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Donald J. Trump White House 2nd Term Page 4
Story by Rey Harris

Washington DC - President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has reportedly been fudging the numbers on how much they claim to be saving with their massive cuts.

According to The New York Times, the agency updated the Savings page on their website late Sunday night, erasing or altering more than 1,000 contracts that they previously claimed were canceled while adding about another 1,000 worth much smaller savings.

The deleted listings accounted for 40% of accounts, including five of the seven largest savings, added to the site's "Wall of Receipts" last week.
Why does Trump keep doing things that help Putin and Russia? Is Trump a Russian asset?


US authorities have stopped intelligence sharing with Ukraine, CIA Director John Ratcliffe confirmed on Wednesday.

Following Washington suspending military aid to Kiev in the context of the Russian invasion of February 2022;  the US administration has decided to plunge Ukraine into darkness. This is the end of intelligence sharing with Kiev, which could seriously hamper the ability of the Ukrainian military to attack Russian forces.
Why does Trump keep doing things that help Putin and Russia? Is Trump a Russian asset?

Story by Dominic Culverwell

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is reportedly ready to lift sanctions on Russia imposed after the start of the full-scale invasion, in a reversal of U.S. policy toward Moscow during its war against Ukraine.

The White House is preparing a plan to potentially give Russia sanctions relief for several entities and Russian citizens as part of negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, Reuters reported on March 3. The move is a stark shift from a sanctions policy by former President Joe Biden’s administration that included the “mother of all sanctions,”

Europe and the G7 nations want to keep sanctions to throttle Russia’s economy and continue to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin. They may have no other option than to follow Washington to maintain unity among Ukraine’s allies and avoid being a pariah in the global economy.

“The big revenue raising opportunities for Russia are still linked to business connected with Europe, and Europe can stand fast on that. But very quickly Europe would find itself marginalized,” said Tom Keatinge, director of the Center for Finance and Security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a think tank.

Although the effectiveness of sanctions has been debated, they have clearly gotten under the skin of Putin, who has repeatedly called for their end. Sanctions, particularly on the oil and gas industry, have been a headache for Moscow, forcing it to resort to a shadow fleet to sell discounted fuel while incurring higher export costs.

Elon Musk says DOGE is rooting out fraud, but the Washington Post reports the agency has yet to identify much fraud. Washington Post columnist Philip Bump joins Katy Tur to explain more.
By law, only Congress can fully close federal agencies. But the department is already facing another 'very significant' workforce reduction, according to an email to staff sent last week.
Zachary Schermele, Joey Garrison USA TODAY

WASHINGTON – A preliminary executive order prepared for President Donald Trump seeks to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education to "the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law," according to a draft reviewed by USA TODAY.

The order would direct Linda McMahon, the newly installed education secretary, to dismantle the agency she oversees. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement on X that Trump won't sign an order Thursday, as some media outlets have reported, but she did not rule out action coming later.

A White House official told USA TODAY Trump is still examining his next steps toward a potential executive action and addressing the future of the Department of Education.
Story by Tom Boggioni

Late Wednesday night Donald Trump took to his Truth Social account and attempted to quell speculation about a comment he made to Chief Justice John Roberts following his speech to the nation on Tuesday night.

Multiple outlets reported on the exchange which was picked up on a hot mic, where the president told the jurist "Thank you again. Thank you again. Won’t forget it,” as he patted Roberts on the arm.

That has led to speculation that Trump was giving a late thanks to Roberts for penning the conservative-majority decision that granted Trump wide-ranging immunity for most all crimes past and future.
Story by Jai Hamid

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E) is running government money straight into his business empire. No official paper trail confirms it, but the numbers tell their own story. Billions of dollars in government contracts are shifting toward SpaceX, Starlink, and Tesla, while Elon sits at the center of it all—both as a White House adviser and the man behind the companies cashing in.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has already locked in a deal with Starlink to upgrade the agency’s IT networks. Meanwhile, Starlink is also poised to grab a $2 billion contract for the nation’s air traffic communications system, a deal currently held by Verizon.

That’s not all—Tesla has been linked to a $400 million contract for armored electric vehicles, a number that’s far beyond the previous administration’s $483,000 budget for similar projects.

D.O.G.E scrubs billions in claims from its records
Elon’s D.O.G.E claims it’s saving taxpayers money, but the numbers on its “wall of receipts” keep changing. In just one week, the department erased $4 billion worth of savings it previously claimed, wiping or altering over 1,000 contracts from its public records. These weren’t small numbers—five of the seven biggest savings listed just vanished overnight.

Since February 19, the total amount D.O.G.E has claimed in government contract cuts has gone from $16 billion to less than $9 billion, according to an investigation from the NY Times. The DOGE.gov website is the only place where these cuts are publicly accounted for, yet it’s been littered with errors, duplicate claims, and numbers that don’t add up.
Trump Press Sec Accidentally Blurts Out Real Goal of His Tariff Scam
As press secretary Karoline Leavitt says the quiet part out loud about Trump’s tariffs, a reporter who covers Trumpworld explains why his vile bullying of our allies should be taken a lot more seriously.
The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent

In his speech to Congress, President Trump kept lying about his tariffs, falsely claiming that Canada is letting huge amounts of fentanyl into our country and suggesting the trade wars will only get worse. Then press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters directly that if Canada wants to avoid tariffs in the future, it should become the fifty-first U.S. state.
Why does Trump keep doing things that help Putin and Russia? Is Trump a Russian asset?

Story by Alberto Rojas / Pablo Pardo

Kiev will not be able to access the information that activated alerts for civilians to take shelter.

Donald Trump continues to distribute doses of arrogance and cruelty to his former Ukrainian ally. If last Monday it was the pause in the delivery of military equipment, which posed a worrying challenge for the troops in Kiev, now he has left them blind by cutting off the vital Intelligence collaboration that gave some advantage to the soldiers of the invaded country. In Ukraine, they wonder what to expect next from the country that had promised to stand by them "for as long as necessary."

The decision is terrible in military terms. Thanks to that Intelligence, Ukraine was able to know before many Russian generals that the Z troops were going to invade Ukraine on February 24, 2022, giving Zelensky a chance to prepare a resistance that helped defeat the Russians around Kiev and Kharkiv, the two most important cities in the country. Putin responded on Wednesday to Zelensky's truce offer with an attack of 183 drones and three ballistic missiles across all of Ukraine.

Furthermore, now Ukraine will not be able to access the information that triggered its early warnings, such as the takeoff of bombers, drones, and missiles from Russian territory, which allowed warning Ukrainian civilians to take shelter. Now they will have to rely on their own radar equipment, much inferior in detection capabilities. Undoubtedly, this decision by the Trump Administration could lead to the deaths of civilians in Ukraine.
Story by S.V. Date

WASHINGTON ― The White House’s favored new reporter, the one who scolded Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not wearing a suit, was the primary voice at a “news” outlet that has taken $192,000 from President Donald Trump’s political committees, nearly half of which came while he was program director there.

Brian Glenn now works for a pro-Trump streaming platform called Real America’s Voice, but from September 2020 to May 2024, he was the most visible face at Right Side Broadcasting Network. Over those years, the outlet took $92,000 in “broadcast” fees, first from Trump’s Save America committee and then from Trump’s campaign, according to a HuffPost review of Federal Election Commission filings.

Glenn acknowledged the payments in a brief interview, describing them as “production” costs, and then pointed to the row of television cameras set up in the back of the White House briefing room.

