#fund administration software

[nando161mando]

Trump's Big Ugly Bill is a deal with the devil. It hikes up taxes on people making less than $50,000 while cutting Medicaid and SNAP benefits to give Elon Musk and greedy billionaires a huge tax break. You do the math. Is that worth it to you?

[mckinlily]

Plot armor but it’s Bruce Wayne’s wealth.

Bruce is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce does not want to be one of the richest men in world.

He starts by implementing high starting salaries and full health care coverages for all levels at Wayne Enterprises. This in vastly improves retention and worker productivity, and WE profits soar. He increases PTO, grants generous parental and family leave, funds diversity initiatives, boosts salaries again. WE is ranked “#1 worker-friendly corporation”, and productively and profits soar again.

Ok, so clearly investing his workers isn’t the profit-destroying doomed strategy his peers claim it is. Bruce is going to keep doing it obviously (his next initiative is to ensure all part-time and contractors get the same benefits and pay as full time employees), but he is going to have to find a different way to dump his money.

But you know what else is supposed to be prohibitively expensive? Green and ethical initiatives. Yes, Bruce can do that. He creates and fund a 10 year plan to covert all Wayne facilities to renewable energy. He overhauls all factories to employ the best environmentally friendly practices and technologies. He cuts contracts with all suppliers that engage in unethical employment practices and pays for other to upgrade their equipment and facilities to meet WE’s new environmental and safety requirements. He spares no expense.

Yeah, Wayne Enterprises is so successful that they spin off an entire new business arm focused on helping other companies convert to environmentally friendly and safe practices like they did in an efficient, cost effective, successful way.

Admittedly, investing in his own company was probably never going to be the best way to get rid of his wealth. He slashes his own salary to a pittance (god knows he has more money than he could possibly know what to do with already) and keeps investing the profits back into the workers, and WE keeps responding with nearly terrifying success.

So WE is a no-go, and Bruce now has numerous angry billionaires on his back because they’ve been claiming all these measures he’s implementing are too expensive to justify for decades and they’re finding it a little hard to keep the wool over everyone’s eyes when Idiot Softheart Bruice Wayne has money spilling out his ears. BUT Bruce can invest in Gotham. That’ll go well, right?

Gotham’s infrastructure is the OSHA anti-Christ and even what little is up to code is constantly getting destroyed by Rogue attacks. Surely THAT will be a money sink.

Except the only non-corrupt employer in Gotham city is….Wayne Enterprises. Or contractors or companies or businesses that somehow, in some way or other, feed back to WE. Paying wholesale for improvement to Gotham’s infrastructure somehow increases WE’s profits.

Bruce funds a full system overhaul of Gotham hospital (it’s not his fault the best administrative system software is WE—he looked), he sets up foundations and trusts for shelters, free clinics, schools, meal plans, day care, literally anything he can think of.

Gotham continues to be a shithole. Bruce Wayne continues to be richer than god against his Batman-ingrained will.

Oh, and Bruice Wayne is no longer viewed as solely a spoiled idiot nepo baby. The public responds by investing in WE and anything else he owns, and stop doing this, please.

Bruce sets up a foundation to pay the college tuition of every Gotham citizen who applies. It’s so successful that within 10 years, donations from previous recipients more than cover incoming need, and Bruce can’t even donate to his own charity.

But by this time, Bruce has children. If he can’t get rid of his wealth, he can at least distribute it, right?

Except Dick Grayson absolutely refuses to receive any of his money, won’t touch his trust fund, and in fact has never been so successful and creative with his hacking skills as he is in dumping the money BACK on Bruce. Jason died and won’t legally resurrect to take his trust fund. Tim has his own inherited wealth, refuses to inherit more, and in fact happily joins forces with Dick to hack accounts and return whatever money he tries to give them. Cass has no concept of monetary wealth and gives him panicked, overwhelmed eyes whenever he so much as implies offering more than $100 at once. Damian is showing worrying signs of following in his precious Richard’s footsteps, and Babs barely allows him to fund tech for the Clocktower. At least Steph lets him pay for her tuition and uses his credit card to buy unholy amounts of Batburger. But that is hardly a drop in the ocean of Bruce’s wealth. And she won’t even accept a trust fund of only one million.

Jason wins for best-worst child though because he currently runs a very lucrative crime empire. And although he pours the vast, vast majority of his profits back into Crime Alley, whenever he gets a little too rich for his tastes, he dumps the money on Bruce. At this point, Bruce almost wishes he was being used for money laundering because then he’s at least not have the money.

So children—generous, kindhearted, stubborn till the day they die the little shits, children—are also out.

Bruce was funding the Justice League. But then finances were leaked, and the public had an outcry over one man holding so much sway over the world’s superheroes (nevermind Bruce is one of those superheroes—but the public can’t know that). So Bruce had to do some fancy PR trickery, concede to a policy of not receiving a majority of funds from one individual, and significantly decrease his contributions because no one could match his donations.

At his wits end, Bruce hires a team of accounts to search through every crinkle and crevice of tax law to find what loopholes or shortcuts can be avoided in order to pay his damn taxes to the MAX.

The results are horrifying. According to the strictest definition of the law, the government owes him money.

Bruce burns the report, buries any evidence as deeply as he can, and organizes a foundation to lobby for FAR higher taxation of the upper class.

All this, and Wayne Enterprises is happily chugging along, churning profit, expanding into new markets, growing in the stock market, and trying to force the credit and proportionate compensation on their increasingly horrified CEO.

Bruce Wayne is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce Wayne will never not be one of the richest men in the world.

But by GOD is he trying.

[political-us]

The Dow is on track for its worst April since 1932—the bleakest year of the Great Depression. Nearly a century later, markets are once again facing economic turbulence on a historic scale.

Trump's approval rating drops to 42%, the lowest it's been since he became president, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

A cutting-edge microscope at Harvard Medical School could pave the way for major breakthroughs in cancer detection and aging research—but its progress is now at risk. The scientist who created the software to analyze its images, 30-year-old Russian-born Kseniia Petrova, has been held in immigration detention for two months. Arrested in February at a Boston airport, Petrova is now detained in Louisiana, facing possible deportation to Russia, where she says she fears imprisonment for protesting the war in Ukraine. Her case highlights the tension between immigration policy and the U.S.'s reliance on global scientific talent.

The Department of Homeland Security denied Mahmoud Khalil permission to be present for the birth of his first child, which took place Monday at a hospital in New York. Instead, Khalil had to experience the moment over the phone from Jena, Louisiana—more than 1,000 miles away from his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, who delivered their baby boy. The case has sparked criticism over DHS's handling of family and humanitarian considerations.

