The Sucklings Should Stick to Weening Themselves from Government Funding: Experts: DOGE scheme doomed because of Musk and Ramaswamy's "meme-level understanding" of spending

Experts: DOGE scheme doomed because of Musk and Ramaswamy's "meme-level understanding" of spending

Elon Musk  and Vivek Ramaswamy, the billionaires President-elect Donald Trump picked to lead the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), have made their aspirations of slashing government spending clear, promising to bring a "chainsaw" to federal bureaucracy and costs.

To cut back on hundreds of billions in government spending, one approach Ramaswamy has suggested is eliminating programs that have lapsed spending authorizations despite still being funded by Congress, which include veterans' healthcare services, housing assistance and the Justice Department. But not only does that proposal misunderstand the function and role of funding authorization in Congress, the lack of authorization doesn't indicate wasteful expenditures, federal fiscal policy experts told Salon.

"They have a fundamentally superficial understanding of what they're doing," argued Bobby Kogan, the senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress. "They have a meme-level understanding. 'Let's get rid of unauthorized spending' is the sort of thing that you might see in a Facebook meme."

Ramaswamy and Musk expanded on that suggestion in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Wednesday, outlining the newly minted out-of-government advisory commission's plans for reducing excess spending. DOGE, they wrote, will target some $500 billion in annual federal expenditures that "are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended" in an effort to help "end" federal overspending.

But the notion that any spending is not approved by Congress or used outside of how the legislative body intends is "inaccurate," said David Reich, a senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. The Constitution requires Congress to authorize any and all government spending, which it does through funding bills, or appropriations. 

"For anything the federal government is spending, there's going to be an appropriation," Reich told Salon in a phone interview. "It could be an annual appropriation. It could be an appropriation and authorizing law, but Congress will have authorized that expenditure."

The authorization that Musk and Ramaswamy take up actually refers to an internal House of Representative's rule that creates a separate process for authorization and appropriations, experts said. 

Authorizing committees in the House make laws dictating provisions for the creation of agencies and their functions, which include "aspirational-level" provisions for how funds can be used like requirements for eligibility to receive that funding and stipulations on its use, Kogan explained in a phone interview, and the authorization is usually temporary to allow the committees to reevaluate those details over time. 

"For a while it was a very common practice for authorizing legislation to say, 'And there is hereby authorized to be appropriated X dollars in year one and Y dollars in year two' and so forth," Reich said.

But the House's use of that language has lessened in recent years, and the chamber often waives the rule, explicitly or implicitly, by considering the funding bills, which it does "often completely consistent with what the authorizing law does," he added, calling the authorization of funding via authorizing laws a "technical step."

For programs where Congress has allowed its authorization to lapse, appropriations legislation covers it. Instead of needing two laws —  an authorizing law that approves funding for an agency and another to actually allocate those funds — Congress only passes the appropriation, which then gives the program the authority to spend its funding, according to The Washington Post. 

In their op-ed, Musk and Ramaswamy pointed to $535 million allocated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $1.5 billion for "grants to international organizations" and nearly $300 million allocated to "progressive groups like Planned Parenthood" as examples of excess spending that could be cut, appearing to cite figures from a Congressional Budget Office report on programs with unauthorized funds. 

But Kent Smetters, the faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model and a University of Pennsylvania Wharton School professor of business, economics and public policy, told Salon that these unauthorized funds don't inherently amount to wasteful or excess spending either. 

"In practice, unauthorized funds give a federal agency more flexibility to direct funds toward the needs that the agency sees as a higher priority at any point in time," he said in an email, adding that "unauthorized funds are probably a bit more efficient because an agency might have more information about immediate needs after the funds were appropriated by Congress at a more aggregate level."

Programs without separate spending authorization amount to more than $516 billion of the budget, with the 10 largest programs comprising $380 billion of that share, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office. Health care for veterans has the largest amount of "unauthorized" government spending, coming in at $119.1 billion. Funding for other programs like housing assistance under the 1998 Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act, and government entities like the State Department and Justice Department would, in theory, be on the chopping block, per Ramaswamy and Musk's suggestions.

Still, as an out-of-government entity, DOGE can only make recommendations to Congress for ways to pare down the federal budget. "Congress will still decide whether authorized or unauthorized programs get funding," Smetters said. "It is not up to the discretion of the White House."

