That's weird. The freakout was mostly about an unappointed, unelected person doing things that only congress is able to do... and that unappointed and unelected person just so happens to be the single highest campaign contributor for the new President.
Weird that MAGA jumps to "it's not a big deal" when they can't or don't want to acknowledge the real issue.
There is no level of sucking we haven't seen; in fact, I'm pretty sure we hold the patents on a few levels of sucking NOBODY had seen until the past few years.
Did you notice they didn't mention a word about how it will starve children and cut off their life saving medications? Something it appears trumpians support wholeheartedly.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
As republicans are working to increase the debt ceiling.................
House Republicans unveil blueprint to extend $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and lift the debt ceiling
Sounds good to me as long as I can do that with my own finances
I think the equivalent is you just taking out more credit cards when you want to borrow more (?). So yes, you can.
There is no level of sucking we haven't seen; in fact, I'm pretty sure we hold the patents on a few levels of sucking NOBODY had seen until the past few years.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
Broken homes is ok as long as you're rich and right wing.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
Early returns on his 280 million dollar investment that Musk bought him power in our government..................
Musk slammed as State Department reveals plan to buy $400m in ‘armored’ Teslas in biggest contract of 2025
Elon Musk was blasted Wednesday following revelations that the Trump administration plans to spend $400 million on "armored” Teslas in what’s reportedly the State Department’s biggest contract of 2025.
The five-year contract, which did not specify the Tesla model to be “armored,” was listed in the government’s procurement forecast for 2025 and was first reported by Drop Site News.
The contract was revealed even as the tech billionaire and Donald Trump “best buddy” is deeply embedded in the same federal government granting the contract as Musk peruses Treasury Department pay systems and can presumably examine information about rival contractors in what would appear to be a glaring conflict of interest.
The contract is due to be finalized in the fourth quarter and is currently in the “planning” phase, according to the document.
After reports of the news Wednesday the online forecast about the contract was edited to remove the word “Tesla” and simply referred to $400 million worth of "armored electric vehicles.”
The news comes as the world’s richest man’s rocket company, SpaceX, is still receiving multi-million dollar contract payouts from the U.S. government as he continues to gut federal funding elsewhere through his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Critics called Musk out after learning of the Tesla contract with Marco Rubio’s department.
“This is what they call ‘efficiency?’” former White House ethics adviser and law professor Richard Painter asked sarcastically in a post on X.
“Musk's plan: Shut down parts of the govt investigating him. Claim that he's stopping government spending … Give himself all the money,” Tristan Snell, an attorney who prosecuted Trump University, angrily commented.
“Musk convinced MAGA he's fighting to save their precious taxpayer dollars. Meanwhile, he's teed up to win a $400 million contract making armored Tesla cars for the State Department. No talk of cutting that one, oddly enough!” wrote Jared Holt, a researcher at London’s Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
A New York Times analyses noted Wednesday that Trump and Musk are hunting for corruption “very selectively” while the president “is rolling back anticorruption efforts and ethical standards for himself and allies like Elon Musk.”
The Independent has contacted the State Department and Tesla for comment.
Musk was questioned by reporters about conflicts of interest during a bizarre press conference Tuesday evening in the Oval Office with his four-year-old son and Trump.
When it comes to conflicts of interest, Musk insisted: “You have to look at the individual contract,” with little added explanation.
“I'm not the one, you know, filing the contract,” Musk said, attempting to distance himself from his business with the federal government. “It's people at SpaceX or someone who will be putting the contract,” he added, referring to his other contract with the government.
As Musk is making cuts through DOGE across government, SpaceX has been awarded a $39 million defense contract.
“You'll never believe who is still getting new government contracts while all the contracts at the Department of Education and USAID and other agencies are being nuked from orbit” by Musk, attorney and researcher Will Stancil wrote on X.
Stancil shared a screenshot that appeared to confirm that Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) was awarded a NASA contract worth just shy of $39 million on Tuesday.
why is Elon meeting with the prime minister of India?
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
NOT one forensic Accountant or Auditor on the staff. This has nothing to do with Dollars.. This is about taking control. Go read Project 2025 and there you have it.
If some Republicans in the house and senate don't wake up, America as we know it will cease to exist.
#GMSTRONG
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynahan
"Alternative facts hurt us all. Think before you blindly believe." Damanshot
I wish you people would get off this unelected BS. The President can appoint anybody he was to advise and help carry out his mission. Every President has had that.
