Elon Musk stirred up a hornet’s nest by investigating some very smelly USAID payments.
$8.2 Million Went to Politico, Where’s $32.5 Billion Going?
Yahoo!News reports USAID is on Trump and Musk’s cost-cutting list. Here’s where the foreign aid agency spends its money.
- USAID distributed nearly $32.5 billion in aid in 2024, mainly to Africa and the Middle East.
- Many Republicans argue USAID is wasteful, while some Democrats say shuttering the agency is unconstitutional.
- Proposed USAID cuts may reduce aid to Ukraine, Jordan, and Ethiopia.
On Tuesday evening, USAID staff received an email saying that starting Friday, “all USAID direct hire personnel will be placed on administrative leave globally, with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership, and specially designated programs.” The email added that essential staff would be notified on Thursday afternoon and that the agency would begin moving international staff back to the US within 30 days.
In 2024, the US donated over $5.4 billion in aid to Ukraine through USAID, most of which was through macroeconomic support to assist in its war with Russia.
The agency gave over $1.23 billion to Jordan last year, mostly through a cash transfer to the government in exchange for the country cooperating with US interests, such as providing intelligence support and housing Syrian refugees.
Donald Trump and Elon Musk have attacked USAID and other foreign aid programs over the past few weeks. Musk called USAID a “criminal organization” in a post on X, while Trump told reporters on Sunday that USAID was “run by a bunch of radical lunatics.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was named USAID’s acting director on Monday and has advocated for foreign assistance agencies to be more transparent about how aid is being implemented. Rubio said the Trump administration was reviewing each program to see if it makes the US safer, stronger, and more prosperous.
Lawmakers, Legal Experts Warn Shuttering USAID Is Unconstitutional
The Hill reports Lawmakers, Legal Experts Warn Shuttering USAID Is Unconstitutional
Over the weekend, agents of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) entered the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) facility. Staff started getting shut out of internal systems Sunday and were told not to come into the headquarters at the Ronald Reagan Building on Monday.
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who leads DOGE, said his team took a “wood chipper” to USAID over the weekend. He has for days railed against USAID on his social media platform X and levied accusations of corruption against the independent agency that has provided humanitarian and development assistance to countries around the world for more than 60 years.
During an event hosted on X early Monday morning, Musk said that USAID is a “ball of worms” that is “beyond repair,” and that the president agreed to shut it down. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that he had taken over as acting administrator of USAID amid speculation that Trump may try to merge the stripped-down agency into the State Department.
“Musk, and perhaps Congress, need to recognize that this isn’t the same as a corporate takeover of another business. Since USAID is an independent agency, only an act of Congress can abolish it. Even shutting down the agency, but just leaving it on the books, should trigger legal challenges,” said James DeSimone, an employment and civil rights attorney at V. James DeSimone Law.
Critics have said that since President John F. Kennedy created USAID using an executive order in 1961, President Trump can do away with it via executive order. But that’s not the full story.
Congress later passed a law, the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, codifying USAID as an independent agency, according to an analysis published Monday by the Congressional Research Service.
DeSimone also said career civil service employees are not the same as political appointees, who serve at the pleasure of the president and may be asked to resign or be dismissed at any time.
“They have due process rights and legal protections designed to prevent such unlawful political retaliation,” DeSimone said. “And you cannot just put thousands of these people on leave without following federal regulations and providing notice. How long would they be on leave? Because long-term paid leave, without an end, is the same as illegal termination. Litigation is inevitable, even if Congress acts.”
Where Does Mish Stand?
- I side with Musk: “USAID is a ball of worms and should be shut down.”
- I also side DeSimone: “Only an act of Congress can abolish it.”
- But Congress should abolish USAID.
- Meanwhile, someone should review every payment.
- Payments that are not explicitly authorized by an act of Congress should be canceled.
Swindled Taxpayers
Fox News reports ‘Swindled the American taxpayer’: New House GOP internal memo rips Dem USAID uproar
An internal memo being circulated to House Republicans is urging lawmakers to argue that President Donald Trump’s handling of foreign aid is “already paying dividends” and that the Biden administration spent that money on initiatives like “a transgender opera in Colombia through the State Department.”
The memo urged Republicans to argue Trump’s freeze on foreign aid “is needed because it’s nearly impossible to evaluate foreign aid programs when they are on autopilot.”
“A 90-day review period, with commonsense waivers for truly life-threatening situations, is the only way to give the State Department the time needed to root out waste,” it said.
The State Department issued a freeze on most federal foreign aid days after Trump was sworn into office. Within recent days, Trump and Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) have also led a significant scale-back of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), including making Secretary of State Marco Rubio its acting head.
But Republicans like Mast, a top Trump ally, argue that the moves are justified to evaluate what money is actually going to foreign assistance that aligns with Trump’s agenda.
“America’s foreign aid is not charity and its goal should not be to advance DEI abroad,” the committee wrote on X on Monday.
Ridiculous USAID Spending Items
- $39,652 to host seminars at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on gender identity and racial equality through the State Department
- $425,622 to help Indonesian coffee companies become more climate and gender friendly through USAID.
- $14 million in cash vouchers for migrants at the southern border through the State Department
- $446,700 to promote the expansion of atheism in Nepal through the State Department
- $32,000 for an LGBTQ-centered comic book in Peru
Did Congress approve any of that? You can hide a lot of sleaze in $32.5 billion.
Canceling Payments to Politico
Fox News reports White House Announces DOGE Is Canceling Payments to Politico
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed on Wednesday that Politico has been receiving funds from the U.S. government that will dry up as President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cracks down on spending.
Leavitt was asked about reports that “media outlets” will be impacted by Elon Musk’s plan to cut funding for U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Politico received at least $8.2 million from the U.S. government in recent years, with $44,000 of that coming from USAID, according to USAspending.gov.
“Upon coming out here to the briefing room, I was made aware of the funding from USAID to media outlets, including Politico, who I know has a seat in this room, and I can confirm that the more than $8 million taxpayer dollars that have gone to, essentially, subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayers dime, will no longer be happening,” Leavitt said.
“The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now,” she continued. “This is a whole government effort to assure that we are going line by line when it comes to the federal government’s books.”
The Fox News headline is incorrect. DOGE cannot cancel payments. It cannot do anything but make recommendations.
Politico Staff Unpaid?