While policymakers have room to eliminate excess federal spending in bipartisan ways, Kogan said, the amount of wasteful government spending is far smaller than what Ramaswamy and Musk suggest.

"People have this idea of just huge and absurd amounts of government waste, and it's just not borne out in the data," he said.

Two-thirds of federal spending is mandatory, while the remaining discretionary spending largely goes toward defense. Over 70% of the nation's non-interest spending is public benefits to Americans, like Social Security, SNAP, WIC, Medicaid and Medicare, Kogan said, and "by definition, if you're cutting those, you're cutting aid to people."

"I think a lot of this comes down to people saying, 'Well, I just don't want us to do that program, and that's fine," he said, adding: "That is a stance someone can take, but it is flatly incorrect to pretend the money we give to states to help them make sure that kids with disabilities have enough money to succeed — that's not waste. You might not like the program, but is just not waste."

Washington and Trump: God’s Soldiers

posted by Al Bienenfeld at American Thinker 

Providence watched over both George Washington, the father of our country, and Donald Trump, the 45th and soon-to-be 47th president. With Trump’s re-election, there is a sense of relief and immense thanks to God. Before the election, we America First Patriots (aka “Trumpists”) were truly fearful of a future with another figurehead president. Nor did we want the America we grew up in to perish in a sea of socialism.

The MAGA world is not composed of atheists. We are believers. We believe that November 5 was a day of deliverance. What went on in the Biden Administration was right out of Orwell’s 1984. So many of us feared expressing our thoughts out of concern that we could join the J-6 prisoners. This is what the Stalinists wanted.

I had planned to go to Washington for a rally, but when the friend I was to go with pulled out due to illness, I kept asking myself, what happens to my sick wife if I am carted away? She needs me to take care of her. She cannot fend for herself. Who would know? Who would tell her where I was? We no longer had individual rights guaranteed by law. We were no longer America.

We in America were living the Soviet experience. Illegal searches, prosecutions, and imprisonments, not to mention cold-blooded murder. Remember Ashli Babbit? I’ve written about the government plan for an American Tiananmen Square conducted by our military.

Moreover, daily news reports showed Jewish citizens have faced 1930s Nazi-era persecution, with college students attacked because they were Jews. On campuses, there were calls again for another Jewish genocide in America, making synagogue vandalism, which has been increasingly common, seem almost secondary. Perhaps the most outrageous part of all this was that the faculties of our most prestigious universities allowed this to go on and even endorsed it in many cases.

It hasn’t just been the Jews whom leftists have targeted. Christians have been targeted generally across America and, very specifically, in our military. There has been an ongoing communist-style purge of Christians with a special emphasis on anti-Catholicism, which is reminiscent of a past era we thought was long gone.

With Trump elected and standing in the way of this collapse into totalitarianism, it’s impossible to look at President-elect Trump without seeing the image of George Washington and the hand of the Almighty.

God was with George Washington

Soldier, statesman, and Father of our Country, whether in the 18th century or today, there was and will be no one like General and President Washington. Our Revolutionary War started with the exchange of fire at Concord and Lexington in 1775. (“The Shot Heard ‘Round the World“ refers to this initial engagement.)

After the Founders signed The Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, citizen Washington became General Washington, Commander of our Continental Army. The deciding battle of this war was fought in Yorktown, Virginia, in October 1781.

That battle almost never happened. Earlier in the year, things were looking very grim for the Patriots. Over the years, Washington faced two major desertion cycles because the new nation’s government in Philadelphia couldn’t raise the money to fund the war, including paying the troops fighting and dying for the dream of independence.

In the first desertion cycle, Washington convinced the men to return to the ranks without punishment. The second time, he executed the ringleaders. There was no third time. He did what was necessary to hold his army together for the climactic battle to come.

Robert Morris was the Founder charged with funding the war. However, when it came to the battle of Yorktown, Morris came up empty. When he told Washington, the latter responded, “send for Salomon,” referring to the Jewish investor and financier Haym Salomon.

Salomon, a loyal Patriot, bundled notes of debt to sell abroad. Using those funds and help from the French Navy, Washington’s army carried the day. When General Cornwallis surrendered, that marked the war’s end, although the official treaty ending hostilities was not signed until 1783 in Versailles.

Washington’s chief asset was that he would not quit. In His Excellency: George Washington, author Joseph Ellis captures the essence of Washington and the Revolutionary War:

A central lesson of his life — survive and you shall succeed — seemed to be holding true in the months after Valley Forge.

