Mike Benz lights his hair on fire about $3 billion from USAID funding a full-on Truman Show in Brazil's $2.6 trillion economy

 OK Mike.

Brazil Was a Full on 'Truman Show' Propped Up by USAID

Mike Benz, The Benny Show

 

Real Clear Politics puts up a discussion between two billionaires 43% of whose business is government contracts demanding that government bureaucrats be prosecuted for fraud

The chutzpah of these parasites is really something, but Real Clear should be ashamed for promoting it.

The billionaires complain that expenditures far outpace revenues, but taxes must never be raised to pay for them:

"My answer on tax policy, what should tax rates be? Just always a little bit lower. I'm not going to tell you the number, they should always be a little bit lower."

Billionaires for tax cuts!

Meanwhile the $40 billion USAID budget was nothing but a virtue signaling food for the poor scam to these two:

"And so much of this left-wing philanthropy nonprofit world, I think it was just a cover for borderline criminal activity."

 

Prosecute Bureaucrats for Defrauding Government

Peter Thiel, American Optimist

 

 

U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland rules Elon Musk violated the Constitution in dismantling USAID

 

 The ruling is significant because the dopes in the Republican Party just rammed through a continuing spending resolution which fully funds the now severely diminished USAID.

The money must be spent as allocated by Congress.

 

 Judge rules DOGE’s USAID dismantling likely violates the Constitution

WASHINGTON (AP) — The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency likely violated the Constitution, a federal judge ruled Tuesday as he indefinitely blocked DOGE from making further cuts to the agency. ...

In one of the first DOGE lawsuits against Musk himself, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland rejected the Trump administration’s position that Musk is merely President Donald Trump’s adviser.

Musk’s public statements and social media posts demonstrate that he has “firm control over DOGE,” the judge found pointing to an online post where Musk said he had “fed USAID into the wood chipper.” ...

The judge said it’s likely that USAID is no longer capable of performing some of its statutorily required functions. ...

Chuang said DOGE’s and Musk’s fast-moving destruction of USAID likely harmed the public interest by depriving elected lawmakers of their “constitutional authority to decide whether, when and how to close down an agency created by Congress.” ...

 

Marco Rubio and his fellow barbarians are shredding and burning USAID classified documents and personnel records

 

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) employees and outside groups are fighting an order from the agency’s leadership to shred and burn its classified documents as well as personnel records.

An email obtained by The Hill sent by USAID’s acting executive secretary instructs remaining employees at the dismantled agencies to “shred as many documents as possible first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break.” ...

More.

Supreme Court rules 5-4 against Trump that USAID payments ordered by Judge Amir Ali must be made

 

A divided U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to let President Donald Trump’s administration withhold payment to foreign aid organizations for work they already performed for the government as the Republican president moves to pull the plug on American humanitarian projects around the world.

Handing a setback to Trump, the court in a 5-4 decision upheld Washington-based U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s order that had called on the administration to promptly release funding to contractors and recipients of grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department for their past work.

Conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh dissented from the decision.

The order by Ali, who is presiding over an ongoing legal challenge to Trump’s policy, had originally given the administration until February 26 to disburse the funding, which it has said totaled nearly $2 billion that could take weeks to pay in full.

Chief Justice John Roberts paused that order hours before the midnight deadline to give the Supreme Court additional time to consider the administration’s more formal request to block Ali’s ruling. The Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices Trump appointed during his first presidential term. ...

The Trump administration had kept the disputed payments largely frozen despite a temporary restraining order from Ali that they be released, and multiple subsequent orders that the administration comply. Ali’s February 25 enforcement order at issue before the Supreme Court applied to payment for work done by foreign aid groups before February 13, when the judge issued his temporary restraining order. ...

More.

Fascism delayed: Intel postpones Ohio chip plant opening from this year to 2030 after receiving $8 billion from bi-partisan Chips Act

But yeah, let's claw back money for food and medicine programs under USAID.

Intel delays Ohio chip plant opening to next decade, was supposed to start production by 2026

... The company said it won’t complete construction on the first plant until 2030, starting operations that year or the next. The second factory in the up to $100-billion complex will likely be finished in 2031 and start running the following year. The company had initially planned to begin production on the first plant in 2025. ...