The amount of discussion over this on X is quite amazing. I try to stay out of things unless I have a decent handle.
After a delay, Politico employees have been paid.
Many Politico employees typically receive direct deposit every other Tuesday, but this week they woke up and noticed the funds didn’t hit their account. An employee told Fox News Digital that management didn’t communicate about the issue until 9 a.m., when they chalked it up as a “technical error.”
According to the employee, many concerns went unaddressed as panicked Politico staffers expressed worry about paying bills and being hit with overdraft fees from their banks. Politico’s management eventually insisted it was a technical error between the bank and payroll providers and that everyone would be paid by the end of the day.
The employees were eventually paid, but it didn’t appear as “pending” until after 5 p.m. ET and didn’t clear until Wednesday morning, according to the impacted staffer. The employee said there is internal concern that the late paychecks and the government cracking down on excess spending were somehow connected.
A Politico spokesperson provided the following statement: “Employees were paid yesterday, there was a technical error that was remedied in a matter of hours.”
Politico did not immediately respond to a series of follow-up questions about whether or not Musk’s crackdown on government spending had anything to do with the delayed payment.
Failure to comment seems damning. And what the hell is with this?
While Politico did receive payments from USAID for its costly subscription service, it was hardly the government agency that has given the most money to Politico. The Department of Health and Human Services leads the way, with $1.37 million followed by $1.35 million from the Department of the Interior, according to USAspending.gov.
The Department of Energy has given Politico $1.29 million, the Department of Agriculture has given $552,024 and the Department of Commerce has given $485,572.
The Politico staffer said employee concerns quickly shifted from being angry about the late payroll to anxieties over Musk’s post.
Politico did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Musk’s post or comments from the White House.
Subscription Service
Social media erupted with claims that the government has been funding Politico, but others pointed out that Politico has an expensive subscription service that is critical for many government employees. Base subscriptions are typically between $12,000 and $15,000 for three users.
While Politico did receive small amounts of cash for subscriptions from government agencies under prior administrations, it appears to have skyrocketed during the Biden administration, according to USAspening.gov.
Politico Payments Over Time
You can search for stuff yourself. Here’s a direct US Spending Link to the above chart.
The 2024 fiscal year for the United States federal government began on October 1, 2023 and ended on September 30, 2024.
Hmm. Fancy that. It seems all of this spending was under Biden.
Why was that?
Ex-Politico reporters reveal editors quashed, slow-walked negative Biden stories ‘with no explanation’
Please consider Ex-Politico reporters reveal editors quashed, slow-walked negative Biden stories ‘with no explanation’
‘Don’t write about the laptop, don’t talk about the laptop, don’t tweet about the laptop,’ ex-Politico reporter Marc Caputo recalled.
Caputo was referencing Politico’s report, which had the headline “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say,” on the open letter signed by 51 intelligence officials declaring that the material from Hunter Biden’s laptop had “all the earmarks of a Russian intelligence operation.”
“I was covering Biden at the time, and I remember coming to my editor and saying, ‘Hey, we need to write about the Hunter Biden laptop.’ And I was told this came from on high at Politico: Don’t write about the laptop, don’t talk about the laptop, don’t tweet about the laptop. And the only thing Politico wound up writing was that piece that called it disinformation, which charitably could be called misinformation, at the least.”
Caputo also shed light on a report he had written in 2019 that stemmed from opposition research from a rival Democratic campaign of then-candidate Joe Biden regarding a “tax lien” of Hunter’s pertaining to his work at Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
“And I wrote what would have been a classic story saying, you know, ‘The former vice president’s son was slapped with a big tax lien for the period of time that he worked for this controversial Ukrainian oil concern, or natural gas concern, which is haunting his father on the campaign trail.’ That story was killed by the editors,’ Caputo said. “And they gave no explanation for that either. So that the general experience- obviously the public doesn’t know about those things.”
When reached out by Fox News Digital, Caputo provided video showing the original Word document created May 8, 2019 of his tax lien reporting on Hunter Biden.
Is the price for silence $8.2 million?
Just Scratching the Surface
I side with the above viewpoint.
However, please note $8 million here or there or even $100 million here or there won’t do much for a $2 trillion deficit.
While I want to save every penny, we need some really big cleanup efforts and I highly doubt they are coming.
Related Posts
December 27, 2024: Can DOGE Cut $2 Trillion Out of $1 Trillion? What About Revenue?
The answer to the first question is obvious. So let’s discuss what’s reasonable.
January 10, 2024: Elon Musk Admits DOGE Can’t Find $2 Trillion In Budget Cuts
Anyone with an ounce of common sense knew that wasn’t possible. He won’t find $1 trillion either.
I appreciate Musk, DOGE, and others looking. But we need to go well beyond millions of dollars into the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts.
Regardless, Democrats are in a tizzy over this reporting and a look at some of the nonsense that was funded shows why.
The Democrats have make charges that Musk has illegal access to data. That’s a hoot because everyone can search the payments database.
I also see reports that Musk has no legal authority to act. That’s correct, but all he is doing is make recommendations. So that’s a bunch of Democrat hot air as well.
So Musk needs to keep looking and you can too. Here is a Search Link to USASpending.Gov.
I am trying to do a data download and it’s taking hours. If the reason is thousands of other people are attempting the same thing, that’s great.
Musk proposed putting this on Blockchain. What a waste of time that would be. How about speeding up the access so everyone can look at where we are spending $32.5 billion.
Penny saved penny earned. Its about fiscal discipline and oversight of what we spend on. Gay operas lol.
Hello Mish,
In your graph titled “Payments to Politico Over Time”, do you have the graph labels reversed (All Transactions, vs. Count of New Awards)? It looks like it may be. I’m referring to the graph at https://i0.wp.com/mishtalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Payments-to-Politico-Over-Time.png?resize=1024%2C528&quality=80&ssl=1
I disagree with your statement it takes an act of congress to abolish USAID. I believe the law congress passed calling USAID an independent entity is unconstitutional. Every law congress passed needs to be specific. They cannot create an organization without specifically numbering the amount of employees working there and giving it a specific budget.
Near the end of the above topic, you make this statement
“I side with the above viewpoint.
However, please note $8 million here or there or even $100 million here or there won’t do much for a $2 trillion deficit.”
The actual deficit for FY’24 on Sept. 30th was $2.297 Trillion.