In one sense the War of Independence might best be described as a marathon, and Washington’s distinguishing virtue thus becomes his stamina.

In battle, Washington took the lead. In this, he could not be more different from former President Barack Obama’s cowardly “leading from behind” approach to foreign wars or soon-to-be former President Joe Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal. Washington had jackets riddled with bullet holes, and yet no bullet ever found its mark. This is why he is seen as God’s soldier.

God is with Donald Trump

Let’s look at Donald Trump’s stamina and what he has endured since that June day in 2015 when he rode down the golden escalator to announce he would run for president of the United States. From the moment he left the White House, he’s faced warfare—in the form of “lawfare”—at the hands of a corrupt and perverted Democrat administration. Every charge brought against him was bogus, and yet the complicit media invariably celebrated the charges (and verdicts) as legitimate.

On July 13, in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump survived an assassination attempt and responded like a champion fighter who refuses to go down. The image of him waving his fist in the air and shouting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” is now indelibly marked on our nation’s history, never to be forgotten.

We will tell our children, and they will tell their children, and so on down the future generations. Trump displayed a soldier’s physical courage. The term “soldiering on” applies here. Regardless of what is thrown against you, regardless of what is happening around you, you keep moving forward. Fight! Fight! Fight!

As someone who has built hundreds of homes (although none named “Bienenfeld Towers”), I share President Trump’s intense appreciation for the “deplorables” who “cling to their Bibles and guns.” These men and women built and continue to maintain our nation—plumbers, electricians, carpenters, and concrete masons, along with truck drivers, oil rig operators, farmers, and factory workers—and made America successful. “Success” includes the wars fought predominantly by the working and middle classes. Our great military leaders were drawn from their ranks.

Does anyone really think that the Clintons, Obamas, Bidens, or Kamala Harris actually know people like this? They treat us like garbage, call us garbage, and wonder why we don’t vote for them.

President Trump knows that without all of us hard-working Americans, there is no America. The Democratic Party seems oblivious to this. Trump recognized America’s forgotten men and women.

President Trump never backed down from a challenge or threat. He remained undeterred despite two failed assassination attempts and an Iranian plan for another. Many people also believe Trump is one of God’s soldiers on earth.

We weren’t alive nearly 250 years ago when Providence guided General and then President George Washington. We are fortunate to be living through this historic time when Providence is guiding President Donald Trump to Make America Great Again.

X22, And we Know, and more- Nov 23

 

Bombshell Report Reveals Disturbing Truths About the Biden-Harris Parole Pipeline

 If you thought you heard the worst concerning the U.S. southern border under the Biden-Harris Administration, think again. 

A new bombshell House Judiciary report found that illegal immigrants facing wanted for sex trafficking and various other violent crimes found a loophole to enter the United States. 

Due to the Biden-Harris Administration’s categorical parole program for nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV), at least 30,000 illegal immigrants monthly with violent records have been allowed to bypass coming into the U.S. through the southern border, and instead fly into domestic airports. This results from what the administration calls “legal pathways,” created without Congressional authorization. 

Illegal aliens are directly let into the country “on commercial flights” to be then “granted parole” for up to two years by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). As of September 2024, more than 531,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans” had done just that. 

To mask the border crisis and artificially decrease historically high border encounters, President Biden and Vice President Harris implemented programs and policies that allowed aliens to bypass the southwest border so they would not be included as encounters in Border Patrol data.

The CHNV supporter must “file a Form I-134A, Online Request to be a Supporter and Declaration of Financial Support” (Form I-134A) with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and must agree “to provide [the CHNV beneficiary] with financial support for the duration of their parole in the United States.” The CHNV alien then arrives at a U.S. airport where a DHS official paroles the alien into the country. Once paroled, the alien can apply for a work permit.

 The report accuses the outgoing administration of committing “fraud,” undermining national security, and endangering the American people “all in favor of ensuring that hundreds of thousands of otherwise illegal aliens can come to the U.S. through CHNV.”

To make it even more disturbing, the House Judiciary report found that “sex traffickers have potentially used CHNV to exploit women and girls” after discovering a “fraud analysis of CHNV applications revealed that some applications that were sent from the same IP addresses were submitted on behalf of a high proportion of female CHNV aliens.”

