Blog

White House rehires hundreds of employees fired by Musk’s DOGE 

Hundreds of US federal employees dismissed during Elon Musk’s cost-cutting campaign are now being asked to return to work, the Associated Press has reported.

US President Donald Trump kicked off the waste-cutting effort a month after taking office, with the initiative being led by the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk headed the department until June, when he stepped down amid mounting tensions with the president.

The reinstatement offers affect workers who previously oversaw federal office spaces, AP reported on Tuesday.

The General Services Administration (GSA), which manages government properties and acquisitions, has given the affected employees until the end of the week to decide. According to the outlet, those who accept must report back on October 6, following what has effectively been seven months’ paid leave. During that period, the GSA in some cases incurred high costs – passed along to taxpayers – for dozens of leases it had planned to terminate or allowed to expire.

Keep reading

Co-Founder of Paycheck Protection Program Service Sentenced for $63M COVID-19 Relief Fraud Scheme

A co-founder of a lender service provider was sentenced to 10 years in prison for defrauding the Paycheck Protection Program by $63 million.

Court documents say that Stephanie Hockridge, also known as Stephanie Reis, 42, of Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, and previously of Arizona, co-founded Blueacorn in April 2020, purportedly to assist small businesses and individuals in obtaining PPP loans.

The U.S. Small Business Administration guaranteed the loans under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. The defendant was also ordered to pay over $63 million in restitution.

Hockridge and her co-conspirators fabricated documents, including payroll records, tax documentation and bank statements. Hockridge and her co-conspirators charged borrowers kickbacks based on a percentage of the funds received.

Hockridge and others offered a personalized service to their clients called “VIPPP” to help potential borrowers complete PPP loan applications. Hockridge recruited co-conspirators to work as VIPPP referral agents and coach borrowers on how to submit false PPP loan applications. To get more kickbacks from borrowers and a higher percentage of lender fees from the SBA, Hockridge and her co-conspirators submitted PPP loan applications that they knew contained materially false information. In total, Hockridge and her coconspirators processed over $63 million in fraudulent PPP loans.

On June 20, a jury found Hockridge guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew R. Galeotti of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney Ryan Raybould for the Northern District of Texas; Acting Assistant Special Agent in Charge Don Daley of the Office of Inspector General for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Western Region; and Special Agent in Charge Christopher J. Altemus Jr. of the IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) Dallas Field Office made the announcement.

Keep reading

Maxine Waters Doesn’t Like It When You Bring Up Her Love Letters to Fidel Castro

In the wake of New York City electing itself a real live communist for mayor earlier this month, Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.) introduced a non-binding resolution to Congress this past week called “Denouncing the horrors of socialism.” That means it doesn’t create any sort of real law — it’s largely symbolic, with the intention of affirming “that the United States rejects socialism and opposes the implementation of socialist policies that threaten the freedoms and prosperity that define our nation.” 

Voting in favor of it should have been a no-brainer. It was for Republicans, at least: 199 voted in favor of it, with zero voting against. For Democrats, on the other hand, only 86 managed to find it within themselves to denounce the very things the U.S. stands against, while 98 voted against and two voted present, and 47 didn’t vote at all. You can’t make this stuff up.  

For some of the Republicans, the vote was personal. They lived the realities of it. 

Salazar, for example, grew up in Florida, the daughter of Cuban exiles who fled Fidel Castro’s reign of terror. “This is a moral vote against an ideology that has destroyed millions and millions of families,” she said during her remarks. “Unfortunately, socialism and Marxism crushes the human soul. And it’s not just my community in Miami. It’s the rest of the hemisphere and the rest of the world.”  

Rep. Young Kim (R-Calif.) also spoke from experience. “As a Korean-American who grew up in the aftermath of the Korean war, I have witnessed the horrors of socialism firsthand,” she said. “… Now more than ever, as socialist ideas gain traction here at home, and as our nation’s largest city and financial capital has elected, not just a socialist but a communist, as mayor, we must firmly demand our capitalist free market system which empowers Americans of all backgrounds to achieve freedom, opportunity, and prosperity.”  

Apparently, for some of the “nays,” it was personal as well. But in a different way. 

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) was one of the most vocal against it, and Salazar wasn’t afraid to point out why. 