“Who pays for them?” he asked, suggesting that the major networks like NBC, CNN and Fox also accept money from the entities they cover.

In fact, taking such payments would be considered a serious ethical breach among reputable news outlets. The television networks covering this and previous White Houses, as well as print and radio outlets, all pay their own expenses when covering political events, as does HuffPost.
Story by Liliana Oleniak

Some US allies are considering reducing the amount of intelligence they share with Washington in response to the Donald Trump administration's conciliatory approach to Russia. They fear the transfer of data to Moscow, NBC News reports.

According to the sources, the allies are considering this step because of concerns about protecting foreign agents whose identities could be inadvertently revealed.

Every intelligence agency treats its obligations to foreign agents as sacrosanct, promising to ensure the agents' safety and conceal their identities. Anything that jeopardizes that commitment undermines trust, former officials say, and could lead some spy services to refrain from sharing information with Washington.

The sources said that allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia and members of the so-called Five Eyes intelligence alliance, are exploring the possibility of revising current intelligence-sharing protocols to reflect the Trump administration's warming relations with Russia.

“Those discussions are already happening,” said a source with direct knowledge of the discussions. However, according to the sources, no decisions or actions have been taken.

According to the sources, the review is part of a broader examination of the range of relations with Washington among many US allies, including diplomacy, trade and military cooperation, as well as intelligence issues.
Story by Chris Hayes

During Karoline Leavitt’s first official on-camera briefing as White House press secretary, she alleged that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and the Office of Management and Budget “found that there was about to be 50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza.”

It was supposed to be the first big “gotcha” from DOGE. But, as we know now, it was a lie. As Jeremy Konyndyk, the former director of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Foreign Disaster Assistance Office, told me recently, the U.S. government gets condoms for about 5 cents apiece. That means $50 million would buy a billion condoms, or roughly 467 for every Gaza resident. And according to a federal 2024 report, USAID didn’t provide or fund any condoms in the entire Middle East in the 2021, 2022 and 2023 fiscal years.

When asked about the false figure, Musk told reporters from the Oval Office “some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected ... nobody’s gonna bat a thousand” and admitted his agency would make mistakes “but we’ll act quickly to correct any mistakes.”

On Tuesday, Reuters released an analysis of what DOGE says are its results. Reuters audited the claims of so-called savings and waste on DOGE’s website and found that in “its latest update this week, DOGE either modified or removed more than 1,000 entries on its list, nearly half of the spending arrangements it had listed the week before.”
Story by Chris Hayes

Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump told a lot of lies during his joint address to Congress on Tuesday. There were small lies, there were big lies and then there was the “big lie.”

Trump used perhaps the largest stage in the country to carry out a coordinated campaign of blatant falsehoods to systematically burn down and destroy an American institution. Trump has used this playbook before. In 2020, he undermined the legitimacy of America’s free and fair elections. On Tuesday, he used it to undermine the legitimacy of America’s most important safety net for its citizens: Social Security.

There is a pattern to what Trump is doing and what he has goaded other Republicans into saying. It’s a deliberate attempt to alter reality, and it’s a pattern he established throughout the 2020 campaign and its aftermath, all the way up to Jan. 6 and beyond. Despite the fact his legal team was laughed out of court dozens of times, Trump was obsessed with convincing his fan base that the voting system in the U.S, which is the gold standard for free elections around the world, was shot through with fraud.

This wasn’t a new obsession. In 2016, even before votes were counted, Trump alleged that the election was “rigged” against him. He ultimately won the election and, of course, didn’t challenge that outcome. But once he lost in 2020, Trump went back to his old playbook, particularly the myth of dead people voting for Democrats. It had been a fringe right-wing talking point for years, but Trump elevated the lie to new prominence.
Donald Trump is giving us whiplash with his Russia stance.

Donald Trump threatened sanctions against Russia Friday—before getting right back to blaming Ukraine for the continued fighting there.

Trump claimed in a post on Truth Social that he was “strongly considering” placing additional sanctions on Russia, referring to reports that the fighting was still ongoing in Ukraine—which he recently cut off from U.S. military aid and intelligence after clashing with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy last week.

“Based on the fact that Russia is absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield right now, I am strongly considering large scale Banking Sanctions, Sanctions, and Tariffs on Russia until a Cease Fire and FINAL SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ON PEACE IS REACHED,” Trump wrote. “To Russia and Ukraine, get to the table right now, before it is too late. Thank you!!!”

Trump’s feeble first attempt at intimidating Russian President Vladimir Putin into ending the war comes just days after the White House reportedly started making a list of sanctions on Russia that they could lift as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing negotiations to end the invasion of Ukraine. This included lifting sanctions on individuals such as Russian oligarchs, who Trump has insisted are “very nice people.”

Despite his supposedly tougher message to Russia on social media, Trump continued his capitulation to Putin during a press conference, downplaying Russia’s continued aggression toward Ukraine while finding a way to blame Ukraine for the fighting.
That is some BS if it was in a majority- white community they would not be dropping the lawsuit.

Story by MATTHEW DALY and MICHAEL PHILLIS

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department on Friday celebrated its decision to drop a federal lawsuit against a Louisiana petrochemical plant accused of worsening cancer risks for residents in a majority-Black community, saying the dismissal showed that officials are “delivering on President (Donald) Trump’s promise to dismantle radical DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs and restore integrity to federal enforcement efforts.”

The dismissal Wednesday of the two-year-old case underscored the Trump administration's commitment to “eliminate ideological overreach and restore impartial enforcement of federal laws,'' Justice said in a statement.

At the same time, the Environmental Protection Agency withdrew its formal referral of the case to the Justice Department. The agency said the action aligns with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s pledge to end the use of “environmental justice” as an enforcement tool that Zeldin was too often used to advance liberal ideological priorities.
The gathering threw its support behind a plan to rebuild Gaza put forward by Egypt and backed by Arab states.
By The Associated Press

Foreign ministers from Muslim nations on Saturday rejected calls by U.S. President Donald Trump to empty the Gaza Strip of its Palestinian population and backed a plan for an administrative committee of Palestinians to govern the territory to allow reconstruction to go ahead.

Meanwhile, Hamas reported “positive signals” in talks with Egyptian and Qatari mediators in Cairo on starting negotiations on the delayed second phase of its ceasefire deal with Israel. Spokesman Abdel-Latif al-Qanoua gave no details, but said the group is willing to start talks and its delegation has been discussing the means to do so.

The foreign ministers gathered in Saudi Arabia for a special session of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to address the situation in Gaza while the 7-week-old ceasefire has been thrown into doubt. Its second phase is meant to bring the release of remaining hostages, a lasting truce and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

The gathering threw its support behind a plan to rebuild Gaza put forward by Egypt and backed by Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Jordan, aimed at countering Trump’s call. The OIC has 57 nations with largely Muslim populations.

Without specifically mentioning Trump, the ministers’ statement said they rejected “plans aimed at displacing the Palestinian people individually or collectively … as ethnic cleansing, a grave violation of international law and a crime against humanity.”

They also condemned “policies of starvation” that they said aim to push Palestinians to leave, a likely reference to Israel’s cutting off all supplies to Gaza in the past week as it presses Hamas to instead extend the ceasefire’s first phase.
Story by Noor Al-Sibai

Elon Musk's supposedly "anti-woke" chatbot, Grok, keeps spewing outputs that are hilariously opposed to the billionaire's views — including that newly-minted President Donald Trump is likely a Russian asset.

