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

10:48 PM · Feb 20, 2025. //

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

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

Any regulations that aren’t in line with the Trump administration policy will be rescinded or modified, including those determined to be based on “unlawful delegations of legislative power,” that inflict costs on private parties that don’t also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

Adam Steinbaugh
@adamsteinbaugh
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Wow: The City of Clarksdale, Mississippi, got a court order yesterday directing a newspaper to delete an editorial criticizing city officials -- without a hearing. Here's the TRO issuing the prior restraint:
2:55 PM · Feb 19, 2025. //

The particulars make this all the more unacceptable. The mayor called a special commission meeting regarding the creation of a sin tax in order to boost revenue to help pay for more police services. All well and good, except there was a lax public notice and local media was not alerted to this public meeting. The editorial took exception to this development, and basically delivered what was a series of questions being raised as a result of this lack of notification.

However, the city officials filed suit, and the judge issued a temporary restraining order on the paper, requiring that it take down the editorial. The newspaper complied, and that web address now returns a "404 page not found" screen. But as the city officials are overstepping their position, and the law, we are more than happy to post the archived editorial. //

In one of the court documents, it is revealed that the city clerk actually admits that an official media notification regarding this special meeting had not actually been sent out to the press. But on top of this, the curious aspect of this entire ruling is that Judge Crystal Martin of the Hinds County Chancery Court (5th District) issued the TRO.

Clarksdale resides inside Coahoma County, which would be covered by the Chancery Court of Coahoma County in the 7th District. Now, it needs to be asked why this city matter would lead to a filing taking place at least three counties south of Clarksdale. Are we looking at a case of shopping for a favorable judge to get this rapid order issued? //

this is a blatant case of government censorship of a newspaper. The lack of wailing from the major news outlets is quite revealing. If it does not involve President Trump, then it is not considered important enough. //

Maximus Decimus Cassius
11 hours ago
This whole thing is racial. A black judge (and female, btw) is protecting a black mayor and city council from a white newspaper publisher.

Trump signed two Executive Orders Thursday that focus on rolling back the role of the federal government beyond its statutory functions and ensuring that those efforts are emphasized across all departments and agencies. The orders are titled "Commencing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy" and "Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President's "Department of Government Efficiency" Regulatory Initiative."

Let's take a look at them one at a time, beginning with the easiest. //

When combined with the Trump Executive Order requiring the repeal of ten regulations for each new one published in the Federal Register (see Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation), we can see the groundwork being laid to eliminate the superfluous government agencies and regulations that have no greater purpose than to aggrandize power to the bureaucracy. Add that to the concerted legal attack on the Administrative State (Trump Declares War on the Administrative State), and Trump could very well end up having rolled back a century of our descent from a constitutional republic into a being held in serfdom by an unelected, responsive, and uncaring bureaucracy. //

Popdaddy
6 hours ago
Months of pre-election planning went into this. There are other plans and so much more can be accomplished. //

Dieter Schultz
5 hours ago

When combined with the Trump Executive Order requiring the repeal of ten regulations for each new one published in the Federal Register (see Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation), we can see the groundwork being laid to eliminate the superfluous government agencies and regulations that have no greater purpose than to aggrandize power to the bureaucracy.

I think soon... maybe before the 6 month mark but, sooner rather than later... we'll need another attack vector on the bureaucratic state and that would be for enough states to get together and challenge the regulations and federal laws as being unconstitutional in that they encroach on the states' duties and responsibilities under the Constitution.

Trump can apply tremendous pressure from the inside and deflate the bureaucratic bubble but, I suspect, it'll require the states... well, anyway, a core of the red states... to make it impossible for the federal government's overreach to ever be resurrected by the elites when Trump and his heirs leave the world's stage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

bk
29 minutes ago
Ah, the old "There are those who say that" journalism returns.

20th Century Ltd bk
14 minutes ago
Canada's Pierre Poilievre has a great technique for dealing with that: He replies, "Well, could you identify some of those folks who say that?"

Reporter: "Umm"

Poilievre: "Because when you use the framing of 'some people say' - you're really just saying what you the reporter believe.". //

Facts Matter
an hour ago
Its just amazing how these morons are defending waste. $71 billion in fraudulent payments. Yah, but it happened over a number of years. And somehow that makes it ok. Are you kidding me!!!

Reminds me of an interview JD did right around election time where he mentioned a Mexican gang taking over apartment buildings in Colorado. The commentator pointed though, that it was only one or two! So, i guess that makes ok too.

