You cannot make this up. Politico responded to the allegations that USAID was their sugar daddy and did not disappoint. It was an exercise in gaslighting and a terrible one at that. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) crew uncovered mountains of waste and fraud, which led to the agency being virtually shut down on Friday. It’ll be absorbed into the State Department, with most of its workers being furloughed.

Yet, USAID also spent millions on various media subscriptions. And while we won’t call it a funneling of cash per se, it pretty much was that, but with extra steps. The government was essentially running a state media operation, which is the Democrat-media complex personified. We knew it existed, and now we have literal receipts. //

NightStalker
2 hours ago edited
So, Politico Pro, for a mere $15,000-$20,000 a year will inform the government what the government is doing? Gotcha.

Commodore Decker NightStalker
2 hours ago edited
This is a distinction without a difference. It’s money, laundering, plain and simple. We’re not that stupid.

Take the “L“, politico. You’re looking like the proverbial elephant trying to hide behind the flagpole. All this proves is what we have known all along. You are a part of the Democrat/government/media information operation.

Adults familiar with the way these early forays into the dank underbelly of longtime bureaucratic Washington have a more cynical suspicion than Elon hunting down disgruntled Tesla mechs.

And it has to do with the last sentence in the quote I used above:

The Labor Department houses an enormous amount of confidential data, and includes the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which produces important economic data, including inflation readings and market-critical employment statistics

What if - what IF - the Wonder Boys get in there and find out the past four years of #Bidenomincs have been a manipulated fantasy?

A badly managed fraud?

A theater piece for the gullible who didn't pay attention to the numerous, massive, downward revisions in data quietly done months after publication. //

Mike Derscher @MDerscher
·
I’m more interested to what the Doge guys find when they start looking at the BLS data. They’ll be able to figure out if it is accurate or if it has been managed.
5:35 AM · Feb 6, 2025 //

According to this fellow below, the entire DOGE department was set up very carefully to be within all the legal parameters from the beginning to prevent challenges based on its legality.

This is part of his thread explaining what the Trump team did and it is so interesting. They didn't create a new department out of whole cloth. They renamed an existing one that was already authorized within the scope of the president's authority to oversee (an executive branch department) and had all the funding, etc, in situ.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1887038847629877714.html.

The Trump team did their homework. I can't say that enough, and we're witnessing the fruits of it every single day - damn near something new every hour.

I expect that the Labor Department is going to be as big as a bag of different worms as USAID once this lawsuit gets tossed or negotiated.

I remember how we all kept getting told things were so wonderful if only our lying eyes would allow us to see it.

They all fell out of a coconut tree.

The looks on their faces. The chyron boldly reading, "DOGE Teen, Known Online As "Big Balls," Now an "Expert." It's simply a piece of art. If the "Newseum" still existed in Washington (it went out of business because no one cares about the supposed heroics of the legacy press) that screenshot would warrant its own exhibit. Everything about it is absurd, including the insinuation that what somebody called themselves online when they were a kid is a scandal.

What makes this so perfect is just how deeply concerned these press apparatchiks pretend to be. These are the same people who have never spent an ounce of energy worrying about the waste and corruption within the federal government when Democrats are in charge. Let Trump appoint a few people to root out that waste and corruption, though, and suddenly it's a national emergency for CNN and the rest of the legacy media.

No one believes any of this is sincere. It's all partisan politics, and if the press thinks they can scare DOGE off the trail by doxxing its members, they are sorely mistaken. //

Short-haired Red
12 minutes ago
Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook when he was 19. Bill Gates founded Microsoft with Paul Allen when he was 19. Steve Jobs founded Apple with Steve Wozniak when he was 21. Scott Jennings needs to bring these truths onto CNN this morning. //

anon-g58b
34 minutes ago
Mozart wrote a symphony at 5. Mendelsohn was about 17 when he wrote Midsummer's Night Dream music (which includes the wedding march that almost everyone plays when the ceremony is over) Obama was in high school when he started toking.

Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cut down USAID, which will effectively be shut down today. The entire operation will be absorbed into the State Department, keeping fewer than 300 out of a 10,000-person staff. The waste was unreal, and while the Left can only say this is a small budget item, that doesn’t negate the premise of DOGE, which is operating at the direction of President Donald J. Trump.