Responding to a prompt from Arizona Republic columnist EJ Montini, Musk's "maximally truth-seeking" AI, which is built into X, said after an analysis that the probability of the president being in the pocket of Vladimir Putin is between 75 and 85 percent.

After Montini asked Grok to rate on a scale from 1 to 100 that Trump is a "Putin compromised asset" based on public information and his "failure to ever say anything negative" about the Russian president, the chatbot went to work analyzing a "complex web of financial ties, personal interactions, political behavior, and circumstantial evidence."

Employees of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), overseen by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, are reportedly drawing substantial salaries while they are downsizing federal agencies., according to a recent WIRED report. Jeremy Lewin, involved in dismantling USAID through DOGE, earns over $167,000 annually, while Kyle Schutt, a DOGE software engineer at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, draws a maximum federal employee salary of $195,200 annually, the report said.

An investigative report revealed at least one DOGE employee is making $195,200—the maximum salary allowed for a federal employee.
By Elisabeth Buchwald, CNN

CNN — President Donald Trump’s blanket 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada took effect on Tuesday, an extraordinary action aimed at bringing America’s top trading partners to heel. But it threatens to weaken the North American economy, including that of the United States, at a time of significant stress for inflation-weary consumers.

Trump also doubled the tariff on all Chinese imports to 20% from 10%. Those duties sit atop existing tariffs on hundreds of billions in Chinese goods. China and Canada immediately retaliated with tariffs on American goods, threatening to ignite a damaging trade war. Mexico said it would announce retaliatory measures Sunday.

The Trump administration said the tariffs were necessary to stem the flow of fentanyl into the United States.

“While President Trump gave both Canada and Mexico ample opportunity to curb the dangerous cartel activity and influx of lethal drugs flowing into our country, they have failed to adequately address the situation,” according to a statement released by the White House shortly before the tariffs took effect.

But the tariffs come at a time when inflation remains stubbornly high. Americans, and the US economy as a whole, are on shakier ground, as evidenced by recent data.
Story by Alex Henderson

Many MAGA Republicans vehemently criticize liberals and progressives for language policing, often mocking "woke" terms like "Latinx" and "pregnant people." And some Americans who vote Democratic are critical of "woke" language as well: "Real Time" host Bill Maher and veteran Democratic strategist James Carville argue that it's ridiculous for Democrats to say "Latinx" when the vast majority of Latinos don't use that word.

But language policing exists in the MAGA movement as well.

In an article published on March 7, New York Times journalists Karen Yourish, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Isaac White and Lazaro Gamio list some of the many words and terms that the Trump Administration is urging government workers to limit or avoid in their communications.
'Who Would Ever Sign a Thing Like This?': Donald Trump Insults Himself While Criticizing Tariff Trade Deal He Once Called the 'Best Ever'
Story by Atlanta Black Star News

The on-again, off-again tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada proposed by President Donald Trump have trading partners fuming, corporations pausing and consumers worrying. The taxes would not be necessary, the president said recently, if not for the poor dealmaking of a prior administration.

“Who can blame them if they made these great deals,” Trump said during a White House press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron on Feb. 24, adding the two trading partners “took advantage of the United States.”

“Every aspect that you could imagine they took advantage of,” the president continued. “I looked at some of these agreements, I’d read them at night and I’d say, ‘Who would ever sign a thing like this?’ So yes, the tariffs will go forward. We’ll make up a lot of territory. Our country will be liquid and rich again.”

That’s a lot of hyperbole for a failed trade deal. So who was the sucker who agreed to it?

It must be the previous commander in chief Joe Biden, whom Trump often calls the “worst president ever.” Nope. Barack Obama? No again.

“We were led by, in some cases, fools,” Trump reiterated at the Macron press conference. “Anybody that would agree to allow this to happen to our country should be ashamed of themselves.”

Turns out the leader responsible was someone who many believe knows no shame. The one who, in his previous incarnation as a real estate tycoon, authored a best-selling book called “The Art of the Deal.”

Yes, the president was talking about himself, though it’s likely he wasn’t aware of that. Admitting mistakes is not his style. And he’s certainly never referred to himself as a fool before, at least not in front of the cameras.
‘People are pissed. Not hard to see why’: Protests break out across the country against Trump, Musk

Jen Psaki discusses the mass protests breaking out against Elon Musk and Donald Trump across the country and speaks to the President of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists Union David Spero about the impact of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)'s layoffs.
Portrait of Ed Kilgore By Ed Kilgore

A local Washington, D.C., TV news reporter has a story that we are almost certainly going to hear often once the Trump administration’s mass-deportation initiative intensifies:

A naturalized Hispanic man says he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who were looking for another person on a deportation order, and now the man is questioning his vote for President Donald Trump. …

[Jensy] Machado said he was driving to work Wednesday with two other men when he was stopped by ICE agents on Lomond Drive in Manassas, a short distance from his home. He said he was confused by what was happening, why agents surrounded the pickup truck.

“And they just got out of the car with the guns in their hands and say, turn off the car, give me the keys, open the window, you know,” Machado told Telemundo 44’s Rosbelis Quinoñez, who first reported his story. “Everything was really fast.” …

“They didn’t ask me for any ID,” Machado said. “I was telling the officer, if I can give him ID, but he said just keep my hands up, not moving. After that, he told me to get out of the car and put the handcuffs on me. And then he went to me and said how did I get into this country and if I was waiting for a court date or if I have any case. And I told him I was an American citizen, and he looked at his other partner like, you know, smiling, like saying, can you believe this guy? Because he asked the other guy, ‘Do you believe him?’”
Story by Ed Mazza

President Donald Trump, who promised to cut the cost of groceries on his first day in office, now seems to have a much different take on high prices as he shared a column with a very blunt headline: “Shut Up About Egg Prices ― Trump Is Saving Consumers Millions.”

Trump posted a link to the Feb. 17 article, written by right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, on his Truth Social website over the weekend:

Egg prices have reached record highs in recent weeks, averaging $4.95 a dozen in January and passing $10 per dozen in some parts of the country. Grocery stores in places have put limits on egg purchases, and some have run out of them entirely. A number of restaurants have even tacked egg surcharges onto the check.
Longtime MAGA supporters and members of the Cabinet have begun pushing back on Elon Musk and the elites surrounding the president.
By Jonathan Allen

Inside President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, the populists and politicians are starting to take swings at the plutocrats — namely billionaire White House adviser Elon Musk.

In a tense Cabinet meeting Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy excoriated Musk for firing their employees without giving consideration to whether letting them go would improve or harm their agencies.

A day earlier, Republican senators, concerned about the human and political costs of Musk’s legally murky budget cuts, appeared to secure an on-the-spot commitment from the billionaire to let Congress vote on those cuts rather than having the White House try to implement them unilaterally.

Musk told the senators — nearly all of them former Rubio colleagues — that his Department of Government Efficiency was not responsible for the cuts, according to two people familiar with a discussion that occurred behind closed doors. Not only was his position at odds with his public posture — Musk wielded a toy chain saw at a conservative conference last month — but it implicitly laid blame at the feet of the Cabinet secretaries who would meet with him and Trump the following day.