The White House is considering policies to encourage more Americans to marry and have children, including a potential $5,000 “baby bonus,” according to The New York Times. The proposals align with a broader conservative push to address falling birth rates and promote traditional family values. Other ideas on the table include reserving 30% of Fulbright scholarships for applicants who are married or have children, and funding educational programs that teach women about fertility and ovulation.

A group of Venezuelan migrants facing removal under a broad wartime authority challenged the Trump administration’s deportation process at the Supreme Court, arguing the notices they received don’t meet legal standards. The ACLU, representing the migrants, said the English-only notices—often given less than 24 hours before deportation—violate a recent Supreme Court ruling requiring enough time for individuals to seek habeas review.

The Education Department announced it will start collecting student loan payments from over 5 million borrowers who are in default. This means it will begin taking money from federal wages, Social Security checks, and tax refunds. This move comes as pandemic-era protections for student loan borrowers continue to wind down.

Tensions are rising within the Arizona Democratic Party as the state party chair is at odds with the governor and U.S. senators. In response, officials are considering shifting 2026 campaign funds to local county Democrats.

​The U.S. Department of Commerce has announced substantial tariffs on solar panel imports from four Southeast Asian countries—Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia—following a year-long investigation into alleged trade violations by Chinese-owned manufacturers operating in these nations. The tariffs, which vary by country and company, are as follows:​

Cambodia: Facing the steepest duties, with tariffs reaching up to 3,521%, due to non-cooperation with the investigation.

Vietnam: Companies may face duties up to 395.9%.​

Thailand: Tariffs could be as high as 375.2%.​

Malaysia: Duties are set at 34.4%.​

Senator Adam Schiff is urging the National Archives to investigate the Trump administration's use of Signal and similar messaging apps. He emphasized the need for NARA to reach out to every federal agency involved to make sure all relevant records are preserved. This comes amid growing concerns over transparency and potential violations of federal recordkeeping laws.

[mtnman451]

Leftist's, Liberals and Democrats: It's All Perfectly Legal

grownoutandabout

First off, Trump did NOT create a new agency. That’s the lie the media is pushing because they know most people are too lazy to actually read the executive order. What Trump did was repurpose an existing agency—the United States Digital Service (USDS)—which was originally created under Obama to “modernize government software.” He renamed it the United States DOGE Service and kept the same acronym. Why does that matter? Because repurposing an existing department that already has funding means Congress has no say in it. No approval needed. No funding battles. Perfectly legal. Now, let’s talk about how Trump and Musk are executing this legally. First, DOGE’s mission is covered under 44 USC Chapter 36, which governs federal IT modernization. That’s what the original USDS was already supposed to be doing—Trump just made sure it was being done correctly instead of as another bloated bureaucratic disaster. Second, Trump invoked 5 USC 3161, which allows for the creation of a temporary organization within the federal government. That’s right—temporary. DOGE’s core audit team (led by Musk, originally including Vivek Ramaswamy) is legally structured to exist for 18 months. That means it’s not a new administrative agency—it’s a temporary oversight body. That’s not some shady loophole—it’s literally federal law. Now, here’s where it gets even better. The executive branch has full authority over executive agencies. That’s just how the Constitution works. Under the Take Care Clause (Article II, Section 3), the President is required to ensure that laws are faithfully executed. That means if agencies like USAID or OPM are mismanaging funds, Trump has every right—no, the constitutional obligation—to intervene and restructure them. And that’s exactly what DOGE teams are doing by embedding within each agency, conducting audits, and identifying waste. For the people screeching, “But Congress has oversight!”

I posted this because THIS is the best explanation of what President Trump has done and done completely inside the Law!

Thanks and ALL the credit goes to grownoutandabout

[us-cj]

DOGE update from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth: “We're back with another update on cutting wasteful spending here at DOGE, and this one is, as they say, a big one. This is a big day. We're signing a memo right now directing the termination of $5.1 billion in DOGE contracts—not million, that's with a B—$5.1 billion in DOGE contracts for ancillary things like consulting and other non-essential services.

So here's a few examples: DHA contracts for consulting services from Accenture, Deloitte, Booz Allen, and other firms are going to save the department $1.8 billion. How about a software reseller contract for enterprise cloud IT services, saving the department $1.4 billion? A $500 million Navy contract for business process consulting—again, process, lots of process, lots of consultant—for administrative offices in the Bureau of Medicine. By the way, we need this money to spend on better healthcare for our warfighters and their families instead of $500 an hour business process consultants. That's a lot of consulting.

How about this: a DARPA contract for IT help desk services that are completely duplicative with services already provided by our DISA workforce, saving the department another $500 million. We're also terminating, on the DEI front, 11 more contracts for DEI, climate, COVID-19 response, and related non-essential activities across the department. We are committed to rooting out DEI—root and branch—throughout this department, and we've found 11 more contracts and we're going to keep looking.

So that's $5.1 billion in DOGE contracts we're getting rid of. On top of that, in support of the President's priorities to stop federal funding for academic institutions that tolerate anti-Semitism and support divisive DEI programs, this week, DOGE is also pausing over $500 million in funding to Northwestern University and Cornell University, and that's on top of the $70 million in funding we've already paused at Columbia, Penn, Brown, and Princeton over the last few weeks— as if any of these institutions need more government money at all.

So, for you keeping score at home, today's cuts bring our running total to nearly $6 billion in wasteful spending over the first six weeks of the DOGE effort here at the Defense Department. Their job is to go out and find the stuff that we can get rid of and then flow back into—drive back into—warfighting capabilities here at the Defense Department. So we want to thank our friends at DOGE, we want to thank all the folks here that have helped us unpack this, reveal it, and we're excited to make these cuts on behalf of you, the taxpayer, and the warfighters here at the department. Thanks.”

[yyprompts]

🌙💙🤍

More character secrets!

They've been in a relationship with a major celebrity and split up on amicable terms.

They've been in an abusive relationship with a major celebrity.

They will faint if they are exposed to too much traumatic information at once. And they will punch whoever laughs at them when they regain consciousness.

They are popular online but will never be popular in real life.

They have a hikikomori lifestyle.

They can play an obscure instrument such as the clavinet.

The kind of relationship they want is too non-standard for others to agree to.

They participate in hook-up culture because that's their coping mechanism.

They still frequent parties the way they did in college.

They use steroids to get ahead in sports and don't see anything wrong with it.

They know how to administrate naloxone and recently had to use it.

They used to work as an EMT and it has traumatized them.

They used to work in a slaughterhouse and it has traumatized them.

They fled to another country to escape their murderous parents.