Also, isn’t that the most DC rebuke ever: well, it’s a little fraud. No, we’re done with that nonsense. And the only people who are furious are worthless federal workers and their Democrat allies who can no longer use USAID to subsidize their wasteful and arguably fraudulent pet projects on the taxpayers’ dime.

So, with Politico embarrassed and exposed by the reported USAID payola-rama, it’s hilarious that two anti-Elon Musk stories get published a day after the agency’s alleged subsidizing of the Democrat-media complex is exposed.

Representatives from Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service have fed sensitive data from across the Education Department into artificial intelligence software to probe the agency’s programs and spending, according to two people with knowledge of the DOGE team’s actions.

The AI probe includes data with personally identifiable information for people who manage grants, as well as sensitive internal financial data, the two people said. They described DOGE activities at the Education Department on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation.

The DOGE team is using AI software accessed through Microsoft’s cloud computing service Azure to pore through every dollar of money the department disburses, from contracts to grants to work trip expenses, one of the people said. Lower level department staffers were directed by agency leadership to let Musk’s teams access the sensitive financial data, the person said. //

If this is being weaponized to screw over the political class, trim the fat from government, and expose the waste and corruption as we’ve seen over the past few weeks, then so be it. Keep feeding that AI machine, which we’ll call Skynet but without the genocidal tendencies. //

Commodore Decker
8 hours ago edited
The use of the phrase “sensitive internal Financial data“ is intended to undermine the legitimacy of the effort and raise fears of privacy invasion. The good news is that the privacy being invaded are bureaucrats making these payments to pet left wing causes with your tax dollars which are hidden but which the AI software is able to expose.

The Democrats have spent decades constructing this Potemkin Village of payoffs, kickbacks, lazy unionized featherbedding work rules, and no accountability along with a sense of entitlement and privilege. The perfect employment for people with useless degrees and not a lot of work ethic. But like any house of cards, one good breeze can blow it all down. And it’s got them terrified. And it should because it’s long overdue.

I never imagined I would see this unfold so rapidly, but it’s great that it has because it’s got democrats completely unbalanced and unable to respond. Trump is inside their media decision cycle and inside their heads. They lash out with hysterics and retarded chants like Schumer the other day who had one of the most cringe worthy moments I’ve ever seen. And none of it seems to be working.

In the wake of the revelation that $34 million was transferred from taxpayer wallets into the coffers of far-left media outlet Politico, the Trump administration has ordered the General Services Administration (GSA) to terminate all media contracts for which the GSA currently pays. Included in the list of outlets affected are the aforementioned Politico—whose "Pro" product has gotten particular scrutiny—plus Bloomberg and the BBC. //

Marc Caputo
@MarcACaputo
·
Follow
News: The White House has directed the GSA to terminate "every single media contract" expensed by the agency: "Politico, BBC, E&E (Politico sub) and Bloomberg"

"The eye of Sauron is on more than just Politico It's all the media," WH adviser says
axios.com
Scoop: Trump orders key government agency to cancel all media contracts
3:42 PM · Feb 6, 2025. //

ConservativeInMinnesota
5 hours ago
I checked Politico’s website yesterday. No subscription is needed online. International print editions max out at $600 per year. They are available in print for free in Washington DC.

There was no cost to use Politico. This was blatant money laundering to buy favorable news coverage. This is criminal, prosecute them. //

Hank Reardon
6 hours ago
I find myself commetning after just the first sentence.

“In the wake of the revelation that $34 million was transferred from taxpayer wallets into the coffers of far-left media outlet Politico . . . “

Can we please agree these federal taxpayer funds were not “transferred”? They were laundered. Let’s use the correct term.

Concerned Patriot
3 hours ago
Fired is not enough, For this level of insane corruption people need to go to jail.

Now do you see why the Dems were so afraid of Trump? All the screeching and all the theatrics, all the lawfare and the assassination attempts, it was all to prevent this day from happening. And we haven't even gotten to the really good stuff yet. Just imagine all the shenanigans waiting to be uncovered over at Medicare and Medicaid. The Dems are screwed and they don't know what to do. who's gonna vote for them after this? We already see their own constituents tune them out as they faux rage over this.

The people have woke up. Now everyone knows the Dems have been full of feces the whole time. It was never about making things better or serving the down trodden. It was about money and power.

