... Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, more than a dozen violent or destructive acts have been directed at Tesla facilities, according to court documents, surveillance photographs, police records and local media reports reviewed by The Washington Post. ...
More.
Republicans press Trump to resume military, intelligence aid to Ukraine
... Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) ...
... Susan Collins (R-Maine) ...
... One Republican senator who requested anonymity called the threat to deport thousands of Ukrainian refugees excessively “punitive.” ...
... Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), a member of the Armed Services Committee, said he doesn’t support the decision to stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine. “I disagree with it,” he said. ...
Michigan Republican congressman would prefer it if people stopped calling his office
... he wants constituents to stop calling his office, claiming that inquires shared directly on his website would “legitimize” who is from his district. ...
That's the worst February reading since 47.51% in Feb 2021.
 |
A Russian "Grad" rocket launcher crosses the Kakhovka dam in March 2023 |
... The president’s message represents the first significant move to narrow Musk’s mandate. According to Trump’s new guidance, DOGE and its staff should play an advisory role — but Cabinet secretaries should make final decisions on personnel, policy and the pacing of implementation. ...
42% now strongly disapprove vs. 34% on January 23rd.
In shift, hard-line conservatives signal openness to stopgap to avert shutdown
... For years, members of the House Freedom Caucus have been predictable “no” votes on stopgaps and other spending measures that do not codify their priorities, railing against leaders for failing to approve appropriations bills on time.
But now, many of those members — happy with how the Trump
administration and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is taking a
sledgehammer to the federal government — are being atypically
cooperative and signaling support for Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.)
plan to pass a largely clean continuing resolution (CR) until Sept. 30,
the end of the fiscal year. Trump endorsed the full-year CR last week.
“My bottom line is: It’s a step forward, again, based on the word that we’re being given from the White House, that they will continue to do the work, that the president supports it and wants it, I’m comfortable,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a deficit hawk who is part of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. ...
These bumblebrains really don't get it.
Elon Musk and DOGE have usurped the role of Congress and have made the Congress irrelevant by accomplishing what they never do.
They should just pack it in. Or maybe DOGE should just eliminate them.
After all, they can't list any accomplishments, can they?
A second federal judge indefinitely blocked President Trump’s blanket freeze on federal grants and loans, saying the administration “put itself above Congress.”
U.S. District Judge John McConnell’s preliminary injunction in favor of Democratic state attorneys general adds to a near-identical block imposed by a federal judge in the nation’s capital late last month.
Both lawsuits commenced after Trump’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a now-rescinded memo that instructed federal agencies to pause grants and loans, a sweeping freeze that covered trillions of dollars of federal spending.
Under McConnell’s order, the Trump administration is indefinitely prohibited from implementing an across-the-board funding freeze under a different name. Agencies can still limit funding access on an individualized basis under applicable laws and regulations.
“The Executive’s categorical freeze of appropriated and obligated funds fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government,” wrote McConnell, an appointee of former President Obama.
More.
What an absolutely contemptible lot.
GOP senators tell Musk DOGE actions will require their votes
Republican senators told tech billionaire Elon Musk at a closed-door meeting Wednesday that his aggressive moves to shrink the federal government will need a vote on Capitol Hill, sending a clear message that he needs to respect Congress’s power of the purse. ...
Paul and other Republican senators said Musk appeared open to the idea but didn’t seem to expect DOGE’s cuts and workforce reductions would need to come back to Congress for ultimate approval. ...
GOP lawmakers say Musk’s failure to brief them in advance about impending cuts and funding freezes — or to respond to their questions and concerns about actions taken by DOGE — reflected his belief that he thought the administration could largely bypass them by simply impounding funds lawfully appropriated by Congress. ...
Several GOP senators vented their frustrations over Musk’s operating
style — especially his team’s failure to respond promptly to their
concerns — at a meeting last week with White House chief of staff Susie
Wiles.
Wiles told frustrated senators they should contact her directly with their concerns over funding freezes and reductions in force pushed by Musk and his team of young engineers.