And the biggest mystery is why did the total go up $275 Billiion the next day? Also, 96% of that money came out of some Trust Fund or Pension Fund hidden in the Interagovenmental Debt part of the total.
Let’s ask Musk to figure that out. Nobody else has the guts to answer that question.
What is going on in DC regarding USAID as funding agent against US citizenry will make McCarthy era look like Childs play.
We’d give some that money to Mish if he’d get rid of some of the degenerates that post here.
First of all, audits are reasonable and responsible. That being said, USAID’s mission is to leverage soft power to advance foreign policy initiatives around the world and, more generally, to plant seeds of goodwill toward America and promote human rights. How DOGE and Trump have handled USAID and its justifiable review/audit has been irresponsible. An audit should have been performed, but that took time. The findings of that audit should be reviewed by the GAO and shared with a Congressional Commission, which then would be responsible for holding public hearings on those findings and the Administration’s actions to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of USAID. You do not come into a position of responsibility and dismantle something as significant and consequential as USAID, effectively throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Yeah no you are totally correct and obviously know how to win wars. Because operating inside your opponent’s OODA loop and not giving them time to delay obfuscate, etc., mount resistance, etc., is totally the wrong approach. No, instead, to win, you should play by your opponent’s ruleset and do audits, then have a bureaucracy review it, then asked CONgress what they think. Then have CONgress hold public hearings so they can get soundbites for their re-election campaign and generate campaign funds. And of course to keep up the illusion that the public actually has a say and the elites aren’t just going to do whatever the F they want to do.
You sound like the sheep who sits down at the table with 3 wolves to decide on what’s for dinner, having no idea that it’s you.
USAID is significant and consequential my ass. You must be one of the Democrats who say shuttering the agency is unconstitutional.
Good grief
My family has been in this land since the late 1600s. My ancestors fought in every war, from the Revolutionary War to WWII. My WWI great-grandfather died at 105 years old when I was 35 years old. My WWII grandfather passed away at 94 when I was 53. I had plenty of time to understand my country through their first-hand accounts spanning the last 100+ years. We are a country founded on just a few fundamental principles. One of those principles is that our government is to be balanced, with three EQUAL branches of government that operate as checks on each other’s power. This ensures that the Executive Branch, led by an elected temporary leader, could not wield disproportionate power resembling a monarchy or dictatorship. For this to work, those in power in each equal branch only swear an oath to the Constitution, not a party or a President. Therefore, laws must hold up to Constitutional legal challenges, with the Judicial Branch being the final arbiter. Presidential/Executive Branch actions are subject to Congressional oversight and Judicial Branch challenges. What this all calls for is a process. You can call it bureaucracy if you like, but in a Constitutional Democracy, process comes above person, and it is critical to such a democracy’s proper function.
Nobody cares.
If you don’t care about the foundational principles of our country, what is it that you actually care about? I know what I care about because my perspective benefits from an understanding of history, an understanding what has made the U.S. the a beacon of freedom and hope around the world, and how, in spite of inward looking cynics, the U.S. literally saved the world from evil and built the rules based order that has so significantly solidified the U.S. as the singular liberal democratic superpower that we have been for the 80 years.
Looks like someone bought unrefundable tickets to a certain transgender opera.
That is the level of seriousness that I expect from many people who just do not care enough to take the time to understand what truly enables our democratic experiment to stand the test of time and sometimes survive in spite of itself.
These have never been approved: I love when Trumpo fires people.
Ridiculous USAID Spending Items
Did Congress approve any of that? You can hide a lot of sleaze in $32.5 billion.
Looks like the strategy is to have the enemies not know their asses from a hole in the ground.
Maybe, just maybe, someone should know how to fly the plane…
before they turn off the autopilot.
Move fast! Break things! BIG THINGS!
Creating these extragovernmental slush funds for the privileged is perfectly constitutional, but getting rid of them is not, eh? Not a single one of these blob-like entities is remotely constitutional — the Departments of the Executive clauses make no room for these creatures.
Okay, Congress should liquidate them. Why’s that so hard? The GOP has its majority, even if its a slim one. Does this mean some Reps are on the line if the dirty flows of money from these agencies stops draining into the gutter-like coffers of influential constituents?
Hmmm!
Doge is turning out to be the government version of the Twitter Files.
“Lawmakers, Legal Experts Warn Shuttering USAID Is Unconstitutional”
It’s under new management by the State Department.
There are pennies and there are dollars. You can pat yourself on the back for “saving a buck or two” by buying cheap furniture next year instead of this year, but unless you are looking at the BILLIONS of dollars (many of which go to American farmers for all these foodstuffs) you are wasting everyones time. Find the BILLIONS in wasted money, Elon!
Giant corporate ranchers & farmers waaay out in the Red Fields is a no-touch slurry trough for taxpayer dollars. They get vast walfare handouts which they use to buy out small family farms and then cry broke to the Dept. of Agriculture every year through their Manhattan white-shoe lobbyists.
He will
When you get into billions, one of the first things you hit is the subsidies to Tesla that are responsible for 35% of its profit. Not interesting at all, and there is more important work to be done. Rooting out DEI, and getting those transexuals in the correct bathrooms will be the priority going forward.
MAGA!
The sad and scandalous thing is that ‘the money’ is the least of it, which is lost on the citizenry. Nuke it all from orbit.
Ironically, it appears that through USAID funding LGBTQ and many other blahblahblah BS, the agency is promoting AIDS (Pun Intended) and other STDs and mental health issues in as many foreign countries as possible.
“THE SCIENCE” has proven that folks in those categories have exponentially more sexually transmitted diseases and mental health issues than other, more “traditional” categories suffer from.
I know, I know, I am evil.
But… prove me wrong.
Have a nice day… : )
That’s called “salting the mine” for future funding!
Population control meaning reduction. Its a thing.
Another idiotic conspiracy theory. there’s nothing wrong with government paying subsriptions to media outlets. Politico has a lot of useful and pretty esoteric information available at the higher tiers that aren’t on their from page website. The NYT, BBC etc.. all have invaluable information going back centuries.
if Fox news had any valuable information, the govt should subscribe to that too.
As usual MAGA rages at nonsnse while compeltely ignoring the open-wrongdoing occurring in front of them. So for example they cheer Lara trump joining Fox News, and see no issue with the CEO of TikTok on the dais at the inauguration after Trunp’s ridiculous about-face on banning TikTok
Run the math, son. $8,200,000.00 over 237 transactions is 35k/transaction. Explain.