In a separate report, the House Judiciary Committee found that sex traffickers may be using the administration’s “parole” program to sneak illegal immigrant women into the U.S. by using “welfare recipients.” This means individuals involved with criminal activity have been approved as sponsors for parolees from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (CHNV).

In 2021, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas created the system, which has since been over by massive fraud. 

An internal investigation at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services found Venezuelan gang members, dead people and stolen identities being listed as applicants. One case even used former first lady Michelle Obama’s passport number. The new report, from Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan’s staff, suggests the program was fatally flawed from conception, allowing people who seem to have been bad risks to act as sponsors.

Among the committee’s findings:  At least 336 sponsors were approved despite receiving welfare benefits. The report said that undercuts the point of the program, since sponsors are supposed to prove they can support migrants on their own without them becoming dependent on the government. 21 sponsorship applications were approved even though the supporters admitted at least some of their income came from an illegal source. Homeland Security told the committee that was okay, as long as the department thought there was “sufficient income” from legal sources too.

The report later discovered that the program does not conduct criminal records checks and couldn’t do them even if it wanted to because it is not authorized to run names through the FBI’s databases.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2024/11/23/bombshell-report-finds-that-sex-traffickers-used-biden-harris-parole-pipeline-to-enter-the-us-n2648172

Trump Victory: From Neocons to Americons

posted by Robert Orlando at Townhall 

“The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.” — George Washington, in his Farewell Address

In the wake of Donald Trump’s overwhelming victory in the recent election, America stands at a crossroads. The results mark not only a shift in political power but a fundamental challenge to the entrenched foreign policy establishment, long dominated by neoconservative thought. As we reflect on Trump’s remarkable rise and the triumph of the MAGA movement, it’s clear that the days of unquestioned military interventionism and foreign entanglements are over—or at least, they should be. But where do we go from here? How do we define a new path forward that balances American sovereignty with global engagement, without falling into the traps of the past?

Trump’s most significant achievement so far—one that will reverberate for decades—may have been his decision to sidestep traditional neoconservative figures like Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo. These individuals, who championed endless wars, were a departure from the agenda that truly served the interests of the American people. Trump’s refusal to hire them represented a break from the military-industrial complex that has thrived at the expense of American taxpayers, the lives of soldiers, and the security of nations whose strategic importance to the U.S. is dubious at best. In Trump, we saw the promise of a foreign policy focused on American interests—not beholden to global elites or entrenched military contractors. 

From Vietnam to Iraq, and from the Middle East to Ukraine, the bloodshed and cost have been staggering. More than just a matter of policy, these wars have defined us as a nation. Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex is more relevant today than ever. Our leaders spent billions of dollars and sacrificed countless American lives in conflicts that served little more than the profits of the political establishment. The ongoing situation in Ukraine is the latest example—a conflict that further proves the futility of foreign interventionism. Americans are beginning to see through the false narratives that justify these wars. Trump, throughout his presidency, became a target of the deep state, exposing the dangerous influence of military elites—and for good reason. His victory helped lift the fog of war.

The Iraq War in particular stands as a symbol of neoconservative failures. It achieved nothing—except to drain the U.S. of its workforce and resources, leaving behind a nation worse for wear. Now, as the Biden administration has dragged America into yet another potential quagmire in Ukraine, we are faced with the stark reality that the same foreign policy elites remain at the helm. These elites, who have mocked true conservatives for decades, dismissed concerns about the dangers of unchecked globalism. But it is clear now that their policies have failed. The left’s facade of Cold War rhetoric, combined with its support for international ventures, is a dangerous path that will only lead to further conflict and division. The lesson of Trump’s victory is clear: America must abandon the neoconservative agenda, reject the military-industrial complex, and embrace a foreign policy rooted in national self-interest, peace, and diplomacy.

So, what do we call this new movement? I propose that we call ourselves “Americons,” a term that encapsulates a new vision for America’s role on the world stage. Americons are patriots who believe in American sovereignty, the American Constitution, and a strong military—but one that operates on strictly American terms, not those dictated by lobbyists, military contractors, or political elites. Trump’s victory has struck the first severe blow to the entrenched global interests that have shaped American foreign policy for so long. To ensure that this victory is not fleeting, we must continue to fight for American primacy—defined not by endless wars, but by the strength of our people, the preservation of our sovereignty, and the defense of our core values.