Sources familiar with Wednesday’s meeting said the GOP senators who complained about Musk and his methods last week were much more cordial when they met with him face-to-face in the wood-empaneled Mansfield Room just off the Senate floor. ...
Republican lawmakers on Wednesday said President Trump’s call for Congress to “get rid of” the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which provided $52 billion for the domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry, is dead on arrival on Capitol Hill. ...
“I think reconstituting domestic manufacturing of advanced semiconductors is a national security and economic imperative,” said Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), who was one of 17 Senate Republicans who voted for the law.
Cornyn noted that “the whole purpose of this was national security.”
“Because if there’s a disruption between Asia or Taiwan, to be more specific, and the United States, we would plunge into a depression and we wouldn’t be able to build advanced weapons or aircraft like the F-35,” he said.
The Texas senator said “the idea” for the law came from the first Trump administration, particularly then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“I understand the president suggesting maybe there’s a better way to do this than use tax dollars as incentives … but I think the original bill was responsible [for] this trend [to bring] much greater investment here in the United States,” he added.
He said he’s open to “tweaks around the edges” but explained “the program that Congress passed — that money is essentially spent.”
More.
... Ukraine's air force reported 112 drones and two missiles launched into the country overnight, with 68 drones shot down and 43 lost in flight.
The air force reported damage in the Kharkiv, Sumy, Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
In Dnipropetrovsk, a ballistic missile hit a hotel in the city of Kryvyi Rih -- Zelenskyy's hometown.
"A ballistic missile struck an ordinary hotel," the president wrote on social media. Four people were killed with more than 30 others injured, he added. The attack came shortly after a group of foreign humanitarian volunteers checked into the hotel, Zelenskyy said. None were hurt.
Sources told ABC News that two U.S. citizens were among the volunteers who survived the strike, working for the Charity fund Freedom Trust and Ukraine Relief organization. ...
U.S. intelligence sharing with Ukraine had allowed Kyiv to give warnings to targeted areas ahead of Russian drone and missile strikes, tracking Russian aircraft taking off, drones being launched and missiles being fired. ...
... Last month Trump called on Hamas
to release the hostages by Feb. 15 or "all hell is going to breakout."
That deadline came and went. This time, Trump is describing his
ultimatum as the "last warning!" ...
“I have just met with your former hostages whose
lives you have destroyed," Trump added. "This is your last warning! For
the leadership, now is the time to leave Gaza, while you still have a
chance.” ...
The Trump Administration has already approved nearly $12 billion in major foreign military sales to Israel, according to the State Department’s website. ...
Hamas still is holding 59 hostages in Gaza, many of whom are believed to be dead. ...
More.
US holding secret talks with Hamas on release of Gaza hostages, 'Post' confirms
... US special envoy for hostage affairs Adam Boehler ... met with senior Hamas officials in Doha, Qatar, several times. These meetings, first reported by Barak Ravid on Axios, mark the first known direct dialogue between Hamas and the US administration since the US designated Hamas as a terrorist organization in 1997.
Such talks run counter to long-standing US policy against direct contact with groups that Washington lists as foreign terrorist organizations. ...
The White House said Boehler has the authority to negotiate directly with Hamas.
“When it comes to the negotiations that you’re referring to, first of all, the special envoy who’s engaged in those negotiations does have the authority,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters. ...
Trump grants automakers one-month exemption from tariffs
... Spokespeople with the three companies as well as other automakers did not immediately respond for comment on the delay, which comes only a day after the tariffs went into effect.
Leavitt said the president is “open” to hearing requests from other industries seeking exemptions as well.
Leavitt also confirmed the “Big 3” Detroit automakers requested the Tuesday call with Trump, who mentioned it during his address to Congress later in the day. ...
Donald Trump had one of the worst annual dumb ass unemployment rates in history in 2020: 38.25%.
Every president between Carter and Obama did better than he did.
Get off your ass you losers and get to work.
