DOGE - A Lawyer's Perspective - Tom Renz’s Newsletter - "A lot is being said about DOGE and whenever I see the mainstream organizing around a narrative I get suspicious. In light of the fact that the mainstream media is a literal extension of the swamp, and the fact that they have organized around a narrative, I decided to look into DOGE myself and see what is under the hood. While I was initially quite concerned about the legality of a “new agency” created by executive order I found that the narrative that is being promoted - just like everything else - is just another lie... Trump did NOT actually create a new agency. Instead what he did was repurpose an existing agency - the USDS - into something more useful. The USDS was an Obamacare office created to make government software better. This group was essentially software development for the bureaucracy. Trump renamed the United States Digital Service (USDS) the United States DOGE Service which even kept the acronym the same. Not only did repurposing an appropriate existing department allow Trump to ensure there was funding for DOGE without having to fight with Congress - it also ensured its legality."
Elon Musk Handed Win by Judge He Wanted Impeached - Newsweek - "Tech billionaire Elon Musk was handed a legal win on Friday by federal judge John Bates who Musk previously called for his impeachment, ruling that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) can continue to access sensitive records from at least three federal agencies... At the core of the case was whether DOGE—created via executive order—has the legal authority to "detail" its personnel to specific federal agencies, effectively granting them access to confidential government records. In his ruling, Bates noted that for DOGE to have such authority, it would need to be recognized as an official federal agency under the law. Plaintiffs argued that DOGE does not meet that standard, as it was not formed through congressional approval—meaning its staffers should not be able to embed within federal agencies. Ultimately, the judge handed DOGE a victory, ruling that it likely qualifies as a federal agency—and therefore has the authority to continue accessing sensitive government records."
Swedish Canary 🇺🇸🇸🇪 on X - "Look son those same people who think you should cut off your naughty bits and be a girl think Elon Musk is going too far. Just say no to the mentally ill @DNC"
Elon Musk on X - "To be clear, what the @DOGE team and @USTreasury have jointly agreed makes sense is the following:
- Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible.
- All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING!
- The DO-NOT-PAY list of entities known to be fraudulent or people who are dead or are probable fronts for terrorist organizations or do not match Congressional appropriations must actually be implemented and not ignored. Also, it can currently take up to a year to get on this list, which is far too long. This list should be updated at least weekly, if not daily.
The above super obvious and necessary changes are being implemented by existing, long-time career government employees, not anyone from @DOGE . It is ridiculous that these changes didn’t exist already! Yesterday, I was told that there are currently over $100B/year of entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN or even a temporary ID number. If accurate, this is extremely suspicious. When I asked if anyone at Treasury had a rough guess for what percentage of that number is unequivocal and obvious fraud, the consensus in the room was about half, so $50B/year or $1B/week!! This is utterly insane and must be addressed immediately."
Senator Tina Smith on X - "Kate is a Park Ranger at Voyageurs National Park, a remote area near the Canadian border. Her job was to protect boaters, campers and hikers who want to experience some of the most beautiful parts of our state. Musk and Trump fired her on Friday."
BowTiedRanger on X - "There were Army Rangers, Navy SEALs, and Green Berets with multiple combat deployments and valor awards who were kicked out of the military because of Biden’s vaccine mandates. Spare me the fake sob story about a junior park ranger who got laid off because of bureaucratic bloat."