Chief Justice John Roberts intervenes in dispute between USAID and USAID recipients and Judge Amir Ali, pausing Ali's order to disperse USAID funds by midnight yesterday

 

. . . Roberts issued an interim order placing on hold Washington-based U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s action that had imposed a deadline of 11:59 p.m. on Wednesday night.

Roberts provided no rationale for the order, known as an administrative stay, which will give the court additional time to consider the administration’s more formal request to block Ali’s ruling.

Roberts asked for a response from the plaintiffs - organizations that contract with or receive grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department - by noon on Friday.

More here. 

The story posted at 10:14pm last night.

This is wild: This morning we learned Judge Ali again ruled that all foreign aid must be distributed, tonight Judge Nichols says it's OK for Trump to fire all the employees at USAID who do that

That doesn't make any sense!

Judge gives go ahead for Trump administration to gut USAID’s workforce

A federal judge Friday paved the way for the Trump administration to move forward with plans to remove thousands of U.S. Agency for International Development workers from their jobs.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols denied a request from labor groups to issue a preliminary injunction after the Trump administration said thousands of USAID employees would be placed on administrative leave and ordered agency personnel abroad to return to the U.S. within 30 days. ...

 

 

US District Judge Amir Ali stops just short of holding Trump administration in contempt for failing to comply with court's order allowing disbursement of foreign aid

 

Trump administration hasn’t complied with order to halt foreign aid freeze, judge says

U.S. District Judge Amir Ali last week ordered the administration to allow the disbursement of U.S. foreign assistance after hearing claims from federal contractors challenging an executive order signed by President Donald Trump pausing nearly all foreign assistance.

Ali determined that a “blanket suspension of congressionally appropriated foreign aid” had caused irreparable harm to the contractors and was likely not allowed under the Administrative Procedure Act. ...

“By enjoining Defendants and their agents from implementing any directives to undertake such blanket suspension, the Court was not inviting Defendants to continue the suspension while they reviewed contracts and legal authorities to come up with a new, post-hoc rationalization for the en masse suspension,” Ali wrote. ...

"to the extent Defendants have continued the blanket suspension, they are ordered to immediately cease it.”

The judge stopped short of holding the administration in contempt.

 

 

US District Judge Amir Ali orders resumption of foreign aid disbursements in place before Trump took office

 

. . . the latest blow to the administration’s sweeping efforts to halt international aid. ...

The judge said in his ruling that the administration has not yet “meaningfully contested detailed and credible evidence of harm to countless American businesses, ranging from shutting down programs, to furloughing and laying off employees, to shuttering altogether.” ...

More.

Scandalous: Republicans subscribe to Politico Pro just like everyone else lol

... records from USAspending.gov show Politico payments totaling only $44,000 from USAID during fiscal years 2023 and 2024. ...

 

Last year, Republicans and committee offices paid for Politico’s products including $9,060 from the Office of the Speaker of the House, $84,000 from the House Committee on Agriculture, and $58,000 from the House Committee on Energy, according to government records.

In total, 38 Republicans in the House spent over $300,000 on Politico subscriptions in the first nine months of 2024, and committees led by Republicans expensed almost $500,000 of Politico subscriptions in the same time period, a Washington Post analysis shows.

 

The day before the mini-scandal erupted, the White House’s Office of the National Cyber Director signed a $35,000 contract for a Politico Pro Premium subscription for 15 users, according to government records. ...

 

Throughout the day Wednesday, Musk and other Republicans claimed that USAID alone had spent millions on Politico over the past 12 months.

 

But that characterization is false, according to a senior executive at Politico who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private internal data. The entire federal government spends more than $16 million on Politico subscriptions, the executive said. Those payments go to Politico Pro and other professional offerings from the Axel-Springer-owned publisher, which offers some subscriptions and licensing deals that can reach five figures. ...

 

More.

Trump appointed judge Carl Nichols stops 2,200 USAID workers from being placed on administrative leave tonight

 

Judge pauses Trump plan to put USAID staff on leave

 

During the hearing, Nichols questioned DOJ attorney Brett Shumate about why the Trump administration needed to place 2,200 USAID workers on leave so quickly.