Trump loves Whoppers.
Smell the farts of nothing has changed.
In 2015 Trump used Rush Limbaugh Math and came up with 42% unemployed lol. "Not in labor force" is not a measure of unemployment.
These Social Security claims are loonier than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris saying 200 million and more had already died of COVID in the United States during their campaign for president-vice president in 2020. Joe corrected himself eventually. Trump and Musk WILL NOT.
... The [Social Security] issue has been repeatedly identified by inspectors general at the agency, but the Social Security Administration has argued that updating old records was costly and unnecessary.
Per the agency’s online records, just 89,106 people — not tens of millions — over the age of 99 received retirement benefits in December 2024, out of the more than 70 million people who receive benefits each year.
It’s a “humiliating mistake for anyone else to make, but they’re doubling and tripling down on it,” said Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank that addresses government spending. ...
More.
Meanwhile the US population 65 years old and older was only about 59 million in 2023. Hello.
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.
Their grandfather, father and uncle served in Cuba’s House before the family fled to the United States in 1959, the year of the revolution, when Lincoln was 5.
His father’s sister was married to Castro in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but they divorced and a falling-out between the families ensued. ...
May he rest in peace.
... many Democrats are pressing leadership to withhold support for any spending plan that doesn’t take steps to ensure the allocated funds go where Congress intended — a response to Trump’s efforts to gut federal programs Congress had previously funded.
“There will have to be some type of guarantees, because we’re very unsure about whether things that we’ve already approved are actually going to be expended,” Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) said. ...
“House Republicans are marching the country towards a government shutdown that was started by Elon Musk,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters on Tuesday.
“Rosa DeLauro is still at the table. We need House Republicans to join her.” ...
Heading into the fight, some Democrats are already warning that they
won’t support in any form. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said it makes
no sense for Republicans to claim billions of dollars of waste and abuse
across federal agencies, and then back a CR that funds that same waste
and abuse. ...
More.
... "We have a fiscal responsibility to use taxpayer dollars to pay people that actually work. ... perhaps they’re not fit to have a job at this moment, or not willing to come to work.” ...
The Trump administration is engaged in a wide-ranging effort to cut the number of federal workers. How that is being done, as well as the personal stories of individuals such as veterans and others affected by the cuts, has led to blowback among the public. ...
Veterans make up about 30% of the total federal workforce, according to a report by the Office of Personnel Management.
As of September 2021, nearly 640,000 veterans were employed in that workforce. Of that tally, 53% were disabled. ...
More.
Why, is there something bad on the horizon with GDP lol?
These people belong in jail, not in the White House.
Trump official floats new approach on GDP, as economy is poised to slow sharply
Social Security Pays Billions of Dollars in Retroactive Payments
The Social Security Administration (SSA) today shared its significant progress to quickly implement the Social Security Fairness Act. Through March 4, 2025, SSA has already paid 1,127,723 people more than $7.5 billion in retroactive payments. The retroactive payments are the result of the repeal of the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO). The average retroactive payment so far is $6,710.
“President Trump made it very clear he wanted the Social Security Fairness Act to be implemented as quickly as possible,” said Lee Dudek, Acting Commissioner of Social Security. “We met that challenge head on and are proudly delivering for the American people.”
The WEP and GPO provisions reduced or eliminated the Social Security benefits for over 3.2 million people who receive a pension based on work that was not covered by Social Security (a "non-covered pension") because they did not pay Social Security taxes.
The agency continues to pay remaining retroactive payments and is ready to begin paying higher monthly benefit payments beginning in April for people’s March benefit.
Not even $1 billion a year. Whoopdeedoo. Don't spend it all in one place, boys.
Social Security Administration says it’s identified $800M+ in savings
The Social Security Administration (SSA) said in a release that it has identified more than $800 million in savings or “cost avoidance” for fiscal 2025 among information technology, grants, property and payroll. ...
... But the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 requires that Congress use "current law" to account for how much a tax cut will cost. ...