This has me thinking of Henry Hill in Goodfellas: "We ran everything. We paid off cops. We paid off lawyers. We paid off judges. Everybody had their hands out. Everything was for the taking. And now it's all over."

St. Joseph, Terror of Demons
33 minutes ago

“Russell Vought was born to make corruption safe again,” freshman Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., said in one of the late-night speeches. “Vought believes that all of the power in the executive branch belongs to the president and the president alone.”

Senator Kim made a very silly comment. Vought is correct in stating that “all of the power in the Executive Branch belongs to the president and the president alone.”

The president is the Chief Executive of the Executive Branch, which means that all of power wielded by the Executive Branch comes from and through the president.

A somber and reflective President Trump, speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast at the Capitol on Thursday, talked about the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July.

In a rare public moment of emotion, Trump explained that the incident affirmed his belief in God.

"Honestly, it's a mir (miracle) — It changed, it changed something in me," the president said in a hushed tone. "I feel even stronger."

"I believed in God, but I feel — I feel much more strongly about it. Something happened," he added as the crowd burst into applause

What we're actually seeing is a trend on this particular issue, and it's going in the direction of opposition. So, take a look here. Okay, transgendered female athletes, and amongst those Americans who oppose them in women's sports, back in 2021, it was 62%. A majority, but, you know, not anywhere close to a ginormous majority, right? A clear majority, but not a ginormous majority. But then again, you look here in 2025, you see it at 79%. So, it's not just that the majority of Americans are opposed to transgender female athletes in women's sports, it's that the opposition has become considerably larger in just the last four years. //

So transgender female athletes, again, opposing them in women's sports, you get 67% of Democrats, so two-thirds there. You get 64% of independents, you get about two-thirds there. And then look at this, near uniformity among Republicans, 94% of Republicans in opposition. You rarely get 67% of Democrats and 94% of Republicans to agree on anything, but they do on this particular issue.

What you see in the above clip is how the sausage is made for these left-wing legacy media outlets. They were all in for Harris, and what "60 Minutes" did here proves that. CBS News has a lot of explaining to do, and no one should ever trust anything they produce again.

Hillary Clinton @HillaryClinton
US airlines had gone 16 years without fatal crashes.

Then MAGA fired the FAA chief, gutted the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, and threatened air traffic controllers with layoffs.

Now there have been two fatal crashes.

Hope your unvetted 22-year-olds fix things fast.

Secretary Sean Duffy @SecDuffy
·
I know you’re lashing out because DOGE is uncovering your family’s obscene grifting via USAID, but I won’t let you lie and distort facts. The FAA administrator announced he resigned over a month before Trump took office, and the air traffic controllers were always exempt from Trump’s civil service buyouts.

The previous administration shamelessly used USDOT as a slush fund for the Green New Scam, throwing away money and resources on wasteful environmental and social justice projects rather than updating our nation’s antiquated air traffic control systems and other critical infrastructure.

I’m returning this department to its mission of safety by using innovative technology in transportation and infrastructure. Your team had its chance and failed. We’re moving on without you because the American people want us to make America’s transportation system great again. And yes, we’re bringing the 22-year-olds with us. //

Evita Duffy-Alfonso @evitaduffy_1
·
Just a PSA: My dad would never commit suicide. //

anon-ai01
6 hours ago
No wonder the Dems moved heaven and earth to try to bankrupt, imprison or kill Trump. They wouldn't have minded so much if a Romney or a McCain type had been elected. Had they been, it would have been business as usual with typical Republican do nothings. But Trump. Ah, that's a different story. I never thought I would see it in my lifetime. It is a wonder to behold. God bless President Trump and Elon Musk! You go, guys! //

CurtTX53 JimboCA
3 hours ago
Remembering how quiet they and their CGI got after 2016, almost disappeared, hoping to stay away from any investigations. Run silent run deep for those four years.

Jennings described what he called the "dumbest strategy in politics" currently being utilized by Democrats, where they take the side on an issue that has 20 percent approval because they reflexively revolt against whatever Trump is doing. This includes keeping men out of women's sports and collapsing USAID.

"This is like Trump's superpower," said Jennings. "Finding a bunch of 80-20 issues and getting on the 80 and everybody who is reflexively against him gets on the 20, and now the Democrat Party has a 31% approval rating."