They were almost in an arranged marriage.

They escaped an arranged marriage.

They escaped a child marriage.

Everyone in their family is involved of crimes and has ties with gangs.

They struggle with oikophobia (rejection of one's home society) due to past trauma.

They hate their ethnicity / race and would do anything to change it.

They are actively going through a messy divorce.

They are actively going through an amicable divorce.

Their terrible habit is always texting their exes when they're drunk.

They've been engaged multiple times before.

They are engaged again but scared to say anything in case they are left again.

They are a war orphan.

They are an orphan.

No family ever wanted to adopt or foster them, and they don't know why.

They are a student with perfect grades but have illegal interests on the side.

They seduce their teachers and bosses regularly.

They are flunking an important class but none of their classmates can tell.

They prefer calling to texting but no one wants to call them.

They went to a pride parade but hid their face to avoid photographers catching them.

They want a baby but are conflicted with how ethical having kids truly is.

They want a pet but are conflicted with how ethical owning a pet truly is.

They've joined a new religion but are scared to be labelled a cult follower.

They are a part of a cult and secretly trying to convert their co-workers, friends, etc.

They do obscene things while unconscious.

They want to join the army...of another country.

They use AI for everything and are scared to admit it.

They are very against AI but their company full of software engineers adores it.

They come from a family of farmers and still aren't very familiar with modern technology.

They have a CD / cassette / vinyl collection.

They love their pet fish to death and hate how people perceive them as dumb.

They call their pet their "child" but no one has figured out it isn't a literal human baby.

They don't believe that they are human.

They don't believe that they actually exist.

Their parents failed them so their grandparents raised them.

Their parents failed them so their aunt and uncle raised them.

They have siblings but are very distant, so they present as an only child.

They are an only child but always wanted siblings.

They've released music before but have no fans except for one, halfway across the world.

They keep ending up with toxic dates and lovers no matter who they go for.

They wanna marry rich so they are set for life.

They wanna marry rich so they can pursue artistic and other opportunities.

They wanna marry rich so someone can fund their obsessive shopping habits.

They used to be a pick-me.

They are a pick-me, unfortunately.

Everyone from their old school thinks they're the reason the top student got expelled.

They got expelled from school and wrote it off as dropping out.

They dropped out of school and wrote it off as expulsion.

They always get fired from jobs.

They quit every job they get.

They have absolutely no luck in the job market.

They live with family and elderly relatives, and it takes a toll on them.

They are stuck caring for their sick elderly parents, and it takes a toll on them.

They want kids but don't trust anyone else to be a good parent to their child.

They had one kid but wished for more.

They had multiple kids but wished they'd stuck with one.

They take in stray animals no matter the risk.

They look cute, feminine, and dainty, and have a pretty personality, but if they are wronged enough, they can become the most ugly, revenge-driven person anyone has ever met.

They rigged an election to become the president.

They have a plan to sabotage their vice president.

They actually aren't from the political party they proclaimed during the election, but don't know what to do about it.

They're a major activist and on many hitlists.

They are a hitman who is a little too popular amongst politicians and drug lords.

They are one of the few survivors of a major crowd collapse and it's traumatized them.

They fail to connect with anyone who has not had an eerily similar experience to them.

They survived a school shooting and couldn't go to college because they were scared of a repeat.

They were the school shooter and have no remorse.

They were the school shooter and have remorse.

They use babysitting as a means to prepare for being a parent themselves, and make good money.

Their childhood is all over the internet and they don't know what to do now as an adult.

They make ASMR videos but are too embarrassed to tell anyone.

They fall out of love with anyone who loves them back.

They, as a principal, expel whichever students they don't like.

They're primary source of income is their cult followers and their fruitful donations.

They work out but still haven't been able to keep the weight off.

They are a great ballroom dancer but never had the chance to show off those skills in everyday life.

They're a single parent and enjoy it.

They're a single parent and hate it.

They gave their child to relatives to raise to not be held back in life.

Their child has a new parent every week.

They like to kiss on the first date.

They refuse to hold hands until the forth date (lol).

They don't want intimacy before marriage.

They really want a non-traditional wedding.

They want marriage but not a wedding.

They want a wedding but not marriage.

They are legally married to a friend just for tax benefits and so they don't die alone, and they love it.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 4, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Feb 05, 2025

Shortly after 1:00 this morning, Vittoria Elliott, Dhruv Mehrotra, Leah Feiger, and Tim Marchman of Wired reported that, according to three of their sources, “[a] 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies [SpaceX and X], has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government.”

According to the reporters, Elez apparently has the privileges to write code on the programs at the Bureau of Fiscal Service that control more than 20% of the U.S. economy, including government payments of veterans’ benefits, Social Security benefits, and veterans’ pay. The admin privileges he has typically permit a user “to log in to servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to.”

“If you would have asked me a week ago” if an outsider could’ve been given access to a government server, one federal IT worker told the Wired reporters, “I'd have told you that this kind of thing would never in a million years happen. But now, who the f*ck knows."

The reporters note that control of the Bureau of Fiscal Service computers could enable someone to cut off monies to specific agencies or even individuals. “Will DOGE cut funding to programs approved by Congress that Donald Trump decides he doesn’t like?” asked Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) yesterday. “What about cancer research? Food banks? School lunches? Veterans aid? Literacy programs? Small business loans?”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo reported that his sources said that Elez and possibly others got full admin access to the Treasury computers on Friday, January 31, and that he—or they—have “already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system.” They are leaning on existing staff in the agency for help, which those workers have provided reluctantly in hopes of keeping the entire system from crashing. Marshall reports those staffers are “freaking out.” The system is due to undergo a migration to another system this weekend; how the changes will interact with that long-planned migration is unclear.

The changes, Marshall’s sources tell him, “all seem to relate to creating new paths to block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked.”

Both Wired and the New York Times reported yesterday that Musk’s team intends to cut government workers and to use artificial intelligence, or AI, to make budget cuts and to find waste and abuse in the federal government.

Today Jason Koebler, Joseph Cox, and Emanuel Maiberg of 404 Media reported that they had obtained the audio of a meeting held Monday by Thomas Shedd for government technology workers. Shedd is a former Musk employee at Tesla who is now leading the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), the team that is recoding the government programs.

At the meeting, Shedd told government workers that “things are going to get intense” as his team creates “AI coding agents” to write software that would, for example, change the way logging into the government systems works. Currently, that software cannot access any information about individuals; as the reporters note, login.gov currently assures users that it “does not affect or have any information related to the specific agency you are trying to access.”

But Shedd said they were working through how to change that login “to further identify individuals and detect and prevent fraud.”