Musk is there to root out waste and abuse. He is there to find it, then the President or department secretary actually shut things down. To me, the only people complaining are people who don't pay taxes or people getting some sort of payment.
If you had access to several peoples credit cards, you would go out and have a much larger time than if you were using your own. I see this as we are starting to look in to things and starting to cancel some of those credit cards.
You should be happy.
If everybody had like minds, we would never learn.
Sure.And Trump has a bible to sell you, a university course to send you on and a bridge in Brooklyn you can take a time share out on. Keep drinking the Kool-Aid comrade.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
What you keep advocating is the best way to prune a tree is to take an axe and cut it down.
Firing the people that keep our nuclear arms safe and protected is not rooting out waste and abuse. Shutting down programs like USAID which congress has approved funds for had wasteful programs in it, but it also served and did much good. Your approach is to give your approval of shutting the entire thing down rather than go through it and cut out the waste. Firing inspector generals only serves to block oversight and accountability and does nothing to address waste.
What DOGE is doing is overriding funds congress has approved. DOGE is not a fourth branch of government that has been given the power to override the decisions of congress but you seem to think that trump has the power to make that so.
You give them a free pass to do anything they want no matter how harmful or disgusting it is. You didn't used to be that person. What the hell happened to you?
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
I wish you people would get off this unelected BS. The President can appoint anybody he was to advise and help carry out his mission. Every President has had that.
Musk is there to root out waste and abuse. He is there to find it, then the President or department secretary actually shut things down. To me, the only people complaining are people who don't pay taxes or people getting some sort of payment.
If you had access to several peoples credit cards, you would go out and have a much larger time than if you were using your own. I see this as we are starting to look in to things and starting to cancel some of those credit cards.
You should be happy.
And I wish you people would get a clue. Musk is the single biggest threat to national security today, followed by Trump, his cabinet and his genetic spawn. It’s sheeple that let a NAZI simp run roughshod all over our nations finances, secrets, and future. Bah bah blatant fascism.
I wish you people would get off this unelected BS. The President can appoint anybody he was to advise and help carry out his mission. Every President has had that.
Musk is there to root out waste and abuse. He is there to find it, then the President or department secretary actually shut things down. To me, the only people complaining are people who don't pay taxes or people getting some sort of payment.
If you had access to several peoples credit cards, you would go out and have a much larger time than if you were using your own. I see this as we are starting to look in to things and starting to cancel some of those credit cards.
You should be happy.
If it were actually that, you wouldn't be hearing a peep from me. Unfortunately, it's not.
If my credit cards were stolen, I'd notify Visa/bank (actually nowadays they notify me first). They would figure out which transactions were fraudulent and refund, shut down my card and ship me a new one. The urgent tasks would be done within the hour and I'd have my new card within 3 business days (usually sooner).
You know what doesn't happen? Visa suspects fraud and systematically cancels everyone's cards with an (at best) cursory glance. That doesn't happen simply because that's not how things are done... even though CC fraud is rampant.
And before you say that's not what's happening, a significant portion of our federal workforce that oversees our nuclear weapons were given termination notices. Now they're trying to get them to come back because... "woops".
There is no level of sucking we haven't seen; in fact, I'm pretty sure we hold the patents on a few levels of sucking NOBODY had seen until the past few years.
It's only BS if you choose to ignore that that's simply not how our democracy runs. It's only BS when you choose to believe that some people don't have to follow the law.
There is no level of sucking we haven't seen; in fact, I'm pretty sure we hold the patents on a few levels of sucking NOBODY had seen until the past few years.
I wish you people would get off this unelected BS. The President can appoint anybody he was to advise and help carry out his mission. Every President has had that.
Musk is there to root out waste and abuse. He is there to find it, then the President or department secretary actually shut things down. To me, the only people complaining are people who don't pay taxes or people getting some sort of payment.
If you had access to several peoples credit cards, you would go out and have a much larger time than if you were using your own. I see this as we are starting to look in to things and starting to cancel some of those credit cards.
You should be happy.
That is total horse crap. Why do to we need appointed officials then? The treasury has appointed officials, as do the IRS, USAID, and every other department. If Elon wants to dive in to what they are doing that is fine, but giving him control is total bs and may be illegal.
