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.

Elon Musk @elonmusk
·
If ANY judge ANYWHERE can stop EVERY Presidential action EVERYWHERE, we do NOT live in a democracy.
10:57 PM · Feb 13, 2025. //

TK421
4 hours ago
To that moron from the union: It doesn't matter whether there's precedent, just whether it's legal. And, your use of the term 'dismantling' is meaningless in a legal sense. What would be unconstitutional would be the Executive branch eliminating a Congressionally created agency. That hasn't happened. It was moved under the auspices of the State Department, so it still exists. One of the things the Executive can do, is determine the staffing level, and you have no right to argue otherwise. If the Executive branch determines that only 10 people are needed to administer the agency's programs (especially because those programs have been scaled back), tough luck. //

anon-tk7z NavyVet
37 minutes ago
do you know how many companies just gave up because of unions? This is exactly their position. Businesses were not negotiating with their people , they were negotiating with a distant entity that showed up for a day or two, threatened the company, left, destroyed the company, and left the workers with no jobs unless they moved. Bread companies, gum companies, toy companies, glass companies, local metalists, on and on and on, small businesses of 50-60 people. So, the companies just closed. Poverty and lack of self worth flourished. The good things unions did are now hard-wired into any business here in this country.

Eco-activists protests are nearly non-existent. Meanwhile, Romanians may be getting the president they wanted after their country’s USAID-funded NGOs were gutted. //

The damage done by the exposure of USAID’s extensive, expensive meddling could be far-reaching as other countries in Eastern Europe that have governments that were unpopular with the Americans are left to wonder how much of their unpopularity in their own country was bought and paid for with American dollars. And how much of it was in concert with their like-minded globalist bug-buddies in Brussels. //

schmuul | February 12, 2025 at 9:53 am
You are also seeing the impact in Israel as well where US interference through fake NGO’s almost took down Netanyahu and the whole Knesset. It’s insane how much we meddled in other countries in ways that weren’t in the best interest of any stability or peace let alone self determination. I guess they were in the best interest of George Soros and some insane “progressive “ vision.

Engelmayer is the first judge ever to grant a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the president of the United States that also forbids a cabinet secretary from accessing his own records without giving these parties an opportunity to respond. He offered zero analysis of his constitutional authority to make such a radical ruling, the federal rule governing injunctions and temporary restraining orders, or why he is enabling fraud and grift by blocking access to records that show who got government money and for what. //

The situation is actually worse than that. Here’s the timeline of the court filings. All these initial documents were filed by New York Special Trial Counsel Colleen Faherty. //

1:04 a.m. — Faherty e-mailed four items — the complaint, the legal memorandum, her prior affirmation, and the order granting the TRO — to two government lawyers, only one of whom had been a recipient of her 7:32 p.m. email.

1:14 a.m. — The complaint was refiled with the deficiency corrected. Note that a properly filed complaint was not filed until more than a half-hour after Judge Engelmayer had already entered his order. //

The accelerated timeline is simply incredible, especially in view of the voluminous materials that any diligent judge would analyze to render a proper opinion. And I mean “incredible” in its literal sense of “not to be believed.”

The last documents filed in support of the request for a TRO were at 10:13 and 10:15 p.m. These included the legal memorandum with its citation to 54 court opinions. Did Engelmayer read these? Not a chance. Did he read any of them? If he did, you can’t tell it from his order, other than one citation from him to a single case that had no resemblance to the case before him. //

Even if Engelmayer had received and began to study these materials immediately after he had them all, he spent less than two-and-one-half hours reviewing and analyzing the materials presented to him before entering his order at 12:39 a.m.

That’s not even counting the time it would have taken Engelmeyer to write his order. If he took only a half-hour to do that, he spent less than two hours to peruse the voluminous record and then begin to write his order. He could not possibly have considered more than a small fraction of the cited cases and other authorities in that time. It raises the question of how much of this order was AI-generated.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ramped up grants for migrants from 2020 to 2024 — which included cash assistance to buy cars, homes and even build credit for startup businesses, according to a shocking watchdog report that found taxpayers were left on the hook for $22.6 billion. //

Non-governmental groups bilked taxpayers for up to $1.7 billion in services including dollar-for-dollar matching savings plans for cars, homes, college educations or startups; small-business loans of up to $15,000; loans to repair credit history of up to $1,500; “cultural orientation,” “emergency housing support,” legal assistance and Medicaid care. //

Dieter Schultz NavyVet
15 minutes ago edited
We have an audit trail. This is theft from American taxpayers.

