Blog

Hey Elon: We Found a Place to Cut More Than $2 Trillion in Wasteful Spending

Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency began its cost-cutting efforts by dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, which spends about $22 billion per year, about 0.3 percent of overall federal spending. DOGE has since targeted agencies focused on children’s education, protecting the natural world, and food safety.

But after more than a month running roughshod through government, DOGE has made strikingly few cuts at the Pentagon, whose bloated budget tips the scales at around $850 billion — accounting for about 13 percent of federal spending.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth encouraged DOGE to hack away at his department on X last week. “We welcome DOGE and finding those efficiencies is how we save taxpayer dollars.” But experts question just how open the Pentagon really is to DOGE, and whether Musk’s merry band of bean-counters has the mettle to do battle with the Department of Defense and its backers.

On DOGE’s “Agency Efficiency Leaderboard,” which shows some of the largest “savings” it has claimed to achieve, the Defense Department is currently wallowing in 16th place out of a total of 22 spots. It’s an especially dismal showing since Defense is the largest government agency, with a budget rocketing toward $1 trillion per year, and has failed seven straight annual audits. The U.S. military budget is the largest in the world — more than triple that of China, 8.5 times higher than Russia, and exceeds the next nine countries combined. Military expenditures are the largest component of discretionary spending in the U.S. budget and are projected to rise over the next decade.

If agencies devoted to saving lives — such as the Department of Health and Human Services or USAID — are on the chopping block, a department that has spent some $8 trillion on foreign wars since 9/11 deserves a close look by DOGE. Potential cuts aren’t hard to find: The Intercept easily sketched a road map amounting to more than $75 billion in annual savings for Musk and DOGE — and as much as $2 trillion over the next decade.

Keep reading

Joy Reid Accused of Blaming Jews for COVID-19 in NYC

Former MSNBC host Joy Reid is facing serious allegations of antisemitism after a former production assistant revealed that she went on a vile, unchecked rant blaming Orthodox Jews for the spread of COVID-19 in New York City.

The shocking accusations, which have only now come to light, paint a troubling picture of the leftist media personality who long claimed to champion so-called marginalized groups.

According to the former MSNBC staffer, Reid made the offensive comments during a morning conference call in the summer of 2020, as the pandemic was gripping the nation.

The ex-staffer, who is Jewish, stated that Reid claimed Orthodox Jews “only care about themselves” and that they were the reason COVID-19 was spreading rapidly in New York.

Keep reading

Ohio veteran calls for change after being denied heart transplant over vaccine refusal

Ken Long, a 54-year-old veteran from Eaton, has been denied a heart transplant at Christ Hospital due to his refusal to receive the COVID-19 vaccine.

Long, who was diagnosed with congestive heart failure nearly a year ago, believes the decision is based on his vaccination status.

“When I decide something, I mean it, and if it takes dying, it’s what it is,” Long said. “They don’t know enough about it, and plus it’s already done a lot of damage. People have said blood clots. There are no cardiac issues and our personal religious rights.”

Initially, Long’s wife, Christina, disagreed with his decision.

“It’s my husband. I don’t want to lose my husband,” Christina said. “In the moment, you’re just overwhelmed, and you want to do anything you can to save somebody’s life, and then I had to regroup myself. It’s his right.”

Long now relies on a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) to pump blood to his heart.

“I can hardly do anything. If the power goes out, I have to worry about my batteries and my charger,” Long said. “You can’t get wet, so showering is an issue.”

Keep reading

Trump, Vance School Zelensky on Reality of His War

Volodymyr Zelensky has become accustomed to being feted in Western cities as the second-coming of Churchill, appearing before awards ceremonies, film festivals, the New York Stock Exchange and various national parliaments, (though the Academy Awards twice turned him down.)

All that came crashing down on him Friday in the 102-foot circumference, 816 sq. foot office at the epicenter of still the most powerful nation on earth, as he was met by a buzzsaw of resistance from the president and vice president of the United States. Zelensky was dressed down, even about his dress, being told he was ungrateful, disrespectful, had lost to Russia and was risking “World War III.”