Total old school bribery! Sleepy Joe couldn’t even figure out how to launch a crypto currency to launder that.
That’s what Sam Bankman Fraud, Caroline “risk management” Crypto and Gary Gensler were for.
Well, they ended up in jail… total amateur operation.
If you cannot see why there is EVERYTHING wrong with the government paying the media, you cannot be helped.
Government employees who want media subscriptions must pay for their own subscriptions out of pocket.
“the media” is a provider of information including archival and historical data that can’t be had elsewhere.
i don’t believe anything that comes from DOGE, which is a billionire who paid $290 million to have full access to the POTUS and got a few 25 year olds to analyze everything even though they on’t have the work or life experience to know anything.
And why would government need to pay Politico for liberal spin. it’s like paying Breitbart to run MAGA stories–a pointless waste since they do it anyway.
You are a case study for Stockholm Syndrome.
Does anyone know how to short residential real estate in DC.
Is Waffle House listed?
this is stupid. cut the expenditures that are bad not the ones that aren’t
I welcome sunshine, but would like to see it applied to DoD as well, and the Department of the Interior, which i have heard nothing about.
it’s a huge government. obviously there’s some money being spent stupidly. that doesn’t mean throwing it all out. not sure what part of this MAGA doesn’t understand. If your car has a flat tire you fix the flat you don’t set the car on fire.
the problem I have with MAGA is it’s great at identifying problems but crap at coming up with solutions– this is the problem with communism too, Karl Marx was great at identifying issues (which sound basically the same as MAGA–elites hurting the hardworking blue collars). it’s not hard to find problems with everything, and burning things down is pretty easy too.
Unfortunately “bad” and “good” are just labels used by individuals to categorize things but people have different perspectives and values so they don’t apply them in the same way.
You want to sort things by what is legal and, perhaps, what serves the interest of the citizens (although this is also subjective).
If the DoD and extensions are examined closely, then you may welcome it. Just remember, the last time there was some disclosure of budgetary malfeasance was nearly 24 years ago and there was unpleasantness afterwards.
if you have some legal argument, make it.
no doubt there is malfeasance, under both republican and democratic administrations in all agencies of government. You think the Dept of the Interior didn’t improperly favor certain oil and gas interests, or paid them money they should not have? i am skeptical DOGE will look too hard because oil and gas is considered a republican thing.
my point is simply do away with the bad and keep the good, which is can easily be defined in terms of whether the agency is hewing to its approved mission (which also determines legality).
the good in this instance would be the ostensible mission of USAID which was approved by congress and all administrations since the 60s: to help starving and sick people worldwide and thereby entrench the American brand. to demand tracing each expenditure to tangible benefit is foolish and runs counter to brand marketing. it’s like asking Coke to prove how the this particular billboard or that particular bus advertisement has improved quarterly sales– it can’t be traced like that because the purpose of those signs is to embed Coke in consciousness, and over time to lead, long with other advertising, to ore business.
then the countries we give aid to give us things like contracts for oil or minerals going to the US instead of China, or things like Egypt, Jordan sharing intel with the US, or allowing us to fly in their airspace, navigate their waterways, and a thousand other things we take for granted.
The new admin should lay out the case for why we no longer want to do that, instead of identifying a handful of LGBTQ line items, valid subscriptions, amounting to less than .01% of the annual budget, and using those outliers as a reason to shutter an agency that commits 99.9% remainder of its budget to exactly what Congress authorized it to do: sending food, medicine and other aid to countries that need it.
Money wise I saw articles proving how this will cost US farmers and other businesses billions in lost sales: 40% of USAIDs expenditures are to Americans: USAID pays farmers (through the Ag Dept) for the grain, rice, corn, along with U.S. companies making the water filters, chlorine tablets, and all the other emergency aid.
I am a blue collar railroader so I can speak for many. Biden crammed a sh*t contract up our ass. He voided our strike. Our entire industry was hollowed because of it. He could have spent 3 minutes reading or listening to our disputes but couldn’t care less. Nearly every legally binding agreement we had with the carrier was sent to the paper shredder. He gutted our labor movement with the strike of a pen. So no don’t give blue collar this or that. Democrats are worthless. Don’t ever tell me MAGA is out to get us when you do it all by yourselves.
Ron Paul argued for decades that we had to “follow the Constitution”. He was laughed into oblivion by both parties and had no legislative accomplishment to show for his years in congress. (He was a good man and I voted for him every time he ran.)
We are now adopting the enemy’s rules of engagement as strict adherence to the Constitution will not be reciprocated. So naturally they are panicking.
Ron Paul is still being a pain in the ass. He needs to get with the program or he’ll end up in Gitmo.
Democrats are clutching their pearls over Musk having access to their social security files but also say than an illegal alien stealing a social security number is a public benefit because the then pay into the system.
really, what Dem politician said that??
Pretty much every one of them, Karen.. err, Kevin.
So, if DOGE can find trillions of dollars of bad spending in a few months, why shouldn’t we vote out EVERY incumbent representative and senator, regardless of party?
Does the Congress not have the ability and authority to oversee the spending that they authorize via legislation? If so, why haven’t they done it? And why do they have to wait for some “outside” party to come and do it for them, regardless of which party invites the outside party in?
I have a feeling that, regardless of the headlines that grab the attention, all of these expenditures were approved by the elected representatives that have been in office for the last 30 years. And, if there really is trillions in “waste, fraud, and abuse”, then the current crop of elected officials haven’t been doing their jobs and deserve to be booted.
Nope. They have not been officially voted on and approved by members of congress.
But, much of this illegal, fraudulent largess probably would be, if they could be, lol.
And I do find it a bit suspicious that all of this “outrageous” spending happens to be supposed Democrat spending. If there was an honest broker doing this work, they would find just as much Republican spending. That leads me to believe this is all BS.
As for the employees, Trump’s Schedule F directive should be used to the fullest extent possible, so all USAID schedule F employee should take the buyout instead of facing termination.
While this is all very good & compelling analysis by Mish, the fact remains that the federal workforce has to shrink. The waste, fraud & abuse has to shrink.