Zelensky expresses regret for Oval Office spat with Trump
... "Our meeting in Washington, at the White House on Friday, did not go the
way it was supposed to be. It is regrettable that it happened this way.
It is time to make things right. We would like future cooperation and
communication to be constructive," Zelensky wrote on X. ...
. . . Trump also took aim at American students protesters, who he said will be "permanently expelled" or arrested, "depending on the crime." . . .
You know what to do.
Cue record needle scratching across the record here.
David Sacks, a Jewish South-African, is another one of Trump's end-run-around-the-rules appointees like Elon Musk.
Like Musk he is one of Trump's "special government employees" who was not confirmed by the US Senate and who has not divested from all of his private business activities while he influences federal government policy. There is no government oversight of David Sacks.
Sacks licks his finger and checks the wind direction like the rest of his parasitical tech bro friends. He has made large political contributions in the past to the campaigns of both Mitt Romney and later to Hillary Clinton, as well as to RFK Jr., among others.
Like J. D. Vance, he believes in nothing very much except what's good for himself and his friends. "They are very rich people who want to buy political power", according to Edward Luce (below).
Sacks spews a litany of falsehoods about Zelenskyy and Russia's invasion of Ukraine here in an interview with the numbskull Jesse Watters. He has stated that Ukraine provoked the Russians to attack in 2022, a belief which Republicans booed last summer because it isn't true, according to Edward Luce of The Financial Times, who was there:
Sacks said on the opening night of the Milwaukee Republican convention,
which I am also attending, that the US “provoked” Russia to invade
Ukraine. As much as Sacks denies strenuously that he was booed by
delegates. I beg to differ. The sceptical reception to Sacks’
Putin-friendly diatribe was the least unreassuring moment of what is the
most dystopian political convention I have witnessed.
During the 1990 summit, Zoellick says President Gorbachev accepted the idea of German unification within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, based on the principle that every country should freely choose its own alliances.
“I was in those meetings, and Gorbachev has [also] said there was no promise not to enlarge NATO,” Zoellick recalls. Soviet Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, later president of Georgia, concurred, he says. Nor does the treaty on Germany’s unification include a limit on NATO enlargement. Those facts have undermined one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justifications for invading Ukraine — that the United States had agreed that former Warsaw Pact nations would never become part of the North Atlantic security alliance.
Zoellick, a former deputy and undersecretary of state, deputy White House chief of staff, U.S. trade representative, and World Bank president, shared his recollections about the Cold War’s end and its ties to the ongoing war in Ukraine as part of a broader conversation with Harvard Law Today about the 75th anniversary of the Truman Doctrine, an American foreign policy aimed at containing Soviet expansion following World War II.
He is the author of “America in the Word: A History of U.S. Diplomacy and Foreign Policy.” An alumnus of both Harvard Law School and Harvard Kennedy School, where he is a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Zoellick believes Putin’s false claim about NATO enlargement is part of a disinformation campaign by the former KGB agent to mask his true intentions.
Zoellick vividly recalls the White House meeting he attended nearly three decades ago in which Bush asked Gorbachev if he agreed with the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe principle that nations are free to ally with others as they see fit. When Gorbachev said yes, he says, the Soviet leader’s “own colleagues at the table visibly separated themselves.”
Sensing the import of the possible breakthrough, he says a colleague at the meeting, Robert Blackwill, sent him a note checking what they had heard and asking if they should ask Bush to repeat the question. “Gorbachev agreed again,” Zoellick recalls, to the principle that Germany could choose to enter NATO.
“The reality was that, in 1989-90, most people, and certainly the Soviets, weren’t focusing on whether the Eastern European countries would become part of NATO,” Zoellick says. Knowing Soviet and Russian diplomacy, he believes Moscow would have demanded assurances in writing if it believed the U.S. had made such a promise. And even in 1996, when President Bill Clinton welcomed former Warsaw Pact nations to join NATO, he says that, “[o]ne of the German diplomats involved told me that as they discussed the enlargement with the Russians, no Russian raised the argument that there had been a promise not to enlarge.”