It’s still hard to register that a factual alternative to the West’s propaganda story on Ukraine has largely been accepted by President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance in a dramatic reversal from the office’s last occupant.

While there are members of Trump’s national security team, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, who previously swallowed whole the fantasy of Russia’s “unprovoked” invasion of an “innocent” Ukraine, there were two officials who during Trump’s campaign likely filled him in on the facts. 

Keep reading

Minnesota Lawmakers, Cities And Businesses Raise Alarm Over State’s Pending Marijuana Contracts With Tribal Nations

People interested in the recreational cannabis market who are not Gov. Tim Walz (DFL) or leaders of the state’s tribal nations have been asking when, where and how they can present their views on imminent state-tribal cannabis compacts.

The answer is: They can’t. The pending compacts that are now expected to allow the state’s tribal nations to enter the legal cannabis business outside of their reservations will not be made public until they are signed by Walz and the tribes. Once signed, they would be the first state-tribal cannabis compacts in the U.S. to allow tribal enterprises to operate outside of reservation lands, and they can’t be amended without mutual agreement.

That leaves lawmakers, local governments and potential cannabis business people to raise issues publicly with little expectation that they will be considered by state negotiators. Walz endorsed the basic tenets of the deal—that the tribes would get a large chunk of the off-reservation market and be allowed to open their stores well before non-tribal stores can open.

“They’re great partners in this. They know how to do this,” Walz said. “Many of them are ahead, obviously enough to set up for them and their sovereignty, to be cultivating. So I think we’re in good shape, and I think they’ll be executed in the near future. And I think that’s the first step in a broader market that is going to be big, and it’ll shake itself out over time.”

He said having tribal stores open first “lets us get out there.”

Keep reading

EU/NATO Keeps Poking the Bear, Still Wants Troops in Ukraine

UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer is looking to pitch the plan to Donald Trump, masking it under the “readiness to deploy British troops as a security guarantee for a free, sovereign and democratic Ukraine”. However, as Moscow is perfectly clear that it won’t tolerate any NATO occupation forces, this proposal makes no sense – unless Starmer is trying everything in his power to sabotage an actual peace deal, just like Boris Johnson did back in 2022.

As the strategic irrelevance of the dying European Union becomes more evident with every passing day, the troubled bloc is desperate to remain relevant, posing as a “great power”. This is rather amusing to Russia, China and now even the United States under Donald Trump. All three superpowers realize that Europe’s place in the geopolitical constellation of global powers is that of a highly dysfunctional second-rate player with little actual leverage over anything (including its own fate).

Several countries in Eastern Europe (particularly Hungary and Slovakia) are refusing to bow down to the diktat of the bureaucratic dictatorship in Brussels, choosing to align themselves with the new Trump administration. Thus, it’s pretty clear that the EU cannot even control its Eastern European members which were never meant to be more than second or even third-class (neo)colonies.

The only regional power outside of the troubled bloc that supports it is the endemically (and pathologically) Russophobic United Kingdom. Namely, London is terrified of seeing Moscow reclaim strong positions in Europe, so it wants to make sure that the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict continues for as long as possible. It did something similar in former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world, including in Ukraine itself even before 2014.

The former colonial superpower has always been adamant that wars between tellurocracies are a must if thalassocraies are to survive, which is why it invested so much of its power projection into pushing countries like Germany against Russia, including during both world wars. The concept remains unchanged to this day, which explains the UK’s obsession with Russia.

Keep reading

DOGE Cuts Fauci-Funded Animal Testing in China

President Donald Trump is picking up where he left off in 2020 and cutting funding to animal testing labs in China.

Days after White Coat Waste Project famously exposed Anthony Fauci’s funding for gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in April 2020, President Trump went on national TV and called it “tremendous waste” and said he’d “end it very quickly.” And he did.

Now, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is taking action to de-fund other animal tests in China.

DOGE just announced a series of NIH cuts made today, including “$135K for a research grant to China Medical University in Shenyang, China.”

While the DOGE post on X didn’t include many details, WCW immediately identified the project as a Fauci-funded animal testing grant they sent to DOGE earlier this month on a list of over $1.4 billion in NIH animal testing projects to cut in the US, China and other countries.

