times says “Musk Asserts Without Proof That Bureaucracy Is Rife With Fraud.” Seriously? The GAO — under Biden — estimated last year that we are losing $233-$521 billion per year to fraud. Guys, it’s right there. Why do you continue with this… fraud? SMH
4:47 AM · Feb 12, 2025. //

After just over a month, Musk has found billions of dollars in waste and fraud, including a $2 billion kiss for Georgia's favorite salad-dodging election loser, Stacey Abrams.

So Trump is dismantling the false god of transgenderism, and Musk is rooting out fraud like a truffle pig on Red Bull. Here comes JD Vance.

Vance said what no evil straight, white man could say a mere 365 days ago; he told Europe that mass migration is killing their nations and the U.S. as well. //

Ian Jaeger @IanJaeger29
·
BREAKING: Rep. Tim Burchett says he thinks there’s a “paper trail” of money that was sent overseas that ended up back in the pockets of lawmakers in Washington D.C.

He said there will soon be a lot of retirements.
4:18 PM · Feb 17, 2025