When a government employee pointed out that the Privacy Act makes it illegal for agencies to share personal information without consent, Shedd appeared unfazed by the idea they were trying something illegal. “The idea would be that folks would give consent to help with the login flow, but again, that's an example of something that we have a vision, that needs [to be] worked on, and needs clarified. And if we hit a roadblock, then we hit a roadblock. But we still should push forward and see what we can do.”

A government employee told Koebler, Cox, and Maiberg that using AI coding agents is a major security risk. “Government software is concerned with things like foreign adversaries attempting to insert backdoors into government code. With code generated by AI, it seems possible that security vulnerabilities could be introduced unintentionally. Or could be introduced intentionally via an AI-related exploit that creates obfuscated code that includes vulnerabilities that might expose the data of American citizens or of national security importance.”

A blizzard of lawsuits has greeted Musk’s campaign and other Trump administration efforts to undermine Congress. Today, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the minority leaders in their respective chambers, announced they were introducing legislation to stop Musk’s unlawful actions in the Treasury’s payment systems and to protect Americans, calling it “Stop the Steal,” a play on Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

This evening, Democratic lawmakers and hundreds of protesters rallied at the Treasury Department to take a stand against Musk’s hostile takeover of the U.S. Treasury payment system. “Nobody Elected Elon,” their signs read. “He has access to all our information, our Social Security numbers, the federal payment system,” Representative Maxwell Frost (D-FL) said. “What’s going to stop him from stealing taxpayer money?”

Tonight, the Washington Post noted that Musk’s actions “appear to violate federal law.” David Super of Georgetown Law School told journalists Jeff Stein, Dan Diamond, Faiz Siddiqui, Cat Zakrzewski, Hannah Natanson, and Jacqueline Alemany: “So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once.”

Musk’s takeover of the U.S. government to override Congress and dictate what programs he considers worthwhile is a logical outcome of forty years of Republican rhetoric. After World War II, members of both political parties agreed that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. The idea was to use tax dollars to create national wealth. The government would hold the economic playing field level by protecting every American’s access to education, healthcare, transportation and communication, employment, and resources so that anyone could work hard and rise to prosperity.

Businessmen who opposed regulation and taxes tried to convince voters to abandon this system but had no luck. The liberal consensus—“liberal” because it used the government to protect individual freedom, and “consensus” because it enjoyed wide support—won the votes of members of both major political parties.

But those opposed to the liberal consensus gained traction after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision declared segregation in the public schools unconstitutional. Three years later, in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, sent troops to help desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Those trying to tear apart the liberal consensus used the crisis to warn voters that the programs in place to help all Americans build the nation as they rose to prosperity were really an attempt to redistribute cash from white taxpayers to undeserving racial minorities, especially Black Americans. Such programs were, opponents insisted, a form of socialism, or even communism.

That argument worked to undermine white support for the liberal consensus. Over the years, Republican voters increasingly abandoned the idea of using tax money to help Americans build wealth.

When majorities continued to support the liberal consensus, Republicans responded by suppressing the vote, rigging the system through gerrymandering, and flooding our political system with dark money and using right-wing media to push propaganda. Republicans came to believe that they were the only legitimate lawmakers in the nation; when Democrats won, the election must have been rigged. Even so, they were unable to destroy the post–World War II government completely because policies like the destruction of Social Security and Medicaid, or the elimination of the Department of Education, remained unpopular.

Now, MAGA Republicans in charge of the government have made it clear they intend to get rid of that government once and for all. Trump’s nominee to direct the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, was a key architect of Project 2025, which called for dramatically reducing the power of Congress and the United States civil service. Vought has referred to career civil servants as “villains” and called for ending funding for most government programs. “The stark reality in America is that we are in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover of the country,” he said recently.

In the name of combatting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, the Trump administration is taking down websites of information paid for with tax dollars, slashing programs that advance health and science, ending investments in infrastructure, trying to end foreign aid, working to eliminate the Department of Education, and so on. Today the administration offered buyouts to all the people who work at the Central Intelligence Agency, saying that anyone who opposes Trump’s policies should leave. Today, Musk’s people entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which provides daily weather and wind predictions; cutting NOAA and privatizing its services is listed as a priority in Project 2025.

Stunningly, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced today that the U.S. has made a deal with El Salvador to send deportees of any nationality—including U.S. citizens, which would be wildly unconstitutional—for imprisonment in that nation’s 40,000-person Terrorism Confinement Center, for a fee that would pay for El Salvador’s prison system.

Tonight the Senate confirmed Trump loyalist Pam Bondi as attorney general. Bondi is an election denier who refuses to say that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. As Matt Cohen of Democracy Docket noted, a coalition of more than 300 civil rights groups urged senators to vote against her confirmation because of her opposition to LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and reproductive rights, and her record of anti-voting activities. The vote was along party lines except for Senator John Fetterman (D-PA), who crossed over to vote in favor.

Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is the logical outcome of the mentality that the government should not enable Americans to create wealth but rather should put cash in the pockets of a few elites. Far from representing a majority, Musk is unelected, and he is slashing through the government programs he opposes. With full control of both chambers of Congress, Republicans could cut those parts themselves, but such cuts would be too unpopular ever to pass. So, instead, Musk is single-handedly slashing through the government Americans have built over the past 90 years.

Now, MAGA voters are about to discover that the wide-ranging cuts he claims to be making to end diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs skewer them as well as their neighbors. Attracting white voters with racism was always a tool to end the liberal consensus that worked for everyone, and if Musk’s cuts stand, the U.S. is about to learn that lesson the hard way.

In yet another bombshell, after meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump told reporters tonight that the U.S. “will take over the Gaza Strip,” and suggested sending troops to make that happen. “We’ll own it,” he said. “We’re going to take over that piece, develop it and create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it will be something the entire Middle East can be proud of.” It could become “the Riviera of the Middle East,” he said.

Reaction has been swift and incredulous. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, called the plan “deranged” and “nuts.” Another Foreign Relations Committee member, Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), said he was “speechless,” adding: “That’s insane.” While MAGA representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) posted in support, “Let’s turn Gaza into Mar-a-Lago,” Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) told NBC News reporters Frank Thorp V and Raquel Coronell Uribe that there were “a few kinks in that slinky,” a reference to a spring toy that fails if it gets bent.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) suggested that Trump was trying to distract people from “the real story—the billionaires seizing government to steal from regular people.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[mariacallous]

The damage the Trump administration has done to science in a few short months is both well documented and incalculable, but in recent days that assault has taken an alarming twist. Their latest project is not firing researchers or pulling funds—although there’s still plenty of that going on. It’s the inversion of science itself.