If there is someone who has seen the horrors of socialism up close within the Democratic Party in the House, it is the honorable Congresswoman Maxine Waters. And I would love for you to support this resolution specifically, because Madam Waters, for decades, you traveled to Cuba dozens of times to visit Fidel Castro personally, whom you considered your friend.  Congresswoman Waters was in Havana and she saw the destruction of biblical proportions that Castro caused on that island who, at the time in 1960, had the highest per capita income in the Western Hemisphere. 

At that time, Madam Waters knew that thousands and thousands of Cubans were escaping on a raft, exposing their lives and their children’s to be eaten by the sharks. She knew that Afro-Cubans were being beaten on the streets of Havana, discriminated against, uh, by Fidel Castro, Mr. Speaker. And for that reason, I am bringing up all these facts, because Madam Waters knew that the Cuban jails were full of political prisoners and the Cubans did not have the same privileges that we are having right now to speak freely. At that time, Madam Waters never raised her voice to denounce the horrors of socialism, Mr. Speaker. 

Keep reading

UK Government “Resist” Program Monitors Citizens’ Online Posts

Let’s begin with a simple question. What do you get when you cross a bloated PR department with a clipboard-wielding surveillance unit?

The answer, apparently, is the British Government Communications Service (GCS). Once a benign squad of slogan-crafting, policy-promoting clipboard enthusiasts, they’ve now evolved (or perhaps mutated) into what can only be described as a cross between MI5 and a neighborhood Reddit moderator with delusions of grandeur.

Yes, your friendly local bureaucrat is now scrolling through Facebook groups, lurking in comment sections, and watching your aunt’s status update about the “new hotel down the road filling up with strangers” like it’s a scene from Homeland. All in the name of “societal cohesion,” of course.

Once upon a time, the GCS churned out posters with perky slogans like Stay Alert or Get Boosted Now, like a government-powered BuzzFeed.

But now, under the updated “Resist” framework (yes, it’s actually called that), the GCS has been reprogrammed to patrol the internet for what they’re calling “high-risk narratives.”

Not terrorism. Not hacking. No, according to The Telegraph, the new public enemy is your neighbor questioning things like whether the council’s sudden housing development has anything to do with the 200 migrants housed in the local hotel.

It’s all in the manual: if your neighbor posts that “certain communities are getting priority housing while local families wait years,” this, apparently, is a red flag. An ideological IED. The sort of thing that could “deepen community divisions” and “create new tensions.”

This isn’t surveillance, we’re told. It’s “risk assessment.” Just a casual read-through of what that lady from your yoga class posted about a planning application. The framework warns of “local parental associations” and “concerned citizens” forming forums.

And why the sudden urgency? The new guidance came hot on the heels of a real incident, protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers, following the sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl by Hadush Kebatu, an Ethiopian migrant.

Now, instead of looking at how that tragedy happened or what policies allowed it, the government’s solution is to scan the reaction to it.

What we are witnessing is the rhetorical equivalent of chucking all dissent into a bin labelled “disinformation” and slamming the lid shut.

Keep reading

US To Launch “New Phase” Of Venezuela Operations, Options Include Overthrowing Maduro: Report

One day after the FAA issued a Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM), or an alert notifying pilots of potential serious hazards in certain airspace, for the Maiquetía Flight Information Region above Venezula, Reuters reported that the US is poised to launch a new phase of Venezuela-related operations in the coming days, citing four U.S. officials.

Amid a sharp escalation of pressure by the Trump administration on President Nicolas Maduro’s government, including proliferating reports of looming action as the US military deployed forces to the Caribbean amid worsening relations with Venezuela, two of the sources said covert operations would likely be the first part of the new action against Maduro, while two US officials told Reuters the options under consideration included attempting to overthrow Maduro.

A senior administration official on Saturday told Reuters that nothing had been ruled out regarding Venezuela.

“President Trump is prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding into our country and to bring those responsible to justice,” said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Before the Reuters report, six airlines had already cancelled flights to Venezuela on Saturday after the US aviation regulator warned major airlines of dangers from “heightened military activity” amid a major buildup of American forces in the region, as well as a “potentially hazardous situation” when flying over Venezuela and urged them to exercise caution.

Spain’s Iberia, Portugal’s TAP, Chile’s LATAM, Colombia’s Avianca, Brazil’s GOL and Trinidad and Tobago’s Caribbean have suspended their flights to the country, said Marisela de Loaiza, president of the Venezuelan Airlines Association (ALAV). Panama’s Copa Airlines, Spain’s Air Europa and PlusUltra, Turkish Airlines, and Venezuela’s LASER are continuing to operate flights for now.

