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.

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.

Ed Martin @EagleEdMartin
·
Dear @elon, Please see this important letter. We will not tolerate threats against DOGE workers or law-breaking by the disgruntled. All the best. Ed Martin
11:46 AM · Feb 3, 2025

“Our initial review of the evidence presented to us indicates that certain individuals and/or groups have committed acts that appear to violate the law in targeting DOGE employees,” Ed Martin said.

“We are in contact with the FBI and other law-enforcement partners to proceed rapidly. We also have our prosecutors preparing,” Ed Martin added.

Mr. Eschenbach writes:

Encouraged by the reception of my previous post “Eight Ten-Thousandths Of A Degree Per Gigaton“, which ranged from warm acceptance through amused contempt to outright hostility, I’ve expanded my research to analyze the CO2 emissions of the late great State of California.

In my post linked above, I found that IF the IPCC is correct (which is a big “IF”), for each gigaton (Gt) of avoided CO2 emissions, there is an avoided global warming of 0.0008°C. Please read that post for the detailed calculations. //

That’s a total of about $1.5 TRILLION dollars, and it doesn’t count the cost of other California CO2-related laws and regulations. The increase in electricity demand from electric houses and electric cars alone will be another huge cost. A trillion and a half hard-earned taxpayer dollars … and all of that to MAYBE reduce the temperature in 2045 by six-thousandths of one degree C.

Seriously. 0.006°C.

Meaningless. Unmeasurably small. Lost in the noise. And please, don’t say that if only everyone did it, everything would be wonderful. At a cost of $1.5 terabucks for a reduction of 0.006°C, it would cost us OVER $250 TRILLION DOLLARS to perhaps maybe possibly reduce the 2045 temperature by one degree … madness.

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.

America is an outlier among developed nations in offering unrestricted birthright citizenship. Not a single European country does. //

the global trend is consonant with President Donald Trump’s recent executive order ending unrestricted birthright citizenship. The United Kingdom, which had birthright citizenship dating back to the “ancient common law,” did away with it in the 1980s. Ireland got rid of it in 2005. New Zealand a year later. Germany, which tried to grab the mantle of “leader of the free world” during President Trump’s first term, doesn’t grant citizenship to a child of foreign parents unless one parent possesses a permanent right of residence and has legally resided in the country for at least eight years.

But somehow President Trump is “cruel” for calling for the end of unrestricted birthright citizenship in our own nation? Why would a nation affirmatively choose to create an incentive for illegal immigration and prioritize illegal immigrants’ children over law-abiding immigrants who apply for citizenship and follow the legal process? //

Why go to such lengths to ensure naturalized citizens adhere to our laws and respect our constitutional ideals, if we then freely dole out citizenship to the children of those who have thumbed their noses at our immigration laws and at the ideals of democratic self-governance that brought them about? What message does that send to those who completed the heavy lift of securing legal citizenship by naturalization? //

In 2018, the Pew Research Center reported that in the last decade or so, somewhere between 6 and 9 percent of babies born in this country were to illegal immigrant parents — meaning at times the figure was close to one out of every ten births. Even at the low end, the number of those births — around 250,000 in 2016 — was larger than the total number of births in any state other than California or Texas.

Federal statistics show US border authorities seized 21,889 pounds of fentanyl in the 2024 fiscal year. Of that amount, 43 pounds were seized at the Canadian border — about 0.2% — compared with 21,148 pounds at the Mexican border, about 96.6%.

There’s no indication of any substantial change in the first three months of the 2025 fiscal year (October 2024 through December 2024). Of the 4,537 pounds of fentanyl seized by US border authorities during that period, 10 pounds, about 0.2%, were seized at the Canadian border, while 4,409 pounds, about 97.2%, were seized at the Mexican border.

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.

The Department of Justice, FBI, and USAID are posing prominent test cases for how the Trump administration can reform a malignant federal bureaucracy. //

The Office of Personnel Management and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are also posing prominent test cases for how the Trump administration can reform a federal bureaucracy that has, by design, resisted elected control since its inception. //

USAID is widely perceived as a CIA front organization. Former State Department official Mike Benz says USAID has funded international censorship and regime change operations. As demonstrated by journalists Diana West and M. Stanton Evans, the State Department has embedded Communist subversives from well before Whittaker Chambers all the way through secretaries Hillary Clinton and Antony Blinken, making it another top strategic threat to American self-governance. //

Last Monday, acting agency administrator Jason Gray placed 50-60 USAID employees on paid administrative leave while he investigates “information that they may have been conspiring to circumvent Trump’s executive orders requiring the halting of federal aid funds to overseas programs and all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs within the agency,” reported RealClearPolitics’ Susan Crabtree. //

Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio Sunday complaining about the incident and insisting that “by law” Congress must determine whether the president can revise a president-created agency. //

If the executive cannot control his own personnel, agencies, and funding lawfully given to him by a duly elected Congress, elections mean nothing. If the executive is not actually an executor, then the entire bureaucracy is an autocratic, self-licking ice cream cone. It runs the country, not any elected official. And Congress is complicit, because it allows the distribution of opium funds to Afghanistan and queer “safe spaces” in Kenya without ever having to take a public vote on any of this garbage, so long as these taxpayer-provided slush funds slather their retirements and relatives with “nonprofit” and “contractor” lard.

KanekoaTheGreat
@KanekoaTheGreat
USAID funneled $53 million to EcoHealth Alliance, which then used U.S. taxpayer funds to support gain-of-function research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab—research that likely led to the creation of COVID-19.

The CIA’s deception regarding COVID-19 origins becomes much clearer when considering USAID's long history of serving as a CIA front organization.