The simple fact is that the Dems know better than anyone who corrupt the system is, so they’re quaking in their boots knowing that DOGE will help eliminate an enormous handouts. In fact, the NYT has recently reported that the GAO knows of $236B in improper payments just in 2023.
what about DoD and Department of the Interior??
what about if we give things a bit of time to be properly investigated?
Sure. except in about 8 days the public’s attemtion will be compeltely elsewhere. like the Gaza idea.
it now came out that ICE was gaming Google search so that raids from years ago come up at the top if someone searches for ICE raids. Trump is a showman. he puts on a show his fans love and his detractors hate, meanwhile he’s putting billions in the pockets of his cronies and himself.
it’d be great if DOGE cut out useless and dumb spending. But what will happen is he’ll cut out all the Dem projects and then replace that with 10X going to him and his rich buddies.
This is what happens when your identity is subjugated by a political party that is hopelessly corrupt as the Democratic party is. You’re all in on defending the indefensible. Please stop, Anthony.
I think both parties re corrupt, but Republicans are much worse.
my identity I assure you is very independent and in no way beholden to the Democratic party.
there is nothing wrong with pointing out that finding suspicious transactions amounting to a rounding error out of the budget doesn’t justify tanking the whole thing.
I am sure there’s corruption and waste at DoD… but I am not advocating for disbanding our military and shuttering DoD. All I am saying is get rid of the bad, keep the good.
fact is MAGA doesn’t want the US to spend any money on foreign aid (except Israel, which is moronic because it’s a rich country that doesn’t need charity from US taxpayers) so they are trying to make iot seem like it’s all LGBTQ stuff when 99.99% of it is in fact aid in the form of food and medicine
“I appreciate Musk, DOGE, and others looking. But we need to go well beyond millions of dollars into the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts.”
Agree. The elephants in the room are social security and medicare. That’s where we’ll find the trillions to fix the deficit. DOGE should have started their rather than tripping over trillions to pick up nickels.
a journey of a million miles begins with a single step. Trump has been president roughly 2 weeks. It took all the time since world war II for the structure and systems of grift,graft and corruption to infuse the government like english ivy killing a tree. It will take much more than a single administration to remove the parasitic system infecting government.
It will continue, it must. But it will be a long hard slog and a lot of tears on both sides. Its very important in the political landscape to have popular support for your efforts. You pickup nickels, to show it can be done, that nickels add up to dollars and you fine time your systems and shake out whistleblowers and honest workers who want to help the effort.
You don’t run a bulldozer into a wall and destroy your momentum and the things you are trying to fix, not destroy outright.
Trump was president from 2016-2020, it hasn’t just been “two weeks” but he knows he has nothing to lose now. He can’t run again so may as well go for broke.
regardless, that doesn’t affect that a proper process is incremental and will take time, probably all of Vance’s two terms as president as well as Trumps.
Vance belongs to Thiel (a 95million side bet). Are you really ready for a gay president?
We’re walking to Alpha Centauri. This may take a few thousand years.
They’ll get there.
They’ve started with parts of the government that most people don’t care about (foreign aid, FBI, CIA etc) because there won’t be much push back on the fraud/waste getting cut / people fired etc.
Fairly soon it will be RFK looking into the health department, then the Pentagon and finally social security/medicare.
We’re going to replace those programs with vouchers for raw milk, heroin, and healing crystals. Mr. Kennedy assures me that this will result in a transformation of the health of the American People!
I believe the monkeys are going through those systems now.
thats so DEI insensitive, people are primates too…
What needs to be looked at VERY DEEPLY is SS disability payments. I wonder how many “disabled” workers couldn’t really work at something?
What Musk is doing is like a household that has an $8,000 income and $15,000 in expenses…and then the BUDGET CUTS start with buying ONE-PLY toilet paper (downgraded from two-ply) and saving $8.00 per month. NOTHING CAN BE DONE with TRILLIONS in debts, and deficit spending out of control.
These are headline grabbing efforts with TINY percentages of benefits to America’s mess.
What you are missing is that to change Bad Fiscal spending, first has to come an angered electorate.
There will be many who after being told for years pay your share because government is your best buddy, now find out their best Buddy has been stealing them blind.
What is going on is enlightenment. Reinforced because quite a large group of people struggle daily just to make ends meet.
This is not just a slap on the cheek getting revealed it is a full on assault of all that people have believed was True.
Next is realization they were lied to intentionally. It has all been smoke and mirrors.
you either don’t understand the nature of a curve upward, that begins at zero, or you are a propagandist damning with faint praise a movement that has only been for 2 weeks.
you are damning a kernel of corn, freshly planted for not being in full bloom and loaded with ears of corn.
Patience and enthusiastic support would do more, than crying and grousing about an infant in its cradle, not walking and talking and attending high school, 2 weeks after birth.
Maybe, but I sure enjoy the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the commie left..
He’s just getting started. It’s only been 2 weeks for God’s sake.
We had to do something to move the news cycle away from the stalled deportations.
Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. – Douglas Case, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University .
Certainly going to be more that comes out.
All that fuss about Bobby Kennedy is really about what is getting buried at HHS which DC does not want brought to light.
At least Taxpayer/Voter is going to get a good dose of where those hard earned dollars paid in to IRS are going. They are not going to like what they find.
What is really to cause some anger will be remembering how citizen interacted with IRS when they happen to make a mistake on a return. Treated like a criminal for a pencil error. DC pisses away their money on whatever it wants and siphons off as vigorous/cut to those seated in Government via foundations.
no, Bobby Kennedy is about the fact that this is a man who eats roadkill, and has a brain parasite and believes in nonsense new age treatments in charge of DoH. ,
And that he’s a liar who sues to abolish vaccines, stands to make millions of dollars if that happens, and then says he’s not anti vaccine. I mean, if you care about corruption how do you justify the fact that as head of DoH he can decide to abolish certain vaccines and meanwhile he has equity interests in cases seeking to abolish vaccines where he stands to make millions of dollars?? you thinh he’s bot compromised in his decisionmaking?
If you are a true environmentalist and or conservationist, why waste a tasty bit o’ fresh roadkill?
That would just be plain ol dumb..
“Equity in vaccine interests”?
You mean, just like FAUCI did?
Damn. BOOM. Shhh…
lol
you may be projecting…. how about we wait and see what happens rather than live in your bubble of fear?