As usual, Jennings is right. Though he's using the 80/20 idea here loosely, he's still accurate.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that America wanted to freeze foreign assistance programs via USAID by 16 points (56 percent vs 40 percent) and an NYT/Ipsos poll found that people say 79 percent of males should not be allowed to participate in women's sports.

But you can see this in other places as well. //

According to the Daily Wire, a poll conducted by McLaughlin and Associates on behalf of Tea Party Patriots Action, sees that the vast majority of Americans love DOGE's work and want to see a border bill: //

But far be it from me to stop them from lodging their own bullets in their own feet.

RealRobert🇺🇸
@Real_RobN
And this is,

the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Ratcliffe,

the FBI was ordered by Barack Obama not to arrest Hillary Clinton for espionage in violation of — 18 U.S. Code § 793. Gathering, transmitting or los defense information. In fact, James Comey effectively served as Hillary Clinton’s personal attorney.

James Comey: “What I can assure the American people is that this investigation was done honestly, competently and independently. No outside influence of any kind was brought to bear.”

CIA John Ratcliffe: “Lisa Page confirmed to me under oath that the FBI was ordered by the Obama DOJ not to consider charging Hillary Clinton for gross negligence in the handling of classified information,"

Transcript excerpt of his interview with Page:
John Ratcliffe: Okay. So let me if I can, I know I'm testing your memory, but when you say advice you got from the Department, you're making it sound like it was the Department that told you: You're not going to charge gross negligence because we're the prosecutors and we're telling you we're not going to –
Ms. Page: That is Correct.

If forgiveness means saying, “That’s OK” to things that aren’t OK then none of us should forgive. Forgiveness is not about pushing ourselves to the limit of what we can tolerate. Susan Shapiro in the Washington Post Eight Times It Might Be Healthier Not to Forgive makes the point that whenever forgiveness begins to sound like “you have no reason to still be upset” it shifts the blame from offender to the person harmed. Forgiveness is not about saying “that’s OK” about things that are not OK.

We consider some advances in relational and affective neuroscience and related disciplines that attempt to resolve some fundamental aspects of the mind–brain problem. We consider the key role of affect in generating consciousness and in meeting our essential survival needs; the neural correlates of relating; how self and other are represented in the brain and awareness of self and other is generated through interoceptive predictive processes. We describe some leading models of the generation and purpose of consciousness, linking theories of affective and cognitive consciousness. We discuss psychiatric and psychotherapeutic innovations arising from this research, new integrated biopsychosocial interventions and the obstacles to be overcome in applying these models in practice.

It's taken a while, but now we're demonstrably living in the world of mainstream News/Bias, where standard hard news mixed with opinion, innuendo and partisanship is just simply considered...The News.

Now I'm old enough to remember how the breach of this trust in 2005-2006 canned the career of Dan Rather, who was kind of like the most trusted guy in news at the time. But like a cryogenically stored body thawed out once they discover the cure for cancer, Rather has re-emerged in recent years because a cure has been found for the truth. Which, it seems, is no longer as valuable as the motive behind the story. In other words, your news stories are now fables with a message instead of simple news stories. Dan Rather wanted to tell a story about George Bush that wasn't supported by his native tongue (JD from Sam Houston State Teacher's College), so he decided to blaze a new trail and incorporate "his truth" into the mix so that the "greater truth" could spread. Great idea. Too bad he was too avant-garde for his peers then.

But he's back now after 20 years, and just like a fine cabernet that improves after years in the dark, liberals and progressives finally recognize the bravery and beauty of Rather's sacrifice. I imagine he sees himself a little bit like Caesar leading his Triumph as he hits the outskirts of Rome after having been gone for a couple of decades. He's got a book, a Netflix series and a home on Substack now. And like Caesar himself, he just might avoid going into the Capitol proper to avert the new government's reach and Donald Trump. He'll probably tell his fans that he fears retribution and arrest but can remain silent no longer. So Bold. So Brave... sigh

Anyway, after 25 years (at least) of the legacy media switching out hard news for the opposite kind, keep an eye on this one to see how much traction it gets. If it breathes life into the whole progressive narrative after having been stomped on lately, we could see more attempts to undermine Trump's presidential leadership. //

Robert A Hahn
32 minutes ago
The fellow who brought down Dan Rather was an attorney in the Atlanta area who used the screen name "Buckhead" on Free Republic. At the time, "FR" was the largest conservative-leaning forum on the internet.