“What is the urgency of this?” the judge asked.

“The President has decided there is corruption and fraud at USAID,” Shumate replied.

I'll say. 

Buying co-president Elon Musk's Starlink terminals and funding Melania Trump's and Ivanka Trump's pet projects is corruption of the highest order.

Doubly inconvenient: USAID spent $1 million on Elon Musk's Starlink terminals for the Ukraine War which MAGA opposes

 What is the world coming to?

 

USAID was not just great in the opinion of the old Marco Rubio, both Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump thought so too, deploying millions of its dollars for their pet projects under Trump I lololol

 

A bunch of phony baloney plastic banana good time rock 'n rollas, but I repeat myself.

 

Melania and Ivanka's close ties to USAID exposed as Trump goes scorched-earth on the 'corrupt' agency:

Melania and Ivanka Trump used thousands of dollars from USAID to fund pet projects during Trump's first term it's been revealed as the agency's spending comes under scrutiny from the president.

The president has gone scorched-earth against the USAID this week, berating its use of tax-payer dollars and saying it had to be 'corrupt' in its spending.

But despite Donald's disdain for the aid agency, it has maintained close ties with his wife and daughter for years by investing in their government ventures. 

USAID helped fund Melania Trump's Be Best program and Ivanka Trump's Women's Global Development and Prosperity Initiative during the first Trump term.

And each woman traveled with the agency on separate trips to Africa, where they praised the investments it was making on the continent.

Ivanka Trump travelled with then-USAID administrator Mark Green to Africa in April 2019, where they met with women entrepreneurs in Ethiopia and rural cocoa farmers on the Ivory Coast.

USAID oversaw $265 million per year in spending Ivanka Trump's women's business initiative and an associated antipoverty program.

Melania Trump partnered with the agency on her 2018 trip to Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and Egypt.

In Malawi, the first lady promoted USAID's national reading program, which was donating on Trump's behalf 1.4 million textbooks to the more than 5,600 primary schools in the poverty-stricken nation.

'I am so proud of the work this administration is doing through USAID and others,' the first lady said at the time, 'and look forward to the opportunity to take the message of my Be Best campaign to many of the countries, and children, throughout Africa.'

In his first term, Trump heavily cut funding for the aid agency but it still found money to invest into his family's government ventures.

Ivanka Trump used USAID for her program to promote women in business, claiming 12 million women around the world had been helped by it.

She travelled with the agency to Colombia in September 2019 to run a workshop for women entrepreneurs.

That same year, she also used over $11,000 from the agency to buy video recording and reproducing equipment for a White House event, its records show.

Meanwhile, USAID was one of the first agencies to name an ambassador to Melania Trump's Be Best initiative.

When Melania Trump first announced her signature program in May 2018, she asked government agencies to name a liaison to her group. USAID immediately did so.

At her one-year anniversary celebration in May, Melania acknowledged the agency and thanked it for naming the first Be Best ambassador.

'For the first time in history, the United States Agency for International Development has appointed a Be Best ambassador,' she said.

'On this one year anniversary of my initiative, I call on all of our partner agencies to appoint a be best ambassador who will serve as a liaison between my office and their respective agency to better highlight and promote the programs and services offered to parents and children on behalf of the US government,' she added.

Donald Trump was sitting in the audience listening.

Neither the East Wing, the West Wing, nor Ivanka Trump's office responded to DailyMail.com's request for comment.

USAID delivers billions of dollars in humanitarian aid overseas.

The Trump administration is threatening to shut it down or bring the independent agency under the umbrella of the State Department.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is now acting director of the agency it's been announced this week.

Hundreds of USAID contractors were placed on unpaid leave and some were terminated. Elon Musk, who is running Trump's Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE program, said the agency would be eliminated.

Its Washington D.C. office is closed and employees were either put on leave or told to work from home.

Trump has said of the agency: 'It's been run by a bunch of radical lunatics, and we're getting them out.'

He also claims it 'had to be corrupt' to approve certain initiatives. 

The president has berated the agency for its spending practices, including having a subscription to Politico Pro, a service that tracks legislation and other government news.