As President Trump once said, “America first, America always.” That mantra must guide us as we move forward—not just in foreign policy, but in every aspect of governance. Our mission is clear: to restore America to its rightful place as an independent, sovereign nation—focused on securing our future, not engaging in endless wars for corporate interests. The time has come for a new era of American greatness, powered by a renewed spirit of patriotism and national pride—one that is uniquely defined by the vision of “Americons.”

Democrats Set the Standard for 'Unqualified'

posted by Katie Pavlich at Townhall

As President-elect Donald Trump continues to announce his choices to fill his Cabinet for a second term in the White House, Democrats and their allies in the leftist media are feigning outrage over “unqualified” nominees — conveniently ignoring their own record and the “norms” they broke to place their people in powerful positions. 

Given the hysteria around Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), let’s take a look at current Biden HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. 

As the former Attorney General of California, Becerra is not a doctor and has no prior health experience. He’s a hardened, leftist zealot whose only record on health includes suing nuns in order to force them to provide birth control — a move that was found wildly unconstitutional and a blatant violation of their First Amendment rights. Eventually, the nuns were victorious at the Supreme Court.

“The Little Sisters of the Poor—a religious organization run by an order of Catholic nuns dedicated to serving the sick and elderly—have spent nearly a decade locked in a battle for religious liberty,” the Heritage Foundation wrote in June 2020. “The Supreme Court on Wednesday handed down a victory for the Little Sisters by holding that the Trump administration had the authority to exempt them and similar organizations from the Department of Health and Human Services mandate requiring them to provide contraceptive coverage to employees, and that it did so in a proper manner.”

Next, we move on to former Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who was chosen as Biden’s Transportation Secretary because he “likes trains” and could use allocated funding to pursue the left’s social justice agenda under the guise of “infrastructure.” Before getting the job and being confirmed by the Senate, Buttigieg’s only background in transportation was failing to fill potholes in South Bend, Indiana. 

“Given Buttigieg’s record in South Bend, he is a curious choice for an administration who wants to ‘build back better.’ South Bend’s pothole problem became notorious with residents and even became one of the primary campaign points for Buttigieg’s successor,” America Rising reported back in December 2020. “For Buttigieg, it seems as if the Secretary of Transportation job is a consolation prize that is more geared towards advancing his political ambitions rather than developing and implementing productive transportation policies.” 

Both of these amateurs were confirmed by senators. I’m not going to get into the number of men pretending to be women, like HHS Assistant Secretary Richard “Rachel” Levine, who are stacked all over the Biden administration. They weren't placed there because they knew what they were doing, instead, they satisfied the Democrats’ identity politics agenda and rejection of meritocracy, especially in a bureaucratic government. 

So, spare us the outrage over Trump’s nominees. The left constantly breaks norms for their own political gain, and when Republicans dare to do the same, especially to upend the D.C. swamp, they throw a fit. Trump’s Cabinet nominees are interested in serving the American people and making Washington, D.C., work for them, which includes cleaning up corruption in the vast and suffocating administrative state. Unlike Biden’s picks, they are not interested in using agencies to force a woke, anti-logic and expensive agenda down the throats of voters. They're ready to get to work. 

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

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These Soros-Backed 'Charities' Are Aiding and Abetting Illegal Immigration

Ward Clark reporting for RedState 

Remember when aiding and abetting a criminal act would lead to some pretty serious consequences? 

No longer, it seems — at least, if you're a non-governmental organization (NGO) or "charity" that is helping people cross into and remain in the United States illegally. Crossing into the United States illegally is still a crime, after all — and there are a number of these organizations, tax-exempt at that, dedicated to bogging down the immigration system and making it as difficult as possible to enforce the law.

Tax-exempt organizations have spent more than $100 million since President Joe Biden took office in 2021 working to prevent the federal government from deporting illegal immigrants, according to a Washington Examiner review of tax filings. 

The organizations, which include donor-advised funds shifting around millions of dollars in untraceable funds, Soros-backed philanthropies, and large legal groups, collectively spent at least $101.9 million on programs intended to aid illegal immigrants in avoiding deportation. While some of the programs paid for by these nonprofit organizations involved advocacy efforts, the vast majority were oriented toward providing immigrants with legal resources to thwart deportation.