"You should never fire government employees even if their jobs are not necessary". The left is really perpetuating stereotypes about government jobs
Jeffrey A Tucker on X - "I'm concerned that many people do not understand the historical and institutional context in which the DOGE labor reforms are unfolding. They look at this as if these are some random, chaotic, arbitrary, strange, and even cruel measures to impose on a devoted civil service. The reality is very different, and I'm not even sure that Elon entirely understands this. For more than a century, even dating back to 1883, the civil service has grown and grown without check from the elected branch, either the presidency or the legislature . The bureaucracies have ballooned from a few to 450 or so. The bloat and absurdities have grown too. Get this: no one has ever known what to do about it. Not Coolidge, not Hoover, not Nixon, not Reagan, not Clinton, no one. No president has been able to crack this nut. The only reforms ever to have made it through are those that make the administrative state bigger, never smaller. Countless cabinet secretaries have come and gone, always with the intention of making a change but leaving saddened, demoralized, outwitted, outgunned, and ultimately devoured. No president has seriously taken on this problem because they simply did not know how. The unions are powerful, the intimidation from the deep institutional knowledge is overwhelming, the fear of the media as been powerful, and every single president comes to power vaguely feeling threatened by the intelligence agencies. The industries that have captured every single agency were also far too powerful to unseat or control. This combination of institutional inertia has blocked serious reform for a full century. No one has dared. No one has even had a theory or strategy about what to do about this problem. It had become so terrible that most people in politics have simply surrendered, like homeowners who know there are rats in the basement and bats in the attic but long ago gave up trying to fix the issue. All this time, the American people have felt themselves ever more oppressed, weighed upon, taxed and regulated, spied upon, brow beaten, and otherwise overwhelmed. Voting never made any difference because the politicians no longer controlled the system. The bureaucracies ruled all. The Biden years underscored the point. We didn't even need a conscious and present executive. We only needed a figurehead to pretend to be president, just like the Soviet premiers in the old days. The institutions ran everything and the people controlled nothing. How to deal with this? Trump alone figured it out in his last term: he simply took charge of the agencies in a limited way. There were screams of horror and plots galore. They performed a long stream of clever schemes to destroy him and show him who is boss, which is not the democratically elected president but the forces behind the scenes. The job of the president, goes the message from all the insiders, is to PRETEND to be in charge but not actually do anything meaningful. Shut up, mug up, obey, and disturb nothing, let the administrative state do its thing without oversight or disruption, and then you will get your honorary library and bestselling autobiography and go down in history as great. Trump refused the deal and look what happened. Four years have gone by and Trump is back again, this time with a determination to slay this beast, one that he knows all-to-well. The efforts of DOGE and MAHA and MAGA are epic in scope, breaking a century of pathetic acquiescence toward the deep, middle, and shallow states, at last using moral courage to confront the problem head on, come what may. They are profoundly aware that they MUST act fast and with some degree of ferocity, even recklessness, else we will default back to the status quo of leaders who pretend to be in charge while the embedded system runs things behind the scenes. It has been this way for TOO LONG. The voters this time have demanded change, and mustered the faith to believe that change is possible. This is precisely what DOGE is attempting, to make good on a promise, a promise that for once the voters actually believed was credible. They simply must succeed. There might never be another chance. The way of failure is the path everyone knows the US was on, toward economic stagnation, political scolerosis, and eventual irrelevance in the unfolding of the next stage of social evolution."
Dr. Lucky Tran on X - "Brilliant protest. Yosemite National Park workers hung an upside-down American flag — traditionally a symbol of distress or a national threat — thousands of feet off the ground on the side of El Capitan."
Kurt Schlichter on X - "They don’t have time to operate the front gates or unlock the bathrooms, but they’ve got plenty of time to climb to the top of the hill and secure an upside down flag there, thereby making a political statement on government time. I don’t think you’re making the case you think you are making"
TONY™ on X - "Elizabeth Warren 15 years ago on government spending: “You know when that much money disappears it’s usually because somebody broke some laws somewhere.” Well that aged well ‼️🤣"
Meme - MM @adgirlMM: "I already answered this on this thread. Here's a short summary. Sympathy for antivaxxers who got fired during the pandemic: *ZERO*"
MM @:a"dgirlMM Just a reminder to the maga crowd cheering on these mass firings... These are scientists. Park rangers. Disabled Veterans. Humanitarians. Civil servants. They are human. They have bills to pay. Families who depend on them. Children. Many of them took pride in their work. Some were just getting started in their careers."
Dominic Michael Tripi on X - "BREAKING: FBI whistleblower confirms to journalist Michael Shellenberger that FBI employees were destroying evidence related to Jeffrey Epstein files and JFK assassination."
Emerald Robinson ✝️ on X - "Rumor: I'm hearing that some generals were caught shredding documents. And that the FBI has raided the homes of some CIA officials. Trying to confirm."
Spookd Blog on X - "The generals were snared, in their offices, shredding documents, by Kash’s team at 3:00 am. Hegseth arranged the bust; The generals are currently, in custody, at Andrews AFB."
Byron Donalds on X - "Democrats are flailing over Musk & DOGE gaining access to IRS data. But in 2023, Joe Biden gave 53 unpaid researchers & student volunteers access to the SAME SYSTEM & they said NOTHING. Democrats have no problem with waste, fraud, & abuse as long as their ideology is promoted."