Follow the audit trail. Confiscate the cars, homes, or businesses purchased with our dollars. Deport the thieves - they are compact in theft. Auction off confiscated items to American citizens.
For the big items that might work, I'm not sure I'd put money on it but... I watched the press event with Musk in the WH and one of the things that struck me from his audit was that he mentioned the lack of standard accountability, traceability, fields in treasury's payment system. Things like requirements to enter information in the 'notes' field, or forcing the data entry person to reference a payment authorization number, and more... were all things Musk noted was common to private/public companies were all not required or not used.

Musk noted that the system as it was being used was designed to minimize challenges to a payment, and therefore minimize the work associated with the authorizing/managing payment the payment process, were all, by design, making it nearly impossible to audit and/or account for the money that was being spent.

Protesters began unfurling banners and chanting "PEPFAR saves lives. Restore AIDS funding now" and continued to do so as they were being escorted out.

Mast didn't skip a beat, and had just a few short, sweet, simple, and to-the-point words for the protesters:

"I guess these guys don't watch the news. They didn't realize that PEPFAR was one of the many programs that did prove to be life-saving, so the funding was restored. Somebody better give them a link to, I don't know, maybe Fox News or something like that."

PEPFAR, which was started in 2003, stands for "the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief," and DOGE leader Elon Musk indicated on the Twitter/X platform Wednesday that its funding was mostly preserved:

Elon Musk @elonmusk
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Replying to @iAnonPatriot
Funding for Ebola prevention and the parts of PEPFAR that appeared to be useful were not cut
6:03 AM · Feb 12, 2025

From his confirmation hearing, it was clear that RFK Jr. knows his most significant challenge will be bringing Medicare and Medicaid under control and improving the quality of service to consumers. He also understands the nature of the opposition he will face from monied interests who make money off of keeping us on drugs for a lifetime rather than focusing on exercise and nutrition as critical factors in keeping us healthy. Just remember, we don't have a health care system -- we have a sick care system. There is no money to be made off healthy, active people.

Even though RFK Jr. is not in sync with the Trump administration on everything, abortion comes to mind. I have no doubt that he will be a team player and color within the lines because this is the last chance of his lifetime to make a difference, and he is more focused on being a change agent than an ideologue.

The nomination of RFK Jr. to HHS has the possibility of being a brilliant pick that puts the US on track to better health and a much more sane use of health care and medical research dollars, or an utter disaster. But like with Tulsi Gabbard, Trump is the guy who will pay the price if RFK Jr. self-immolates and if he is fine with that risk, he deserves to have his man in place.

Now he does. //

anon-j4cj
4 hours ago
This guy Kennedy is supposedly a Democrat, and how many Democrats voted for him ? ZERO! Don't ever buy that "reaching across the aisle" BS again! It doesn't exist. This is our triangulation of the Democrats with RFK, Jr. and Tulsi. WE are the ones with the coalition; Americans are throwing off the chains of Marxist slavery. //

epaddon
4 hours ago
The irony for all those Dems and liberals who have spent decades with their silly Camelot nostalgia and pining for a restoration that the first Kennedy to serve in a Cabinet since 1964 is in a Republican Administration. :). //

GBenton ECoolidge19
3 hours ago
The political spectrum is changed. It's the elite vs the people more than right or left, at least with most Americans who are not hardcore partisans. I've come to believe that the Uniparty divided us into R vs D and then played pretend like there was an actual difference. Reality was the RINOs made sure the limited government Christian conservatives never won. Government only ever grew. We were told that was inevitable. Real reformers like Reagan were impeded by establishment RINOs like the Bushes who support bigger government in perhaps only marginally different ways than establishment Dems. Thus, the progressive Commies are mad they never got their full Communism and conservatives are mad we keep losing to the left. Now, Trump has taken populist ideas and shown that we can agree on more than we disagree on the core stuff like health and liberty. We'll have to agree to disagree on some things and let voters decide at the state level, but that's Federalism. Either way, the Uniparty can no longer divide us into fake party lines.

AKERMAN: That stuff [government bureaucracy] is sacrosanct, and you've got people going in there who don't know anything about...(crosstalk)...Elon Musk doing this, he knows nothing about it.

JENNINGS: What you just said is so profound. You said these people don't know anything and they don't know what they're doing.

AKERMAN: That's right. I'm talking about Elon Musk.