According to the NIH’s database, the grant received $135,000 in 2024 and a total of $677,000 from Fauci’s NIAID. The Fauci-funded experiments at CMU involved infecting rabbits and mice with malaria, and infesting mice with mosquitoes so that the insects could feed on their blood.

Keep reading

Zelensky Caught On Hot Mic Calling Trump VP J.D. Vance a ‘Bitch’?

Ukraine President Volodymr Zelensky referred to US Vice President J.D. Vance as a “bitch” in Russian during Friday’s peace talks, social media users claimed.

Zelensky appeared to utter the vulgar slur amid a contentious exchange as Vance criticized him for attempting to litigate his case “in front of the American media,” while noting the Ukraine president should instead “be thanking [President Trump] for trying to bring an end to this conflict.”

As Vance argued that, despite not having visited Ukraine, he was familiar with how it operated, Zelensky shook his head and appeared to mutter under his breath “сука” or “Suka Blyat,” which social media users say translates to “bitch,” “bitch whore,” or “fucking shit.”

Keep reading

Wolves, Hyenas and Legislators Run in Packs

At an early age, we taught our kids to learn from others and to think for themselves. I still remember telling one child, “Truth doesn’t fly in flocks. You need to seek and find it on your own. And never be afraid to test and re-examine what you believe is true. Belief has no value if you close your mind to the ideas and arguments of others. Living in truth involves not only faith, but also the courage to think for yourself.”

Unthinking animals either herd up for security, or run in packs to pull other creatures down. Politicians do both. In the worst example I have seen in 48 years in Montana, the cowardly pack mentality has been on full display in the sixty-nineth session of the Montana State Legislature.

Most of us are aware by now of the hostile takeover of the Montana State Senate by a coalition of every Democrat plus a wolf pack of liberal Republicans, who locked claws on vote after vote to deliver a functional majority for the Democratic Party. At one point, twenty separate pro-Democrat floor votes were recorded, all by 27-23 margins – an impressive show of Pack Power over their own Republican leadership. The nine GOP deserters are senators Vance, Gillespie, Kassmier, Lammers, Loge, McKamey, Tempel, Hunter and Ellsworth.

First, the Pack held the Senate hostage for many days, eventually forcing leadership to change its own rules so that liberal Republicans could be inserted onto key committees to shift committee control.

Then came the Jason Ellsworth affair. Sen. Ellsworth was caught arranging a sweetheart contract for a buddy of his by quietly diverting, at the last moment, over $170,000 from the unspent budget of the Judicial Reform Interim Committee, over the objections of its members. The project made no sense and would be performed from the friend’s home. When discovered, auditors were shocked, and the Senate Ethics Committee began an investigation, as was its constitutional duty. But the nine-member GOP wolf pack again locked arms with the Democrats and stopped the investigation in its tracks – thus assuring that the liberal Ellsworth would remain in the Senate for the entire session, doing the Democrats’ bidding.

Other reports of Ellsworth throwing his political weight around started coming out. Clearly, he should have resigned, but the “the Pack” continued to give him protective cover, and he remains there still – larger than life – seemingly incapable of shame or contrition.

Keep reading

Defense Secretary Hegseth Puts Mexico on Blast: ‘Curb the Influx of Migrants and Fentanyl, or US Military Will Strike the Cartels’

Donald J. Trump is moving decisively on a wide array of fronts, both in domestic and foreign policies—and sometimes, these two categories overlap.

Take, for example, border security and the fight – on both sides of the divide with Mexico – against drug influx and illegal migrant smuggling-human trafficking operations, both undertaken by the brutal and extremely well-armed Mexican Cartels.

Here, too, Trump’s team will not operate in the old, expected fashion – but is alerting the neighboring authorities of their full intention of acting forcefully unless they up their game and tackle the issue.

A report arose that, in late January, a mere 7 days after his confirmation as Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth warned Mexican officials that the US military was ‘ready to take unilateral action’ against the country’s drug cartels.

The only way for Mexico to prevent this, the Secretary reportedly stated, is by working harder to stem the flow of fentanyl and migrants into the US.

Keep reading