The truth is, with every discovery of waste and corruption, I feel even more excited about what Musk is doing. With every panicked and angry speech given by a Democrat, my confidence in what Musk is doing is only increases.
I'm not just feeling hostile, I feel happily hostile.
But one thing needs to be understood by Psaki and the Democrats. This is definitely a takeover, but it's not a takeover by Trump or Musk, it's from the people. All the hostility they're feeling is coming from us, the people whose tax dollars were wasted and even used against us. Before we stopped them, they wanted to empower the IRS with our own tax dollars to take even more of our tax dollars.
Have a happily hostile year, everyone!
Ernst’s struggle to hold USAID accountable frustrated Musk who called the agency’s obstruction of her attempts to investigate ‘outrageous.’. //
Republican Sen. Joni Ernst disclosed in an X Spaces forum with DOGE Head Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy on Sunday that USAID issued “all kinds of threats” to the Republican and her office for her attempt to “exercise my oversight capacity in Congress.”
Ernst first pressed USAID on how it used its tax dollars to pay the facilities and administrative costs outlined in Negotiated Indirect Cost Rate Agreements (NICRAs) in November 2022. //
When USAID finally responded in February 2023, the agency claimed it did not “have a system to track or report on this data, as it is not possible to compare indirect costs between for-profit and nonprofit organizations at the rate level.”
One week later, Ernst’s staff debunked this claim by sending USAID a link “to a publicly reported NICRA database.” USAID confirmed the existence of a database but once again refused to indulge Ernst’s demands.
This time, the agency claimed that divulging NICRA information was impossible because it would violate several federal laws including “the Economic Espionage Act, Protection of Trade Secrets Act, and Disclosure of Confidential Information Act.” //
Eventually, Ernst’s staff was permitted access to “very limited data” about USAID’s indirect costs.
“They were allowed to go into a room and they couldn’t take notes. They were on camera the whole time. They couldn’t remove any of the information,” Ernst told Musk.
Even with “very limited data,” Ernst said her staff discovered USAID spent “anywhere from 50 to 60 percent” on indirect costs which could range from someone’s “rent in Paris” to a “fancy dinner to entertain whomever.”
Kennedy's Executive Order 10973 named the USAID. But read the first line carefully.
By virtue of the authority vested in me by the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (75 Stat. 424) and section 301 of title 3 of the United States Code, and as President of the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:
This corresponds to a Congressional directive, the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. That law required Kennedy to create a foreign aid organization to replace the hodgepodge then in existence. The law lists a wide range of international aid activities required by Congress and directs the president to put those functions under a single person.
The President may exercise any functions conferred upon him by this Act through such agency or officer of the United States Government as he shall direct. Tne head of any such agency or such officer may from time to time promulgate such rules and regulations as may be necessary to carry out such functions, and may delegate authority to perform any such functions, including, if he shall so specify, the authority successively to redelegate any of such functions to any of his subordinates. //
Such designation and authorization shall be in writing, shall be published in the Federal Register, shall be subject to such terms, conditions, and limitations as the President may deem advisable, and shall be revocable at any time by the President in whole or in part. //
From the beginning, the USAID administrator has required Senate approval and has had a budget.
Because Congress created the agency, President Trump will either gut it and leave the remnant alive or set off a direct conflict with Congress, which he may or may not want.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt battled the press on Monday, listing off several grants she described as "insane." That includes over a million dollars to push DEI in Serbia and tens of thousands of dollars for a transgender opera in Colombia. As it turns out, those examples were just the tip of the iceberg. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) put out a thread on Tuesday and you won't believe what your money has been going to.
On second thought, you might believe it given our government's track record, but it's still jarring. Take a walk with me because things are about to get crazy.
Elon Musk @elonmusk
.
Fraud in the federal government is closer to 10% of disbursements, so more like ~$700 billion per year.
Outright waste is at least 15%, so another trillion+ dollars.
Anyone who works in government knows this.
Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger
·
Forty-three paragraphs into the NYT's latest hit piece on @elonmusk, the six (!) by-lined reporters reveal that the federal government lost $236 billion to apparent fraud ("improper payments") in 2023 alone. Maybe this isn't the dunk you guys thought it was?
John Ʌ Konrad V
@johnkonrad
Fact: Bribery is rampant in the U.S. government and military—but it’s also legal.
To understand what’s going on at USAID you must understand how bribery works in America today.
Here’s how to legally bribe a 4-star US Army General:
American bribery operates differently than the classic cash-in-a-suitcase (or bitcoin today!) model still used in most other countries. It relies on trust, time, and reputation—making it nearly impossible to prosecute.
Efficiencies
Tracking DOGE wins
We are grateful to the wide range of funders, including national governments, the UN and other international organisations, foundations, corporate partners and private individuals who support us.