After listening to the back-and-forth between his Cabinet secretaries and his biggest political benefactor, Trump publicly clipped Musk’s wings. The Senate-confirmed secretaries will have control over who is fired in their departments for now, the president said, with Musk playing a backup role if necessary.
Regulations saves lives and people from harm. Deregulation harms some and kills others. How many people will be harmed or killed from Trump's and republicans deregulation push?

Story by Richard Chambers

Day one of Donald Trump’s second presidency made it resoundingly clear: The Trump-Vance administration is prioritizing deregulation. He has announced a freeze on new federal regulations, an executive order requiring agencies to repeal at least 10 rules or regulations for each new one they adopt, and “initial rescissions” of 80-plus Biden actions, including easing rules around AI. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been taking charge of government agencies like the Treasury Department and reducing staff. And we’re less than two months in.

In organizations that have long felt the financial and administrative burdens of regulatory compliance, it’s only natural for board members and C-Suite leaders to regard this change with a collective sigh of relief. Less regulation means less budget and personnel allocated to auditing and compliance activities. But don’t start reallocating your compliance dollars yet. Many of the actions are already being challenged in court, and most regulations won’t be easy to do away with given the numerous requirements and time restraints it takes.

That won’t stop the administration from trying—and succeeding in many cases. The new administration will keep pushing to reduce existing federal oversight and issue fewer new regulations. We are moving into an era in which government regulation will be de-emphasized, whatever the eventual specifics.

Martin O’Malley former Governor of Maryland joins Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House to discuss the work being done by Elon Musk and his army of DOGE bros who are actively working to undermine social security, and what can be done to stop these changes before benefits and payments are interrupted.
Story by Charles P. Pierce

Not that it will matter to anyone except the farmers in California, and then not until this summer when things get hot and dry, but the administration’s release of a massive amount of water on January 30 was almost altogether a photo op. At the time, more than a few people noticed that the release of the water, ostensibly to help quench the epic wildfires that had been raging in and around Altadena and Pacific Palisades, wasn’t doing any good.

Col. Chad W. Caldwell, commander of the Army Corps’ Sacramento district, wrote that the water that poured out of Lake Kaweah and Success Lake “could not be delivered to Southern California directly.” To do so would have required several steps of coordination with state and federal agencies to transport the water to a rarely used connection point, and it quickly became clear that was impossible in such little time, according to the memo.
The protester's 8-month pregnant wife was also threatened with arrest
Taylor Odisho

Democrats are speaking out against the Trump administration for working with Columbia University to arrest pro-Palestine activist Mahmoud Khalil, a former graduate student who holds a Green Card and is a permanent U.S. resident.

Khalil, who was born in Syria and obtained his graduate degree from Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs in December, has been a vocal supporter of Palestine. He served as a negotiator for students bargaining with university officials to dismantle the "Gaza Solidarity Encampment," which sparked a global movement but made Khalil a target for pro-Israel activists, AP News reported.

University officials worked with the Trump administration and Khalil was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs agents, who also threatened to arrest his 8-month pregnant wife, in his apartment on Saturday.

Since then, protests have erupted and #FreeMahmoudKhalil has trended across social media as the nation has called for him to be freed. Several Democratic politicians have also spoken out in support of the detained activist.

"Free Mahmoud Khalil. This is straight out of the fascist playbook. Criminalizing dissent is an assault on our First Amendment and freedom of speech," Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib wrote in an X post shared Monday.
Is Trump a useful idiot, a Russian asset or a Russian mole?

Story by Matthew Chapman

President Donald Trump has brought about an alarming retreat from American values on the world stage, in ways that all seem to empower Russia and Vladimir Putin, wrote conservative analyst Max Boot in a scathing column for The Washington Post published on Monday.

"Unrestrained by any administration 'adults,' Trump is executing what may be the most startling U-turn in the history of U.S. foreign policy," wrote Boot, a frequent critic of the president. Specifically, he is trying to align America with the Kremlin, something that has been diametrically opposed to U.S. interests since 1917.

"Trump has ended funding for the National Endowment for Democracy, which the Kremlin hates because it supports groups that expose Putin’s tyranny and corruption," wrote Boot. "He has cut off offensive cyber-operations against Russia. He voted with Russia (and such rogue regimes as North Korea and Belarus) at the United Nations against a resolution censuring Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. He has said he won’t defend NATO nations that supposedly don’t pay enough for defense. (Most NATO members now meet its target of spending 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense, but Trump is shifting the goal posts by demanding 5 percent of GDP — well beyond the 3.4 percent that the United States itself spends.)"
Analysis by Matt Egan, CNN

New York CNN — Just 20 days ago, the US stock market was sitting at all-time highs. The US economy appeared to be growing at a solid pace. And a recession was nowhere in sight.

Now, the R-word is seemingly everywhere.

Recession fears are rocking the stock market. GDP forecasts are getting slashed. President Donald Trump and his economic team are facing questions about a possible recession —and failing to ease mounting jitters about the economy.
ABC News

The United States and Ukraine are calling for a 30-day ceasefire, subject to the acceptance of Russia, following talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

The U.S. will also "immediately lift" its pause on intelligence sharing and "resume security assistance to Ukraine," the countries said in a joint statement.

The U.S. and Ukraine "took important steps toward restoring durable peace for Ukraine," the statement said.

"Ukraine expressed readiness to accept the U.S. proposal to enact an immediate, interim 30-day ceasefire, which can be extended by mutual agreement of the parties, and which is subject to acceptance and concurrent implementation by the Russian Federation," the statement said. "The United States will communicate to Russia that Russian reciprocity is the key to achieving peace."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who led the U.S. delegation in Jeddah, said the ceasefire proposal will be delivered to Russia "directly through multiple channels."

"The offer is to stop the shooting. The goal here is, the only way out to end this war is to negotiate out of it. There's no military solution to this war," Rubio said during remarks to reporters in Jeddah following the talks. "Before you can negotiate, you have to stop shooting at each other. And that's what [President Donald Trump] has wanted to see, and that's the commitment we got today from the Ukrainian side, their willingness to do that, obviously."

"Our hope is that the Russians will say yes," Rubio added.

During a House Oversight Committee hearing, Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) questioned witnesses about Elon Musk and DOGE cuts, as well as attacks on Social Security. Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:

In an interview with Fox Business, Elon Musk said he is looking to cut waste and fraud from US entitlement programs. However, Musk’s estimate for the amount of waste and fraud is much higher than previous estimates. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) discusses Musk’s controversial remark and what it could mean for Social Security.
Story by Colby Hall

President Donald Trump continued to amplify anti-Canadian trade rhetoric on Tuesday, wondering why the current policy of free trade of electricity is allowed. Trump also amplified his ignorance that the free trade agreement was negotiated explicitly under the USMCA free trade agreement that went into effect during his first administration.

Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff policy with some of the U.S.’s strongest allies and largest trade partners — including Mexico and Canada — has caused significant market disruption, leading to a spate of warnings about a looming recession. During a Sunday interview with Maria Bartiromo, Trump’s refusal to say that he could not guarantee there wouldn’t be a recession did not calm already skittish investors.
Story by Ja'han Jones

Trump turns CISA upside down
Donald Trump is known for peddling conspiracy theories about election security, yet his administration has cut funding for two key cybersecurity initiatives, including one focused on election security. On Monday, The Associated Press reported the Trump administration slashed millions of dollars for two initiatives, the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center. Both initiatives are part of the nonprofit Center for Internet Security.