The Trump administration has been weighing Venezuela-related options to combat what it has portrayed as Maduro’s role in supplying illegal drugs that have killed Americans. He has denied having any links to the illegal drug trade. 

Maduro, under whose rule Venezuela has experienced crushing hyperinflation and a collapse in its oil production sector amid staggering corruption, has contended that Trump seeks to oust him and that Venezuelan citizens and the military will resist any such attempt. He also has characterized U.S. actions as an effort to take control of Venezuela’s oil.

A military buildup in the Caribbean has been underway for months, and Trump has authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela.

Keep reading

Our elites are so mediocre

As the spring of 2020 ground on, I waited for the people I still thought of back then as the grownups — executives running public companies, big Wall Street investors, successful tech entrepreneurs and scientists — to speak out.

After all, they were mostly political moderates. They could see the same data and run the same analyses I could. Tens of millions of Americans were being laid off. Their companies were at stake. The economy was at stake.

They had to speak. And they had cover. After all, Elon Musk, among the world’s most successful entrepreneurs, had already spoken out. So I waited for them to join him.

And waited.

But they didn’t. They never did, really.

The tech bros and the hedge funds had cynical reasons to stay quiet. The tech companies saw immediately how lockdowns increased our dependence on screens. The smartest investors stopped caring about the impact lockdowns would have jobs or ordinary Americans very quickly.

They realized the Federal Reserve would need to pour massive liquidity into the financial system to stop a depression, and that liquidity would drive an equally massive increase in asset prices. Bitcoin was trading at about $7,000 before Covid, at the end of 2019. It briefly dipped as the panic spread in March 2020, but by March 2021 was at $50,000.

I said Silicon Valley and Wall Street were cynical. I didn’t say they were dumb.

But what about the executives outside those industries? The ones at hotel companies? Or retailers? Or restaurants? Or manufacturers? Or banks? Or grocery stores? Or Big Pharma? Or energy companies? Or airlines? Or consumer-goods companies? Or hospitals? What about all the medium to large companies that collectively employ tens of millions of people in what we quaintly call the real economy?

Well. The airlines and hospitals got straight cash handouts for the business they lost. The grocery stores and big retailers like Walmart realized they had an advantage, they would be allowed to stay open as essential businesses.

A lot of other companies had a rough go in the spring and summer of 2020. But their executives quickly saw the score. The economy was in the tank, sure. But executives know they don’t get fired for having bad years when the economy’s in the tank.

They might get fired if they pushed back against the public health and media consensus too loudly, though. And they’d definitely get fired if they demanded to bring their employees back to offices and even one of those employees died of Covid.

Keep reading

The Problem Of Fake Science

Don’t eat those waffles; your hair will fall out. Science says so!

Think of this. We’ve never before been in the position to generate such seemingly scientific content on any subject under the sun within a matter of seconds. This power has only existed for two years. Many people do not even know it exists, much less how easy it is. Bad actors are in a position to use this power anytime they want. They can count on legacy levels of trust in “science” to pass off such fakery as real.

This past week, we saw yet another piece of fake science retracted from publication. This one is a big deal. The publication is The Lancet, one of the most prestigious venues in the world. It had published the study, which was thoroughly peer-reviewed. But it turns out that the authors had pulled the wool over the eyes of the experts.

The retracted paper is one of many generated from a huge and well-funded trial of therapeutic drugs used to treat COVID-19. The trial in question was called TOGETHER. It was funded with grants from FTX, the crypto company later shut down for fraud, alongside financial companies holding large pharmaceutical stocks and think tanks funded by the industry that hoped to sell vaccines. If the study was correct, getting the shot would seem like the only option.

The authors peppered all the journals with papers on the results.

Only one has been pulled so far, but the others will likely do the same in time. This includes the New England Journal of Medicine, a venue that prides itself on its low retraction rate.

The TOGETHER trial was conducted then released fully four years ago. Questions and criticisms have been roiling and boiling all this time.

When the study came out in 2021, it was invoked as one of the major reasons to pull hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin from the shelves. Even if your own doctor wrote a prescription, the answer was no.

I will never forget that day when I walked into my neighborhood pharmacy and showed them my prescription. The girl behind the counter excused herself to talk to her manager, who shook his head no without saying a word. That sent me on a scramble to get some sent by overnight mail from New York City, from a person who had ordered some from India. I felt better in three hours.

I later learned that although millions of people did something similar, because it was the only way to get effective meds, the practice is, shall we say, frowned upon.