And his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, gave a blistering account of USAID's spending. Speaking to reporters at the White House last week, she held up a sheet of paper giving details of the astonishing ways in which taxpayers' money had been doled out.

It was an apparent reference to a story in Daily Mail, which first outlined the shocking expenditures related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), on which President Trump has ordered a crackdown.

'I don't know about you. But as an American taxpayer, I don't want my dollars going toward this crap. And I know the American people don't either. And that's exactly what Elon Musk has been tasked by President Trump to do. To get the fraud, waste and abuse out of the federal government,' Leavitt said.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump stop USAID payments authorized by Congress, some of which Marco Rubio used to be for before he became Secretary of Suck-Up and is now against

I expect a federal judge to intervene on this one perty quick like.

The sums involved are paltry, but Elon Musk amusingly makes a mountain out of this molehill and says “This is our shot. This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have,” he said. “Now or never.”

Seems more like an admission that it will be impossible to slay the federal leviathan.

Elon Musk says he and Trump are shutting down USAID

... Congress annually appropriates money for USAID to spend, primarily for foreign aid and internationally focused charities. Its budget for the 2023 fiscal year was about $40 billion, according to a report last month from the Congressional Research Service. That’s a tiny fraction of the overall federal discretionary spending of $1.7 trillion. ...

A 1974 federal law known as the Impoundment Control Act says that the president generally cannot withhold funds that Congress has approved. Some Trump aides argue that the law is unconstitutional, foreshadowing a potential fight in the courts. ... 

 

 

Catholic woman finally realizes Christian and Catholic NGOs fund the entire illegal alien pipeline into America and have been doing so for decades

Welcome to reality, sister.

The enemy isn't just without. It's probably sitting next to you in the pew.

I started doing some more digging. The entire illegal immigrant pipeline, from the airports in Turkey and Dubai that are sending them to South America and Central America, to the Darien Gap, across the border and into our cities is being funded by Christian and Catholic NGOs. When you learn about the betrayal Catholic and Christian NGOs have been committing, for decades, to the rights and privileges granted by America, you will go mad.

The recent failed federal “border control” [sic] bill included almost $2 billion to religious organizations to “help migrants,” which often means helping migrants break the law. ... There are many organizations like this, taking money from their parishioners and the federal government and funneling it directly to illegal aliens. ...

Catholic Charities is a socialist terror organization working to undermine this country, subvert our “sacred democracy,” and diminish our citizens. It must therefore be defunded, prosecuted, and banned from operating inside the United States. ... They are helping our enemies execute a silent coup right under our noses, and use Christianity as a shield, an impenetrable force field, to deflect all criticism and examination. 

Peachy Keenan, here.

I don't think Keenan quite realizes, however, how this would be all but impossible to pull off from cash-strapped parish donations alone. These religious NGOs are not simply incestuous conduits for vast sums of taxpayer money. They directly embody the progressive Democrat immigration policy of native replacement.

As the Center for Immigration Studies recently reported, a United Nations-led “Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan (RMRP)” calls for more than 200 nonprofit groups to dole out $1.6 billion in cash debit cards, food, clothing, medical treatment, shelter, and even “humanitarian transportation” during 2024 to millions of U.S.-bound immigrants in 17 Latin American nations and Mexico. ... the administration of President Joe Biden is directly footing the bill for at least part of facilitating the most voluminous mass migration crisis in U.S. history, now in its fourth straight year ... more than 30 faith-based nonprofits among those UN NGO partners — representing Jewish, Lutheran, Seventh Day Adventist, Catholic, and nondenominational evangelical organizations — shows that the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have been mainlining taxpayer funds to these groups, which then distribute them to keep hundreds of thousands of migrants comfortably moving toward illegal U.S. southern border crossings.

More.

According to Forbes, the NGO Catholic Charities USA received $1.4 billion from government support compared with $1 billion in private donations [for 2022]. Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service reported more than $93.1 million in U.S. government grants in its 2021 financial statement, making taxpayer-funded grants more than 80% of its total support.

And that number would only climb as the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service would receive $182.6 million in grants in the fiscal year of 2022 from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Another NGO, Church World Services, reported more than $20.5 million in grant funds in its 2022 financial report, making more than 40% of its assets coming from taxpayers.

 Reported here.