Restructuring The Bureau To Remedy What Ails It Or Turning It Into A Vehicle To Pursue The Malfactors Inside It And Other Aligned Agencies? //

What happened is what Kash Patel is going to need to confront and fix. The daunting task in front of him stems from the fact that the changes in the Bureau have become nearly universal. It worked like a underground weed that spread far and wide before sprouting up through the soil to start taking over separate parts of the organization.

How did that happen? Nowhere in the Government is the phrase “personnel is policy” more true than in the FBI. //

Patel is going to be taking over an organization where a large percentage of its work force, maybe approaching 75%, were hired in the past 15 years — since 2009, the first year of the first term of President Obama.

Not too far into that year the hiring priorities of most federal agencies changed, including at the FBI. Rather than continue the influx of former military, state and local law enforcement, and holders of graduate degrees in engineering, accounting, law, etc., the FBI’s recruiting was adjusted to fit the goal of achieving a work force that “looked like the population at large.” That goal supplanted other priorities that focused on recruiting the “best and brightest” as had for decades been the foundation for FBI hiring. //

The Special Agent work force that began to be created in 2009 was recruited more from college campuses than at any time in FBI history. That’s where a work force that “looked like the population at large” could be most easily found. Since academia has been the breeding ground for 40+ years of crusading social justice warriors — dedicated to recognizing and correcting social injustices of yesteryear more than addressing criminal conduct of yesterday and today — the new agents coming into the Bureau starting in 2010 arrived with that mindset.

But, as was explained to me by FBI Agents in a position to know, many of the new agents had post-college “work experience” with groups such as Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, Southern Poverty Law Center, Innocence Project, Justice Policy Institute, National Women’s Law Center, Human Rights Campaign, NARAL, etc. They came in trained already in how to seek out offenses involving “injustice” rather than focusing on crime.

This remained the hiring paradigm for more than a decade. //

The abuses in the intelligence gathering by the FBI and other parts of the IC community over the past 10 years will likely result in Patel — himself a victim of such efforts — taking steps to severely limit what will be allowed to continue. At the same time a comprehensive analysis will likely be done as to whether intelligence gathering domestically — to the extent it is allowed at all — should be moved to an agency without law enforcement responsibility. Intelligence is to inform decision-making by policy makers — not as a directional device to steer law enforcement in the direction of suspected law breakers. When the latter is allowed, the temptation to abuse that power is simply too great to resist. That is how we find ourselves where we are today. //

“Domestic terrorism” — meaning by citizens and not foreign invaders — has always been a police responsibility. It is nothing more than violent crime. Most domestic terrorism “crimes” are violations of state laws at the same time. Using the massive intelligence gathering capacity of the federal government — often leveraging Big Tech to assist — all for the purpose of interdicting the commission of state crimes, has come with a price to liberty I don’t think the majority of citizens are willing to continue to pay. //

It’s a daunting task. Taking a wrecking ball to the current internal structure is only half the solution. Fixing what is broken by introducing hundreds of new management personnel into the ranks, while at the same time working to cull the resistance from among the Special Agent work force will be the more lasting legacy of what Patel leaves behind when his time is done.

on Sunday, he announced that he would be pulling any funding for South Africa because he believes the government is unlawfully confiscating land from its own citizens. He took to Truth Social to announce his intentions: //

Robby Starbuck @robbystarbuck
·
President Trump just called out South Africa for their land confiscation and racism toward White South Africans.

"The United States won’t stand for it, we will act" and he’s cutting off ALL funding for them. //

Trump’s comments come less than two weeks after South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a new law making it easier for the state to expropriate land, subject to equitable compensation paid.

The African National Congress, the largest political party in South Africa, has pushed to make it easier for the state to take land in an effort to address racially skewed land-ownership patterns dating back to colonial and White-minority rule. //

epaddon
7 minutes ago
Post-apartheid, it's amusing how no one has ever given a damn about human rights and liberty in South Africa because any acknowledgment that the ANC has never been anything but a Marxist party more dedicated to ideas rooted in Lenin than Jefferson has always been a no-no.

So I have a question for these protesters. If they or the people they're protesting for want to be here, if they came here because they thought they had reason to be here rather than in Mexico, then why are they waving the Mexican flag? Why aren't they praising the U.S. and waving American flags? Why is at least one of these groups burning an American flag?

You don't make that case for why illegal aliens should be here when people are waving foreign flags, blocking cars, and causing disruption in the streets. That tends to tick off everyone on both sides of the aisle, and it adds to the desire for the American people to want to enforce the law.

You don't make that case when you burn an American flag. They act like illegal aliens have a right to be here and that the U.S. is in the wrong for actually enforcing its laws; they act as though we have no right to enforce our rules. They're actually helping Trump's point when they do things like this. There was already a mandate, and they're just making it bigger with such actions.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Panamian President José Raúl Mulino on Sunday and laid down the law regarding the Panama Canal.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his intention to end Chinese influence over the key shipping channel, noting that American ships are being charged higher fees than other nations. A Hong Kong-based company currently holds the contract to control the canal, and there's little doubt that CCP politics are playing a role in how things are operated. China is always going to try to press any advantage it can, and this situation is no exception. //

One of the issues here is that the Panama Canal Treaty of 1977, which was created and signed by an incredibly naive (at best) President Jimmy Carter, calls for total neutrality regarding the canal. Handing China control of operations is not neutrality. It's a slap in the face to the United States and its generosity. China did not spend billions of dollars to build the canal, and because it is a geopolitical adversary, it is a national security risk for the communist country to have any involvement outside of paying fees to transit its ships. //

Alex Ward @alexbward
·
Panama's President: Panama will not renew the memo 2017 with China on its Belt and Road Initiative. Panama will study the ability to end the agreement earlier than its end date in a year or two.

This comes after SecState Rubio's visit to Panama today.