I was on there one night and saw a very short note from 'Buckhead.' It said, "I gotta go, so I can't follow this up. Dan Rather's proof is fake. That is Times New Roman font, which is part of Microsoft Word, and that did not exist when W was in the National Guard."

People on FR were already making gifs that flipped back and forth between the CBS News document and the same thing typed into Microsoft Word... and the two were identical.

That got picked up by one of the early blogs -- I think it was Hindraker at "Power Blog" -- and the rest is history.

USAspending is the official open data source of federal spending information,
including information about federal awards such as contracts, grants, and loans.

The more President Donald Trump does, the more the left flies into stammering, impotent rage, and the more the rest of us have to point and laugh at. And the president is doing a lot, including removing us from impractical and even wasteful international deals that hurt American prosperity - like the Paris climate accords, which the president yanked us out of right away.

That made the climate scolds angry, of course. But now it's getting even better; as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is finding more and more wasteful expenditures, the more all the president's men are cutting out of the executive branch's budgets - and a lot of those cuts are emptying the coffers of some notorious climate scolds.

That's right, the federal government was paying these people to advocate for the destruction of our modern, high-technology lifestyles. At the great climate website Watts Up With That, author Charles Rotter has brought receipts.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/02/05/schadenfreude-at-its-finest-climate-grifters-cry-over-trumps-grant-freeze/

Secretary Sean Duffy @SecDuffy
Big News - Talked to the DOGE team. They are going to plug in to help upgrade our aviation system.

Hillary Clinton @HillaryClinton
·
8h
They have no relevant experience.

Most of them aren't old enough to rent a car.

And you're going to let them mess with airline safety that's already deteriorated on your watch?

Secretary Sean Duffy @SecDuffy
·
Madam Secretary, with all due respect, “experienced” Washington bureaucrats are the reason our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling. You need to sit this one out. ///

She quote tweeted a screenshot of his tweet and turned off replies so that nobody who replies shows up in her "mentions" and her account has the last word.

“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America,” reads the very first sentence of Article II of the Constitution. “A” is singular. There is a President of the United States. He has the executive power. The federal bureaucracy operates under the President. Congress has, in some cases, established executive departments that the President cannot get rid of due to their statutory origin. Congress has granted some executive powers that the President cannot get rid of due to their statutory origins. But everyone in the executive branch serves at the pleasure of the President and, with few limits, he gets to direct the executive branch. //

rump is, they claim, engaged in a coup against the American administrative state.

One can hardly launch a coup against oneself. The executive power is vested in a single President, not an administrative state. Mr. Trump is retrieving powers long ago distributed to unelected bureaucrats who have used that power to advance progressive goals even when progressives do not hold power. //

Contrary to some Trump supporters’ claims, USAID did not spend $50 million on condoms for Gaza. It was $45 million and included “sexual and other reproductive health care” for Gaza, not just condoms. There was, separately, $10 million for condoms in the Gaza Province of Mozambique, in Africa. USAID also spent $2 million on healthcare for transgender youth in Guatemala; $45 million for DEI scholarships in Burma; $520 million for leftwing ESG investments in Africa; and $45 million to promote social justice and democracy based on the theories of an Italian Marxist professor. The money flows through and subsidizes various leftwing NGOs. Virtually one hundred percent of USAID’s top outside contractors, recipients of billions of dollars, donate to the Democratic Party. Tim Meisburger, a former USAID employee, discovered that “Of the top 17 grantees and partners of USAID’s Office of Democracy, Human Rights and Governance, 14 saw 100 percent of their political donations during the 2019–2020 election cycle directed to Democratic Party causes with only one (the International Republican Institute) under 90 percent.”

Therein lies the reason Republicans now wish to wind down USAID and Democrats wish to preserve it. The organization is not just a clearing house for aid from the United States to the developing world but both a boundary-breaking vanguard of progressive funding abroad and a pass-through source of Democratic Party donations domestically.

The State Department can run PEPFAR and other programs. USAID is not a necessary entity.