Pfizer made billions off the Covid shots and paid 1.1 billion in royalties to NIH for them. The shots were neither safe or effective. The CDC holds a number of vaccine patents. They have a conflict of interest in being a regulator of vaccines. The public health agencies receive a large part of their budgets from the pharma companies themselves. The FDA approved Aduhelm, which 10 of 11 review committee members said, did not work. Three quit in disgust in response to approval. The public health agencies are compromised in their decision making.
Kennedy isn’t against only the Trump Vaccine, he was an anti vaccines well before 2020.
the Trump vaccine is both safe and effective, as is obvious from the fact that hundreds of million in the US took them and there’s not some mass die-off occurring. i know hundreds of people personally took the shots and not one has had any issue with them. they kept me from getting covid for 2 years even though i was constantly exposed, and my wofe never got it.
if there are conflicts of interest, get rid of them. Also, the NIH doesn’t approve vaccines, and the people work at NIH aren’t PERSONALLY benefitting from the money coming in. Unlike Kennedy who unquestionably does have a financial stake in banning vaccines –he has referral percentages in class actions targeting vaccines, this is not debatable he admitted it and said he’d supposedly resolve that conflict by giving the millions to his kids! i mea the fact that he would even suggest this fixes the issue is ridiculous. i am not opposed to eliminating those payments to NIH but this is hardly all Kennedy wants to do.
Kennedy is an ALSO an environmentalist lawyer who has been anti oil and gas for decades, so making him head up the EPA would have made sense. but no. he is appointing people in charge of agencies that they hate.
Do you have a Politico Pro subscription?
Say it ain’t so
America is one thing, but what about the same goings on in all the other major developed countries? Especially the NATO ones.
There’s more than one story hear obviously.
The money is one thing, and yes, the big amounts need to be exposed to public scrutiny, but the small amounts do also matter where they play a role in manipulation of opinion and policy – they are like small gears turning much bigger gears in the corruption machine.
…..and, you have opened up the discussion to what REALLY happens in DC: “Opinion Molding.” Politicians REALLY do not want to do much at all other than put on the Clown show for the Plebs.
This is a 3-ring circus without the cool Animals…and no trapezes.
Food for Thought?
As I was investigating this whole charade, I got to thinking something not touched upon, as of yet. Not sure at all if this would apply, but damn I can’t help but think I am onto something…
Is Perhaps, USAID a slush fund for the perpetual “War Machine” by chance? I hold On Now… In reviewing where a lot of money went, it appears to be places that spend it on weapons and mayhem. Would we send money to places, that we know will spend it on disruption events. Things like what occurred in Israel perhaps, could have been funded by this money? How about leaving all those weapons and munitions in Afghanistan? They are going to be and have been used for war purposes no? What about the places that are known to do these sorts of things in the Middle East? Lots of funds went to these disrupters no? We do seem to have an abundance of missies flying all over the place, ships being attached, drones the size of buses raining down on us, I mean C’mon Now WTF!!
Makes sense to me, no?
It’s a slush fund for sure. There’s no telling what all DOGE will find. Just the fact that Politico got $8M+ is outrageous.
IMHO, I think the biggest issue here really is the past oversight. Who was supposed to be doing what DOGE is doing and reporting back?
These losers:
https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/ossoff-criticizes-trump-firing-17-inspectors-general-citing-oversight-concerns
USAIDS has long been known to be a cutout for CIA. Lest we forget, intelligence is just a facet of diplomacy, and war is just diplomacy by another means.
– Elon Musk stirred up a hornet’s nest by investigating some very smelly USAID payments.
> Helps to explain the Democrat “Freakout” as sunlight is the “Best Disinfectant” It shows all the open wounds and sores.
>> So now what? Perp Walks if needed, I hope they are extremely swift and cut very deeply, so as to uncover these cheating, lying, stealing Non-patriots within Our Existence!!
No wonder it’s been so hard to stop the shenanigans, as they were “Bought and Paid For” with Our Own Tax dollars!!! This is Absolutely Disgusting on Every Level!!
Isn’t this considered corruption at the “Extreme Levels” where punishment must be extremely severe, so as to “DETER” this from happening Ever Again! I am not implying that it is, but IF THE WORD: Treason comes into play, then toss the damn card on the table!! Enough of this Shit!!!
Very Disturbing…
we crawl, before we walk, we walk before we run. you must investigate before you can indict, you must have evidence. When the evidence accrues the guilty parties will be brought to justice. Thats the difference between Lawfare and real Justice.
great, now do DoD and Department of Interior.
He will
Don’t forget to reward us by purchasing $Trump and $melania crypto currencies!
Walks out on the plank.
Our tax dollars are paid strictly for the operation of our government, every penny spent above that is thievery.
JFK squeezed the Aids. He was blackmailed. That started the bloodshed of the 60’s.
I think the CIA started the bloodshed of the 60’s with the help of the FBI, and the mafia, Kennedy was in the way, stopping and slowing things down, til Kennedy was no more.
Que Bono? Who benefited from Kennedy’s death?
JFK was upset with the CIA’s incompetence. That’s why he took the Cuban project in house under Bobby. JFK was enamored with covert actions and devoured James Bond novels. Dulles is supposed to be the mastermind behind the JFK assassination but Dulles supplied JFK with advance copies of Bond novels. Bobby later asked Dulles to provide an oral history for the JFK Library and Bobby’s widow invited Dulles to RFK’s funeral. Doesn’t sound like a blood feud to me.
I think it was Cuban intelligence that hit JFK. Castro felt thrown under the bus by the Soviet withdrawal of its IRBM missiles from Cuba in return for a secret verbal promise from JFK not to invade Cuba. The assassination and sabotage efforts against Castro and Cuba continued. So Castro’s security service (perhaps without Castro’s knowledge) took matters into their own hands. It wouldn’t have been difficult as Cuba had heavily infiltrated the Cuban exile groups. Cuba’s intelligence capabilities are top notch. We’ve found Cuban spies in the US intelligence community that had been in place fir decades.
The Warren Commission was designed to cover up the Castro project, Cuban retaliation, protect the Kennedy family and CIA and give the American public a good story so we wouldn’t be dragged into WW3. I think Dulles was on the WC to protect the CIA AND the Kennedy family.
Consider the fact that we have far better relations with Vietnam than Cuba. When communism falls in Cuba, those archives will be interesting if they are ever revealed.
OK, If that theory makes you sleep better.
But, like ‘Schmuck’ Shumer said, “the intelligence community has seven ways from Sunday to get even with you.”