Waste and abuse is a matter of opinion, Elon is playing judge and jury on Twitter, and probably does not know his backside from a hole in the ground other than looking at the name of the line item before making a determination that can affect hundreds if not thousands of people.
I cringe because this is real to me. I have projects that have federal funding. There was a big scare when the funding was placed on hold. Come to find out the hold was tied to DEI initiatives. There is a lot of money committed to the Build Back Better program, and it would not surprise anyone if that became became an object of review, simply because it was passed with Biden as president. The challenge, is that there are projects under construction and stopping that has significant costs.
"Jameis Winston: guaranteed to throw 6 TD's/game. Tune in next week to see which team benefits-"
There is no level of sucking we haven't seen; in fact, I'm pretty sure we hold the patents on a few levels of sucking NOBODY had seen until the past few years.
No, it’s the tech bro crap… Move fast and break ish. That’s okey dokey for code, not so much for human lives. This is why the government CAN NOT be run like a business. The bureaucracy and rules are our fire wall against this insanity, regardless of political sides. Well, MAGA won. FAFO.
It's only BS if you choose to ignore that that's simply not how our democracy runs. It's only BS when you choose to believe that some people don't have to follow the law.
What are you talking about Oober? All sorts of policy is set by unelected officials. EPA, monetary policy. Who elected Fauci? The FBI director isn't elected.
As for the law, we will see where that goes.
And just to make things clear, this country has never been a democracy. Many laws and policies have been set that went contrary to the publics popular opinion, and thank God for that.
If everybody had like minds, we would never learn.
Both Fauci and the FBI director are appointed by the president and approved by Congress.
Is there some sort of endgame to looking like you have no grasp of any major points of the conversation?
There is no level of sucking we haven't seen; in fact, I'm pretty sure we hold the patents on a few levels of sucking NOBODY had seen until the past few years.
Yeah he keeps wishing to overlook that the very people he mentions are approved by congress before they can be appointed to their positions and then makes a feeble attempt to make it sound like the same thing. He's probably just repeating some talking point he heard on FOX News or OAN.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Mass producing EV's in China as he collects all of your personal information data via the IRS and Social Security Administration. While trumpians all applaud! Murica! Freedumb!
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Since Musk keeps promising full disclosure, here's a little disclosure for you.............
Elon Musk staffers now has many of his staffers entrenched within our governent. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has several Musk staffers, including Amanda Scales, Brian Bjelde, Stephen Duarte, Christina Hanna, and Bryanne-Michelle Mlodzianowski.
At the General Services Administration (GSA), Stephen Ehikian, Thomas Shedd, and Nate Cavanaugh have taken key roles.
The Treasury Department now includes Tom Krause and Marko Elez. Other federal advisers include Justin Fulcher and Scott Langmack.
The U.S. DOGE Service is led by Steve Davis, Brad Smith, and Katie Miller, while DOGE engineers include Alexandra “Aly” Beynon, Riccardo Biasini, Akash Bobba, Edward Coristine, Luke Farritor, Gautier “Cole” Killian, Gavin Kliger, Nikhil Rajpal, Ethan Shaotran, Christopher Stanley, and Jordan Wick. Lawyers James Burnham, Keenan Kmiec, and Noah Peters have been identified, as well as other DOGE-affiliated staff like Anthony Armstrong, Jennifer Balajadia, Stephanie Holmes, and Adam Ramada.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
Musk gives us great headlines- exactly what the MAGA group wants to read----IE Musk announces thousands of 150 yr olds are receiving Social Securty checks.....OK, thanks for finding the corruption--- NOW, produce the goods, find out which law abiding American cashed the check/s and put them in JAIL. Saying you found corruption doesn't do anything but bring light.....catch the bugs and put them in jail.....but do they REALLY exist. Headlines vs. real work.
"You've never lived till you've almost died, life has a flavor the protected will never know" A vet or cop
Both Fauci and the FBI director are appointed by the president and approved by Congress.
Is there some sort of endgame to looking like you have no grasp of any major points of the conversation?
Right, but the hubbub I have seen is he wasn't elected
Doge isn't an official department. Musk doesn't need Senate vetting since he is an advisor to the President. He has been missioned by the President ferret out waste and fraud.