I'd suggest that if you are locked in a crapper from the inside, you are probably able, with enough coaching, to figure out how to unlock the door. If not, I'm sure a quick call to 911 will save you before you are reduced to drinking from the toilet. If one guy has the keys to the federal courthouse and all the gun safes, firing him might be a useful lesson in organizational resilience.

I appreciate National Parks as much as the next guy, and I'd be one of the last to gloat over some working-class guy losing his job, but nothing in these two articles makes a case for the continued existence of these lost jobs. Taking reservations for historic homes at Gettysburg sounds like the quintessential contractor operation, likewise, with clearing hiking trails through a National Forest.

The fact is that we are spending too much and getting too little for it. Another point is that if you are unwilling to cut five percent of an agency's workforce in a time of trillion-dollar deficits, you are a monumentally unserious person who should be ignored. //

polyjunkie
an hour ago edited
This is a classic passive resistance Strategy: “Let’s get rid of the people most important to the customer, and those a$$holes will HAVE to let us rehire them and keep things the way yhey were.”

The correct solution by the employer is to creatively redeploy employees so that the critical jobs get done first, and customers are served properly. Oh, and fire the manager(s) who couldn’t figure it out.

Fixed it!

The State Leadership Initiative is a coalition-building organization aimed at ensuring ‘red states’ operate in GOP voters’ best interests.

The organization was set up expressly to apply for the GGRF grant. It had only received $100 in funding during the 2023 tax year. Yet somehow, it managed to retain the services of a major law firm to file its return. //

I have some experience in grant writing, and the idea of a non-profit with $100 in the bank getting a $2 billion grant is about √-1 without shenanigans involved. The common theme seems to be Abrams. She was general counsel for one coalition partner, founder of two partners, and on the national advisory board of yet another partner.

Tuesday, a top DC prosecutor resigned rather than open an investigation into some part of the $20 billion GGRF grift; Top DOJ Prosecutor Walks Out Rather Than Investigate Biden 'New Green Deal' Grant for Criminal Behavior – RedState. It would be interesting to know which grant was under examination.

In 1932, FDR decided he had better use for the seat and summarily fired Humphrey. Humphrey sued but died five months later. The executor of his estate pressed the suit to recoup five months' salary. This spat was destined to become a landmark Supreme Court precedent called Humphrey's Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935), or just Humphrey's Executor. Mr. Humphrey's estate hit the jackpot.

In a unanimous opinion, the Supreme Court ruled: //

This ruling let independent agencies do whatever they wished. As rulemaking became a big deal, an independent agency in the hands of political opponents of the president with the power to interpret statutes and make legally binding regulations could engage in sabotage of the president's agenda. //

Shipwreckedcrew @shipwreckedcrew
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Earlier today I posted a Substack article arguing that the TROs being sought against the Trump Admin are, in many respects, great opportunities for the Admin to assert its Article II authority over the Admin. state and push back against encroachments by Congress and the lower…

SCOTUS has danced around the continuing vitality of the Humphrey's decision for many many years. The issue is now squarely before them. This is a fight worth having at this moment in time.

And the most important part about fights worth having is that you need someone who will fight them. And we do. //

Musicman
6 hours ago
Let's pray we finally have a Supreme Court that cares about the Constitution. There are three branches and only three branches. Either each "independent" board reports to the Executive, the Legislative or the Judicial. Those are the only choices. The notion of any kind of board with any kind of power could exist apart from the three branches is simply unconstitutional. Period.

KAROLINE LEAVITT: If you just watched that video, but shut your eyes and listen to the words from those Democrat politicians, you would think you are listening to President Trump, Elon Musk and our entire administration, who are saying the exact same things that Democrat politicians promised the American people they would do for decades. President Trump is just the first president in our lifetimes to actually do it. And now you see the Democrat Party and the mainstream media spiraling out of control about a very simple promise: rooting out waste, fraud and abuse from our federal bureaucracy. This is a promise President Trump campaigned on. He is now delivering on it.