I’m pretty sure they were the main drivers of most of the evil for the last.. 60-70 years.
Viet Nam, Panama, Yugoslavian rearrangement, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine.
Remember those?
There’s so much evidence it would literally take years to bring you up to speed, son.
everyone was enamored by the Bond novels, the author attended White House dinners. The author, Ian Fleming had a great deal to do with the success of world war II, which was not known to the general public at the time, but probably by the intelligence agencies at the time.
There is a very good BBC program, discussing what Ian Fleming did during World War II, it was posthumous. 2023..
Ian Fleming: A BBC Radio Biography, its available at archive.org. Worth a listen.
Uh, I’m pretty sure that’s what ME was saying GM..
I’m saying without a proper understanding of who Ian Fleming was and what his role was both in the WWII war effort and the cold war, one is unable to put in perspective the entire era and it fascination with subterfuge and prestidigitation.
And most people only know Ian Fleming as an author of somewhat cheezy spy novels.
If you want to understand the present, you have to understand the past.
How much will eventually be cut from the budget by DOGE is yet to be seen but starting with such an in-depth our government has never seen is a very good sign of better things to come. First of all we get to eliminate a huge amount of waste immediately. Secondly we can be sure of a lot claw-backs from organizations for misuse of funds. We will have a feeding frenzy of lawyers on this issue. Lastly, going forward government agencies will be very careful about what they authorize and what they spend taxpayer’s money on because this time the controls will be serious.
Musk’s plan to use blockchain is perfect for this because you can use it as a continuous audit. The saving from this will be slower but more consistent but over the long-term will result in more savings than the chainsaw we are experiencing now. For the first time I feel confident that we can finally get the budget in control and start to seriously lower debt. A few billion here, a few billion there and pretty soon you have a trillion or two in savings.
This team is redefining government’s relationship with the public. Radical transparency and quick access could only be possible through technology developed in the last two decades and we have people we know how to use it and how to implement it and they are in the government now. After four years and hopefully eight more it will be impossible to go back.
There is massive corruption starting from POTUS.
US needs to start building 5 stars prison. Not one but a lot.
actually a few firing squads can do a whole lot about changing people’s behaviour on a massive scale. Of course after due process of law, we don’t need a French Revolution, just an effort to show that someone is in charge and cares about the damages done, and that they won’t be tolerated going forward.
Prisons are for punishment and rehabilitation, some criminals are not repairable. Perhaps they could help build the walls, and fix the cities, the roads and bridges. Rebuild the country that they took advantage of and left in a rotting mess.
True justice may involve more than 3 squares and a bunk in a jail.
“5 star”?
How about putting that DC Filth in a “1 Star”?
Just as they did to the J6ers”
El Salvador has already offered up prison services on the cheap. Tropical paradise.
“I also side DeSimone: “Only an act of Congress can abolish it.”
This is incorrect. USAID was created via EO 10873 in November 1961. It can be abishrd via an EO.
22 USC 6501 (1982)attempts to prevent future dissolution by claiming USAID is an ‘independent’ agency in the Executive Branch and by reference cannot be dissolved. This is incorrect. From a Constitutional perspective, there are no independent agencies in the Executive branch.
Funding was provided by Congress. Funding is a seperate issue than the dissolution of the agency itself. On the funding or defunding issue, I agree that Congress must be involved
I would think that any illegal funding, miss use of funding, taking any funding, or giving funding out to where it was never approved to go, are all blatant unlawful events?
I would guess that penalties would be very severe for the misuse and misspending of Our Taxpayer Dollars? Don’t Citizens have checks and balances against This sort of thing? Can some sort of Committee (Team of Prosecutors) be put together for a “Massive Investigation” into this?
Perp Walks, Damn It!!!
Dems AND Repubs will not allow that (Perp Walks). That WOULD BE A TRUE CIRCUS with REAL ANIMALS.
No, the Circus Ring Master means nothing to use in reality. It is ALL ORCHESTRATED TO KEEP US AMUSED, CONVINCED THEY ARE DOING SOMETHING and then PLOP:
NOTHING in reality can be done with these deficits and the spending will never stop on Wars (So called).
Why would you say they won’t allow (Perp Walks)? Didn’t President Trump do so, and didn’t the J6 Visitors do so? I can think of many others that did so as well, and so can You, if you think about it and try.
I think it’s time for the Fox in the Henhouse to be “Exposed” and for the Public to actually SEE THE ANIMALS!!!
NOTHING in reality can be done… Why? Didn’t DOGE just “Pull the Plug”? I see hands waving high, as the bodies get flushed, what have you been looking at?
It “ONLY NEVER STOPS”, if You Never Try!!
Hope, Hope, Hope that Pam Bondi and a new and improved DOJ may DEMAND a few ‘Perp Walks”.
Get out your popcorn.
“There is no distinctly American criminal class – except Congress.”
Mark Twain
Given we are running a huge budget deficit, why would we be given away any money at all to other countries?
The Politico thing indicates that USAID was also being used to as a slush fund. This should be investigated and people involved prosecuted.
Thankfully we have DOGE asking these very questions, and not liking the answers so much though. As we uncover more of the corruption, we can send more of them out to pasture. The Public will be absolutely horrified by these findings.
When you think of all the heartache being felt in Our Country, and the “Doom & Gloom being perpetuated by the MSM and others, and how we need to change as we are going under…
Meanwhile the one holding onto both legs and pulling us down is Our Very Own “Democrat Party” in Our Government!! Wow!
Now we are to believe that there is not a penny of Republican pork in there somewhere?
And why not start digging into the much bigger pot of waste at the defense department? What about the unexplained trillions to the pentagon?
Is this political revenge or true cost cutting?
But no, eliminate the education department first, and pay public money to private schools …
This is typical.
I take it from the Left and Right.
Republican isn’t always right-wing, and Democrat isn’t always left-wing, the real difference is proximity to the money, and levels of transparency over it.
This issue is above petty political rivalry, it’s the whole system itself. Nevertheless, the last regime has gone way further than any previous one in corruption.
and pardoned themselves as they were leaving the building…..
What’s more interesting is who did not get a pardon from Uncle Joe. Popcorn …
As the flyoverlanders like to say: Hold my beer, and watch this!
I think we’ll all be surprised if DOGE doesn’t take a long, hard peak under the Pentagon hood.