Our significant donors include the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, several UN agencies, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation, Global Affairs Canada, USAID and many others.
In an interview with Fox News, however, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the agency had become filled with “rank insubordination.”
“They just think they’re a global entity and that their master is the globe and not the United States. And that’s not sustainable,” Rubio said.
Rubio told reporters on his first foreign trip to Latin America he is now the acting director of USAID after employees and congressional Democrats were locked out of the headquarters this week.
“There are a lot of functions of USAID that are going to continue, that are going to be part of American foreign policy, but it has to be aligned with American foreign policy,” Rubio said in El Salvador.
A review of its recent priorities reveal the agency had more to do with far-left social engineering overseas than responsible diplomacy. Here’s a look at what USAID has been funding with American tax dollars:
The White House’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has finally gained access to the U.S. government’s payment system after a career bureaucrat had blocked them out. In an executive order creating DOGE, President Donald Trump ordered all agencies to provide the small but energetic team, headed by Elon Musk, with “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems,” for the purpose of identifying and exposing areas of government waste, which can later be cut.
A single payment system within the U.S. Treasury Department is effectively the spigot for every dollar Uncle Sam spends, and for decades access to it has remained closely held among career officials in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Fiscal Service. Since the election, agents of DOGE have requested access to this system, and they renewed their requests after Trump’s executive order made their department official.
Yet through the first week of the Trump administration, Acting Treasury Secretary David Lebryk denied DOGE access to the payment system. Last Monday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trump’s nominee, received Senate confirmation, and Trump administration officials placed Lebryk on administrative leave.
On Friday, Lebryk announced his retirement in a letter to Treasury employees — rather a high-flying move for a civil servant. The letter addressed the Fiscal Service without addressing the controversy directly. “The Fiscal Service performs some of the most vital functions in government,” he said. “Our work may be unknown to most of the public, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t exceptionally important.”
This could simply be encouraging comments, or it could be a subtle call to further resistance against impending changes by the Trump administration. The latter would be both inappropriate and unwelcome. //
“The fact that there are people in the government, paid by taxpayers, who think the President of the United States or his designee cannot see who is being paid by the federal government is a scandal of the highest order,” Kilgannon added. “Expect resignations and firings until this situation is corrected. We have a right and a duty to know where federal dollars are flowing.”
Meanwhile, the mainstream media is not enamored by the thought of public accountability for public spending; their reporting attempts to make the access by DOGE appear sinister. //
For now, the stated purpose of DOGE is to audit the government for waste, so that the elected agents of the people can actually control the government that governs in the people’s name. The team is too small and moving too fast to pull illegitimate shenanigans along the way. //
But even mechanical jobs need oversight because machines can malfunction, too. Musk reported on Saturday, “The @DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups. They literally never denied a payment in their entire career. Not even once.” //
“More will come out,” Gacek continued, “but two things are clear: Trump was watching how Elon Musk took over Twitter, and there will be no #resistance in the federal workforce.”
Cafeblue32
5 minutes ago
Like I said, pattern recognition. I see it all the time with democrats now. Whatever crime they're accusing the GOP of committing and whatever awful character flaw they assign conservatives is inversely proportional to the guilt of the accusers themselves. The louder they are, the guiltier they are of trying to deflect. This has always been so to a point, but nothing like today. Hillary did it by gaslighting her working with Russia to get rid of Trump and transferring all onto Trump to take the attention off her involvement, and dems have been openly doing this since. //
Sandy-like the beach I can be
2 hours ago
"All the billionaires I know..." How does a bartender from the Bronx know so many billionaires? Never mind. //
reddog1
2 hours ago
"the danger ... in the lack of expertise ... that Elon has"
I can't think of anyone with more demonstrated achievements in more diverse fields. I don't know if it's expertise or just boldness and some ability to assimilate information at a pace that most of the rest of us don't possess, but the guy is amazing.
AOC as the PR voice for your movement -- that's what I would call not smart. //
GeoMcGeo
an hour ago
I'm sitting here working remotely from my home high in the mountains with reliable high-speed Starlink internet service put in place by SpaceX, two ventures that were unimaginable to most people 20 years ago, and marveling at Elon Musk's vision and execution skills. What has AOC and her party done for me? Reduced my spending power by 20% over the last 4 years and wrecked my childrens' career prospects as they wrapped up college at the beginning of the COVID panic.
The US Digital Service was a part of the Executive Office of the President (EOP) established by Barack Obama. Trump then renamed that unit "DOGE." Most of the people in the EOP are "unelected" as are most of the people in the executive branch and the USAID officials. Chuck thinks they are somehow sacrosanct and immune from review.
Schumer is essentially saying the elected president doesn't have any right to review an agency within the executive branch. Indeed, it is Schumer who is arguing that an "unelected shadow government" of bureaucrats from USAID should not be questioned or reviewed by the president and the people in the EOP when USAID has control of $50 billion a year.