I've been fighting fake news reporters all day long here in the Washington, D.C. swamp who are trying to fearmonger the American people into believing that this administration is going after their hard-earned tax dollars and their hard-earned Social Security checks. So I want to set the record straight on your show tonight, Sean, and I'm very grateful for the opportunity to do so. President Trump has directed Elon Musk and the Doge team to identify fraud at the Social Security Administration. They haven't dug into the books yet, but they suspect that there are tens of millions of deceased people who are receiving fraudulent Social Security payments and so their goal in going into the Social Security Administration is to identify three things: Number one, to identify duplicate payments and to end them, Number two, to identify payments that are going to deceased people who are no longer living and should no longer be receiving that money and number three, to protect the integrity of the system for hardworking Americans who have been paying into it their entire lives.

reported earlier on Tuesday how they discovered that there was a missing code in regard to $4.7 trillion in payments, that would link a treasury payment to a line item, that the code was optional and was often left blank, making tracing the payments almost impossible. Yikes. I'm sure no one has taken advantage of that (/sarcasm). //

Even MSNBC is now recognizing there's a problem, in a bit of a stunning report. They acknowledge that there had been $71.8 billion in improper Social Security payments over eight years, which had been discovered by the inspector general in 2024. That's billion, not million. //

Even for anchor Jose Diaz Balart, that sounds crazy. He isn't buying it: "72 billion! And that's without a comprehensive search!"

What could they find with a comprehensive search? And if there is that much of a problem resulting in such massive overpayments, then yes, this is more evidence of a systemic problem that DOGE needs to help resolve. We already saw the concerning issue of the active Social Security numbers for millions of people over 120 years old that could be used for all kinds of nefarious things, yet hasn't been addressed. //

DOGE is supposed to end in 2026, but we need to have something in place to continuously review all this stuff, so these issues cannot come back after they are resolved. Otherwise, there can be backsliding unless the whole system is changed to one of responsibility and accountability. Obviously, what has been in play hasn't been enough to stop these crazy things.

The crux of the case brought before Chutkan is that Musk's participation in government is illegal as the US Senate has not confirmed him as a "principal officer" as required by Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 or the Constitution and Congress does not have oversight of DOGE because it exists within the Executive Office of the President. This sounds rather bizarre to me as the President has clear authority, in my view, to set up an ad hoc task force to carry out a time-limited mission and to appoint anyone he wishes to lead it. But I'm not a judge on the DC Circuit.

In these circumstances, it must be indisputable that this court acts within the bounds of its authority. Accordingly, it cannot issue a TRO, especially one as wide-ranging as Plaintiffs request, without clear evidence of imminent, irreparable harm to these Plaintiffs. The current record does not meet that standard. //

NavyVet
32 minutes ago
I am sick and tired of this "unelected official" BS. It is "unelected officials" that have been malfeasant allowing massive fraud waste and abuse. That's the way it works.

So the entire "unelected official" mantra is a smokescreen for the ignorant and stupid. That means it works on democrats and their media bootlickers, but has no credibility with the rest of us.

In fact, all it shows us is that the democrats are corrupt and stupid.

"Death field set to false" means the number is still active, according to the system.

His chart showed more than 20 million over 100 years old "including more than 3.9 million in the 130-139 age range, more than 3.5 million in the 140-149 range and more than 1.3 million in the 150-159 range." Not to mention the couple of folks who must be the original vampires who are between 240 and 369 years old.

Musk also noted how there were unresolved inconsistencies between the Social Security and Treasury files.

"The logic flow diagram for the Social Security system looks INSANE. No one person actually knows how it works. The payment files that move between Social Security and Treasury have significant inconsistencies that are not reconciled. It’s wild," Musk declared in a post on X.

In another post, Musk said "there are FAR more ‘eligible’ social security numbers than there are citizens in the USA. This might be the biggest fraud in history."

The fact that the numbers are active in regard to people who can't be alive doesn't necessarily mean that money is going out to them. Musk seems to be implying at least some of it is, as he talks about "vampires collecting Social Security." But it does mean that the numbers are active, and for more people than are in the U.S. So that means there's a big problem in the system, with these numbers theoretically still active. //

Quiverfull
39 minutes ago edited
Amazing that the same people who cheered about getting 87,00 new IRS agents to audit us, are the same ones screaming to high heaven about the one guy auditing the government, and he's doing it for free. //

SouthernRoots
a minute ago
These numbers add up to 398,416,213. According to http://census.gov , the US population today is 341,356,247.

There are 57,059,966 more individuals active in SS than the population of the US. If all of these get $24,000 a year, that is a waste of $1.369 Trillion a year.

The cadre of elite disease detectives at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to be left in ruin today as the Trump administration continues to slash the federal workforce.