However, they need to cut their teeth on the stuff that’s not national security related. I can agree with the reasonable Dems who want to make sure there’s locked down health around what DOGE is doing in terms of privacy, etc.
DOE 2024 budget was $248 BILLION.
urp, urp.. (sound of me vomiting)
Andy, do better. Don’t be like the squealing politicians ranting about how mean it is to have accountability at USAID. Why was that org giving millions to ECO Health Alliance when their supposed mission is to ‘spread democracy’?
someone said, “give me democracy or death” so they were exploring both options..
Democracy is spread like a respiratory bioweapons virus?
Let’s ponder the reasons Pete Hegseth faced so much opposition from the Dems … Deus Vult applies to Pentagon audits.
Gee, or pay more money to public schools which goes to administrators and not to kids who are falling further and further behind. Like Nancy Pelosi and a $250MM net worth, “we did it for the children”.
I guess we finally got the question answered on left-leaning Politico reporting. I wonder how many other news agencies received cash? Go Musk!
It’s not only about the amount of money Mish, but as much about the grifters stealing it being brought to account, and the elimination of departments and agencies that facilitated the theft!
Correct – And how much went back to “the big guy”?
standard contract per Hunter’s laptop, was 10 per cent for the Big Guy, see the congressional hearing documents.
That would be AWESOME!!!
Right when Brandon is getting his Hollywood career going acting as a dementia patient, then WHAMO, down comes the whack-a-mole hammer of justice.
If the Satan invented a government, it would be USAID (United States Agency for International Development). The name itself is a deception. It buys influence, peddles bribes, overthrows governments, subverts morality, starts revolutions and wars; nothing to do with aid. USAID wants us to believe that they help other countries by instilling faith in the US, preventing panic and containing misinformation. This is self-absorbed narcissi where the ends justify the means and don’t ask question because we are protecting the fruit of your labors. Comrade.
the intelligence agencies always have a cover story, its the 1st rule of operation. This includes naming things, usually the opposite of what they are, US AID, is neither US (other than the money funding it was taken from US taxpayers) nor is it AID, free and unencumbered, it will be shown to be “grease” used to slide a horde of related and unrelated programs into places they shouldn’t have been, by people who shouldn’t have been doing it, as always. – and somebodies making a fortune in the process via the process and front running the results via banking and investments. its the CIA way
Wonder what their profits are from starting Bitcoin …
What is in Politico that is if such vital importance that any official at any agency needs such an expensive subscription?
There is better information on Mish, Market Ticker and ZH that is less biased, better informed and free to read and the commentators (both those I agree with and those I don’t) give a better insight into the US economy, crime, politics and society than any paid subscription MSM junk.
Just keep USaid as a token to fund projects approved of by the WH and the State Department.
Thanks for the thumbs up.
I try to be balanced.
Other governments have been complaining about the USAID. The Hungary President for starters.
There’s going to be college courses on the USAID in the coming years and absolutely movies. Lots and lots of fascinating material.
Let Musk and company keep digging. For at least 2 years until mid terms. Eventually he’s going to find those multi billion dollar slush funds. Right now everyone is getting very nervous and they should be.
This is one reason people voted for Trump, because he promised to do a deep dive into the various departments to see where the money is going. This is the kind of thing that should be happening once every 10 years or so rather than once every 50 or more.
Catherine Austin Fitts would know where the dark money is hidden, such as the Rumsfeld trillions from his statement on, ‘coincidentally’, September 10, 2001.
what happened the next day, September 11th, 2001
wasn’t there a fire in the pentagon where the audit records were stored?
The good news is for all the screaming and yelling of the democrats etc, unless they are willing to attack the US Army, all they have managed to do is incite the 49%. Repubs (male, white, rich) and their compliant wives still own the 51%, and unless you willing to go all the way and pick up the AK-47s, it is strum and noise signifying nothing. He is now dictator. Lets see if power really does corrupt absolutely.
“In private meetings and at public events, elected Democrats appear leaderless, rudderless and divided. They disagree over how often and how stridently to oppose Mr. Trump. They have no shared understanding of why they lost the election, never mind how they can win in the future.” — The New York Times
“The Democratic Party aim has basically been to induce you to doubt your sanity. You were asked to swallow one fabulous absurdity after another — lockdowns, vaccines that don’t prevent illness, mostly-peaceful arson, US soldiers in puppy masks, pronoun police, shoplifting-is-reparations, the wide-open border — an epic acting-out of manifold mental illness in living color.
The climax was drag-queens in the primary schools, obese men in fright-wigs presenting nightmare varieties of Mom-as-monster, often with some exposure of their male junk as part of the act. Suburban mothers watched approvingly, insisting on video that this was all wholesome, edifying fun for the kiddies (while some of the more insane moms went even further at home, coaxing their little kids toward medical “transitioning”).
Im very glad you only find old white men to be acceptable, especially in public.
He never mentioned age or skin color. That’s your obsession, not his.
We lost because we had no superstar last year. Clinton. Obama. Nowhere in sight. Repubs are familiar with having no superstar in a given cycle. Romney? McCain? We’ll find one one of these days. And the other side will find their Reagan (superstar).
The hilarious thing is ANYONE with a penis could have won it. They were running against the worst candidate in history, and figured they could get the first woman president plaque.
People know instinctually that a woman belongs in the kitchen, and you sure as hell don’t give one control of a nuclear arsenal!
There will NEVER be a female president. I will make sure of it.
The democrats are composed of two ancient groups that somehow found each other in the New World: The People’s Front of Judea, and the Judean People’s Front.
It’s both sides. People are infuriated about both sides in on the grift. Everybody in Congress knew what was going on for decades with that agency and most of them were getting a cut on some level.
what about ism, aint gonna fix anything. its actions like Musk and Trump that will change the situation.
Democrats are being labeled as confused and lost. We are not. We actually know what we believe. The Repubs have no idea what they believe (except the value of dictators) and it may be a long time when Trump passes away for the Repubs to find themselves again.
Democrats don’t even know how to define what a woman is. Start there.
If you have a job and it provides health coverage, I recommend you look into psychiatric help.
We well knew Americans were too fat and lazy to stand up to us. More guns than any other country, but if you can’t launch a revolution from the comfort of your SUV, it isn’t gonna happen.
The draft will change all that.
AK ammo is very expensive due to the festivities in Ukraine.