This is being done by design. These organizations, make no mistake, are deliberately aiding and abetting in the illegal importation of millions. They do not appear to be concerned with who is coming in; they appear to be concerned only with making sure people do come in and are making it as difficult as they can to find and eject these people. They will, it's certain, be fighting the incoming Trump administration every step of the way. And, yes, it's amazing how often the name "Soros" pops up.

Here are some of those organizations.

La Raza Community Resource Center, an immigration nonprofit organization based out of San Francisco, was one of the biggest spenders among the groups resisting deportation efforts, disbursing $14.1 million between 2021 and 2023 for a program providing legal services to asylum-seekers and migrants facing deportation. Immigrant Justice Corps, meanwhile, is a New York-based charity that spent $20.2 million over the same period on a fellowship program placing recent college graduates at nonprofit organizations across the country to provide illegal migrants with legal services.

And:

Legal Services of New Jersey, a nonprofit organization that provides free legal representation in civil rights litigation to low-income residents of the state, was also a major force in antideportation efforts between 2021 and 2022. The organization distributed $12.5 million worth of grants over that period to help other organizations provide “legal assistance for individuals facing detention or deportation.” 

Pangea Legal Services, located in San Francisco, spent over $5 million on providing representation to asylum-seekers and people who entered the country illegally between 2021 and 2023. In those years, the nonprofit organization served nearly 1,500 clients through its program, according to its tax forms.

But here's the real kicker, and perhaps the consummate villain in this affair:

The Soros family’s Foundation to Promote Open Society donated $500,000 to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in 2021 to support its “New Way Forward” campaign. The campaign pushed changes to the legal system that would end the automatic deportation of some criminal aliens, end the mandatory detention of illegal aliens, and decriminalize entering the U.S. without proper documentation. The Soros family’s foundation also gave the Transgender Law Center $250,000 in 2021 to “support Black LGBTQIA+ migrants through organizing and base-building, deportation defense and strategic communications.”

These organizations are providing support for people whose first act on arriving at the United States border was to break our immigration laws.

President-elect Trump has promised to get control of the border. He has promised to deport people who shouldn't be here, beginning with known criminals. He has appointed Tom Homan, who seems doggedly fixed on getting this job done. But the fact that these well-funded "charities" exist shows that this won't be the job of months, but rather the job of decades, and the pro-illegal alien forces will fight every step of the way. There will be lawsuits, there will be every manner of aiding and abetting the people who are here illegally and who intend to remain illegally.

And, as I repeatedly point out, the influx since 2020 has been largely young, unattached, military-age men. We have little or no idea who most of them are, where they intend to go, and what they intend to do when they get there. 

The groups named above intend to ensure that this remains the case.

The GOP Establishment Is A Greater Threat To Trump’s Agenda Than Democrats

The defeat of Matt Gaetz’s nomination for attorney general shows that this time, Trump really does have to drain the swamp.

by John Daniel Davidson for The Federalist

Matt Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration for attorney general on Thursday. It was an early setback for President-elect Donald Trump that confirms the greatest threat to his agenda isn’t Democrats, but establishment Republicans.

Apparently there were at least four GOP senators staunchly opposed to confirming Gaetz as attorney general: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and John Curtis of Utah. Assuming all Democrat senators voted against him, that would have put Gaetz one vote shy of confirmation.

The corporate media, along with a cadre of Never Trump commentators on the right, boasted about the defeat of Gaetz’s nomination, citing widely discredited sexual allegations against him as evidence that he was unfit to lead the Justice Department. Never mind that those allegations have always been comically thin. 

Indeed, as my colleague Mollie Hemingway laid out in these pages recently, the entire campaign to smear Gaetz as a “child sex trafficker” was from the outset a giant psy-op and fraud. After an 18-month investigation by the Biden Justice Department, no charges were filed against Gaetz because the two central witnesses in the probe had serious credibility problems.

But that didn’t stop House Democrats from launching an ethics probe that relied on these same sources and their unsubstantiated claims about Gaetz. They dragged their probe out for more than a year as part of an ongoing effort to sideline and silence Gaetz, who had been one of the most effective voices in Congress calling out the corruption of the Justice Department.  

And sure enough, a handful of establishment Republican senators latched onto these allegations in the Democrats’ ridiculous ethics probe as justification for opposing Trump’s nomination of Gaetz.