Here’s how it works. Three “dire wolves” are born in an undisclosed location in the continental United States, and the media goes wild. This is big news for Game of Thrones fans and anyone interested in “de-extinction,” the promise of bringing back long-vanished species.

There’s a lot to unpack here: Are these dire wolves really dire wolves? (They’re technically grey wolves with edited genes, so not everyone’s convinced.) Is this a publicity stunt or a watershed moment of discovery? If we’re staying in the Song of Ice and Fire universe, can we do ice dragons next?

All more or less reasonable reactions. And then there’s secretary of the interior Doug Burgum, a former software executive and investor now charged with managing public lands in the US. “The marvel of ‘de-extinction’ technology can help forge a future where populations are never at risk,” Burgum wrote in a post on X this week. “The revival of the Dire Wolf heralds the advent of a thrilling new era of scientific wonder, showcasing how the concept of ‘de-extinction’ can serve as a bedrock for modern species conservation.”

What Burgum is suggesting here is that the answer to 18,000 threatened species—as classified and tallied by the nonprofit International Union for Conservation of Nature—is that scientists can simply slice and dice their genes back together. It’s like playing Contra with the infinite lives code, but for the global ecosystem.

This logic is wrong, the argument is bad. More to the point, though, it’s the kind of upside-down takeaway that will be used not to advance conservation efforts but to repeal them. Oh, fracking may kill off the California condor? Here’s a mutant vulture as a make-good.

“Developing genetic technology cannot be viewed as the solution to human-caused extinction, especially not when this administration is seeking to actively destroy the habitats and legal protections imperiled species need,” said Mike Senatore, senior vice president of conservation programs at the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife, in a statement. “What we are seeing is anti-wildlife, pro-business politicians vilify the Endangered Species Act and claim we can Frankenstein our way to the future.”

On Tuesday, Donald Trump put on a show of signing an executive order that promotes coal production in the United States. The EO explicitly cites the need to power data centers for artificial intelligence. Yes, AI is energy-intensive. They’ve got that right. Appropriate responses to that fact might include “can we make AI more energy-efficient?” or “Can we push AI companies to draw on renewable resources.” Instead, the Trump administration has decided that the linchpin technology of the future should be driven by the energy source of the past. You might as well push UPS to deliver exclusively by Clydesdale. Everything is twisted and nothing makes sense.

The nonsense jujitsu is absurd, but is it sincere? In some cases, it’s hard to say. In others it seems more likely that scientific illiteracy serves a cover for retribution. This week, the Commerce Department canceled federal support for three Princeton University initiatives focused on climate research. The stated reason, for one of those programs: “This cooperative agreement promotes exaggerated and implausible climate threats, contributing to a phenomenon known as ‘climate anxiety,’ which has increased significantly among America’s youth.”

Commerce Department, you’re so close! Climate anxiety among young people is definitely something to look out for. Telling them to close their eyes and stick their fingers in their ears while the world burns is probably not the best way to address it. If you think their climate stress is bad now, just wait until half of Miami is underwater.

There are two important pieces of broader context here. First is that Donald Trump does not believe in climate change, and therefore his administration proceeds as though it does not exist. Second is that Princeton University president Christopher Eisengruber had the audacity to suggest that the federal government not routinely shake down academic institutions under the guise of stopping antisemitism. Two weeks later, the Trump administration suspended dozens of research grants to Princeton totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. And now, “climate anxiety.”

This is all against the backdrop of a government whose leading health officials are Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Mehmet Oz, two men who, to varying degrees, have built their careers peddling unscientific malarky. The Trump administration has made clear that it will not stop at the destruction and degradation of scientific research in the United States. It will also misrepresent, misinterpret, and bastardize it to achieve distinctly unscientific ends.

Those dire wolves aren’t going to solve anything; they’re not going to be reintroduced to the wild, they’re not going to help thin out deer and elk populations.

But buried in the announcement was something that could make a difference. It turns out Colossal also cloned a number of red wolves—a species that is critically endangered but very much not extinct—with the goal of increasing genetic diversity among the population. It doesn’t resurrect a species that humanity has wiped out. It helps one survive.

[metalheadsagainstfascism]

I feel like I need to clarify how fucking... random the Big Ugly Bill is.

I do admit. I'm not reading 1000 pages. I did use AI to read it. I know, I know. You can hate me, but my attention span and reading comprehension are not great enough for that.

So here's 25 random ass points in the Big Ugly Bill.

Environment and Energy

1. Repeals grants and rebates from the government for clean energy projects

2. Reduces financial incentive and technical assistance to reduce methane production

3. Ends EPA initiative to label and certify greenhouse gas materials

4. Revokes money meant for modernizing and digitizing environment permitting process

5. Ends federal aid to states and tribes to improve emissions tracking and public access to environmental compliance data

Agriculture and Conservation

6. Reauthorizes major farm safety net programs

7. Rescinds unspent Inflation Reduction Act funds for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), and others

8. Provides $15 million/year to continue controlling the spread of destructive feral swine populations on agricultural lands

9. Continues payments to private landowners who open land for hunting, fishing, and conservation through 2031

10. Increases federal support for groundwater and drinking water safety projects via the USDA

Nutrition and Social Programs

11. Revises definitions of “qualified” non-citizens, likely restricting Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) access

12. Reauthorizes through 2031 with ongoing food commodity purchases and distribution logistics support

Defense and National Security

13. Raises the multiplier for calculating military pensions, enhancing the defined-benefit portion for service members

14. Lets DoD keep using private contractors for base housing through September 2029

15. Adds appropriations for expanding the U.S. Navy fleet—part of a broader military-industrial buildup

Infrastructure and Industry

16. Eliminates tax incentives and grants for EV purchases and charging network development

17. Mandates quarterly oil and gas lease sales in areas like the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, including ANWR

18. Adds metallurgical coal (used for steelmaking) to the list of industries eligible for domestic manufacturing tax credits

IRS and Taxes

19. Eliminates the free government-run tax filing system, reinstating reliance on private tax software providers

20. Doubles the estate tax threshold to $15 million per individual, shielding ultra-wealthy inheritances

21. Temporarily allows Americans to deduct interest on car loans for U.S.-made vehicles

22. Sets up “American Freedom Accounts” seeded with $1,000 at birth and available for tax-free growth

23. Codifies lower individual income tax brackets and corporate rates from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

Other

24. Bars local governments from regulating artificial intelligence for 10 years, centralizing control at the federal level

25. Creates a new EPA division for restoring abandoned hardrock mine sites in western regions

This could all be... a dozen bills... at least. The Big Ugly Bill should be renamed the special interest lobbying bill.