The Vigilant Fox 🦊 on X - "NEW: Elon Musk just revealed that the government handed the Navy $12 billion to build new submarines—and not a single submarine was built. When investigators asked where the money went, Navy officials shrugged and said they had no idea. “There’s a case where I think Senator Collins was telling me about how she gave the Navy $12 billion for more submarines, got no extra submarines, and then held a hearing to say where the $12 billion go. “And they were like, we don’t know. That was it. I mean, basically, stuff is so crazy. Only the federal government could get away with this level of waste,” Musk said."
TaraBull on X - "Elizabeth Warren salary: $285,000/yr
Net worth: $67,000,000
Wants to stop YOU from finding out where your money goes."
Meme - Adam Schiff: "Elon Musk is trying to access your personal bank and tax data. The world's richest man should not and cannot be able to snoop around your personal finances. Period. End of story."
Chaotic Good @ChaoticGood42_: "He's not trying to snoop around my personal finances. He's trying to snoop around yours. Because you get paid with taxpayer money and should be subjected to these types of audits on a regular basis to flush out obvious conflicts of interest."
doitbigchicago on X - "Fun Fact: If someone gave you $500,000 a day, every single day from when Jesus was born until today, you still wouldn’t have as much money as Elon Musk. He’s not interested in the $23.48 in your checking account. Sit down and STFU!"
A twist on the classic left wing claim
Meme - Joey Mannarino: ""Elon Musk has your Social Security Number" And so what if he does? He's worth $400 billion dollars. Do they think he's going to use it to take a loan out or something? How STUPID are these people?"
DeathMetalViking: "My favorite conservative logic is that people with lots of money couldn't possibly want more money."
Jay Hubbard: "I guess that's why Musk turned down a DOGE salary. But you're right, he'd rather steal grandma's $1700 social security checks or take out fraudulent loans via stolen identities, all without banks noticing or anyone reporting their missing money. Remember when you guys used to make fun of conspiracy theorists?"
Threads - "if you oppose "DEl," you should have to use the full phrase instead of the letters. Be brave and say, "I oppose diversity, equity, and inclusion." … Making it an acronym transforms it into a thought-terminating cliche. From now on, be proud of your opinions, but be specific. Let everyone know if it's diversity you don't like, or if it's equity, or if it's being inclusive"
If you oppose “DOGE” you oppose government efficiency
MM on X - "Just a reminder to the maga crowd cheering on these mass firings... These are scientists. Park rangers. Disabled Veterans. Humanitarians. Civil servants. They are human. They have bills to pay. Families who depend on them. Children. Many of them took pride in their work. Some were just getting started in their careers. Losing a job and financial hardship is not funny. It impacts every member of the family. It impacts self worth. It impacts the economy. Finding satisfaction in the indiscriminate firing of tens of thousands of Americans at the hands of a punch drunk billionaire is not only cruel, it's unAmerican. This is not patriotism."
hoe_math on X - "This very normal-minded woman is arguing against firing totally useless employees because of their needs. Pay careful attention: She is saying "it is wrong to fire 100% useless people because THEY HAVE NEEDS." This is how the mind of a woman is built to care for babies. Babies have needs, and you can't expect them to provide anything. The mother says: "the baby! The baby! The baby NEEEEEEEEDS!" And then men provide for the baby. This woman - who I'm gonna guess doesn't have her own kids - is not demonstrating empathy for adults, as she wants you to believe. She is demonstrating empathy for BABIES, but DIRECTED at adults. This is basically a phantom pregnancy. This is how putting women in charge of things destroys nations. When men are in charge, they say "what are YOU gonna do for ME? What value do YOU bring to the company? The army? The nation?" Men have to think this way because if you give out more than you take in, you die. Most women have no awareness of this at all. I call this "Santa-ism," because of how it resembles a child expecting magical free presents from Santa. "Cost? What's a cost?" This is one reason why women fight so hard to take in infinity invaders and pay for them using your money. There's no such thing as a "cost" in the average female mind. The invaders are just babies who neeeeeeeeeed! Give them their needies, you NAZI! Leftism is a mental illness caused by women not getting pregnant early enough in life, having a phantom pregnancy directed at useless, needy people (because that's how her mind recognizes babies), and then becoming violently angry when men don't want to feed her "babies." And then weak, selfish men become leftist as a way of making those insane women feel validated, which causes comfort, and then they just hang around like buzzards until one of those women has a moment of desperation and selects a sub-par male. Remember, politics is just psychology + economics, and psychology is just applied biology. Feminism and leftism is just baby-crazies turning women's minds inside-out from lack of reproductive success, and weak male scavenger sexual strategy."
