The Trump administration specializes in inflating everything

 GAO finds Elon Musk’s DOGE inflated claims of $110 billion in savings for federal government

Trump signs DHS funding for ICE and CBP rammed through under reconciliation

 

 Trump signs $70 billion immigration funding bill after months of delay

... Democrats had refused to fund the two Department of Homeland Security subagencies since January, when an immigration surge in Minneapolis led to the deaths of two U.S. citizens at the hands of federal agents. ... The Senate advanced the immigration funding package on Friday on a 52-47 vote, with no Democrats voting in favor. The House followed on Tuesday, approving the package 214-212, also with no Democratic support. ... 

A lasting legacy of Donald Trump may be The Wall after all

 But Mexico is still not paying for it.

Trump Builds the Wall

Byron York, Washington Examiner

 

... Construction that was slow during Trump’s first term, and abandoned during Joe Biden’s time in office, is now accelerating in Trump’s second term. The key was the passage of last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included $46.5 billion for the construction of what is now called a “smart wall” — that is, a wall that includes not only the basic structure but detection technology, cameras, lighting, and roads. 

 

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 221 miles of what is called primary smart wall are currently under construction. Contracts have been awarded, and design is underway for an additional 370 miles. Another 44 miles of replacement wall are under construction, plus 183 miles of secondary wall to provide backup security in high-traffic areas where there is already a primary wall.

 

Things are moving quickly. “Construction crews are erecting five miles of wall a week, according to Customs and Border Protection officials,” reports the Washington Post.” The crews are “introducing barriers in parts of Texas that did not previously have them and installing a second wall across much of California, Arizona, and New Mexico to further deter illegal immigration.” ...

 

The U.S. federal government has spent north of 100% of what it takes in for most of the time since 1901, that's why we're $39 trillion in the hole, but 2009 and 2020 when Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House still stand out

 

The MAGA Marxist wants more stimulus checks

 

Real GDP in 1Q2026 second estimate revised lower from 2.0% annualized to 1.6% annualized "primarily reflecting downward revisions to investment and consumer spending" lol

 I guess those trillion$ Trump said were coming into the country have not come in, and consumer spending is higher only because everything costs so damn much more due to inflation.

May 21: Consumers are still spending, but cracks are starting to show

Dec 5: Trump touts over $20 trillion in new U.S. investments, but the numbers don't add up

 

A191RL1Q225SBEA: 1Q1984-1Q2026 Trend

 

Republican Congress critters got the hell out of town Thursday and won't be back until June and left all this unfinished business in their wake lol

 Republicans lash out over $1.776B ‘anti-weaponization’ fund 

McConnell slams Blanche over ‘slush fund to pay people who assault cops’  

Republicans punt on reconciliation amid furious disagreement over ‘anti-weaponization’ fund  

House Republicans fume at Senate for punting immigration funding package  

House punts Iran war powers resolution vote   

Trump approval among Republicans at new low in Fox News poll   

Trump, facing GOP blowback, sends 5,000 troops to Poland  

(Trump orders withdrawal of 5,000 troops from Germany amid feud with Merz) 

Elections have consequences as Mad King Ludwig eats his own narrow majority in the U.S. Senate and further alienates it

 

 Trump's self-destructive alcoholic personality will only make him more legislatively unsuccessful this year than he has been already.

 

 Cassidy becomes fourth GOP senator to back Iran war powers measure limiting Trump 

Sen. Bill Cassidy, who lost his bid for a third term in Saturday’s Louisiana Senate Republican primary, on Tuesday became the fourth Republican senator to vote to advance a war powers resolution directing President Trump to withdraw U.S. armed forces deployed against Iran.

Cassidy joined Republican Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.), Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) in voting Tuesday for a motion to discharge the war powers resolution sponsored by Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine (Va.) out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The motion passed by a vote of 50 to 47, setting up a future vote to proceed to the motion on the Senate floor.