Many members of the CDC's Epidemic Intelligence Service, EIS—a globally revered public health training program—were informed earlier Friday that they were about to be fired, according to reporting from Stat News. Multiple sources told CBS News that half of EIS officers are among the ongoing cuts.

The Trump administration is ousting thousands of probationary federal workers in a wide-scale effort to dramatically slim agencies.

The EIS is a two-year program filled with competitively selected, highly educated and trained experts. EIS officers are the ones deployed in critical public health situations, such as deadly outbreaks or bioterror attacks. The program has a long, rich history since its establishment in 1951, which includes contributing to the eradication of smallpox, among other achievements.

Now we have another example. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner has formed a DOGE task force to work with the larger effort to comb through HUD's books, and one of the first things they found was $1.9 billion - that's "billion" as in a "b" followed by an "illion" - that had been "misplaced" by the Biden administration.

How, for the luvva Pete, do you "misplace" almost two billion taxpayer dollars? //

There has to be more to this story than a huge block of money confiscated by force of law from American taxpayers just being "misplaced." Remember that the Biden administration was marked by corruption and incompetence, from the very top down, and it's hard to credit that this money was just "misplaced."

Slowly but surely, these multiple lawsuits against the Trump administration, often for exercising the barest amount of oversight of agency expenditures, are being settled. The Trump agenda is being slowed, but not as much as the first time around. The actions by the administration are much better planned and coordinated than they were in 2017, and the lawyering is much superior. When the dust settles, Trump will have had his way on these ridiculous ankle-biter cases, and I think he will score a huge win at SCOTUS that will crush the administrative state. More on that to come in a VIP post.

Axios is confirming this sentiment in a focus group of swing voters that they surveyed. The focus group included 11 people who had voted for Biden in 2020 but switched to Trump in the 2024 election. Eight were independents, two were Republicans, and one was a Democrat.

Every Arizona swing voter in our latest Engagious/Sago focus groups said they approve of President Trump's actions since taking office — and most also support Elon Musk's efforts to slash government.

Margot Cleveland
@ProfMJCleveland
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🚨🚨🚨Judge in ⬇️case denies stay pending appeal. Court's reasoning based on his huge walk back of what he really enjoined saying basically "oh, I've only ordered you to not do what you can't legally do." 1/. //

The pattern seems to be that judges respond immediately to requests for temporary restraining orders with overbroad language, then quietly walk the language back once the headlines pass.

“The days of irresponsibly shoveling boatloads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over”

Mongoose
7 hours ago
Really, Mr. Wyden? Refund delayed? Let me tell you a story. I was working financial intelligence and got a call from a local bank. Seems they had a guy who wanted to deposit a million dollar+ check from the IRS. His tax refund, he said. The bank, which is supposed to report sketchy-looking activity on Treasury Suspicious Activity Report forms, thought this was... suspicious. On account of this guy had a W-2 job that paid him about $50,000/year. The bank really, really, really did NOT want to do this transaction, which they were certain was fraudulent.
It sounded squirrelly to me, so I called the IRS-CID special agent who handled refund frauds and was surprised to hear he already knew about it. The guy was pulling a 1099 OID fraud (it's on Wikipedia), and the bank had already told the IRS about it. I said, "Well, good, you can stop payment on the check, nip this fraud in the bud."
Nope, they'd been instructed not to interfere with the deposits/cashing of any refund checks. Go ahead and do the transaction, they told the bank. If it's fraudulent, we'll try to get the money back later. They couldn't even delay the check for a couple of weeks to do an investigation. Why? Because of Ron Wyden and people (Senators and Congressmen) like him. Apparently taxpayers(?) had been complaining to their congress folks about not getting their refunds (especially the fraudulent ones) in a timely fashion, and Ron and his buddies don't like those kinds of calls and can earn some easy constituent gratitude by squeezing IRS to push out that check post haste, so that's what IRS did.
I told the S/A that I thought he and IRS were f'n morons and told him I was going to tell the bank that I believed their deposit of the check would be a potential money laundering violation (thereby guaranteeing they wouldn't touch it or that customer with a hazmat suit). Which I did. (And in fairness, the refund fraud S/A was as distressed about it as I was.)
The crook took his business elsewhere, deposited his check, moved all the money out and when IRS finally went to get it, it was gone.
Now, multiply that little piece of insanity by a couple hundred thousand taxpayers(?) and we're starting to talk real money. Wikipedia says one 1099 OID fraud case involved three quarters of a billion dollars in false claims.
But those checks all went out because Ron Wyden doesn't want your refund delayed.