Plus, imagine Democrats having fits about things being run by a shadow government when Joe Biden was in cognitive decline for four years. They have some nerve. //
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
·
Hysterical reactions like this is how you know that @DOGE is doing work that really matters.
This is the one shot the American people have to defeat BUREAUcracy, rule of the bureaucrats, and restore DEMOcracy, rule of the people. We’re never going to get another chance like this.
It’s now or never. Your support is crucial to the success of the revolution of the people.
Chuck Schumer @SenSchumer
An unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government.
DOGE is not a real government agency.
DOGE has no authority to make spending decisions.
DOGE has no authority to shut programs down or to ignore federal law.
DOGE’s conduct cannot be…
3:59 AM · Feb 4, 2025
It seems shocking that a government entity that has the word "aid" in its acronym would ever be accused of doing dirty tricks and worse against the friends and foes of the U.S., much less be defanged or shut down by Donald Trump. For the world's lefties this defanging is unthinkable. But now, we're finding out all kinds of skullduggery attributed to our color revolutionistas at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Victoria Nuland, and Samantha Power and their kindred through the years. And color revolution coups have been their specialty. See Ukraine 2014.
Need a race riot in Africa? No problem, USAID is your go-to riot planner. Want to force out a democratically elected president? Call USAID for an information onslaught guaranteed to get rid of any elected populist. Need conservatives censored? Call USAID.
But you may not have heard this one unless you follow the work of former CIA targeter and Defense Department operative Sarah Adams. See her interview on the "Shawn Ryan Show" podcast below.
She tracked the Al-Qaeda operation and operators that Jake Sullivan and Hillary Clinton denied were part the Benghazi attack and proved it was a preplanned Al-Qaeda terrorist attack.
And Adams has tracked-back the money being sent by the United States government to our enemies—the people we went to war against to settle the score for 9/11.
Catherine reports nearby that USAID dollars support Iran's proxies Hamas. If that's shocking, then you'll want to sit down for this next revelation. The U.S. State Department and USAID pay millions of dollars per week to the Taliban, the bin Laden family leading the group, and the Haqqani terror network. Remember those guys? Didn't we wage a 20-year-long war to get rid of them ...??? //
And now, as Adams reckons, we pay the Taliban and all the above parties between $40-87 million per week that is carried on a plane complete with a bag man who doles out the payoffs. //
We pay our enemies—and they're our enemies—millions per week. We share intelligence with them, and we left our other enemy, China, in the driver's seat in Afghanistan. How does this help the United States? Both the U.S. State Department and USAID and the Pentagon made that happen.
Whose side are they on? //
And even though we're paying them millions per month, Adams says Al-Qaeda terrorists who's training camps we're paying for have gone gotten visas from Brazil, come up through Panama's Darien Gap, and entered our country for Hamas-like attacks in the U.S. Thanks, Joe Biden.
I know Trump talked about negotiating with the Taliban to get out of Afghanistan when he was President #45, but considering that the USAID employees were attempting to sidestep his foreign policy priorities (and were fired for it), wouldn't it be a good idea to get a reckoning of how much we're paying these terrorists to kill us? //
Federal government grant award search
Below is a keyword search over a selection of active federal government grants. Each typed word is treated as an AND condition (i.e., all must match). This search runs in two passes per keyword: (1) exact keyword match, (2) prefix matches (i.e., other keywords that start with that string). For performance reasons, only the first 100 matching rows are displayed.
"Now, many of my Democratic colleagues and some of the tofu-eating wokeratti at the USAID are screaming like they're part of a prison riot because they don't want us reviewing the spending. But that's all Mr. Musk is doing, and he's finding some pretty interesting stuff. To my friends who are upset, I would say, with respect, you know, call somebody who cares...They better get used to this. It's USAID today, it's going to be Department of Education tomorrow."
Kennedy said for four years under Joe Biden, that these people asked one simple question, "Who needs to pay more in taxes?" "Well, that's not the question that the Republicans and President Trump are going to ask," Kennedy explained. "Our question is, 'What the hell happened to the money?'"
Exactly, and that's why Democrats are flipping out — because, finally, all of this is being unraveled.
ALX 🇺🇸 @alx
·
Elon Musk on USAID threatening Senator Joni Ernst: “It’s outrageous that a taxpayer-funded organization would threaten a U.S. Senator who is simply trying to figure out if American taxpayer money is being spent correctly and not fraudulently.”
12:51 AM · Feb 3, 2025
https://x.com/alx/status/1886291382949527609
But imagine the power they believe they have if they think they can threaten a senator. Sounds like this is one more thing that needs to be investigated by U.S. Attorney Martin. All of this has to stop. This obviously has desperately needed oversight for a long time.