By the way, he is going a good job. We have finally closed down USAID. US Agency for International Development. People just see the AID part and think it is only about sending grain and medicine. LOL...it does far more than that. If you send a little time looking in to some of the things it has been involved with, your head will spin....but it will come out soon enough. Until then, keep your eyes glued to the usual, paid off media outlets who report the usual news.
If everybody had like minds, we would never learn.
Musk doesn't need Senate vetting since he is an advisor to the President. He has been missioned by the President ferret out waste and fraud.
Do you know how many times trump said the Musk and Ramaswamy were in charges of DOGE until this latest BS lie that Musk is an advisor? Continuously. Advisors aren't in charge of enforcing policy. Then Ramaswamy left DOGE to run for Ohio governor. So who did that leave in charge?
Quote
By the way, he is going a good job. We have finally closed down USAID. US Agency for International Development. People just see the AID part and think it is only about sending grain and medicine. LOL...it does far more than that.
Yet they cut off that food and aid too. And that's your problem. That's what you now endorse.
They told you they were going to prune the tree. Cut out the waste and make it healthier. Instead they brought a chainsaw and cut the tree down. If someone did that at your house you wouldn't call that "doing a good job".
Then, by not knowing what the hell they're doing, they fired the very people in charge of keeping our nuclear weapon stockpile secure and had to scramble to get them back to work. "Good job"? Not on this planet it's not.
Quote
If you send a little time looking in to some of the things it has been involved with, your head will spin....but it will come out soon enough. Until then, keep your eyes glued to the usual, paid off media outlets who report the usual news.
So your theory is places like FOX News and OAN are the beacons of truth and the media you don't like is "paid off"? That 787 million dollar lawsuit FOX News had to pay should have been your first clue.
It was stated by Musk that he would have a list of full disclosure by Valentines day at the latest. We still haven't seen it. Instead they have called every program they are against fraud while showing zero evidence of fraud.
It seems as if you have severely lowered your standards in regards to what the word good means.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
USDA accidentally fired officials working on bird flu and is now trying to rehire them
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Tuesday that, over the weekend, it accidentally fired "several" agency employees who are working on the federal government's response to the H5N1 avian flu outbreak.
The agency said it is now trying to quickly reverse the firings.
"Although several positions supporting [bird flu efforts] were notified of their terminations over the weekend, we are working to swiftly rectify the situation and rescind those letters," a USDA spokesperson said in a statement. "USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service frontline positions are considered public safety positions, and we are continuing to hire the workforce necessary to ensure the safety and adequate supply of food to fulfill our statutory mission."
We’re looking to hear from federal government workers who have been laid off. If you’re willing to talk with us, please email us at tips@nbcuni.com or contact us through one of these methods.
The spokesperson noted that several agency positions were already exempted from the sweeping cuts President Donald Trump's administration is making across the federal government, adding that the Agriculture Department "continues to prioritize the response to highly pathogenic avian influenza."
The error is the latest in the Trump administration's attempts to rapidly shrink the size of the government by conducting mass firings of federal workers — an effort that is being carried out by tech billionaire Elon Musk and the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, which is heavily staffed by people who have no experience in government.
On Friday, the administration tried to notify some nuclear safety employees who were fired last week that they are now due to be reinstated — but struggled to find them because they didn’t have their new contact information.
The latest episode comes as the virus has decimated poultry flocks and has sent egg prices soaring. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed 68 cases among humans in the U.S. so far. On her first day in office, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins convened a panel on bird flu and "reviewed options for a comprehensive strategy to combat it," the department said in a release.
Several agencies within the Agriculture Department play a role in responding to the outbreak, including the Agricultural Research Service and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. On Sunday, Politico reported that some of the Trump administration's layoffs hit the National Animal Health Laboratory Network, which is involved in avian flu research.
The layoffs concerned a number of Republican lawmakers, who privately warned the Trump administration that such cuts could hamper the government’s bird flu response and asked them to reconsider, according to two Republican sources with direct knowledge of the situation.
Lawmakers had received little guidance from the administration about the recent program cuts and staff terminations at USDA, which sources said has frustrated Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee. The panel, which oversees the USDA, provided a briefing to its members over the weekend to try to provide some more clarity to lawmakers.
“They need to be more cautious,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., a member of the Agriculture Committee, told NBC News of the DOGE team. “There’s an old saying, ‘Measure twice, cut once.’ Well, they are measuring once and having to cut twice. Some of this stuff they’re going to have to return back. I just wish they’d make a better decision up front.”