"BUT! NO TAXES ON TIPS! IT'S GOOD!"

But it revokes grants for clean energy and methane control, instead providing grants for coal production.

"BUT CHILD SAVINGS ACCOUNT"

But it creates stricter work requirements for SNAP eligibility.

"BUT CLEAN WATER"

But it eliminates the free government funded tax filing system.

We can do this all day. This is trash. The bill is trash. It's a "EVERYONE SHOVE WHATEVER SHIT YOU WANT INTO IT" bill.

And don't get me started on Obama's "EVERYONE SHOVE AS MUCH SHIT AS YOU CAN INTO IT." Bill. I'm tired of every time I criticize the current administration people want to say "BUT OBAMA". I wasn't okay with it when he did it. I'm not okay with it now. Besides, by your logic. Just because one person does something, that makes it okay for EVERYONE to do it.

How about "it wasn't okay for Obama to do it and it's not okay for Trump to do it"? Eh?

-fae

[nando161mando]

Trump’s tax scam.

[misfitwashere]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

FEB 5

Shortly after 1:00 this morning, Vittoria Elliott, Dhruv Mehrotra, Leah Feiger, and Tim Marchman of Wired reported that, according to three of their sources, “[a] 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies [SpaceX and X], has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government.”

According to the reporters, Elez apparently has the privileges to write code on the programs at the Bureau of Fiscal Service that control more than 20% of the U.S. economy, including government payments of veterans’ benefits, Social Security benefits, and veterans’ pay. The admin privileges he has typically permit a user “to log in to servers through secure shell access, navigate the entire file system, change user permissions, and delete or modify critical files. That could allow someone to bypass the security measures of, and potentially cause irreversible changes to, the very systems they have access to.”

“If you would have asked me a week ago” if an outsider could’ve been given access to a government server, one federal IT worker told the Wiredreporters, “I'd have told you that this kind of thing would never in a million years happen. But now, who the f*ck knows."

The reporters note that control of the Bureau of Fiscal Service computers could enable someone to cut off monies to specific agencies or even individuals. “Will DOGE cut funding to programs approved by Congress that Donald Trump decides he doesn’t like?” asked Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) yesterday. “What about cancer research? Food banks? School lunches? Veterans aid? Literacy programs? Small business loans?”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo reported that his sources said that Elez and possibly others got full admin access to the Treasury computers on Friday, January 31, and that he—or they—have “already made extensive changes to the code base for the payment system.” They are leaning on existing staff in the agency for help, which those workers have provided reluctantly in hopes of keeping the entire system from crashing. Marshall reports those staffers are “freaking out.” The system is due to undergo a migration to another system this weekend; how the changes will interact with that long-planned migration is unclear.

The changes, Marshall’s sources tell him, “all seem to relate to creating new paths to block payments and possibly leave less visibility into what has been blocked.”

Both Wired and the New York Times reported yesterday that Musk’s team intends to cut government workers and to use artificial intelligence, or AI, to make budget cuts and to find waste and abuse in the federal government.

Today Jason Koebler, Joseph Cox, and Emanuel Maiberg of 404 Mediareported that they had obtained the audio of a meeting held Monday by Thomas Shedd for government technology workers. Shedd is a former Musk employee at Tesla who is now leading the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), the team that is recoding the government programs.

At the meeting, Shedd told government workers that “things are going to get intense” as his team creates “AI coding agents” to write software that would, for example, change the way logging into the government systems works. Currently, that software cannot access any information about individuals; as the reporters note, login.gov currently assures users that it “does not affect or have any information related to the specific agency you are trying to access.”

But Shedd said they were working through how to change that login “to further identify individuals and detect and prevent fraud.”

When a government employee pointed out that the Privacy Act makes it illegal for agencies to share personal information without consent, Shedd appeared unfazed by the idea they were trying something illegal. “The idea would be that folks would give consent to help with the login flow, but again, that's an example of something that we have a vision, that needs [to be] worked on, and needs clarified. And if we hit a roadblock, then we hit a roadblock. But we still should push forward and see what we can do.”

A government employee told Koebler, Cox, and Maiberg that using AI coding agents is a major security risk. “Government software is concerned with things like foreign adversaries attempting to insert backdoors into government code. With code generated by AI, it seems possible that security vulnerabilities could be introduced unintentionally. Or could be introduced intentionally via an AI-related exploit that creates obfuscated code that includes vulnerabilities that might expose the data of American citizens or of national security importance.”

A blizzard of lawsuits has greeted Musk’s campaign and other Trump administration efforts to undermine Congress. Today, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Representative Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the minority leaders in their respective chambers, announced they were introducing legislation to stop Musk’s unlawful actions in the Treasury’s payment systems and to protect Americans, calling it “Stop the Steal,” a play on Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

This evening, Democratic lawmakers and hundreds of protesters rallied at the Treasury Department to take a stand against Musk’s hostile takeover of the U.S. Treasury payment system. “Nobody Elected Elon,” their signs read. “He has access to all our information, our Social Security numbers, the federal payment system,” Representative Maxwell Frost (D-FL) said. “What’s going to stop him from stealing taxpayer money?”

Tonight, the Washington Post noted that Musk’s actions “appear to violate federal law.” David Super of Georgetown Law School told journalists Jeff Stein, Dan Diamond, Faiz Siddiqui, Cat Zakrzewski, Hannah Natanson, and Jacqueline Alemany: “So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once.”

Musk’s takeover of the U.S. government to override Congress and dictate what programs he considers worthwhile is a logical outcome of forty years of Republican rhetoric. After World War II, members of both political parties agreed that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. The idea was to use tax dollars to create national wealth. The government would hold the economic playing field level by protecting every American’s access to education, healthcare, transportation and communication, employment, and resources so that anyone could work hard and rise to prosperity.

Businessmen who opposed regulation and taxes tried to convince voters to abandon this system but had no luck. The liberal consensus—“liberal” because it used the government to protect individual freedom, and “consensus” because it enjoyed wide support—won the votes of members of both major political parties.

But those opposed to the liberal consensus gained traction after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision declared segregation in the public schools unconstitutional. Three years later, in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, sent troops to help desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Those trying to tear apart the liberal consensus used the crisis to warn voters that the programs in place to help all Americans build the nation as they rose to prosperity were really an attempt to redistribute cash from white taxpayers to undeserving racial minorities, especially Black Americans. Such programs were, opponents insisted, a form of socialism, or even communism.

That argument worked to undermine white support for the liberal consensus. Over the years, Republican voters increasingly abandoned the idea of using tax money to help Americans build wealth.

When majorities continued to support the liberal consensus, Republicans responded by suppressing the vote, rigging the system through gerrymandering, and flooding our political system with dark money and using right-wing media to push propaganda. Republicans came to believe that they were the only legitimate lawmakers in the nation; when Democrats won, the election must have been rigged. Even so, they were unable to destroy the post–World War II government completely because policies like the destruction of Social Security and Medicaid, or the elimination of the Department of Education, remained unpopular.

Now, MAGA Republicans in charge of the government have made it clear they intend to get rid of that government once and for all. Trump’s nominee to direct the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, was a key architect of Project 2025, which called for dramatically reducing the power of Congress and the United States civil service. Vought has referred to career civil servants as “villains” and called for ending funding for most government programs. “The stark reality in America is that we are in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover of the country,” he said recently.

In the name of combatting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, the Trump administration is taking down websites of information paid for with tax dollars, slashing programs that advance health and science, ending investments in infrastructure, trying to end foreign aid, working to eliminate the Department of Education, and so on. Today the administration offered buyouts to all the people who work at the Central Intelligence Agency, saying that anyone who opposes Trump’s policies should leave. Today, Musk’s people entered the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which provides daily weather and wind predictions; cutting NOAA and privatizing its services is listed as a priority in Project 2025.

Stunningly, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced today that the U.S. has made a deal with El Salvador to send deportees of any nationality—including U.S. citizens, which would be wildly unconstitutional—for imprisonment in that nation’s 40,000-person Terrorism Confinement Center, for a fee that would pay for El Salvador’s prison system.

Tonight the Senate confirmed Trump loyalist Pam Bondi as attorney general. Bondi is an election denier who refuses to say that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. As Matt Cohen of Democracy Docket noted, a coalition of more than 300 civil rights groups urged senators to vote against her confirmation because of her opposition to LGBTQ rights, immigrants’ rights, and reproductive rights, and her record of anti-voting activities. The vote was along party lines except for Senator John Fetterman (D-PA), who crossed over to vote in favor.

Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency is the logical outcome of the mentality that the government should not enable Americans to create wealth but rather should put cash in the pockets of a few elites. Far from representing a majority, Musk is unelected, and he is slashing through the government programs he opposes. With full control of both chambers of Congress, Republicans could cut those parts themselves, but such cuts would be too unpopular ever to pass. So, instead, Musk is single-handedly slashing through the government Americans have built over the past 90 years.

Now, MAGA voters are about to discover that the wide-ranging cuts he claims to be making to end diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs skewer them as well as their neighbors. Attracting white voters with racism was always a tool to end the liberal consensus that worked for everyone, and if Musk’s cuts stand, the U.S. is about to learn that lesson the hard way.

In yet another bombshell, after meeting with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump told reporters tonight that the U.S. “will take over the Gaza Strip,” and suggested sending troops to make that happen. “We’ll own it,” he said. “We’re going to take over that piece, develop it and create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it will be something the entire Middle East can be proud of.” It could become “the Riviera of the Middle East,” he said.

Reaction has been swift and incredulous. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, called the plan “deranged” and “nuts.” Another Foreign Relations Committee member, Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), said he was “speechless,” adding: “That’s insane.” While MAGA representative Nancy Mace (R-SC) posted in support, “Let’s turn Gaza into Mar-a-Lago,” Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) told NBC News reporters Frank Thorp V and Raquel Coronell Uribe that there were “a few kinks in that slinky,” a reference to a spring toy that fails if it gets bent.

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) suggested that Trump was trying to distract people from “the real story—the billionaires seizing government to steal from regular people.”

—

[partisan-by-default]

Jeremy Lewin, one of the DOGE employees tasked with dismantling USAID, who has also played a role in DOGE’s incursions into the National Institutes of Health and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is listed as making just over $167,000 annually, WIRED has confirmed. Lewin is assigned to the Office of the Administrator within the General Services Administration.

Kyle Schutt, a software engineer at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is listed as drawing a salary of $195,200 through GSA, where he is assigned to the Office of the Deputy Administrator. That is the maximum amount that any “General Schedule” federal employee can make annually, including bonuses. “You cannot be offered more under any circumstances,” the GSA compensation and benefits website reads.

Nate Cavanaugh, a 28-year-old tech entrepreneur who has taken a visible internal role interviewing GSA employees as part of DOGE’s work at the agency, is listed as being paid just over $120,500 per year. According to DOGE’s official website, the average GSA employee makes $128,565 and has worked at the agency for 13 years.

When Elon Musk started recruiting for DOGE in November, he described the work as “tedious” and noted that “compensation is zero.” WIRED previously reported that the DOGE recruitment effort relied in part on a team of engineers associated with Peter Thiel and was carried out on platforms like Discord.

[darkmaga-returns]

Trump Delays 50 Per Cent EU Tariffs. It Wasn’t Biden’s White House. Merkel: Europe will be ‘destroyed’. Putin Escaped Ukraine Drone Assault. Is AI Going To Kill All Of Us? Contrails vs Chemtrails

Lioness of Judah Ministry

May 26, 2025

Trump Delays 50 Per Cent EU Tariffs After Request From Brussels for Time to Make Deal

U.S. President Donald J. Trump said Sunday evening that he has agreed to delay additional tariffs on the European Union after receiving a call from EU chief Ursula von der Leyen requesting an extension to come to a trade deal.

After President Trump branded the EU “very difficult to deal with” and warned that due to its intransigence, it could face a potential 50 per cent tariff by June 1st, Brussels appears willing to negotiate. Taking to Truth Social on Sunday, the president said: “I received a call today from Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, requesting an extension on the June 1st deadline on the 50% Tariff with respect to Trade and the European Union.

GOP Senator Ron Johnson Says He Has The Votes to Stop The One Big Beautiful Bill (VIDEO)

President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill could face significant hurdles in the Senate after barely passing in the House last week, as GOP Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) says he has the votes to stop the bill.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, the House passed the budget reconciliation bill by only one vote on Thursday after months of debate. President Trump has said he needs the budget reconciliation bill to pass in order to cut taxes for the working class, fund his secure border and mass deportation agenda, and follow through on creating the “Golden Age of America.” On Tuesday, President Trump delivered remarks to House Republicans on Capitol Hill, where he reportedly asked lawmakers to stop haggling over the bill and move it forward to his desk.

Supreme Court Temporarily Shields DOGE From Freedom Of Information Requests

The block will remain in effect for the time being, Chief Justice John Roberts ruled.

The Supreme Court on May 23 temporarily blocked lower court orders requiring the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to respond to freedom of information requests in a pending lawsuit. President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14158 on Jan. 20, implementing DOGE, an advisory body that recommends cost-cutting measures for federal agencies. The executive order directed the entity to “implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” Chief Justice John Roberts issued what’s called an administrative stay that puts lower court orders on hold while the justices consider how to handle the case. Roberts did not provide reasons for his decision.

EPA Looks To Remove Biden-Era Carbon Limits From Coal & Gas-Fired Power-Plants

The 2024 regulation would have required steep emissions cuts from coal and gas plants using carbon capture technology...

An EPA spokesperson told The Epoch Times that the agency has been reconsidering the Biden administration’s power plant emissions regulations, commonly referred to as “Clean Power Plan 2.0,” since March. The Biden-era Clean Power Plan marks the third major attempt by the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. It follows the Obama administration’s original Clean Power Plan, which required power plants to shift toward lower-carbon sources of electricity.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jason Wilson at The Guardian:

A rightwing non-profit group that has published a “DEI Watch List” identifying federal employees allegedly “driving radical Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives” is bankrolled by wealthy family foundations and rightwing groups whose origins are often cloaked in a web of financial arrangements that obscure the original donors. One recent list created by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF) includes the names of mostly Black people with roles in government health alleged to have some ties to diversity initiatives. Another targets education department employees, and another calls out the “most subversive immigration bureaucrats”. The lists come amid turmoil in the US government as Donald Trump’s incoming administration, aided by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has sought to fire huge swathes of the federal government and purge it of DEI and other initiatives – such as tackling climate change – that Trump has dubbed “woke”. While the publication of the personal details of government workers – whom the website describes as “targets” – has reportedly “terrified” many in federal departments, the Guardian has discovered that some current and former employees of AAF have taken pains to conceal their affiliations with the group on LinkedIn and other public websites.

One of the donors to the AAF is the Heritage Foundation, the architects of Project 2025, which has been a driving ideological force behind Trump’s re-election and first weeks in government. Heidi Beirich, the chief strategy officer of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), said: “It’s not surprising to find a vile project such as this backed by Project 2025 entities and far-right donors who have it out for public employees.” Disclosure documents show that the AAF has been closely involved in training Republican staffers in collaboration with the affiliated Conservative Partnership Institute, in sessions that promise to train rightwing operatives in skills including “open source research” and “working with outside groups”.

[...]

‘Incubated’ by the Conservative Partnership Institute

The most crucial support for AAF, however, has come from the organization that birthed it: the CPI, which continues to have a profound influence on the Trump administration and the Republican party as a whole via its own activities and those of its flotilla of spin-off groups. AAF was founded in 2021 to “take a big handful of sand and throw it in the gears of the Biden administration”, as Tom Jones, the organization’s head, told Fox News at the time. [...]

Moulding Maga minds

The Guardian reported last year that CPI had been cementing ties between the far right and the GOP by means of training events for Hill staffers and their bosses in Congress. Many of these events were held at “Camp Rydin”, a sprawling 2,200-acre (890-hectare) property on Maryland’s eastern shore purchased after a $25m donation was made to CPI by its namesake, retired Houston software entrepreneur Mike Rydin, in the wake of January 6. Others were held at one of at least nine adjacent properties on Washington DC’s Pennsylvania Avenue purchased by CPI since 2022, in what reports described as a $41m “shopping spree” that has created a “Maga campus”. CPI literature describes the precinct as “Patriot’s Row”. Records obtained from US Senate and House ethics disclosures indicate that AAF has benefited from being front and center at many of these events. At a 29 May 2024 “Legislative Assistant Symposium” attended by staffers then working for senators including Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and JD Vance, AAF’s Jones was billed as speaking on “strategies for how Congress should approach oversight and accountability”, alongside speakers from CPI, AFL, Advancing American Freedom and anti-immigrant group NumbersUSA. A parallel event with the same line-up drew staffers for hard-right Maga representatives including Anna Paulina Luna – who recently introduced a bill that would see Trump’s face added to Mount Rushmore – and Paul Gosar, who in November invoked antisemitic conspiracy theories in a newsletter defending Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick to lead national intelligence. NumbersUSA was part of a network of groups “founded and funded” by John Tanton, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center called the “puppeteer of the nativism movement and a man with deep racist roots”. At an event held 15-17 February 2023, hosted by AAF and attended by staffers for Congress members including Luna, Ken Buck and Marjorie Taylor Greene, trainees were to learn skills including “how to effectively draft requests for information from agencies and witnesses”, “tools and techniques for conducting open source research into agencies, individuals, and organizations”, and conducting “mock interviews with reluctant / recalcitrant witnesses”.

[...]

Dirt machine

The dirt machine now targeted at government workers was honed on higher-profile targets during the Biden administration. Early on, AAF pointed its opposition-research machine at Biden nominees including Saule Omarova, nominated for comptroller of the currency; Sarah Bloom Raskin, nominated for vice-chair for supervision of the Federal Reserve Board, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, supreme court justice, whom the organization falsely claimed had been soft on sex offenders.

The Guardian reports on how a shadowy far-right group of donors are funding American Accountability Foundation’s watchlists, such as the “DEI watchlist.”

[wakingfromthewater]

Last November I outlined my concerns that elections might look very different in four years, one of which was cutting funding for election cybersecurity.

WELP

In its crusade against federal agencies, the Trump administration is targeting our election system, making potentially dangerous reductions to protections that help keep elections free, fair, and secure. On Friday, the acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency sent a memo to all agency staff notifying them that “all election security activities” would be paused pending the results of an internal investigation. The memo also stated that the administration was cutting off all funds to the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center—a Department of Homeland Security–funded organization that helps state and local officials monitor, analyze, and respond to cyberattacks targeting the nation’s election hardware and software.

The work of CISA and the EI-ISAC has been central to election security in the United States for most of the past decade, providing state and local election officials with critical tools and assistance to defend against cyber and physical threats to election systems. These steps and other recent blows to federal election guardrails were foretold in Project 2025. Understanding the playbook will help us be ready to push back when the next shoes drop.

Changes to CISA began shortly after Kristi Noem was sworn in as secretary of Homeland Security, which oversees the agency. Beyond the announced election security pause and defunding of EI-ISAC, the agency also put critical election security staff on leave and targeted them for potential termination. These staff include CISA’s regional election security advisers, who are former state and local election officials that provide on-the-ground security support to current frontline election workers, and members of the agency’s Election Resilience team, who were reportedly targeted because they had previously been involved with the agency’s efforts to communicate accurate information about election security to election officials and the public.

(more at the source)