The AP highlighted the potential ramifications:

The activities no longer being funded include cyber threat intelligence, cyber incident response and engaging with state and local government officials. In a statement, the agency said ending the funding will help ‘focus CISA’s work on mission critical areas, and eliminate redundancies.’

Trump and the GOP have had the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in their crosshairs since 2020, when Trump fired its former director, Chris Krebs, who debunked election conspiracy theories Trump was spreading at the time.

Trump has made several moves at CISA in his second term that have raised eyebrows. His Department of Homeland Security secretary said earlier this year that CISA shouldn’t focus on thwarting foreign misinformation efforts that target Americans. Meanwhile, a recent CBS article highlighted worries among lawmakers and federal employees about the dire consequences of gutting CISA, including the recent firing of a top employee responsible for overseeing defense against cyberattacks on critical infrastructure like water pipelines and electrical grids.
Story by Sarah K. Burris

President Donald Trump is downplaying his influence on the stock market after watching it plunge by more than 2,000 points Monday — with another 500-point tumble soon after opening Tuesday.

But MSNBC showed a supercut of Trump's past speeches in which he boasted about his impact on the markets and claimed credit for a successful surge.

"I don't want to be braggadocious, but we'll say it anyway, the Trump Effect, it's you. You're the effect. Since the election, the stock market has surged," Trump said on Jan. 19 at a pre-inauguration rally.

On Feb. 9, Trump told Fox News, "I was very proud to have handed over the country, and the stock market was higher than it was before the pandemic came in. It was an amazing achievement."
Carl Gibson, AlterNet

President Donald Trump notably stayed away from cameras on Monday, as Wall Street experienced its worst day in years as investors react to a climate of economic uncertainty.

On Monday evening, CNN host Anderson Cooper reminded viewers that despite normally being willing to take questions from reporters in the Oval Office, Trump was "nowhere to be seen" following a "massive stock sell off that began the moment the bell rang." Cooper noted that the Dow Jones Industrial Average was "down almost 900 points," while the Nasdaq Composite "took the worst beating" of the day, down by 4% after the conclusion of trading on Monday. He also remarked that today marked the biggest single-day decline since September of 2022.

"More than an hour after markets closed, the White House did finally put out a statement touting the president's economic agenda and first term record on the economy. It didn't mention the massive drops today, nor what sparked it," Cooper said. "The culprit wasn't a poorly received report of jobs, GDP or consumer spending. as is often the case. It was what the president himself said."
Holly Ellyatt

The European Union has reacted swiftly to U.S. President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports that came into effect Wednesday, retaliating with their own punitive counter-measures that it said were needed to protect consumers and businesses.

The White House confirmed the duties — which will affect Canada, Australia, the EU and others — late Tuesday, but said that Trump no longer planned to raise tariffs on the metals from Canada to 50%.

The EU responded swiftly, saying it would impose counter-tariffs on 26 billion euros ($28.33 billion) worth of U.S. goods starting in April.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday told reporters that the EU “must act to protect businesses and consumers.”

We deeply regret this measure [by the U.S.]. Tariffs are taxes, they are bad for business and worse for consumers, they are disrupting supply chains, they bring uncertainty for the economy, jobs are at stake, prices are up and nobody needs that, neither side needs that,” she said during a press conference.

Rachel Maddow explains how House Republicans had the power to take away Donald Trump's ability to casually throw around trade tariffs in a way that is roiling markets and provoking trade wars, but instead of using their power to protect the economy (and the American public) from Trump's impulsiveness, they gave away their power and went out of their way to twist the rules to do so.
And how unchecked innovation enabled the ruse.
EXPERT OPINION BY PETER COHAN, FOUNDER, PETER S. COHAN & ASSOCIATES @PETERCOHAN

In America, a profound sense of betrayal is taking root. Many supporters of President Donald Trump are suffering economic distress instead of the prosperity Trump promised. Escalating tariffs and massive government layoffs are causing them to question the choices they made at the ballot box.

Betrayed Trump voters have many reasons they voted for him: They expected him to cut waste and fraud and get criminals off the streets. Some Trump voters regret believing him when he distanced himself from Project 2025.

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Project 2025 co-author and Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought said in a speech leading up to the November 4 election, reported NBC News. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”

Here are three stories from betrayed Trump voters.
By LORNE COOK, DAVID MCHUGH and ROB GILLIES

BRUSSELS (AP) — Major trade partners swiftly hit back at President Donald Trump’s increased tariffs on aluminum and steel imports, imposing stiff new taxes on U.S products from textiles and water heaters to beef and bourbon.

Canada, the largest supplier of steel and aluminum to the U.S., said Wednesday it will place 25% reciprocal tariffs on steel products and also raise taxes on a host of items: tools, computers and servers, display monitors, sports equipment, and cast-iron products.

Across the Atlantic, the European Union will raise tariffs on American beef, poultry, bourbon and motorcycles, bourbon, peanut butter and jeans.

Combined, the new tariffs will cost companies billions of dollars, and further escalate the uncertainty in two of the world’s major trade partnerships. Companies will either take the losses and earn fewer profits, or, more likely, pass costs along to consumers in the form of higher prices.

Prices will go up, in Europe and the United States, and jobs are at stake, said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

“We deeply regret this measure. Tariffs are taxes. They are bad for business, and even worse for consumers,” von der Leyen said.
By Elisabeth Buchwald, CNN

CNN — President Donald Trump imposed sweeping 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imported into the United States Wednesday, a policy aimed at leveling the playing field for US manufacturing but a move that threatens to drive up prices on a broad range of consumer and industrial goods for Americans.

It’s the latest salvo in Trump’s multifaceted tariff plan aimed at correcting perceived trade imbalances and reigniting domestic industry. But it risks igniting a global trade war. The European Union, hit for the first time by higher US tariffs since Trump returned to the White House, retaliated within hours with countermeasures on US goods exports. And later Wednesday, Canada announced over $20 billion in retaliatory measures as well.

Trump on Wednesday in the Oval Office said the United States would up the ante after the European and Canadian retaliation, but he did not spell out how or when the United States would respond.

“Of course I will respond, Trump said.

The tariffs on steel and aluminum mark the first time in Trump’s second term that a set of tariffs has been applied to all countries.

Imposing steel and aluminum tariffs poses a risky bet: Although it could give America’s steel and aluminum industries a boost, it will raise prices on a key ingredient for American manufacturers, which could be passed on to consumers. The costs could outweigh the benefit.
Opinion by David Gardner

Vladimir Putin has Donald Trump right where he wants him.

Now the world is waiting to see what Russia wants, rather than what Ukraine needs or the United States desires.

The U.S. president sees peace as a means to an end. In his case, bragging rights over Joe Biden and European leaders who have fretted over the bloody conflict for three years.

Of course, Trump also wants the killing to stop. But picking up the phone to the Kremlin and sending over your golfing buddy to knock some sense into the Russians is playing into Putin’s hands.

Because Moscow has no interest in peace.

It is Trump’s strategy, or rather, his lack of strategy, that interests Putin and his pit bull foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov. The naive approach, talk of World War II alliances and ending the bloodshed, forgets Russia’s maximalist ambitions.

According to a senior diplomatic source with intimate knowledge of Putin’s inner circle, Trump’s protégé and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff will likely bypass the usual protocols when he meets with Putin in Moscow later this week.
Story by Erik De La Garza

An exclusive New York Times report that revealed tech billionaire Elon Musk wants to pour $100 million of his vast fortune into political groups aligned with President Donald Trump drew outrage from observers who pointed out the curious timing of new the multimillion-dollar effort from the world's richest person.

