Elon Musk said on Friday that while he is taking a step back from his role in the White House, the Department of Government Efficiency, which he helped spearhead, will continue to &#8220;grow stronger.&#8221;
Musk appeared alongside President Donald Trump in the Oval Office for a press conference on the end of Musk&#8217;s time as a &#8220;special government employee.&#8221; During the press conference, Trump praised Musk for his work with the DOGE team, and Musk said he would remain an adviser to the president.
&#8220;This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning,&#8221; Musk said. &#8220;My time as a special government employee necessarily had to end. It was a limited-time thing &#8230; but the DOGE team will only grow stronger over time. The DOGE influence will only grow stronger.&#8221;
&#8220;It is permeating throughout the government, and I am confident that, over time, we will see &#8230; a trillion dollars of waste and fraud reduction,&#8221; he added.
Musk, who will return to focusing more of his attention on his companies Tesla and SpaceX — and his mission to get humanity to Mars — added that DOGE still predicts saving the federal government over $160 billion for fiscal year 2025 to 2026. &#8220;And that&#8217;s climbing,&#8221; he said.
&#8220;I think the DOGE team is doing an incredible job. They&#8217;re going to continue doing an incredible job, and I&#8217;ll continue to be visiting here and be a friend and adviser to the president,&#8221; Musk continued.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@elonmusk</a>: &quot;This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning&#8230; The DOGE team will only grow stronger overtime&#8230; It is permeating throughout the government, and I am confident that, over time, we will see — a trillion dollars of waste and fraud reduction.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/75XZ7ih8qg">pic.twitter.com/75XZ7ih8qg</a>
&mdash; Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1928517327642874003?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 30, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Some of the government waste the White House said was uncovered by the DOGE team <a href="https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1928514412257608022" target="_blank" rel="noopener">includes</a> over $100 million &#8220;for DEI contracts at the Department of Education,&#8221; nearly $59 million &#8220;for illegal alien hotel rooms in New York City,&#8221; $20 million directed to make an &#8220;Arab Sesame Street,&#8221; and $8 million for gender experiments on mice.
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Trump gifted Musk a golden key and called him “one of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a> presents <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@elonmusk</a> with a gold White House key as a gift for his service as a special government employee. <a href="https://t.co/vmpp3RcSTm">pic.twitter.com/vmpp3RcSTm</a>
&mdash; Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1928515860101988759?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 30, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Musk recently grew frustrated over some of the obstacles in the way of cutting government waste and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ive-done-enough-musk-says-he-will-spend-a-lot-less-on-future-political-campaigns?author=Zach+Jewell&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=%E2%80%98I%E2%80%99ve+Done+Enough%E2%80%99%3A+Musk+Says+He+Will+Spend+%E2%80%98A+Lot+Less%E2%80%99+On+Future+Political+Campaigns">said</a> he will dial back his spending on future political campaigns.
“I think I’ve done enough,” Musk said last week, adding, “If I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it. I do not currently see a reason.”
Musk faced constant criticism from the Left and Democrats in Washington as he focused on searching for government waste to cut. After he became a senior adviser to Trump and pushed for major government spending cuts, Tesla has been targeted by leftist activists who have set fires to and vandalized vehicles and threatened Tesla dealerships.
Last week, Musk provided some more <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/musk-reveals-more-about-his-decision-to-step-back-from-politics-and-it-involves-humanoid-robots?author=Zach+Jewell&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Musk+Reveals+More+About+His+Decision+To+Step+Back+From+Politics+%E2%80%A6+And+It+Involves+Humanoid+Robots">insight</a> into his decision to step back from his White House role, writing on X that he believes &#8220;accelerating GDP growth is essential,&#8221; adding that he wants to do so with humanoid robots.
“I have come to the perhaps obvious conclusion that accelerating GDP growth is essential. @DOGE has and will do great work to postpone the day of bankruptcy of America, but the profligacy of government means that only radical improvements in productivity can save our country,” Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1925975507759243741" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>.

Elon Musk

‘Will Only Grow Stronger’: Musk Says It’s Still ‘The Beginning’ Of DOGE As He Steps Back From Role