JENNINGS: I understand, but they are appointees of the duly elected president so your view, you're here as our legal expert, but your view is because you don't personally believe they know enough, that the duly-elected president who appointed a treasury secretary and who appoints special appointees like Elon Musk shouldn't be able to act as the president because you don't personally believe they know enough? Is that how it works? Do elections mean anything to you?

AKERMAN: It's got nothing to do with elections. //

What they believe in is an unaccountable bureaucratic system that allows them to thumb their noses at American voters. It's a "heads I win, tails you lose" setup, and it has been the basis of Democratic Party power stretching back to the Woodrow Wilson era.

On Friday, February 7, Trump set off a megaton blast by reducing the allowable overhead rate for NIH grants to 15%. This is how NIH says the overhead works. //

The average rate inside NIH stood at about 25 percent; that is, $9 billion of the $35 billion in research grants was skimmed off the top. Allegedly, this money went to support the lab, but "support" is an expansive term that might be used to describe a DEI administrator or business class airfare to a five-star hotel for a "conference.". //

But, in the media, you'd have thought that Donald Trump was personally destroying America's competitive advantage in science, never mind that the overhead rate from the Gates Foundation is 10%, and none of the big private grant funders exceed 15%. //

Ten years ago, the GAO pointed out how overhead was killing scientific research; see NIH Should Assess the Impact of Growth in Indirect Costs on Its Mission. Just five years ago, it was common to find articles demanding a lowering of the overhead rates: The NIH needs to become leaner and more innovative. Here's how | STAT. //

Five years ago, overhead rates were killing science, but with Trump as president, lowering overhead hurts science. Go figure.

Stephen L. Miller @redsteeze
·
Elon Musk answering more questions in the Oval Office than Joe Biden did in 4 years.
9:45 PM · Feb 11, 2025. //

Standing next to President Donald Trump, Musk lambasted the bureaucratic state, noting that it is antithetical to democracy to have unelected officials operating outside the authority of elected representatives. No doubt, he was referencing several recent court decisions that have sought to prevent Trump from being president despite his holding of the office. //

Rapid Response 47 @RapidResponse47
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ELON MUSK: "If the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have? If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives... then we don't live in a democracy... It's incredibly important that we fix that..."

9:31 PM · Feb 11, 2025. //

Well, we have this unelected fourth, unconstitutional branch of government, which is the bureaucracy, which has, in a lot of ways, currently more power than any elected representative. That's not something that people want, and does not match the will of the people. It's something we've got to fix. //

This is what Democrats refuse to accept, and for completely cynical reasons. You do not have a democracy if federal bureaucrats can simply override, either directly or through lawfare, any change to the status quo made by the President of the United States. If an agency has such total control that it can stop the executive branch from even changing the content of government websites, that is authoritarianism despite the faceless nature of federal employees. American voters voted for change by electing Donald Trump. They did not vote for federal judges to stop any and all reforms under absurd legal theories.

Democrats see the bureaucracy as a protection of their power structure. As long as it persists, they don't have to win elections. They can simply continue their reign of terror from the shadows, hiding behind millions of federal employees exercising immense control without any accountability. That's what Trump is seeking to stop, and it has Democrats screaming bloody murder. //

MUSK: You know there's crazy things like, we just finished the examination of Social Security, and we've got people in there that are 150 years old. Now, do you know anyone that is 150? I don't, okay. They should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. They're missing out. So, you know that's a case where I think they're probably dead, or they should be very famous. One of the two. //

The federal bureaucracy has been a gravy train for Democrat partisans for decades. Somehow, despite relatively normal salaries (though far too high in some cases), many of these people become fabulously wealthy. How did Samantha Power, who headed USAID during the Biden administration, see her wealth surge up to $30 million holding the position she did? These are questions that deserve answers. //

Brigitte Gabriel @ACTBrigitte
·
Cuteness overload!

Elon Musk is talking about how he's going to cut the deficit in half and his son X is whispering to President Trump and picking his nose.

Little boys will be boys! It's nice to see beautiful young families back inside the White House!
0:22 / 0:22
9:41 PM · Feb 11, 2025. //

There's something wholesome and refreshing about children being normalized in public spaces again. Whether it's Musk or Vice President JD Vance, we are seeing a return of kids not being seen as a burden but as a blessing worth cherishing. Once again, it represents a stark contrast to the hateful resentment shown by the left, and Musk calmly answering questions while Democrats screech like banshees is why the latter keep losing.

Four DHS officials working for the sub-agency FEMA are being terminated after they violated one of President Donald Trump's executive orders. As RedState reported, a payment of $59 million was sent to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal immigrants during the first week of February. That came after the White House ordered a stop to such spending, with the intention being to redirect the money to disaster relief for Americans.