The layoffs also concerned researchers working on bird flu. Keith Poulsen, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, said that the firing of three employees at the USDA’s National Animal Health Laboratory Network program would hurt efforts to combat the spread of the virus.
“It’s creating a lot of problems,” he said.
Egg prices, which were already high, have continued to soar as the bird flu has spread. Several committee members, who were back in their districts this week, told NBC News they are hearing an earful from constituents over the sky-high price of eggs.
Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee have raised their concerns to the chairman, Rep. Glenn "GT" Thompson, R-Pa., and his staff, who have been working to relay those concerns to the USDA and obtain more information about the moves, sources said.
In a statement to NBC News, Thompson expressed broad support for the DOGE mission.
“With Secretary Rollins now confirmed, we anticipate further clarity on the status of this review across USDA mission areas,” Thompson said in a statement.
Some Republicans have also complained about cuts to a program that works with poultry farmers to reduce the number of birds around airports in an effort to enhance aviation safety. And more broadly, there is uncertainty over how widespread funding cuts across the government, as well as new restrictions on funding for National Institutes of Health grants, may affect infectious disease researchers and local health officials working to respond to the bird flu
Latest data from USDA shows 151 confirmed flocks have been hit, affecting 23 million birds.
In recent days, the Trump administration has fired probationary employees across the government — a move that could affect hundreds of thousands of people, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management. An agency spokesperson said the administration would not be able to provide full details on how many individuals were fired until Tuesday evening.
Probationary status typically applies to someone who has been with the federal government for less than two years — before full civil service protections kick in. But it can also apply to longtime civil service workers who move to a different agency or take a promotion.
The Trump administration has cited "performance" issues in letters to fired employees explaining why they were let go — though some of those same employees have received strong performance reviews from their superiors.
Both Fauci and the FBI director are appointed by the president and approved by Congress.
Is there some sort of endgame to looking like you have no grasp of any major points of the conversation?
Right, but the hubbub I have seen is he wasn't elected
Doge isn't an official department. Musk doesn't need Senate vetting since he is an advisor to the President. He has been missioned by the President ferret out waste and fraud.
By the way, he is going a good job. We have finally closed down USAID. US Agency for International Development. People just see the AID part and think it is only about sending grain and medicine. LOL...it does far more than that. If you send a little time looking in to some of the things it has been involved with, your head will spin....but it will come out soon enough. Until then, keep your eyes glued to the usual, paid off media outlets who report the usual news.
Blue ostriches on crack float on milkshakes between the sidewalk titans of gurglefitz. --YTown
Right, but the hubbub I have seen is he wasn't elected
Doge isn't an official department. Musk doesn't need Senate vetting since he is an advisor to the President. He has been missioned by the President ferret out waste and fraud.
Look, dude... I'm going to explain this one more time, and if you don't get it then it's on you.
He's not elected, nor is he appointed/confirmed. He's a rando (that just so happens to be the largest single campaign contributors AND one that benefits bigly from govt contracts). So this rando advisor has gained access to citizen tax records (which he's already weaponized when doxxed the daughter of a judge he disagreed with). DOGE's website has also already been hacked due to lax security, exposing sensitive intel and previously mentioned citizen tax records. He also previously gained access to the govt's system used to pay contractors.
Case in point, a rando "advisor" is doing a whole bunch beyond just giving advice and affecting congressionally approved budgets/money. It's not that hard to understand how all of this is an ongoing attack on institutionalized checks and balances, which is a pillar of our democracy (speaking of which, go check out his recent EO on him and his AG being the final arbiter of what is and isn't against the law).
Him and Musk aren't just ferreting out waste. They're actively eroding the basic foundation of how this country was originally intended to function.
There is no level of sucking we haven't seen; in fact, I'm pretty sure we hold the patents on a few levels of sucking NOBODY had seen until the past few years.
According top some of them they simply don't care about any of that because in their world democracy takes a back seat as what they see as the ends justifying the means. You know, Niccolò Machiavelli...
Amorality: Machiavelli is often criticized for advocating a pragmatic, sometimes ruthless approach to politics that seems to dismiss ethical considerations. Critics argue that his advice encourages deceit, manipulation, and a lack of moral integrity in leaders.
Intoducing for The Cleveland Browns, Quarterback Deshawn "The Predator" Watson. He will also be the one to choose your next head coach.
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