The eyeball-popping donation was “unheard-of” for a White House staffer, according to the Times’ reporting on Tuesday, which detailed the DOGE head's upcoming plans for his presidential boss.

But the move didn’t sit well with onlookers – who noted that the report hit the same day that Trump used the White House lawn to promote Musk's Tesla electric vehicles, as the company's stock has plummeted in the last seven weeks.
Story by Rhian Lubin

The acting head of the Social Security Administration admitted that he doesn’t know exactly what the “DOGE kids” have been doing with Americans’ sensitive data, according to a bombshell audio recording.

An hour-long meeting last week led by the department’s acting commissioner, Leland Dudek, was captured on an audio recording shared with ProPublica, where he repeatedly referred to young staffers at the Department of Government Efficiency as the “DOGE kids,” and confirmed they had “broad access” to Social Security numbers and personal data.

Addressing what DOGE staffers had been doing with Social Security data, Dudek reportedly asked at one point in the meeting: “Are we going to break something? I don’t know.”

But he added that he “actually like[s] having the kids around” despite them being unfamiliar with the “nuances” of the department. “They’re learning. Let people learn. They’re going to make mistakes,” Dudek reportedly said. “They’re thinking about work differently.”

One of his deputies in the meeting added it was a “victory” that there was not more misinformation because the DOGE staffers “are being educated.”

In a bid to reassure employees, Dudek reportedly said that if Elon Musk’s techies did anything illegal with Americans’ Social Security numbers or data, he would investigate and have them “potentially prosecuted.”
Story by Julia Conley

With declining consumer interest in Tesla vehicles sending CEO and Trump administration ally Elon Musk into an apparent panic over the electric automaker's plummeting stock—spurring an impromptu car show on the White House lawn Tuesday with President Donald Trump scolding Americans for not buying Musk's products—recent reports from across Europe and Canada suggest the two right-wing leaders are pushing global consumers to reject not just Tesla, but a wide array of American goods.

As The Guardian reported Wednesday, numbers released this week by Statistics Canada showed waning enthusiasm for Canadians to visit their southern neighbor, with 23% fewer Canadians taking road trips into the U.S.—the most popular mode of cross-border travel—this year so far compared to February 2024.

With Trump initiating a trade war with Canada—falsely claiming the country is a major source of fentanyl flowing into the U.S.—by imposing 25% tariffs on all Canadian imports and threatening to take over the country as the "cherished Fifty First State," consumers have been downloading apps like "Maple Scan" and "Is This Canadian?" to avoid purchasing U.S.-made products.
Arthur Sullivan

The Trump administration's uncompromising approach to tariffs appears to have sparked a trend in opposition — boycott campaigns against American products from consumers and companies.

Scandinavian countries and Canada are at the forefront of a growing international trend in which some consumers are shunning US goods because of President Donald Trump's decision to place tariffs on a range of products from all over the world.

Several Facebook groups have been set up in recent weeks aimed at organizing boycotts and campaigns. A Swedish group called "Bojkotta varor fran USA" in Swedish, meaning "Boycott goods from the US," had almost 80,000 members at the time of writing.

It describes its purpose as to "protect democracy, self-determination and security," and says it hopes boycotts will put pressure on the Trump administration. The use of the American platform Facebook is justified as it is "the best weapon," it added.

Several similar Canadian groups have started on Facebook, while a French group called "BOYCOTT USA: Achetez Francais et Europeen!" — BOYCOTT USA: Buy French and European! — has over 20,000 members.
Tesla drops amid Musk wrath

There is limited data available so far to show if such campaigns are having an impact. However, one of the US products with an especially tangible link to the Trump administration is Tesla. The electric car brand is run by Elon Musk, a senior advisor to Trump currently tasked with running the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The Guardian

With Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino cosying up to each other, we will have to boycott the 2026 World Cup and all things American (Gianni Infantino and Donald Trump have taken the 2026 World Cup for themselves, 12 March). A couple of problems, however: Tim Cook of Apple has also donated to Trump. My quandary is that both my iPhone and iPad are on the blink and need updating, so what should I do? And we must try to buy Canadian goods, but what else is there besides Canadian maple syrup on sale here?

Patricia Borlenghi
Manningtree, Essex
I recently had a wonderful walk on Bleaklow in the Peak District and visited the wreckage of the American bomber, the B29 Superfortress Overexposed, which crashed in 1948. The centre of the devastation was adorned with stars and stripes. There were also many poppies and small wooden crosses, one marked “RIP our allies”. How poignant at this time and how sad.

Martin Whittle
Sheffield
Apparently, the worst playground insult these days is “You’re Donald Trump!” Have any readers who work in schools heard this?

Phil Brand
London
The suggestion that cinemas show adverts at the end of films (Letters, 10 March) reminds me of the days when we scrambled for the exit as soon as the film ended to avoid having to stand through the national anthem.
There’s a growing global call to boycott American-made goods.

Consumers across the world are boycotting American products in protest of literally everything Donald Trump is doing.

In Canada, American liquor, wine, and spirits have been pulled off the shelves in response to Trump’s tariff war with America’s northern ally. Canadians have booed the American national anthem at hockey games, and trips across the southern border dropped 23 percent last month from the same time last year.

In Sweden and Denmark, people are calling for a boycott of American companies, including McDonalds, Amazon, and KFC, after Trump pulled military funding for Ukraine. A Danish Facebook group, Boykot varer fra USA, which translates to “Boycott Goods from the U.S.,” has over 70,000 members. Users post about alternatives to American products, and support one another in boycotting American products.

“I have been in the group for a few days and can already feel my joy at my increased consumer awareness,” one user posted.

And across the world, electric vehicle buyers are refusing to buy Teslas in rejection of Elon Musk’s shadow presidency, his support for the far-right German party AfD, his hand gesture that looked like a Nazi salute, his slashing of federal funding through the Department of Government Efficiency … the list goes on.
Story by ktan@businessinsider.com (Kwan Wei Kevin Tan)

A federal judge ordered Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to hand over documents and answer questions about their plans to trim federal agencies.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan said in her order on Wednesday that Musk and DOGE have to comply with the discovery request in three weeks.

Under the order, Musk and DOGE must turn over records relating to their plans to cull federal agencies, terminate federal employees, and cancel federal contracts. The discovery requests do not apply to President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order establishing DOGE on January 20, the day he took office.

Last month, 14 Democratic state attorneys general filed a federal lawsuit against Trump, Musk, and DOGE. In their lawsuit, the attorneys general asked the court to "restore constitutional order" and stop Musk "from issuing orders to any person in the Executive Branch outside of DOGE."

"Mr. Musk does not occupy an office of the United States and has not had his nomination for an office confirmed by the Senate. His officer-level actions are thus unconstitutional," the lawsuit argued.
Story by Travis Getty

Elon Musk wants to position himself above the federal government in an unprecedented way, according to veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO bought himself a powerful perch in the White House by giving more than a quarter billion dollars to Donald Trump's re-election campaign, and he has set about eliminating thousands of government jobs and entire federal agencies, but Swisher told "CNN This Morning" that Musk is scooping up sensitive data to give him a "god's view" of the entire government.
Travis Gettys

Four young staffers working under Elon Musk gained access to highly sensitive personal data held by a consumer protection agency before shutting it down.