No matter the intent, it is an unassailable fact that in these three instances involving Politico, the New York Times, and the AP, the massive increase in their subscription business with the US government coincides with Joe Biden's election and is really obvious by February 2021, Biden's first full month in office. There is no such volume of subscriptions in either the Obama or Trump administrations. //

Trump needs to order an investigation into this unseemly financial connection between the Biden administration and the media that covered it and give America a full accounting of what they find. //

anon-mdjj
2 days ago
Since the subscriptions were purchased with my tax money, I demand complete and total access to all the politico pro and NYT subscription services.

What Democrats have done is open the door wide open for a bureaucratic state bloodbath, and no one can say they weren't warned.

epaddon
20 hours ago
This Senator's defense of Sesame Street is brought to you by the letters B and S.

Almost 70 years ago, the U.S. State Department dispatched a new ambassador to a Southeast Asian nation. As often seemed to happen, the new U.S. official was no expert on the nation, its economy, or its culture. He did not speak the language. And his concerns were more geopolitical and career-oriented. //

Communism at the time of that ambassador’s appointment was the worst threat ever to global democracy. It had already taken over Eastern Europe, prompted the Korean War, and was inspiring guerrilla movements around the world, especially in Asia, where some colonial powers like France still reigned.

Using the American Revolution against Britain as his model for successful guerilla warfare, Ho Chi Minh was succeeding in ousting the French from Indochina, soon to become Vietnam.

It turns out, this story about the ignorant, bumbling new U.S. ambassador was all made up, total fiction. It was the plot of “The Ugly American,” a blockbuster 1958 novel that would shape the thinking of a future president and millions more through a successful movie starring some actor in his 30s named Marlon Brando.

The compelling book by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer was a longtime best-seller. It spoke to a deep-seated American fear, which survives to this day, that the world’s bad guys would be victorious because a naïve United States, geographically isolated from foreign trouble spots, failed to fully accept its responsibility to help other countries and thereby protect itself. //

During and long after World War I, the U.S. produced and sent millions of tons of food to feed war-torn Europe. That effort was spearheaded by an Iowa orphan and mining engineer named Herbert Hoover, who gained international fame.

He also served as Secretary of Commerce and, in 1928, became the first Quaker and last Cabinet member to win election as president.

The vast Marshall Plan to feed and rebuild Europe after World War II cemented a reputation for generosity in the minds of the world and ourselves and a dawning awareness that Americans had a strong self-interest in helping others.

As someone who read Ugly American at the time, I can say the psychological impact of that book was even stronger than the 1974 one for “Jaws,” which unleashed our inner fears of immense monsters just out of sight.

The warnings of Ugly American — that the U.S. had to be smarter abroad — so impressed first-term Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-MA) that he gave copies to every other senator. And then, two years later, he took those impressions with him into the White House with some lethal consequences. //

Just four months into his presidency, Kennedy reversed President Eisenhower’s policy of non-intervention in foreign conflicts. That had kept the U.S. out of fighting in Indochina and Egypt when France and Britain seized the Suez Canal.

Fatefully, in May 1961, Kennedy sent 500 troops to South Vietnam. They were just going to advise the local army, you understand, in its struggle against Communists infiltrating from North Vietnam. //

Fast forward to Afghanistan, 2001. The initial decision seemed reasonable for the U.S. and NATO allies to attack al Qaeda there and the Taliban, which had hosted terrorist training camps for the 9/11 attacks.

But then, once again, mission creep slipped in. //

Three hundred years before Christ, Alexander the Great could not pacify what became Afghanistan. Nor could the British in the 1800s. In 1989, the Soviets gave up their attempt after 10 years.

It took the U.S. and allies 20 years before they gave up and left in a humiliating 2021 withdrawal that Joe Biden's ineptness made worse than necessary.

The Western costs were 2,465 U.S. service fatalities, 1,144 allied and contractor deaths, and $2.3 trillion.

The Taliban won anyway.

Now, we return to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was active there. The goal of President Kennedy, who also founded the Peace Corps, was to unite scattered foreign aid programs in one semi-independent agency under the State Department to promote social and economic progress in other countries. //

There is no doubt, however, that some of the billions distributed by USAID have benefited many millions. The agency helped eradicate smallpox, stemmed the spread of AIDS in Africa, and provides treatments.