William Forbes | Facebook - "This theory by hoe_math will not be received well by many women. To all the women reading this - I'm sorry if his explanation is upsetting. I love you all. But, trying to set aside his abrasive style, and knowing, maybe this doesn't apply to you personally, if you evaluate it rationally, is there potentially some merit to it? We do know that becoming a mother tends to shift a woman's politics more to the right. Becoming a mother to a boy tends to reduce feminism as well, incidentally. So the later and later, or never transition to motherhood that is becoming more and more common must be having some effect on the overall outlook of our polity. If you're smart enough not to be a blank slatist, you know there are innate human instincts - that, again, are not necessarily universally the same for every individual - but on the whole, women do have maternal instincts. And is it not possible that in the absence of a child, a woman's maternal instincts might be redirected in this manner? We redirect instincts all the time. Sports redirect men's draw towards combat and competition and channel it into something harmless and entertaining. It seems that video-games reduce violence through similar mechanisms. So it's not unprecedented for a natural tendency to find novel, alternative outlets. But these need not be beneficial - it is possible for our instincts to become warped in their redirection and become harmful. Our instincts to shove sugary and fatty foods down our gullets - which would have been rare treats to exploit immediately in a state of nature - cause us to overfeed on now abundant empty calories. So, could this be true? If not, how to you know?"
Nat Friedman on X - "TIL: in the 1990s Clinton offered federal workers a $25,000 buyout, and ~150,000 took the deal. He cut federal government spending from 22% to 18% of the economy, the lowest level since 1966."
Meme - Tish Harrison Warren @Tish_H_Warren: "Trump is shutting down Christian ministries. Ministries I've supported may have to close their doors. I've never seen anything like this."
Eric Teetsel @EricTeetsel: "An entity that cannot survive absent federal funding isn't a "ministry" at all. It's a federal agency."
Colin J. Smothers: "I've never seen anything like this."
"Obama's War on the Little Sisters of the Poor"
Meme - "Let me get this straight. You are mad at the guy who found all the fraud and theft but not at the people who wasted and stole that money? IDIOTS."
Meme - Fat guy with knives: "Leave the corrupt agencies wasting my tax money alone"
Meme - "The new leftist virtue signal
"LEAVE THE PEOPLE STEALING OUR MONEY ALONE!!!" *blonde white woman with thick glasses and septum ring*
Gentry Gevers on X - "When you're finding fraud and somebody yells “STOP!”… That's who's doing the fraud."
Meme - "IF DEAD PEOPLE ARE RECEIVING SOCIAL SECURITY CHECKS, LET'S SEE THE NAMES. OH, THEY DON'T HAVE THAT INFO?.. YEAH, CAUSE THEY'RE FULL OF SHIT."
Of course, if someone illegally released the names, these same people would pounce and bitch about confidential information being released. There's no winning
Iowa woman sentenced for cashing dead mother’s Social Security checks for nearly 30 years - "An Iowa woman has been sentenced to a year in prison for illegally cashing more than $300,000 in Social Security checks intended for her mother, a Brattleboro resident who died in 1994. Ella Mae Woods, 76, had pleaded guilty in May to a single wire fraud charge in connection with the scheme that spanned nearly three decades, according to court filings."
Weird. Left wingers keep telling us this never happens and Elon Musk is lying, because cheques don't go to the bank accounts of dead people and funeral directors must tell the government someone has died
Klamath Falls man admits to $458,000 Social Security fraud - "A man who owned a Klamath Falls mailbox business for decades has admitted to Social Security fraud that lasted nearly 43 years. George William Doumar, 76, pleaded guilty Monday in U.S. District Court in Medford to a charge of theft of government funds, admitting he stole $458,992 from the Social Security Administration in the name of a New York aunt who died in 1971, according to a news release issued by the U.S. Attorney's office, plus a $1,200 stimulus check from the Internal Revenue Service."
