Sunday, February 9, 2025
Saturday, February 8, 2025
Trump's deportation fantasies hit the big brick wall of reality
Meanwhile at ICE, Vitello told agents in January to
aim to meet a daily quota of 1,200-1,400 arrests. According to numbers
ICE has posted on X, the highest single day total since Trump was
inaugurated was just 1,100, and the number has fallen since that day. On
Tuesday of this week, arrests of immigrants were over 800, according to
a source familiar with the numbers. But last weekend, there were only
about 300 arrests, another source told NBC News.
In order to fulfill Trump’s Inauguration Day promise of “millions and millions” of deportations, the Trump administration would have to be deporting over 2,700 immigrants every day to reach 1 million in a year.
And, as NBC News has reported, arrests do not always equal immediate detentions, much less deportations. Of the more than 8,000 immigrants arrested in the first two weeks of the Trump administration, 461 were released, according to the White House.
More.
They were supposed to end catch and release on day one. They can't do even that.
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. ...
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.
Obama appointed judge, Paul Engelmayer, issues sweeping order banning Musk and his allies from accessing the US Department of Treasury payments system
A federal judge in New York temporarily restricted the ability of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to access the Treasury Department payment system, saying that doing so was necessary to prevent the potential disclosure of sensitive and confidential information.
The early Saturday order by Judge Paul Engelmayer, an Obama appointee, precludes officials without proper background checks and security clearances from accessing the payment system through at least next Friday, including political appointees and special government appointees. It also orders any prohibited person who has had access to the records since President Trump’s inauguration to destroy them. The judge set a hearing for Friday.
Some 19 blue-state attorneys general filed the case Friday evening, saying that Musk’s DOGE initiative risks interference with the payment of funds appropriated by Congress.
Engelmayer said the states were likely to win on arguments that the Trump administration exceeded its authority in allowing broader access to the payment system. He also said the states faced irreparable harm without court intervention for now, including “the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking.” ...
Well thank God.
None of these people have security clearances. The say so of President Trump is not a security clearance.
Friday, February 7, 2025
America has always produced outstanding 19 year olds, like Audie Murphy of Kingston, Texas
When Audie Murphy was 19 and two days after he had already been wounded in the legs, he stood alone on top of the burning wreckage of a tank destroyer for an hour gunning down 50 German soldiers with a machine gun that still worked, for which he won the Medal of Honor. It happened in Holtzwihr, France, 26 January 1945.
A boy we all looked up to.
Trump appointed judge Carl Nichols stops 2,200 USAID workers from being placed on administrative leave tonight
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?
A Democrat with multiple credit card balances owed, including one for $1.2 million, should fit right in as a cabinet secretary overseeing spending of money we don't have
Kennedy’s credit card balances range between $610,000 to $1.2 million in accounts that carry interest rates of 23.24% to 23.49%, the filing shows.
Financial experts interviewed by CNBC said balances that high are unusual.
“That’s a truly massive amount of credit card debt,” said Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate.
Maybe he can borrow some fashion money at lower rates from Kash Ap Patel at the FBI, if they ever confirm him.
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 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.
The legal system is about to be clogged with multiple battles over Trump's second and imperial presidency, which has deployed Elon Musk as the embodiment of the line-item veto which it does not possess
It's a strange day when I find myself agreeing with Ed Markey.
. . . “The courts, if they interpret the Constitution correctly, are going to stop Musk, are going to stop Trump,” Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday.
“Article One is the Congress. Article Two is the president, Article Three is the judiciary. There is not an Article 3.5 where Elon Musk gets to do whatever he wants to do,” Markey said. “They are trying to rewrite constitutional law in this country.” . . .
Three weeks in, the growing storm of lawsuits means some of this young administration’s most extraordinary applications of unilateral presidential power could be reined in. But the litigation also conjures a scenario that no one wants to think about: what would happen if the administration refused to recognize court rulings — even one handed down by the Supreme Court?
This is a particularly acute matter because it’s the Justice Department, which is now operating under Trump’s firm hand, that’s responsible for enforcing the law. The constitutional remedy for a president who breaks the law is impeachment, but Republicans have twice shown that they will not hold Trump to account in such trials, making moot this key check on power envisioned by the founders.
“That is the doomsday scenario,” Ryan Goodman, a former Defense Department special counsel and NYU law professor, told CNN’s Burnett. “So far, they are complying with all the court orders, but what happens come the day that they do lose at the Supreme Court?” Goodman asked.
“If they really want to push it, we are in a real constitutional crisis.”
From the story here.
January 2025 is the fifth consecutive January with full time employment not as good as in January 2020 when 49.85% of civilian population usually worked full time
January 2020: 49.85%
January 2021: 47.42%
January 2022: 49.29%
January 2023: 49.32%
January 2024: 49.16%
January 2025: 49.22%
Thursday, February 6, 2025
Judge George O’Toole Jr. pauses Trump's federal employee buyout nationwide, says he will consider arguments on the legality of the buyout on Monday
. . . O’Toole’s order Thursday is the latest in a series of judicial
rulings pausing implementation of key policy initiatives of President Donald Trump.
Kinda like a libertarian convention
. . . fiscal hawks said they could not support the massive package without more spending cuts. ...
Welcome to end stage libertarianism: The executive branch of the United States does not possess a line-item veto power
What Trump is doing will be challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, which already ruled the 1996 version of the line item veto unconstitutional.
Trump is a renegade.
Imagine a Democrat president simply canceling programs Republicans passed and firing all the people in them. That's what this is. And that's what the future will bring if Trump gets away with any of this.
It's anarchy, and it's unconstitutional, however much you may agree with the cuts. The Court will set this straight or the federal government is finished as an institution.
Despite record highs in stocks in 2024, real return since the last secular peak in August 2000 still significantly lags previous periods of peak-to-peak returns
During four months in 2021, real return since August 2000 briefly hit the 5s: 5.06% in August, 5.02% in September, 5.17% in November, and 5.15% in December.
Real return swooned after that, as low as 3.63% in October 2022, making it seem like 2021 might have been a secular turning point.
But by October 2024 real return since August 2000 had recovered to 5.11%, and 5.2% in November, and 5.24% in December.
Is this the new secular peak?
Return might suggest, No, seeing how low it still is.
Valuation might suggest, Yes.
The annual average of the S&P 500 divided by GDP in trillions hit 186 in 2024, a level not seen since 1930 (228) on an annualized basis.
That ratio never got above 139 (2000) between 1937 (165) and 2020 (151).
And this ratio was 180 in 2021, 158 in 2022, and 155 in 2023, all unprecedented for the post-war.
But 186 in 2024 really takes the cake.
The price of the market is really, really rich for the return you get.
Wednesday, February 5, 2025
Gold prices continued their record run on Wednesday
... Spot gold was up 0.8% at $2,865.61 per ounce by 01:59 p.m. ET (1859
GMT), after hitting a record high of $2,882.16 earlier in the session. ... Spot silver rose 0.8% to $32.36 per ounce . . ..
-- CNBC
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