But if the West never gave the promise Putin has used to explain his decision to invade Ukraine, what does Zoellick think motivates the Russian president’s decision to inflict death and destruction on one of Russia’s nearest neighbors? “Putin does not see Ukraine as an independent and sovereign state,” he says. “He has a view of Russian history where the Rus [the medieval ancestors of the people who came to form Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine] began in Kyiv. He believes that they are all Russians, living in a greater Russia. And I think at age 69, Putin feels that this is a question not only of Russian history, but his place in Russian history.”
Zoellick says that when Putin’s earlier attacks in the Crimea and country’s eastern regions failed to halt Ukraine’s drift towards the West, the Russian leader believed he had no other choice but to invade. “That’s his motivation. And I think we need to be aware that he’s going to double down. The resilience and resolve of the Ukrainian people to resist has been a surprise to him and everybody else. I don’t think he’s going to ultimately be successful. In addition to today’s brutal battles, Russia faces a difficult occupation and insurgency, even if it can seize cities and territory.”
The experienced diplomat also credits Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with rallying the Ukrainian people by refusing to flee Kyiv and through adept use of social media and language.
“We’re seeing that the skills that he developed as an entertainer and a communicator can be used in different ways, just as Ronald Reagan did,” he says. “It does raise a concern that, if something happens to Zelensky, what will that do to morale? Will he be a martyr or will his loss break the public will?”
Zoellick also notes that, as the war in Ukraine has garnered the world’s attention, many of the questions being asked today about the West’s relationship with Russia are similar to those he had dealt with at the end of the Cold War, including “Russia’s sense of whether it feels like a great power or threatened by NATO … those are the issues that are at very much at play in dealing with Ukraine.”
“Can Russia forge peaceful, constructive ties with the West?” he asks. “Failed economic and political reforms left Russia behind. Its economy depends on energy production. Putin played off public frustrations, but many Russians don’t want war and isolation.”
When thinking about global diplomacy and the factors that might have led to the Russian invasion, Zoellick harkens back to a comment made by his boss for eight years, James Baker, who served both as secretary of state and the treasury, as well as White House chief of staff: “As you address the problems of one era, you’re often planting the seeds for the next set of challenges. History doesn’t stop.”
More than 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Zoellick says the legacy of decisions made at the end of the Cold War are echoing throughout Europe today: “Would we keep NATO alive? Would it enlarge into Central and Eastern Europe? How far? What would be the effects on Russia of its loss of empire?”
“That leaves the question of whether the U.S. could have avoided Russia’s turn,” he says. The answer, he believes, depended on Russia’s choices. “Certainly, we wouldn’t have wanted East and West Germany to remain divided.” The related questions are many: What if Eastern European countries had been barred from joining NATO and therefore remained, like Ukraine, outside the western security umbrella? And how would they react to the Russian threat and being left again as “lands between” Germany and Russia? The U.S. and Europe, he notes, offered Russia partnerships, but Russia felt humiliated by the loss of its empire.
“I was the U.S. negotiator for German unification,” he says. “We wanted to make sure that a democratic Germany was unified in NATO. I don’t think anybody would think that’s a bad idea today. And if anything, we’re now seeing Germany stepping up to a security role for NATO and the European Union.”
In 1989-90, Zoellick was also focused on the idea that Poland — long subject to invasions by Russia and Germany — should be able to eventually join NATO. He made sure that the treaty on German unification kept that possibility open. “Given Putin’s behavior, can you imagine what the effect would be on Poland today if it weren’t in NATO? I think it’s wise to have Poland and Germany on the same side. The Baltic countries were a tougher choice for NATO, not because they don’t deserve the security, but they’re very hard to defend.” Nevertheless, he adds, because the Baltic states are now NATO members, he believes we must “take serious steps to defend them from both direct and hybrid threats.”