St. Louis County Man Admits Cashing His Dead Mother’s Social Security Checks for 26 Years - "A man from St. Louis County, Missouri on Thursday admitted cashing his mother’s Social Security checks for 26 years after her death. Reginald Bagley, 62, of Dellwood, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of stealing money belonging to the United States."
Meme - "Meet May. She just turned 329 years old. She watched her husband throw tea off ships in Boston Harbor, lost her son in the Civil War, and survived the Titanic after nearly drowning. She's been through a lot. Elon Musk just stopped her Social Security checks. How could Elon do this?!"
Meme - *Dead Baby Voldemort*
Harry Potter: "What happened to him?"
Dumbledore: "He had to make a list of five things he did last week."
Journalist called to testify on ‘CIA-funded Trump impeachment’ - "Investigative American journalist Michael Shellenberger was called to testify before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Thursday regarding allegations that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the CIA funded the 2019 impeachment effort against President Donald Trump. Shellenberger first addressed the issue on Feb. 6 on the social media platform X, explaining how the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) played a central role in leading the impeachment effort. “USAID’s defenders say it’s about charity and development in poor nations. It’s not. It’s a $40 billion driver of regime change abroad. And now the evidence suggests that it, along with the CIA, were behind the 2019 impeachment of Trump—an illegal regime change effort at home,” Shellenberger wrote. He elaborated on how OCCRP worked as an "arm" of USAID, publishing a report centered around two Soviet-born Florida businessmen who allegedly acted as key figures behind Trump's investigation into the Biden family. According to Shellenberger, these two businessmen connected Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, to two former Ukrainian prosecutors. “The OCCRP story was crucial to the House Democrats’ impeachment claim, which is that Trump dispatched Giuliani as part of a coordinated effort to pressure a foreign country to interfere in the 2020 presidential election, which is why the whistleblower cited it four times,” he stated. In his evaluation of the OCCRP report, Shellenberger criticized the organization for acting beyond the scope of traditional investigative journalism. “OCCRP does not operate like a normal investigative journalism organization in that its goals appear to include interfering in foreign political matters, including elections, aimed at regime change. Sullivan told NDR that his organization had ‘probably been responsible for five or six countries changing over from one government to another government... and getting prime ministers indicted or thrown out.’” Shellenberger stated, "As such, it appears that (the) CIA, USAID, and OCCRP were all involved in the impeachment of President Trump in ways similar to the regime change operations that all three organizations engage in abroad. The difference is that it is highly illegal and even treasonous for the CIA, USAID, and its contractors and intermediaries, known as ‘cut-outs,’ to interfere in U.S. politics this way.” Shellenberger was invited by the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs to testify on "Eliminating Waste by the Foreign Aid Bureaucracy." In his testimony, Shellenberger reiterated examples of USAID's controversial actions, including its involvement in previous operations outside its intended mission. “For example, under President Barack Obama’s administration, USAID was caught using an HIV program to foment rebellion in Cuba. USAID used EcoHealth Alliance as a passthrough organization to funnel $1.1 million to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was conducting risky gain-of-function experiments that may have caused the COVID-19 pandemic,” he added. Citing the founding rationale of USAID by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 “to promote America’s values,” Shellenberger questioned, “Why has USAID been spending so much money on information control and information operations, both in the form of demanding censorship by social media platforms and financing supposedly ‘independent’ journalism? Why is the U.S. government in general and USAID in particular the largest donor to supposedly ‘independent media’ worldwide?”"
Wife of Federal Judge Who Threw a Wrench in Trump's Agenda Has a Curious Connection to USAID: Report - "The wife of a federal judge who blocked President Donald Trump’s decision to shutter government websites that promoted gender ideology founded an organization that received funds from the United States Agency for International Development, an agency that the administration is currently targeting. U.S. District Judge John Bates issued a decision on Tuesday ordering federal health agencies to restore pages about transgenderism they had pulled after a Trump executive order about “gender ideology extremism.”... Bates’ wife, Carol Rhees, started a nonprofit called Hope for Children in Ethiopia. The organization has received funds from USAID, one of the agencies facing scrutiny under the government efficiency effort. Hope for Children “received hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grants” between 2013 and 2021, according to archived web pages analyzed by Shore News Network. One page showed Rhees as the “Founder and President” of Hope for Children."