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

Donald Trump

Executive

Federal Government

Oval Office

Politics

spending

Trump Administration

President Donald Trump promised on Friday that the major spending cuts requested by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will be codified after his &#8220;Big, Beautiful Bill&#8221; passes Congress.
Trump <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wK3XzFZ_ac" target="_blank" rel="noopener">addressed</a> DOGE during a press conference with the mastermind behind the waste-cutting effort, Elon Musk, who is taking a step back from his role in the White House to focus on his companies. The &#8220;Big, Beautiful Bill,&#8221; pushed by Trump and passed by the House, is currently in the hands of the Senate, where it faces scrutiny from some Republicans over its lack of cuts to federal spending.
&#8220;We are totally committed to making the DOGE cuts permanent and stopping much more of the waste in the months to come,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;We want to get our great &#8216;Big, Beautiful Bill&#8217; finished and done. After that, we&#8217;re going to be — we put some of this into the bill, but most of it is going to come later. We&#8217;re going to have it [codified] by Congress.&#8221;
The president promised that the DOGE cuts will result in &#8220;hundreds of billions of dollars&#8221; in savings.
Earlier this week, Musk said he was &#8220;disappointed&#8221; by the &#8220;massive&#8221; bill passed by the House, which he said &#8220;increases the budget deficit&#8221; and &#8220;undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.&#8221;
&#8220;I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,&#8221; Musk <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-disappointed-by-trump-big-beautiful-bill-doge/">said</a> in an interview with CBS News, &#8220;but I don&#8217;t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.&#8221;
Musk wasn&#8217;t alone in his criticism of the &#8220;Big, Beautiful Bill.&#8221; In the House, Republican Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio voted against the legislation, citing the federal deficit. Similarly, Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Mike Lee (R-UT), among others, have raised concerns about the legislation.
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“Everybody likes a tax cut, but when you’re $37 trillion in debt on the path to over $60 trillion in debt, right when the Social Security trust fund is running out, somebody’s got to be the dad that says, ‘I know everybody wants to go to Disney World, but we just can’t afford it,’” Johnson <a href="https://thehill.com/business/budget/5322665-conservative-furor-doge-cuts/">said</a>.
Sen. Lee <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mike-lee-comes-out-against-current-version-of-trump-s-beautiful-bill/ar-AA1FFaYf">told</a> conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, &#8220;The Big, Beautiful Bill is big [but] isn’t yet as beautiful as it needs to be, but there’s still time to fix it. And the Senate version is going to be more aggressive.&#8221;
&#8220;So we got to address the spending crisis to a greater degree than this bill does,” Lee added.
Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, <a href="https://x.com/StephenM/status/1927572082780520465">said</a> earlier this week that the &#8220;Big, Beautiful Bill&#8221; was not the right package to cram through DOGE cuts.
&#8220;DOGE cuts are to discretionary spending. (Eg the federal bureaucracy). Under senate budget rules, you cannot cut discretionary spending (only mandatory) in a reconciliation bill,&#8221; Miller wrote. &#8220;So DOGE cuts would have to be done through what is known as a rescissions package or an appropriations bill.&#8221;

Donald Trump, Elon Musk

‘Totally Committed’: Trump Promises To Codify DOGE Cuts After ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’