The mission was to make investments abroad that would encourage and ignite further progress. Not provide free lunches today but teach literacy so people could get better jobs tomorrow. Help provide clean water and teach better health care, especially for infants and children. Provide nutritional guidance. Improve agricultural methods to boost production and reduce erosion and pests. //

The fact is that although the U.S. is by far the world’s largest provider of foreign aid, such spending only runs around one percent of the total federal budget of $6.1 trillion; in Fiscal Year 2023, it was 1.2 percent. //

Everyone from Musk's young children to his ex-wives is named and described in the piece, some in ways clearly meant to provoke embarrassment. To be sure, there is no valid reason for any of these family members to be thrust into the public eye, and The Hill's framing makes it clear that this is in retaliation for Musk daring to take "an influential Washington role" in reforming the bureaucracy. It's the mobster tactic of winking and nodding while saying, "That's a nice family you've got there. It'd be a shame if anything were to happen to them."

I'd say the mainstream press should be ashamed of itself, but we all know its members possess no shame to offer. These "journalists" operate like ghoulish leeches, willing to publish anything to serve their political wants. There are no boundaries, and some news outlets sure seem to nudging others into committing physical attacks on Musk and his family.

That attitude extends to Democrat politicians as well, who have made "Elon Musk wasn't elected" a rallying cry, as if his appointment is somehow invalid while the unelected bureaucrats are unassailable. Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) recently ranted and raved that people need to use "every tool" to stop Musk.

Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Russ Vought has frozen all new funding to that agency. In a memo to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, Vought, who was just confirmed as Office of Management and Budget Director, said, "This letter is to inform you that in the Third Quarter of Fiscal Year 2025, the Bureau is requesting $0."

Earlier, Vought had announced that he'd discovered the CFPB was sitting on a $711.6 million "reserve fund." //

The beauty of this move is that when Elizabeth Warren set up the CFPB, she attempted to insulate it from influence or management by either the Executive or Legislative branches. Contrary to other agencies that are managed by a group of directors who the president can remove, the CFPB had a single director who could only be removed for cause. The Supreme Court struck down that arrangement in 2020. She also had the CFPB draw funds directly from the Federal Reserve, bypassing the appropriation process. In the best "it isn't a tax" tradition of John Roberts's jurisprudence, that funding arrangement survived a Supreme Court challenge. This combination of events has led to a situation where one man, that would be Russ Vought, can do pretty much as he wishes because there is no Congressional oversight, and he can't be forced to spend money because there are no appropriations. //

This letter is to inform you that for the Third Quarter of Fiscal Year 2025, the Bureau is requesting $0.

During my review of the Bureau's finances, I have learned that the Bureau has a balance of $711,586,678.00 in the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Fund. By law, I must take account of this sum when determining the amount "reasonably necessary" for the Bureau to fulfill its statutory authorities.

I have determined that no additional funds are necessary to carry out the authorities of the Bureau for Fiscal Year 2025. The Bureau's current funds are more than sufficient — and are, in fact, excessive — to carry out its authorities in a manner that is consistent with the public interest.

When DOGE found empty fields in Treasury's payment system, they uncovered more than missing data.
They found a mechanism.

Simple things were left blank:

Payment categories

Payment rationales

Basic audit controls

The kind of fields any small business would require. The kind that let you track where money goes. The kind that stop a billion dollars of fraud. Every week.

Here's what Treasury didn't want exposed:

Over $100 billion flowing annually to accounts without Social Security numbers. No temporary ID numbers. No verification. Nothing.

When Musk asked Treasury officials how much was "unequivocal and obvious fraud," the answer revealed decades of corruption: HALF

Let that sink in.

$50 billion per YEAR.

A billion dollars every SINGLE week disappearing into accounts that shouldn't exist.

The kind of fraud that would shut down any bank in America.

The kind that would land any business owner in federal prison.

But Treasury had perfected its system:

Process payments

Ignore controls

Keep the machine running. //

Nineteen Democratic state attorneys general filed suit. Not about the fraud. Not about the waste. Not about billions vanishing into accounts without SSNs. But about "protecting" the Treasury Department from its own Secretary.

A judge in New York responded with something unprecedented: an ex parte order blocking Treasury officials from accessing their own department's data. No warning. No chance to respond. No opportunity to present evidence. Just a wall between the people elected to fix the system and the system itself.

Think about what that means: The Secretary of the Treasury—effectively the CFO of the United States government—legally barred from seeing how money moves through his own department. The people's appointee blocked from viewing the people's accounts. Young coders mapping the missing controls ordered to stop looking.