This tells you everything you need to know about what Trump is facing in Washington right now. He was elected with a mandate from the American people to clean up the corruption in Washington and dismantle the deep state. Ground zero for that fight is the DOJ, which has been at the center of every effort to undermine, imprison, bankrupt, and remove Trump from office since 2016. In his second term, Trump’s number one goal should be to fix the Justice Department and the FBI, which have become inimical to our constitutional system of government and a threat to the republic.

That’s why he nominated Gaetz for the role of attorney general. Gaetz stood out in Congress not for being a hard-partying playboy, which is common enough in Washington, but as one of only a handful of GOP lawmakers who spoke out against the Russia collusion hoax, the politicized Jan. 6 prosecutions, the lawfare against Trump, and the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.

That’s the real reason for the Washington establishment’s opposition to Gaetz. The idea that it’s because lawmakers have scruples about Gaetz’s sex life, about salacious allegations that he’s a “child sex trafficker,” is just laughable. A bunch of swamp creatures in D.C. didn’t suddenly start caring about sexual morality overnight.

No, they opposed Gaetz for the same reason they worked to undermine Trump’s agenda throughout his first term in office. From border security to foreign relations, the permanent uniparty in Washington resisted Trump in every way they could. His political appointees were slow-walked through the Senate, with Democrats delaying and obstructing every step of the way. The top brass of the military routinely undermined, ignored, or lied to Trump about what they were doing. A handful of Never Trump Republican lawmakers obstructed or opposed him at every turn.

Contrast that with how GOP lawmakers behaved with the Biden administration. Every Democrat senator uniformly supported all 21 of Biden’s cabinet picks. Not one defected. Sen. Tommy Tuberville pointed this out recently, saying, “Panic has set in at the DOJ, the intelligence community, and the entire D.C. swamp. They’re finding out, as Barack Obama once said, that elections have consequences.”

Well let’s hope they do. The defeat of Gaetz’s nomination is a prelude to the kind of fights Trump is going to have to engage in and win if he wants to dismantle the deep state and enact his MAGA agenda. He needs to make it clear to establishment Republicans that if they stand in the way of his administration they will pay a heavy political price, that it won’t be like last time. If he doesn’t, they’re going to be a greater obstacle to his second term than the Democrats.

To Restore Democracy Trump Will Have To Overcome Administrative State Tyranny

The second Trump administration was elected as the antidote to the administrative state — to make radical changes in personnel and policy.

posted by Ben Weingarten at The Federalist

In the wake of Donald Trump’s historic victory, permanent Washington’s hysteria is reaching new heights daily.

“Federal bureaucrats wrestle with fight-or-flight response to Trump election,” reads one headline. Justice Department officials are “terrified,” according to another, fearing they may be sidelined, fired, or unable to “resist” as they did during the president’s first term. Pentagon officials are reportedly preparing their response to orders to “deploy active-duty troops domestically and fire large swaths of [purportedly] apolitical staffers,” another dispatch reveals.

Several of Trump’s less conventional nominees, who hold views anathema to the bureaucracies they are poised to helm and threaten to disrupt them dramatically, have only further fueled the federal freakout.

As unhinged as related stories from regime mouthpieces may seem on their face, one would be wrong to dismiss them as merely the Trump-deranged’s temper tantrum over a lost election. Rather, what these reports collectively illustrate is the hubris of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. They foreshadow perhaps the bloodiest coming political battle in Trump’s war to restore Americans’ control over our republic. This will require overcoming myriad entrenched forces. First and foremost among them is the administrative state wherein these bureaucrats reside — an arguably unconstitutional branch unto itself that has usurped and combined the powers of the legislative and judicial branches, defining tyranny.

The hubris among those in the administrative state is that they believe they know better than We the People, and that therefore they must substitute their policy preferences for our own by any means necessary. Who we voted for then doesn’t really matter because even when we give our elected representatives a mandate, the policy predilections of the “executive” agencies in-name-only must prevail.

This is the true threat to democracy, and the dangerous status quo that has prevailed for too long and exploded into public view during the first Trump administration.

The second Trump administration was elected as the antidote — to make radical, not incremental, changes in personnel and policy, and make the people sovereign again. Our ruling regime’s fear that Americans would self-govern rather than remain subjects explains why the president faced impeachments, indictments, and assassination attempts, among other attacks.