The resolution is privileged under the 1973 War Powers Act, allowing it to pass the Senate with a simple-majority vote instead of having to clear the 60-vote threshold required for most legislation.

Cassidy kept his plan to vote to advance the resolution secret until the last moment. He declined to reveal how he would vote on the measure when asked about it Monday.

Murkowski broke ranks with Senate Republican leaders last week to vote to advance the war powers resolution. ...

 Trump’s ouster of Republican senator sends shock waves through Senate GOP 

The resounding defeat of Sen. Bill Cassidy (R) in Saturday’s Louisiana primary has sent shock waves through the Senate Republican Conference, underscoring how Republicans who look to distance themselves from President Trump and his low approval ratings will have to think twice about paying a political price for perceived disloyalty.

Cassidy’s ouster came a few weeks after Trump and his allies helped defeat five state senators in Indiana who defied Trump’s desire to redraw the state’s congressional map, sending a loud message to any Republican on Capitol Hill thinking about clashing with the president. ...

[Republican Senator Thom] Tillis, an outspoken critic of some of the Trump administration’s actions this year, reacted angrily to Cassidy’s loss, sending an email to Republican colleagues on Monday threatening to block a budget reconciliation package from moving on the Senate floor later this week — even though it’s a top Trump priority.

Tillis expressed his disappointment over Cassidy’s loss on Saturday and urged Republican colleagues to delay action on the reconciliation bill so as not to force Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), another Republican colleague facing a tough primary on May 26, to stay in Washington until late this week to vote on the budget bill, according to a source familiar with the email’s details. ...

Senate GOP expresses frustration, anger, sadness as Trump snubs Cornyn in Texas 

President Trump’s decision Tuesday to snub Sen. John Cornyn and endorse state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate Republican primary was met with frustration, anger and even sadness by Senate Republicans.

The move likely sinks Cornyn’s hopes of winning another Senate term, and Republicans warned it could make it tougher to defeat Democratic candidate James Talarico in November.

Republican senators exuded pain for Cornyn, who served as Senate Republican whip during Trump’s first term and is deeply respected by his Senate GOP colleagues. ...

Some Republican senators saw Trump’s treatment of Cornyn as a snub of Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), who had worked behind the scenes for months to persuade the president to back him.

The NRSC invested in Cornyn through a joint fundraising committee, and One Nation, a fundraising group affiliated with Thune’s political operation, has spent more than $10 million helping Cornyn. ...

Trump’s endorsement of Paxton and his attacks against Cassidy won’t make it any easier for him to muster GOP votes for his ballroom funding or for the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund to compensate MAGA allies who believe they were targeted by the government. ...

Senate Parliamentarian won't let Republicans spend $1 billion through phony reconciliation interpretation to rebuild East Wing destroyed by the MAGA drone in the Oval Office

 

 Trump ballroom money in question after Senate parliamentarian rules. Thune says GOP will persist

... Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough determined Saturday that the provision, which included $220 million for security upgrades tied to the East Wing ballroom project, fell outside the jurisdiction of the Senate Judiciary Committee. ... The White House and Senate Republicans have framed the $1 billion as Secret Service funding for security upgrades, not direct construction money for the ballroom. ... MacDonough has already ruled against several other pieces of the measure, forcing GOP leaders to revise multiple provisions as they try to keep the package on track. ...

Trump's dumbass, incompetent deportation policy of prolonged ICE detention until they cry uncle and leave voluntarily is the mouse that roared

At this rate Trump will have to be president for 138 years to deport 9.5 million illegal aliens. 

 

80k voluntary departures in fourteen months is a drop in the bucket when there are millions of illegals here, but spending tens of billions of dollars to do it sure isn't.

 

Immigrants are giving up their cases and leaving the U.S. in soaring numbers: People facing the prospect of prolonged ICE detention are increasingly abandoning their claims for humanitarian protection and agreeing to depart voluntarily

 

... Immigration judges issued more than 80,000 “voluntary departure” orders from January 2025 through March of this year, according to court data obtained by the Vera Institute of Justice and shared with The Washington Post. ...