White House budget director Russell Vought ordered wider access to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau materials by staffers working for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency over the weekend before agency chief operating officer Adam Martinez ordered all its employees to stay home for the week, reported Bloomberg News.

"The actions began last Thursday, when four young staffers working under Musk for [DOGE] showed up at CFPB’s Washington headquarters," the publication reported. "At first, they had what was described as read-only access to a limited array of documents, including the agency’s internal personnel files, procurement records and budgeting and financial data, according to an email shared among CFPB officials."

"Then, late Friday night, the DOGE staffers were granted access to all the CFPB’s data systems, including sensitive bank examination and enforcement records, according to five people familiar with the matter and emails seen by Bloomberg News," the report added. "The people asked not to be identified, citing concerns over potential retribution. By Sunday, the agency was a skeleton, with its funding limited and activities suspended."
Story by Emily Peck

DOGE is taking its wrecking ball to the Social Security Administration, the agency responsible for overseeing retirement and disability benefits for 73 million Americans.

Why it matters: The cuts underway could wind up breaking critical parts of a system that millions of the nation's most vulnerable citizens rely on, including nearly 90% of Americans over age 65.

The big picture: Monkeying with Social Security was always viewed as a "third rail" in politics, even before an aide to House Speaker Tip O'Neill coined the phrase in the early 1980s.

Many presidents have tried to reform the system in ambitious ways, but the costs were always too great, perhaps until now.
State of play: The agency announced last month it seeks to cut about 7,000 employees, or 12% of staff, through voluntary resignations and a reduction-in-force plan due Thursday.

Employees have been fleeing, resulting in "a significant loss of expertise," former staffer Tiffany Flick said in an affidavit filed late last week.

The agency also announced plans to shutter six of 10 regional offices.

Also closed? The office inside the agency that had been tasked with moving some of these processes online, the Office of Transformation.

"That office was doing what DOGE purports to do," said Kathleen Romig, director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, who worked at the agency for years under different administrations, most recently in the Biden administration.

DOGE has also gained access to crucial systems, packed with private data that Flick and others said the group doesn't have the expertise to handle.
Story by Julia Ornedo

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) backed off a plan to scrap telephone services for millions of Americans filing claims with the Social Security Administration, just hours after The Washington Post revealed the sweeping changes.

In a tense Tuesday meeting, DOGE staff grilled SSA officials about phone fraud and proposed shifting all claims processing to online channels and in-person offices, according to The Post.

SSA employees floated possible solutions, but DOGE wasn’t “interested in anything else but defending the decision that they had already made,” a source familiar told the paper.

The news was met with outrage on Musk’s social media platform X.

“Going after 90-year-old grandmas who can’t drive and don’t have a computer? That’s just low,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said.
Story by Rhian Lubin

President Donald Trump took to social media to whine about who negotiated a deal allowing Canada to supply energy to the U.S. — but, it turns out, he made the deal.

Amidst the trade tariffs back-and-forth with Canada and Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who suspended the province’s 25 percent electricity surcharge on three U.S. states Tuesday, Trump fumed on Truth Social: “Why would our Country allow another Country to supply us with electricity, even for a small area?”

“Who made these decisions, and why?” the president demanded.

The decision to maintain the free flow of energy across the borders was part of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement and negotiated by Trump in November 2018 during his first term. It was signed into law in January 2020.

Elon Musk's DOGE program promised to save taxpayers billions through aggressive cost-cutting measures. New investigations reveal many of these claims are based on miscalculations.
Story by Brett Arends

Less than a day after Elon Musk promised to find $1 trillion in free money by cutting “fraud and waste” from the federal government — an amount equal to about one federal dollar in seven — his claim has been undercut by yet another government report.

Total federal “improper payments” last year came to $162 billion, according to figures released by the Government Accountability Office.

And the Biden administration had already slashed that figure by a third, or $74 billion, from the year before, as pandemic-era programs were wound down, the GAO added.

The further you look into the report, the worse news becomes for everyone who had already been planning out how to spend their share of the so-called DOGE dividend.

For instance, the GAO’s “improper payments” figure included $7.9 billion in underpayments, which is where the federal government failed to pay people what they were owed.

Deduct that figure from the total — and pay that money out, as intended — and the total savings Uncle Sam could have achieved last year by perfect accounting would have come to $146.2 billion, the GAO numbers show.

Oh, and even this includes $12.6 billion in so-called unknown payments, which the GAO says is where it is “unclear whether a payment was an error or not.” So these might not be overpayments at all, either.
Story by Estelle Nilsson-Julien

When former KGB officer Alnur Mussayev claimed that US President Donald Trump was recruited as an asset for Moscow in the 1980s, it set off a storm on social media.

In a Facebook post on 20 February, Mussayev said that Trump was enlisted by the KGB in 1987 while on a trip to Moscow, then aged 40, and assigned the code name "Krasnov".

Trump has not directly responded to Mussayev's claims. The US president has repeatedly denied having ever worked for Russia.

One thread on X, which has amassed more than 1 million views, refers to Trump as "Krasnov" and brands the US president as a Russian asset. The post goes on to list a series of claims which it presents as purported evidence for this declaration.

Meanwhile, other social media users turned to mockery, with one account posting a photo montage of Trump in a KGB outfit, with the political slogan and acronym MAGA ("Make America Great Again") altered to read "Moscow Agent Governing America".
Story by Joey Garrison, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON ― Tens of thousands of federal government probationary workers fired in recent weeks as part of President Donald Trump's sweeping cuts to the federal workforce must be reinstated immediately to their positions, a California judge ordered Thursday.

The decision from U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco is one of the most far-reaching court defeats so far in the Trump administration's efforts, led by top White House adviser Elon Musk, to gut the federal bureaucracy.

The judge ordered six federal agencies ‒ the departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Energy, Interior and Treasury ‒ to reinstate recently hired or promoted probationary employees who were terminated by the Trump administration.
The administration wants the court to limit the scope of lower court rulings against his executive order that would end automatic birthright citizenship.
By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to narrow nationwide injunctions that have blocked the president’s plan to end automatic birthright citizenship.

Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris said in three concurrently filed emergency applications in different cases that it was a “modest” request.

Notably, she is not asking the court to issue a decision on the merits of the plan that would apply nationwide. Instead, the government wants to the court to limit lower court injunctions to individuals or groups that sued over President Donald Trump’s order, and potentially to people who live in the Democratic-led states that challenged it.

She also asked that the court allow agencies to be able to work on how the executive order issued by Trump on his first day in office could be implemented, if it ever does go into effect.

If the request is granted, the administration could move forward with developing its policy and try to implement it in some form.
Antonio Pequeño IV Forbes Staff

Tesla chief and presidential adviser Elon Musk shared a post Thursday that said public sector workers, not Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, murdered millions of people, marking the billionaire’s latest Nazi-related post as he and his electric vehicle company face continued backlash and boycotts as critics say his embrace of right-wing politics is veering more extreme.

Musk, who has over 219 million followers on X, formerly known as Twitter, retweeted a post saying Soviet revolutionary Joseph Stalin, former Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong and Hitler—whose regime under his direction orchestrated the Holocaust—did not murder millions of people, “Their public sector workers did.”

The post had 1 million views and 14,000 likes as of Thursday evening.

Musk’s repost comes as Tesla is facing boycotts around the world that has resulted in calls for Tesla owners to sell their vehicles and posters in the Bay Area urging owners to “sell your swasticar.”