Loudest Howls from Deep State

The Department of Justice (DOJ) led the lawfare inquisition against Trump and those in his orbit, Jan. 6 protestors, pro-lifers, practicing Catholics, and engaged parents. It has effectively criminalized dissent. A hyper-politicized and weaponized DOJ is the death knell of the rule of law and justice in this country.

The Department of Defense’s politicization at its highest levels is equally disturbing. It would be bad enough if, as Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has lamented, lowered fitness standards and an emphasis on wokeness and “diversity, equity, and inclusion” eroded the lethality of our fighting forces. But as recent reporting suggests, we also face an apparent crisis of insubordination — a breakdown in the chain of command that poses a dire threat to our security. It is an invitation for our enemies to test us.

News that some at the Pentagon plan to thwart the Trump administration comes on the heels of outgoing Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s Pentagon-wide letter affirming that the U.S. military stands ready to “obey all lawful orders from its civilian chain of command” under the new administration. The insinuation is that unlawful orders rather than simply disfavored policies might be forthcoming, and that the military would disobey them. In fact, resistance forces have been telegraphing such efforts for months, replete with “tabletop exercises” simulating a standoff between Trump and the generals, in what journalist Lee Smith hypothesizes represents a sinister plot to divide the military.

This from a defense establishment whose former senior officials, arguably in violation of their codes of conduct, if not certainly in violation of the public trust, have attacked Trump as a fascist; a defense establishment from which hails the last chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who allegedly told Chinese counterparts he would tip them off to any coming attack and conspired with the former speaker to prevent Trump from using nuclear weapons; a defense establishment that played “shell games” to keep troops in Syria against Trump’s wishes.

Past Subversion of President’s Policies

Resistance efforts of course are likely to span far beyond these agencies, and though they may take more “banal” forms — as a former Trump administration official recently told me — they will be no less corrosive to our republic.

As James Sherk, a former top civil service reform advisor to President Trump on the White House Domestic Policy Council, has detailed, during Trump’s first term, bureaucrats across a raft of agencies commonly subverted the president’s policies through “withholding information, refusing to implement policies, intentionally delaying or slow-walking priorities, deliberately underperforming; leaking to Congress and the media; and outright insubordination.”

This is precisely why Trump and his transition team have emphasized loyalty as perhaps the key criteria for those who will serve in his second administration. The media frames this in terms of bad faith, characterizing loyal staffers as toadies who will rubberstamp lawless acts.

Set aside for the moment that the president has historically surrounded himself with people holding a diverse array of views — as with his initial slate of appointments this term — encouraged his personnel to debate them before him, and weighed all perspectives before making final decisions. And set aside that the Obama-Biden and Biden-Harris administrations actually engaged in the lawless and authoritarian actions that regime media dishonestly claims Trump would engage in in his second term.

Loyalty means fidelity to the president’s agenda — dogged devotion to helping him execute the mandate for which we voted in the face of staunch opposition. This should be the bare minimum of what is required of personnel. It’s what every administration would expect of its staffers. It means that presidential personnel bring all of their skills and abilities to bear, provide their best possible advice, and when shots are called, do everything in their power to craft and implement policy as effectively and expeditiously as possible.

What the media is implicitly saying, in referring to loyalty pejoratively, is that they want Trump to hire disloyal appointees who will sabotage, subvert, and stymie the duly elected president — to prevent the American people from getting the policies we voted for.

The fear, in truth, is that if Americans get what we want, the ruling class will lose its power, prerogatives, and privileges.

Every day, the incoming Trump administration will face resistance from uniparty congressmen, establishment judges, blue states, corporate media, popular cultural institutions, and beyond. But the first point of friction will always be with the Leviathan administrative state.

The task for the Trump administration then will be to execute its agenda not only while the resistance challenges it in a thousand-front war, but with limited appointees, political capital, and time.

Hiring cabinet and sub-cabinet officials who build teams firmly aligned with the president’s mission, comprised of those who are smart, tough, and will zealously work to fulfill the mission every day — prioritizing essential policy reforms, anticipating the ways they may be circumvented, and using every tool at their disposal to execute accordingly — is the first step towards overcoming the challenges at hand.

Trump’s campaign also showed us the power of the bully pulpit — of the ability to go over the heads of all the hostile forces of propaganda and bring the message straight to the American people. That the president’s picks for vice president and cabinet have shown themselves to be compelling and charismatic speakers suggests the administration may well exploit these talents to maximum political effect. It would do well to do so.

The future of our republic may rest upon these efforts.