Ultimately, he believes supporting Ukraine economically and supplying arms for self-defense, rather than opening the potential for eventual NATO membership, would have been a better approach than the one the West has taken in recent years.
“If NATO gives a security guarantee, it has to mean it,” he says. “It has to be serious about providing deterrence under Article Five of the North Atlantic Alliance treaty. … I support Ukraine’s economic reforms and its democracy, [but] I doubted that the American people were ultimately willing to fight for Ukraine. The worst thing to do was to suggest Ukraine might join NATO, but without a serious pathway to membership.”
The U.S., he adds, “isn’t going to defend everybody all the time, everywhere in the world; we have to know what we will and won’t defend. Having said that, I think the Obama and Trump administrations erred by not giving more military support to Ukraine. I believe that we should help the Ukrainians defend themselves. But those are the exact issues debated today.”
https://hls.harvard.edu/today/there-was-no-promise-not-to-enlarge-nato/
... March 1 ... ended the coldest three month period in the United States since the winter of 2013 to 2014. It was about 1.1 degrees below average as a whole in the contiguous United States ... Despite the frigid temperatures, 67 percent of the country experienced below-average snowfall. ...
More.
Average temperature in Grand Rapids, MI was 46.5 degrees F in 2014, indeed the lowest of the last eleven years.
"Meteorological winter" here Dec-Feb was above the mean for temperature by 1.1 degrees. And snowfall was 3 inches above the mean for the period. So GR, being warmer and snowier, ran completely counter-trend in the current winter season.
US Treasury auctions last week:
3-month 4.195 average yield/4.225 previously
6-month 4.18/4.22
2-year 4.169/4.211
5-year 4.123/4.33
7-year 4.194/4.457
4-week 4.25/4.245.
The weekly average of US Treasury yields by duration finished the week showing Bills holding up and Notes collapsing the most, with Bonds not far behind.
Yields for the 1MO, 1.5MO, 2MO, 3MO, and 4MO were strong in the range of 4.3. Investors piled into 2Y and 3Y Notes with yields plunging to 3.99 on Friday.
... If Roosevelt had told Churchill to sue for peace on any terms with Adolf Hitler and to fork over Britain’s coal reserves to the United States in exchange for no American security guarantees, it might have approximated what Trump did to Zelensky. Whatever one might say about how Zelensky played his cards poorly — either by failing to behave with the degree of all-fours sycophancy that Trump demands or to maintain his composure in the face of JD Vance’s disingenuous provocations — this was a day of American infamy. ...
... Some Republicans already see signs that the backlash to the Trump administration's "efficiency" efforts is spilling over into opposition to their legislative plans. ... Republicans have been barraged the last week and a half by angry constituents at town halls and protests outside their district offices complaining about DOGE's layoffs and cuts to federal programs. ...
The lone GOP truth-teller is Thomas Massie, who voted against the budget bill because it puts America at least $56 trillion in debt in 10 years, even with the spending cuts.
America needs spending cuts and tax increases, but Republicans are virtually incapable in their DNA of raising taxes.
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. ...
John McCain would not be happy with his old friend. McCain was a main agitator for freedom in Ukraine and its alliance with the West. The policy wisdom of that was controversial, but it wasn't framed as purely economic.
Lindsey used to be for freedom in Ukraine like McCain. Lindsey used to be an immigration liberal who advocated for amnesty. Now he's a suck-up to Trump as bad as Marco Rubio, who also used to talk about the old American values preached by Ronald Reagan.
They are shapeshifters all, just like the formerly NeverTrump J. D. Vance.
You cannot trust any of these people any more than we can trust Vladimir Putin.
Lindsey Graham here:
I told Zelensky we'll talk about security guarantees. We'll talk about ceasefires and how the war ends. This is a process. You have a new relationship with America, a 500 billion, half trillion, dollar deal that President Trump is proud of that gives us an interest worth defending.
In other words, if it's not about money it's not worth defending.
Thy money perish with thee.
-- Acts 8:20