Ronald Reagan's faith in the American people's better judgment about how to spend their own money was . . . misplaced

"Well, our loyalty lies with little taxpayers, not big taxspenders. What our critics really believe is that those in Washington know better how to spend your money than you, the people, do. But we're not going to let them do it, period."

-- Ronald Reagan, Nationally Televised News Conference, June 30, 1982

The secret of Ronald Reagan's success was that he stroked the vanity of the people. 

Nominal return from SPX since he made those remarks has been 12.48% per annum through April 2026.

Just socking away a one time investment of $2,000 in the S&P 500 that summer and forgetting about it would have yielded you almost $353,000 by now.

But today just 2.6% of Americans in general have at least $1 million in a retirement account, and HALF of retirees aged 65-74 have only $200,000 or less.

Meanwhile, our betters in Washington have put the country $39 trillion in debt, and 73% of us die in debt ourselves, with the average owed just under $62,000.

The government we deserve!

 

In 1982 Ronald Reagan was really upset about the federal government spending $2 billion a day, in 2025 we spent $20 billion a day

 "Our Government is spending money at a rate that is intolerable, if not incomprehensible. Almost $2 billion a day, $1,400,000 a minute... We must reverse the process."

-- Ronald Reagan, 1982 

Federal outlays in 2025 are estimated at $7.266 trillion, or $19.9 billion per day. 

Christopher Caldwell for The New York Times thinks the American Empire has met its match in the Persian Gulf when it already met it a year ago in the Red Sea

... the United States lacks the military means to impose its will on Iran in a long conflict. In 1991 a million soldiers from more than 40 countries were needed to reverse the invasion of Kuwait carried out by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a country less sophisticated than Iran and a fraction of its size. When Iran and Iraq fought each other to a standstill in the 1980s, deaths ran into the hundreds of thousands on each side. The United States would have to send a significant portion of its armed forces — which total only 1.3 million troops — to stand a chance of subduing Iran, and that force, if successful, would have to stay for a long time. ...

Here.

Caldwell is just as blind as Trump.

Neither one gets it that the lowly Houthis already beat us to a draw last year in the Red Sea.

Nothing is moving out of the Persian Gulf today, and tanker traffic through the Red Sea is less than half what it used to be in 2022, even under the new conditions of a world desperately thirsty for the Middle East oil no longer coming out of the former.

And neither one gets it that you can't have an American Empire without paying for it. 

We're $39 trillion in debt and can no longer impose our will in the world's vital choke-points because elites have pretended since Reagan that low marginal income tax rates are sufficient to maintain American Empire when what those rates have done is impoverish us and enrich our adversaries.

1,135 billionaires are the symbol of our lost empire. 

Caldwell steers well clear of naming the obvious remedy, and Trump's Big Ugly Bill will  do nothing but put America $62 trillion in debt by the end of 2032.

Taxes must be raised . . . a lot.

Hooverville here we come: U.S. House Farm Bill allows hot rotisserie chicken purchases with food stamps, but 23R and 12D were agin it

 

The Jerome Powell Fed Chair era draws to a close effective May 15, but Powell could remain a Fed governor until his term ends in January 2028

Fed holds rates steady but with highest level of dissent since 1992

... In what may have been Chair Jerome Powell’s final meeting at the helm, the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee voted to hold the benchmark funds rate in a range between 3.5%-3.75%. Markets had been pricing in a 100% chance of no change. ...

It wasn't much of a dissent when the vote to hold rates steady was 11-1. Three of the eleven simply disagreed that right now the Fed should say as it does in the official statement that it remains open to new information which might suggest additional rate cuts in the future, when in their opinion that sends the wrong signal when inflation remains as elevated as it is at present.

