Things are about to get much worse, though, so buckle up. According to recently revealed records, left-leaning news outlet Politico received over thirty-four million dollars from USAID and other government agencies. That money went to pay for "subscriptions" for various bureaucratic officials, including "pro" subscriptions that add up to over $10,000 a pop. //

Stephen L. Miller @redsteeze
·
Guess which outlet the Biden campaign and intel officials solicited the laptop letter story to?

Sunny @sunnyright
We do indeed appear to be funneling large sums of tax money to @politico so that some bureaucrats can read left-wing journalists complain about Republicans
9:02 AM · Feb 5, 2025. //

There's more, though, and while it's speculative, it's certainly a pretty big coincidence. After all the funding from USAID to Politico got shut down in late January, they suddenly missed their next pay period, claiming "technical difficulties.". //

If you've ever wondered how some of these left-wing news outlets stay afloat financially, what has been revealed about Politico is one big reason. Democrats use federal agencies to funnel money for the express purpose of influencing elections and pushing left-wing ideology. It's been out in the open with organizations like NPR and PBS, but the level of corruption we are going to find out about will be mind-blowing. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Politico should not survive this. To take millions of dollars from the entity you are covering and not let your readers know about it is a huge breach of journalistic ethics. Hopefully, this leads to major investigations because does anyone actually believe it costs $447,998 for 37 subscriptions to a news site? If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.

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.

" Medical conditions associated with unreactive pupils include brain injury, stroke, and certain neurological disorders
" Seek immediate medical attention if you experience unreactive pupils along with severe headache, dizziness, or loss of consciousness

"I’ve left instructions," Trump said. "If they do it, they get obliterated. There won’t be anything left. And they shouldn’t be able to do it."

The comments came as the president signed an executive order restoring a “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran, something he indicated he was "unhappy" to do because it was really tough on Iran but necessary since he believes they are "close" to building a nuclear weapon. //

President Trump's threat to obliterate Iran if they dare carry out threats on his life is reminiscent of a similar warning he issued to Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar.

Baradar, now Afghanistan's acting first deputy prime minister, was involved in negotiations for the United States withdrawal with Trump during his first term. And he received a hell of a threat from the then-president, reminding him not to harm a single American.

“Under my conversations with Abdul, who’s the leader of the Taliban, for 18 months, we didn’t lose one soldier,” Trump bragged in an interview with Sean Hannity, adding that he told Baradar he’d “obliterate” him if he failed to follow orders in their negotiations to withdraw.

To drive home the point, Trump sent him a lovely picture.

"I sent him a picture of his house,” he revealed. “He said, ‘But why, but why do you send me a picture of my house?’ I said, ‘You have to figure that one out.'”

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.

Mario Nawfal @MarioNawfal
🇺🇸🇸🇻 TRUMP AND RUBIO’S PRISON DEAL WITH EL SALVADOR IS A LEGAL AND STRATEGIC MASTERSTROKE

Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have secured a historic agreement with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele that will allow the U.S. to deport violent criminals—regardless of nationality—to serve their sentences in El Salvador’s high-security mega-prison. This bold initiative will cut prison costs, reduce overcrowding, and enhance public safety by removing dangerous criminals from U.S. soil.
...

Yuchen Jin @Yuchenj_UW

judging an engineer by age is BS

• Linus Torvalds wrote Linux at 21
• Steve Wozniak built Apple I at 25
• Palmer Luckey created Oculus VR at 20
• Vitalik Buterin designed Ethereum at 19
• Mark Zuckerberg coded Facebook at 19

Looking back, I realize that 18-25 is the peak time.

"The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible – and achieve it, generation after generation."

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

An incredible NUCLEAR-POWERED FLIGHT film is newly available online!

We just scanned this declassified film showing 30 minutes of detail from the major reactor development program at its peak, between 1956-1958.

It presents the program goals and evolution, including how global operating costs were expected to be reduced by eliminating the need to operate foreign air bases around the world. Materials problems required them to reduce requirements from high-altitude/supersonic to low-altitude/subsonic. Ongoing development and progress is shown on the GE direct air cycle (XMA-2) in Idaho and Evandale, and the P&W indirect liquid-metal lithium-7 cooled cycle at CANAL, where they developed niobium-based alloys and technology that could run at the required crazy-high temperatures and withstand lithium.

It shows dozens of things I've never seen before, like the 3 ZrH and BeO inserts put into HTRE-2, and talks a bit about the HTRE-3 meltdown. The HTREs can still be seen in the parking lot of the EBR-1 museum on the INL site.

They show an in-reactor test loop being fabricated and tested in a large oil-fired heater, destined to be inserted in the ETR in Idaho.

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

Here are the powers given to the President by the 1807 Insurrection Act, as modified in 2006:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurrection_Act //

This law, I am given to understand, provides a statutory exemption to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the use of the armed forces in civil law enforcement. In other words, President Trump would seem to have a tool here, if he chooses to use it. The Posse Comitatus Act also specifically states “…except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress…” This means that suppression of domestic insurrection is specifically exempted, as an Act of Congress – the Insurrection Act – allows the use of the military.

Now, I’m not generally in favor of the government, at any level, using force unless met first by force. But dip me in... something unpleasant if the events of the last few days ain’t been different. There is an organized, armed, destructive rebellion going on against civil authority. The protesters are blocking the public roadways, interfering with the law-abiding citizenry’s right to go about their daily business unimpeded, and possibly endangering lives by impeding the passage of emergency vehicles.

If the president won’t authorize the use of soldiers and Marines to quell the burning, rioting, and looting, then the only recourse is for private citizens to arm themselves in response and to use deadly force themselves in defense of the life, limb, and property of themselves and their neighbors. //

So, yes, the president has some tools to deal with these protests, if things get bad enough. But it's likely, for the time being, he's going to continue the "you made your bed, now you lie in it" approach.