Why had all the pharmacies in my local neighborhood denied me proven treatments that my own doctor had prescribed me? Because they believed the science.

This is the problem of fake science. It has real-world consequences. We supposedly live in the age of science, but the credibility of all the institutions is now in free fall. The slogan “science” was deployed to justify a level of attack on freedom that we had never before seen. As a result, the reputation of science in general has taken a huge hit.

The TOGETHER trial at least had the appearance of plausibility. After all, they had actually done a real trial. The SURGISPHERE trial, in contrast, released early on in the summer of 2020, was discovered to have entirely made up all its data. Its conclusions were thereby invalid. And to be fair, the fake science was not entirely one-sided. Some studies indicating the reverse results have also been shown to have faked data.

In the end, hundreds of thousands of papers during this period were published, and these days, the retractions are happening as quickly as the acceptances in the old days. My friends, this is not just a PR problem. This is a genuine crisis for the credibility of science itself.

When the science tells you that you cannot safely have a Thanksgiving dinner in your home or sing praises to God without killing grandma, it is risking the very foundations of the scientific revolution.

Keep reading

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Eric Swalwell Wants Americans to be Able to Vote by Phone 

California Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell recently announced that he is running for governor during an appearance on the Democrat Variety Hour, formerly known as the Late Show.

During another media appearance this week, Swlawell revealed that he also wants Americans to be able to vote by phone because he wants to ‘max out democracy.’

Swalwell seems annoyed that people have to wait in line to vote. Funny, he fails to mention how long people have to wait to find out California’s election results. How long did that take last fall? A few months? Maybe he should start with that problem.

Transcript via Legal Insurrection:

“I want us to be able to vote by phone. I think every California… by phone, by phone, yeah, if we can do our taxes, do our, you know, our, make our health care appointments, you know, make, essentially, your, do your banking online, you should be able to vote by phone. Make it safe, make it secure. But it’s actually already happening all over the United States.

I want us to be a blue state that doesn’t do just a little bit better than, like, Georgia or Alabama when it comes to like voting access. I want us to max out democracy.

Also, as it relates to democracy, if you wait in line for 30 minutes or more, if you do want to vote in person, I think you should fine every county for every minute that a person has to wait longer. We have to be better, not just a little bit better than the other states, the DMV. I don’t think Californians should have to go in person to the DMV anymore.

I think we can do that virtually. I think you.. You can have the DMV employees do it virtually, but that’s a lot of real estate. Is that the most popular position we can modernize the state? And I look forward to, you know, bringing these ideas to Californians.”

Keep reading

DEM BOOMERANG: US Virgin Islands Rep. Stacey Plaskett’s Deep Connection to Her Donor Jeffrey Epstein Comes to Light

Plaskett appears to have been an Epstein operative.

The mania that took over the Democratic party over the ‘Jeffrey Epstein files’ was sure to backfire on them – and it’s happening, fast!

Apart from Bill Clinton, Larry Summers and so many others, the spotlight has been shining on embattled Rep. Stacey Plaskett from the US Virgin Islands.

Plaskett is being shown to have far deeper connections to Jeffrey Epstein – a major donor for her – than she let on.

The New York Post reported:

“On Wednesday, Plaskett downplayed Epstein as just another ‘constituent’, after files released by Epstein’s estate revealed he fed her questions during a congressional hearing in 2019, prompting the call for the House sanction.

But exhibits and depositions in a New York court case reveal the convicted pedophile and his associates shoveled at least $30,000 in campaign funds to Plaskett over three election cycles.”

Keep reading

Disgraced ex-news anchor Stephanie Hockridge sentenced in massive COVID fraud scheme — will be jailed with Ghislaine Maxwell

Disgraced ex-TV anchor Stephanie Hockridge will spend the next ten years behind bars for her role in a multi-million-dollar COVID fraud scheme – serving her time in the same cushy lockup as notorious sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

The 42-year-old, a former Phoenix TV anchor turned entrepreneur, was sentenced in Texas federal court Friday and ordered to cough up nearly $64 million in restitution for the bogus Paycheck Protection Program loans she helped secure during the height of the pandemic, the Justice Department announced.

Hockridge, found guilty in June of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, will report to prison on Dec. 30.

She will be locked up at Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas — the same minimum-security facility that houses Jeffrey Epstein’s madam, disgraced Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, and “Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” scammer Jen Shah, AZ Family reported.

Keep reading