The repost also follows Nazi puns made by Musk in January, when he evoked the names of infamous Nazi party members like Rudolf Hess and Joseph Goebbels after coming under fire for a gesture he made at a Trump inaugural event that was likened to a Nazi salute by foreign leaders and Democrats.
Story by Alex Henderson

President Donald Trump and many of his MAGA allies continue to use terms like "landslide" and "historic mandate" to describe his victory over then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the United States' 2024 presidential race, but in fact, it was a close election. Trump won the popular vote by roughly 1.5 percent, which is hardly a "landslide."

Nonetheless, Trump's performance in the Rust Belt is a source of major frustration for Democrats, as Trump flipped Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — three of the states that former President Joe Biden carried in 2020. And Democratic strategists want to make sure that those states don't go the way of Ohio, which went to former President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 but now leans Republican.

Some Engagious/Sago focus groups recently held in Michigan may be a hopeful sign for Democrats.
Alex Henderson

Opponents of President Donald Trump's tariff proposals were hoping that he would back down from imposing 25 percent tariffs on all goods imported into the United States from Mexico and Canada. Trump postponed those tariffs by 30 days, but he appears to be determined to go through them after that.

In an editorial published on February 25, the Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board warns that the tariffs will significantly harm the auto industry if Trump follows through with them.

"Businesses breathed a sigh of relief after President Trump gave Mexico and Canada a 30-day reprieve from his threatened 25 percent tariffs," the WSJ editorial board explains. "But on Monday, he said he is 'going forward' with the tariffs next week. If the goal is to harm U.S. auto workers and Republican prospects in Michigan, then by all means, go ahead, Mr. President."
Story by Jake Johnson

Despite his pledge of "maximum transparency," Elon Musk has gone to great lengths to obscure the names and activities of staffers working for his Department of Government Efficiency—even claiming at one point that it is illegal to publicly identify members of the advisory commission.

That didn't stop Wired from publishing a story on Thursday that names 10 DOGE operatives who have infiltrated the Social Security Administration, which is facing deep staffing cuts that advocates warn could impact the delivery of benefits.

The staffers, according to Wired, are Akash Bobba, Scott Coulter, Marko Elez, Luke Farritor, Antonio Gracias, Gautier Cole Killian, Jon Koval, Nikhil Rajpal, Payton Rehling, and Ethan Shaotran. The list "includes a number of young engineers whose presence at the SSA has not been reported."

"This team appears to be among the largest DOGE units deployed to any government agency," the outlet noted. "Many of them have worked or interned at Musk companies such as Tesla and SpaceX, and the majority of them have also appeared at other government agencies in recent weeks, as part of DOGE's incursion into the government."
Carl Gibson

By a slim 217-213 margin, House Republicans narrowly passed a bill Tuesday night that makes deep cuts to safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps while simultaneously extending President Donald Trump's tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans. Wall Street Journal congressional reporter Olivia Beavers tweeted that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had a group of Republicans "shaking his hand, back slapping and congratulating him" after the vote was confirmed.

As Politico reported, the vote was initially slated to fail with multiple Republican holdouts expressing reservations about the scope of cuts in the bill. While the legislation makes $2 trillion in across-the-board spending cuts, Forbes reported that roughly $800 billion of those cuts came from federal support for state Medicaid programs, which provide health insurance for low-income families. But some Republicans, like Reps. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), Thomas Massie (R-Ky) and Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) wanted deeper cuts.

After Johnson and Trump both leaned on the four holdouts, three of them ended up flipping to support the bill, while Massie voted with the Democratic opposition. The Kentucky Republican explained that his primary hangup with the budget bill was that it added $20 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.
The whitewashing of history has begun
Story by BIN

The Trump administration has reportedly banned nearly 200 words, including "Black," "racial justice," and "anti-racism," amid its war on woke and attacks against DEI.

According to the New York Times, 199 words and phrases have been prohibited from use in the Trump administration as the president works to reverse efforts made by Former President Joe Biden.

The censured words include “Black,” “anti-racism,” “discrimination,” “racial justice,” “diversity,” “trauma,” “at-risk,” “minorities,” “underprivileged,” “biased,” “climate science,” “women,” “female,” “socioeconomic,” “climate change,” “cultural heritage," and more.
Opinion by Thom Hartmann

Today, March 13th, through April 7th next month, commemorate the anniversary of what could only be called the start of an intentional, racially-based plan for the mass death of American citizens, put together by Donald Trump and Jared Kushner for purely political purposes, and virtually ignored by the American mainstream media.

If that sounds extreme, read on: all details are hotlinked to credible, mainstream sources. And, as these anniversaries over the next 3 weeks are noted in the press, hopefully some in the media will report on this now-well-documented history.

By March 13th, 2020 Covid had begun to rapidly spread across the United States, despite Trump’s earlier promise that the virus would be “contained” and was “no big deal.”

Back in February of that year, as it was hitting China hard, he’d told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward that the disease was far more dangerous than the flu, while he repeatedly lied about it to the American people.

But that was just the beginning.

“This is deadly stuff,” Trump told Woodward on a Feb. 7 phone call. “You know, the touch — you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air. That’s how it’s passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than your — you know, your — even your strenuous flus.”

A total of 1,645 people from 47 States had been infected with the virus that causes Covid by March 13th, the day Trump issued an emergency declaration that began the process of shutting down America.

And it’s the “why” that Trump intentionally pushed a half-million Americans to die unnecessarily where our media, and the Democrats, have missed the shocking and horrifying story of Trump’s and Kushner’s soulless cruelty.
By JOSEF FEDERMAN, MATTHEW LEE and SAMY MAGDY

JERUSALEM (AP) — The U.S. and Israel have reached out to officials of three East African governments to discuss using their territories as potential destinations for moving Palestinians uprooted from the Gaza Strip under President Donald Trump’s proposed postwar plan, American and Israeli officials told The Associated Press.

The contacts with Sudan, Somalia and the breakaway region of Somalia known as Somaliland reflect the determination by the U.S. and Israel to press ahead with a plan that has been widely condemned and raised serious legal and moral issues. Because all three places are poor, and in some cases wracked by violence, the proposal also casts doubt on Trump’s stated goal of resettling Gaza’s Palestinians in a “beautiful area.”

Officials from Sudan said they have rejected overtures from the U.S., while officials from Somalia and Somaliland told The Associated Press that they were not aware of any contacts.
DOGE is a fraud

Story by Travis Gettys

One of the inspectors general fired by Donald Trump is questioning whether the president is serious about saving money for taxpayers.

Mark Greenblatt was inspector general of the Interior Department from August 2019 until January 2025, when the incoming president fired him and 17 others tasked with auditing and investigating government agencies. He published a piece for NBC News highlighting the $93 billion their work potentially saved Americans for the fiscal year 2023.

"That’s why President Donald Trump’s decision to fire 18 inspectors general in the first week of his term is so puzzling," Greenblatt wrote. "According to the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, IG oversight has collectively resulted in potential savings of about $93.1 billion in FY 2023. With the OIG community’s aggregate FY 2023 budget of approximately $3.5 billion, these potential savings represent an approximate $26 return on every dollar invested in inspectors general."
DOGE is a fraud


The Department of Government Efficiency, the federal cost-cutting initiative championed by Elon Musk, published on Monday a list of government contracts it has canceled, and the New York Times finds the DOGE list 'vastly overstated the actual intended value' of one contract for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
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