Jerome Powell says he will continue to serve as a Fed governor, calls Trump criticism ‘unprecedented’  

... “My decisions on these matters will continue to be guided entirely by what I believe is in the best interest of the institution and the people we serve after my term as chair ends on May 15, and will continue to serve as a governor for a period of time to be determined,” he added. ...

Stock investors fared very well under Powell. Bond investors, not so much 

...  the S&P 500 rallied 14.7% annually under Powell, the third best performance for Fed chairs going back to 1970, Bespoke Investment Group found. ...

“He believed in easy money. He voted for all the QEs. He voted for zero interest rates,” Boockvar said. “It’s only when inflation mugged him ... that he became more hawkish ... .”

But the problem with accommodative monetary policy is, “Easy money gets investors drunk on things, and puts beer goggles on them,” Boockvar said. ’Sometimes it ends up OK, but other times it ends up in rampant inflation.”

 ... The Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index that aims to track all U.S. investment-grade debt returned just under 2% annually during Powell’s tenure, far below the average of 6.5% since the 1970s, according to Bespoke. ... 

Analysis: The Warsh revolution is coming. Powell won’t stand in the way. 

... the only major challenge for Warsh, as far as Powell is concerned, will be driving consensus within the Fed for where to set interest rates. Wednesday’s dissents suggest that won’t be easy. But Powell, whom Warsh has described as a failed chair who chose inflation, went out of his way to say Warsh is up to the task.

The chair’s job is to “create consensus” among the Fed’s voters and to “be inside their thinking,” Powell said.

Warsh “has the capabilities, skills to be very good at that,” Powell said.

 

If Warsh cuts interest rates in this environment, he'll be choosing inflation, too.

Inflation is very painful for the people, but for a government which absolutely refuses to get its fiscal house in order Powell's choice of inflation was the only medicine available to him, faced as he was with a national debt snowballing toward $40 trillion and the moon after that, and desperately in need of devaluation. 

Fetterman is still not right in the head

 Fetterman's recent history of saying some reasonable things makes people on the right treat him like he's some oracle now.

But another lunatic tries to shoot Trump and suddenly America is on the hook for a new ballroom, which wouldn't be necessary AT ALL if Mad King Ludwig hadn't torn down the East Wing in the first place?

I don't think so, pal. Not when Trump promised it would be funded entirely from private donations.

Fetterman: Dems Should 'Drop the TDS,' Fund WH Ballroom

Alexander Bolton, The Hill

 

... “We were there front and center. That venue wasn’t built to accommodate an event with the line of succession for the U.S. government. After witnessing last night, drop the TDS and build the White House ballroom for events exactly like these,” Fetterman posted Sunday on the social platform X, referring to “Trump derangement syndrome,” a term the president uses for his critics. ... 

 

Yeah, but what Trump saved with military spending cuts to Ukraine he's blowing on the Iran war, which is why he's asking for $1.5 trillion in defense spending next year

 Europe’s rearmament push drives global military spending to record $2.9 trillion despite U.S. pullback

The U.S. national debt is up $3.069 trillion to date since November 1, 2024, an annual rate of deficit spending of $2.2 trillion after seventeen months of Donald Trump. 

... Global military spending as a share of GDP climbed to 2.5%, its highest level since 2009, the report showed. Europe was the main driver of the increase in global spending, with spending rising 14% to $864 billion. ...

While global defense spending continued to grow, the growth rate slowed to 2.9% in 2025, markedly lower than the 9.7% rise in 2024. This was largely due to a 7.5% reduction in U.S. military expenditure after no new financial assistance for Ukraine was approved during the year. The U.S. remained the world’s largest defense spender at $954 billion. ...

The Pentagon has requested about $1.5 trillion in defense spending for fiscal 2027, which would mark the largest request in history. ...

That spineless weasel so-called spending hawk Chip Roy (TX-21) is so desperate to win his attorney general race in Texas that he's proposing DHS pay for Trump's ballroom now

 

Because socialism is expensive

 Scarborough: How Did We Spend Trillions On Defense—And We're Running Out Of Munitions After A One-Month War?

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