Congress

We&#8217;ve been trending in this direction for some time now, but after yesterday&#8217;s ruling by a three-judge panel on the United States Court of International Trade in Manhattan — which struck down all of the Trump administration&#8217;s tariffs — it&#8217;s now official: We don&#8217;t need any more rulings from federal judges about what the president of the United States isn&#8217;t allowed to do. Those are completely pointless. Instead, what we need, in our alleged first-world democracy, is a ruling from some federal court explaining, in as much detail as possible, what exactly the president of the United States does have the authority to do while in office. That would be the most efficient way forward, at this point.
In just the past five months, federal courts have held that the Trump administration has no authority to do the following:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Change federal government websites</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Fire any Executive Branch employees</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Ban mentally disturbed individuals from joining the armed forces </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Eliminate slush funds for corrupt NGOs</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Stop funneling billions of dollars of taxpayer money to anti-white universities like Harvard</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Eliminate wasteful &#8220;administrative spending&#8221; that&#8217;s tacked onto every single scientific grant</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Deport illegal alien gang members — even the wife-beaters and terrorists</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Cut federal funding to child castration services for children</li>
</ul>
And now, after all of these rulings and dozens more like them, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/worlds-stock-markets-react-to-court-ruling-against-trumps-tariffs?author=Hank+Berrien&amp;category=undefined&amp;elementPosition=11&amp;row=3&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+News&amp;rowType=Vertical+Carousel&amp;title=World%E2%80%99s+Stock+Markets+React+To+Court+Ruling+Against+Trump%E2%80%99s+Tariffs">we heard last night</a> from the U.S. Court of International Trade that the president of the United States also does not have the power to impose emergency tariffs on foreign nations. Before we go into the details about this ruling and the problems I have with it, there&#8217;s a very important point that needs to be made here, which is this: Even if you think tariffs are a terrible idea — and really even if you believe that the Court of International Trade made the right ruling in this particular case — you simply cannot deny that the judicial system in this country, because of its own overzealousness, has never been less legitimate than it is right now.
The sheer number of injunctions that have been issued, blocking every single agenda item that the democratically elected president has attempted to execute, is unprecedented in the history of the United States. We&#8217;re in comical, “jump-the-shark” territory. And that&#8217;s a very, very big deal, because courts don&#8217;t have militaries. They can&#8217;t enforce their own rulings. When they lose legitimacy, they lose everything. And with this latest ruling, on top of all the other rulings, legitimacy is long gone.
So who does have legitimacy? Where does legitimacy come from? For judges, legitimacy comes from restraint and consistency, and adherence to the law. For presidents, it comes from democratic elections. It comes from campaigning, and openly telling voters what you plan to do, if and when you&#8217;re elected. And with that in mind, you will not find a single person — even the most deranged anchor on MSNBC — who will disagree with this statement: Donald Trump explicitly campaigned on imposing massive tariffs on foreign nations in order to return manufacturing to the United States. That was always a core plank of his domestic agenda. That doesn&#8217;t mean you have to agree with him. You can feel however you want about tariffs. But it does mean that Trump&#8217;s plan was put to a vote. And the American people decided that Donald Trump&#8217;s economic agenda was the best way forward. That&#8217;s legitimacy. If that&#8217;s not legitimacy, then legitimacy has no meaning. And neither does democracy.
Again, even on MSNBC, they concede this point. Last night, as he was celebrating this court decision, the perpetually unhinged Lawrence O&#8217;Donnell admitted that Trump&#8217;s entire campaign was about tariffs. He says he was talking about tariffs the whole time — and he blames the &#8220;campaign press&#8221; for not talking about tariffs enough. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="001 unconstitutional Tariffs" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/O-_kzh1ORhE?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The point of this little diatribe from Lawrence O&#8217;Donnell is to suggest that, if only the &#8220;campaign press&#8221; had covered Trump&#8217;s tariffs a little bit more, then the voters would have rejected his entire candidacy. This is a very familiar tactic on the Left. They did the same thing with Russiagate. They claimed that, if only people knew that the Russian government had spent $100,000 on Facebook memes back in 2016, then they would never have voted against Hillary Clinton. You poor, poor voters. You&#8217;re always being tricked by Donald Trump. You have no agency whatsoever. Thankfully, the courts will correct that little problem for you.
This is about as undemocratic as it gets. It is asinine, narcissistic and above all, totalitarian. Of course, it wasn&#8217;t just this one MSNBC blowhard who discovered that Trump was talking about tariffs all the time. The entire country heard Trump talk about tariffs. And then they overwhelmingly decided to elect him. And that should matter, more than anything else. Unless the president clearly and unambiguously exceeds his authority under the constitution, then the courts should respect the will of the voters.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/mws-ep-1605-member-exclusive?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+Show+Episodes+Carousel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
And in this case, if you read the ruling from the panel of judges on the United States Court of International Trade, you&#8217;ll discover that Donald Trump did not actually exceed his authority. In order to come to the opposite conclusion, a lot of mental gymnastics were required on the part of this three-judge panel. I want to start with the court&#8217;s handling of Trump&#8217;s fentanyl-related tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China. At the moment this ruling was issued, the tariffs stood at 25% for Mexican and Canadian products, and 20% for Chinese products (with an exception for Canadian energy, which remained at 10%).
Normally, the president can&#8217;t issue tariffs that are quite this high. However, as you probably remember, the Trump administration determined — rightly — that fentanyl trafficking is a national emergency because tens of thousands of Americans are dying each year from fentanyl that&#8217;s imported from overseas. Therefore, under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the White House asserted its authority to impose substantial tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China — tariffs that are much higher than they otherwise could be.
Under this emergency act, the president is allowed to, “&#8230; deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat.&#8221;
Again, the president can, “deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States &#8230; if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat.&#8221;
That&#8217;s a direct quote from the text of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which became law in the 1970s. That&#8217;s the authority Congress delegated to the president. Under this Act, the president can impose substantial tariffs to &#8220;deal with&#8221; any &#8220;extraordinary threat,&#8221; as long as he declares a national emergency. So you might be asking: Isn&#8217;t that exactly what happened in this case? Didn&#8217;t Trump impose the fentanyl tariffs in order to pressure countries like Mexico and China to stop allowing fentanyl into this country? Under the terms of this law, isn&#8217;t the president implementing these tariffs to &#8220;deal with&#8221; the fentanyl crisis?
According to the trade court, the answer to that question is no. Here&#8217;s their reasoning. They focus extensively on the words &#8220;Deal with&#8221; in the law that I just read.
Here&#8217;s what <a href="https://www.cit.uscourts.gov/sites/cit/files/25-66.pdf">they said</a>:
<blockquote>&#8216;Deal with&#8217; connotes a direct link between an act and the problem it purports to address. A tax deals with a budget deficit by raising revenue. A dam deals with flooding by holding back a river. But there is no such association between the act of imposing a tariff and the &#8216;unusual and extraordinary threats&#8217; that the [Fentanyl] