Too damn funny!
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113977646169606601
Did anybody get Musk's DOGE commercials?
Wow! That didn't take long, first filter of the day.
Article II, Section 2
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-2/
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
Trump to Announce 25 Percent Steel, Aluminum Tariffs Monday
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/donald-trump-steel-aluminum/2025/02/09/id/1198432/
Sunday, 09 February 2025 05:42 PM EST
President Donald Trump said he will announce on Monday that the United States will impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, including from Canada and Mexico, as well as other import duties later in the week.
"Any steel coming into the United States is going to have a 25% tariff," he told reporters Sunday on Air Force One as he flew from Florida to New Orleans to attend the Super Bowl. When asked about aluminum, he responded, "aluminum, too" will be subject to the trade penalties.
Trump also reaffirmed that he would announce "reciprocal tariffs" — "probably Tuesday or Wednesday" — meaning that the U.S. would impose import duties on products in cases where another country has levied duties on U.S. goods.
"If they are charging us 130% and we're charging them nothing, it's not going to stay that way," he told reporters.
Trump's comments are the latest example of his willingness to threaten, and in some cases to impose, import taxes. Tariffs are coming much earlier in his presidency than during his previous four years in the White House, when he prioritized tax cuts and deregulation.
Financial markets fell on Friday after Trump first said he would impose the reciprocal tariffs. Stock prices also dropped after a measure of consumer sentiment declined on Friday, largely because many respondents cited tariffs as a growing worry. The survey also found that Americans are expecting inflation to tick up in the coming months because of the duties.
Trump on Sunday did not offer any details about the steel and aluminum duties or the reciprocal tariffs. Trump previously threatened 25% import taxes on all goods from Canada and Mexico, though he paused them for 30 days barely a week ago. At the same time, he proceeded to add 10% duties on all imports from China.
Rep. Zinke to Newsmax: 'Follow the Money' on USAID
https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/ryan-zinke-usaid-trump-administration/2025/02/09/id/1198428/
Sunday, 09 February 2025 03:53 PM EST
It's important that the Trump administration continues to "follow the money" when it comes to stopping excess spending through the U.S. Agency for International Development, even with a judge blocking firings temporarily, Rep. Ryan Zinke, a former secretary of the Interior, told Newsmax Sunday.
"When I came in as secretary of Interior, I did largely the same," the Montana Republican said on Newsmax's "Sunday Report." "I shut the grants down until I knew where the grants were going. Did they agree to an audit? Was the grant behind? Was it behind some sort of congressional intent?"
USAID has been targeted as part of the Department of Government Efficiency's spending crackdown, and Zinke said that there should be "no debate" about accountability and making sure a government agency's spending is transparent.
"What we're finding is billions and billions of dollars have been transferred," he said. "These programs, No. 1, they never had an audit. No. 2, Congress didn't know about it. No. 3, it's hidden."
At the same time, Zinke said he doesn't "think the taxpayer should be paying one dime to any program that the taxpayers and Congress and the president don't know about."
Zinke added that when he came in as a secretary in President Donald Trump's first Cabinet, "I shut down the grants because I didn't know where the money was."
"We don't even have a database," he said of the current situation. "I sit on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and the Department of State does not have a database — a single database — or where we can track where the grants are."
This means the administration must continue to "go after the money, see where it's being distributed, and stop the flow until we can get a handle on where the taxpayer dollars are going," Zinke added. "I think that's absolutely prudent and fair."
Zinke also on Sunday commented on Trump's plans for redeveloping Gaza, noting that he doesn't think anyone saw the news coming.
"Thinking it through, what is absolutely clear is the Palestinian people have to have a hope and a future, and right now they do not," he said. "The Gaza Strip itself is a result of the 1967 war, and it is largely a refugee camp strip, but it needs some economic development and a future. And, look, if we're going to take the lead on it, you know, I'm behind President Trump."
Judge Reviews Govt Worker Buyout Offer; CFPB HQ Shuttered
https://www.newsmax.com/us/doge-judge-review/2025/02/10/id/1198460/
Monday, 10 February 2025 06:59 AM EST
A U.S. judge will consider Monday the fate of President Donald Trump's buyout offer to two million federal workers as Trump presses ahead with an unprecedented effort to dismantle government agencies and downsize the federal workforce.
U.S. District Judge George O'Toole in Boston will hear arguments in a lawsuit brought by federal workers' unions which claim the Trump administration's "deferred resignation" offer to government civilian employees is illegal because the U.S. Congress has not approved funding for the scheme.
Trump has tasked Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, the world's richest person, with overseeing the purge of employees through the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The actions of DOGE, which is not a government department, have sown panic in Washington and triggered public protests and a flood of calls from angry voters to Congress worried about the access Musk's team has been given to sensitive information in government computer systems that contain data on government payments to Americans and personal details of federal workers.
Musk aides have taken senior positions at key government agencies while the billionaire has pushed for the dismantling of others, including USAID, America's humanitarian and development aid agency, and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the consumer watchdog set up in 2010 after the global financial crisis.
Education Department, Pentagon Next
Opposition Democrats and federal employee unions have decried the power Trump has bestowed on South African-born Musk, who appears largely unaccountable except to Trump himself. Trump says Musk does not operate unilaterally but only with his blessing.
Musk and his team of young staff appear to be far exceeding the mandate given to them by an executive order Trump signed when he took office on January 20, in which DOGE was asked to provide recommendations on how to modernize technology used by the federal government.
Last week Judge O'Toole temporarily paused the Thursday deadline for workers to accept Trump's buyout plan, which offers employees pay through September if they resign now.
While unions have urged members not to accept the offer, saying the Trump administration cannot be trusted to honor it, more than 65,000 government employees have so far opted to take it as of Friday. Reuters has been unable to independently verify that number, which does not include a breakdown of workers from each agency.
O'Toole could decide on another temporary pause to the program, bar it outright, or allow it to proceed.
A CFPB employee sounded downbeat on Sunday, saying even if the judge blocks the buyout program, he and fellow staff believe they will likely lose their jobs anyway.
Russell Vought, Trump's new acting director of the CFPB, sent an email to workers on Saturday night ordering them to cease virtually all work. On Sunday, workers received another email telling them the agency would be closed for a week starting on Monday.
A labor union that represents CFPB workers filed a lawsuit late on Sunday to block Vought's actions, arguing that he was violating Congress' authority to set and fund the agency's mission.
The agency regulates consumer financial products and has long incurred the ire of conservatives, who view its existence as government overreach.
The same day his staff were reported to have entered the agency, Musk posted "CFPB RIP" Friday on X, his social media platform .
Trump said Sunday he expected Musk to find billions of dollars of waste in military spending once he instructs the billionaire to turn his sights on the Pentagon.
The aggressive moves by Trump and Musk are bringing new lawsuits on an almost daily basis.
An effort to hollow out USAID is partially on hold after a judge's ruling, and Trump's effort to freeze trillions of dollars in federal loans, grants and other financial assistance has also been paused in a separate case.
A judge temporarily blocked DOGE on Saturday from accessing government systems used to process trillions of dollars in payments at the Treasury Department.
Game parties, all the normal shills are hungover.
Don't stick dick in crazy….you know this.
I was wondering how long it would take for them to start complaining about the loss of USAID monies.
Pope's Aid Man Suggests USAID Has 'Commitments' on Funds
https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/vatican-us-usaid-pope-migration/2025/02/09/id/1198447/
Monday, 10 February 2025 07:16 AM EST
Pope Francis' point-man on migration and development has urged the Trump administration to remember Christian principles about caring for others, saying people are being "terrorized" by the U.S. crackdown on migrants and vital church-run aid programs are being jeopardized by the planned gutting of USAID.
Cardinal Michael Czerny, a Czech-born Canadian Jesuit, is one of the cardinals most closely associated with Francis' pontificate and heads the Vatican office responsible for migrants, the environment, the church's Caritas Internationalis charity and development.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Czerny said every incoming government has the right to review its foreign aid budget, and to even reform an agency like USAID. But he said it is another thing to dismantle an agency after it has made funding commitments.
"There are programs underway and expectations and we might even say commitments, and to break commitments is a serious thing," Czerny said Sunday. "So while every government is qualified to review its budget in the case of foreign aid, it would be good to have some warning because it takes time to find other sources of funding or to find other ways of meeting the problems we have."
USAID is the main international humanitarian and development arm of the U.S. government and in 2023 managed more than $40 billion in combined appropriations. The Trump administration and billionaire ally Elon Musk have targeted USAID hardest so far in their challenge of the federal government: A sweeping funding freeze has shut down most of USAID's programs worldwide, though a federal judge on Friday put a temporary halt to plans to pull thousands of agency staffers off the job.
One of USAID's biggest non-governmental recipients of funding is Catholic Relief Services, the aid agency of the Catholic Church in the U.S., which has already sounded the alarm about the cuts. Other programs, including Caritas international programs at the diocesan and national levels, are also being impacted directly or indirectly, Czerny said.
"I think people are still reeling from the news and beginning to figure out how to respond," he said.
While large, the USAID budget is less than one percentage point of the U.S. gross domestic product and a fraction of the biblical call to tithe 10% of one's income, Czerny noted.
Czerny acknowledged Francis has often complained about Western aid to poor countries being saddled with conditions that may be incompatible with Catholic doctrine, such as programs promoting gender ideology. The Trump administration has said it is targeting these "woke" programs in its USAID cuts.
"If if the government thinks that its programs have been distorted by ideology, well, then they should reform the programs," Czerny said. "Many people would say that shutting down is not the best way to reform them."
…and here comes another pandemic?
UNAIDS Chief: HIV Infections Could Jump 6 Times
https://www.newsmax.com/health/health-news/hiv-aids-us-trump-un-byanyima/2025/02/10/id/1198467/
Monday, 10 February 2025 07:16 AM EST
The head of the U.N. AIDS agency said Monday the number of new HIV infections could jump more than six times by 2029 if American support of the biggest AIDS program is dropped, warning that millions of people could die and more resistant strains of the disease could emerge.
In an interview with The Associated Press, UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said HIV infections have been falling in recent years, with just 1.3 million new cases recorded in 2023, a 60% decline since the virus peaked in 1995.
But since President Donald Trump’s announcement the U.S. would freeze all foreign assistance for 90 days, Byanyima said officials estimate that by 2029, there could be 8.7 million people newly infected with HIV, a tenfold jump in AIDS-related deaths — to 6.3 million — and an additional 3.4 million children made orphans.
“We will see a surge in this disease,” Byanyima said, speaking from Uganda. “This will cost lives if the American government doesn’t change its mind and maintain its leadership,” she said, adding that it was not her place to criticize any government’s policy.
Byanyima pleaded with the Trump administration not to abruptly cut off funding, which she said has resulted in “panic, fear and confusion” in many of the African countries hardest hit by AIDS.
In one Kenyan county, she said 550 HIV workers were immediately laid off, while thousands of others in Ethiopia were terminated, leaving health officials unable to track the epidemic.
She noted that the loss of U.S. funding to HIV programs in some countries was catastrophic, with external funding, mostly from the U.S., accounting for about 90% of their programs. Nearly $400 million goes to countries like Uganda, Mozambique and Tanzania, she said.
“We can work with (the Americans) on how to decrease their contribution if they wish to decrease it,” she said. Byanyima described the American withdrawal from global HIV efforts as the second biggest crisis the field has ever faced — after the years-long delay it took for poor countries to get the lifesaving antiretrovirals long available in rich countries.
Byanyima also said the loss of American support in efforts to combat HIV was coming at another critical time, with the arrival of what she called “a magical prevention tool” known as lenacapavir, a twice-yearly shot that was shown to offer complete protection against HIV in women, and which worked nearly as well as for men.
Widespread use of that shot, in addition to other interventions to stop HIV, could help end the disease as a public health problem in the next five years, Byanyima said.
She also noted that lenacapavir, sold as Sunlenca, was developed by the American company Gilead.
International aid, Byanyima said, “helped an American company to innovate, to come up with something that will pay them millions and millions, but at the same time prevent new infections in the rest of the world.” The freeze in American funding, she said, didn’t make economic sense.
“We appeal to the U.S. government to review this, to understand that this is mutually beneficial,” she said, noting that foreign assistance makes up less than 1% of the overall U.S. budget. “Why would you need to be so disruptive for that 1%?”
Byanyima said that so far, no other countries or donors have stepped up to fill the void that will be left by the loss of American aid, but that she plans to visit numerous European capitals to speak with global leaders.
“People are going to die because lifesaving tools have been taken away from them,” she said. “I have not yet heard of any European country committing to step in, but I know they are listening and trying to see where they can come in because they care about rights, about humanity.”
We only in the 400's…
>$59 million “LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants.”
Somebody is about to get fired!
Trump DOJ Files to 'Dissolve' or 'Modify' Judge's Treasury Ruling
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/trump-doj-courtfiling/2025/02/10/id/1198474/
Monday, 10 February 2025 08:36 AM EST
President Donald Trump's Justice Department filed a court order to "dissolve" or "modify/clarify" a federal judge's ruling that prevents the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing the Treasury Department's payment system.
U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer issued an emergency order early Saturday blocking Elon Musk's DOGE team from accessing personal and financial data for millions of Americans stored at Treasury.
Trump appointed Musk to head advisory DOGE, which has been tasked with finding ways to streamline government and reduce spending.
Engelmayer's order restricts giving access to department payment systems and other data to "all political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department."
Late Sunday night, the DOJ filed a court order in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York saying that Engelmayer's order "is a remarkable intrusion on the Executive Branch that is in direct conflict with Article II of the Constitution, and the unitary structure it provides."
"WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING (again): The Justice Department asked a court to urgently 'dissolve' or 'modify/clarify' the sweeping order that blocks Musk allies — and political leadership in Treasury from accessing the government's massive payment system," Politico's Kyle Cheney posted on X early Monday morning with a copy of the court filing.
The order said the Trump administration was "already negotiating with the [19] states who filed the lawsuit to narrow the order."
"There is not and cannot be a basis for distinguishing between 'civil servants' and 'political appointees.' Basic democratic accountability requires that every executive agency's work be supervised by politically accountable leadership, who ultimately answer to the President," DOJ attorneys wrote in the filing.
Cheney also pointed out that "Thomas Krause, the lone Musk ally with access to the system, appended a seven-page declaration describing his work with it and emphasizing he has been properly trained on it. He says his access was limited to 'over the shoulder' review and copies of code."
Damn! Where are the MPs?
Brain dead morans.
I agree