Ernst also posted an interesting thread about some of the bad things they've found so far. You can check out the thread here.
https://x.com/SenJoniErnst/status/1886530928379617675
Brandon Wright, Platform Services Manager for DHS, was recorded saying that the agency’s career bureaucrats do not allow political appointees to interfere with their operations. He told the undercover reporter, "Kristi Noem? I f*cking hate her."
“The secretaries can set the priorities for the department, but they can't actually tell us what to do,” Wright told an undercover OMG journalist, later adding, "The truth is, we don't let them [secretaries] get in our way.” He said, "If we don’t agree with those priorities, there is a lot of room for interpretation, in terms of how we interpret what those priorities are."
He compared the government's bureaucratic structure to a septic tank, saying that there are layers that allow employees to filter directives in a way that minimizes their impact. “There’s a lot of layers like that in the government. And by the time the actual marching orders get to, like, me and below, we can filter it in a way that steadies the ship,” he said. //
The Department of Homeland Security provided the following statement to O’Keefe Media Group:
“Secretary Noem has not seen the video in its entirety. This type of behavior will not be tolerated. This person has been placed on leave and is under investigation … The senior official says the termination of the official is imminent.” //
SLOTown Hoosier
2 hours ago
Sadly, Wright was only stating the truth - “saying that the agency’s career bureaucrats do not allow political appointees to interfere with their operations”. This has been a known fact for decades and no one in the District of Corruption, on either side of the aisle, took action. DJT had other distractions the first time around but these people are going to get the Apprentice treatment this time around.
To say Democrats and their press allies were upset would be an understatement. Nothing seems to incense the left more than stopping the federal government from wasting taxpayer money overseas. Politicians who never said a word about the lack of funding for Hurricane Helene victims rushed to the podium to decry how "cruel" and "dangerous" it is to stop funding abortions in the Gaza Strip, among other insane wastes of money. //
LEAVITT: Here's the reason Elon Musk and others have been taking a look because if you look at the waste and abuse that has been run through USAID over the years, these are some of the insane priorities that that organization has been spending money on.
1.5 million dollars to advance DEI in Serbia's workplaces. $70,000 for a production of a DEI musical in Ireland. $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia. $32,000 for a transgender comic book in Peru. I don't know about you, but as an American taxpayer, I don't want my dollars going towards this crap, and I know the American people don't either, and that's exactly what Elon Musk has been tasked by President Trump to do. To get the fraud, waste, and abuse out of our federal government.
Now ask yourself, what possible benefit to America's standing could come from promoting DEI in Serbia or paying for a transgender comic book in Peru? And that's assuming the money even went to those things. To be frank, many of the grants given out by USAID sound so ridiculous that it would make more sense for them to just be money laundering operations. //
GBenton
an hour ago
I'm guessing none of those funded projects or causes got a fraction of the money or even existed. Probably all fronts for the Dems and Republicans who authorized the pay to play.
Understand what this means. Trump and Musk are cutting off the enemy's money supply and exposing the dirt behind how they funded Covids creation and release and Trump's lawfare, too.
wanna bet the money trail leads directly back to the scumbags crying into microphones?
They're all dirty corrupt maggots and they're all going down.
All they can think of to do is scream and cry and probably accuse Trump of persecuting his critics when they get indicted.
But he's got the receipts and they're screwed.
Wanna bet Cheney and McConnell and Ryan and Romney are all in on this?
of course they are. Its all about the grift with this treasonous traitors.
When Democrats and the media say they’re concerned about ‘independence’ in Trump’s appointees, they mean they want insubordination. //
Neither Democrats nor the Washington-based news media want Donald Trump’s presidency to succeed and one of the most effective ways to ensure it doesn’t is for people to sabotage his administration from within, as was often the case in his first term.
But they don’t explicitly acknowledge that reality. They instead cloak the subversion in nobility by referring to “independent” administration officials or cabinet appointees whom they urge to “exercise independence.”
On Friday’s episode of The New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast, reporter Jonathan Swan said Trump and his closest allies are “scouring the executive branch, looking for any pockets of independence and removing them.” Likewise, during the confirmation hearing for Trump’s pick for attorney general Pam Bondi, Democrat Sen. Chris Coons said, “One of the concerns I’ve raised … is safeguarding the Department of Justice’s independence…”. //
Every elected Republican and “career civil servant” (aka government bureaucrat) who did that in Trump 1.0 was turned into a media hero: Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Alexander Vindman, Miles Taylor (who?!), Mark Milley, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Christopher Wray, John Brennan and on and on and on.
Each one of those “independent” fellows proved their courage by undermining the person to whom power was bestowed by the voters. To be called “independent” by Democrats and the media is to do everything Democrats and the media want you to do. Amazing how that works.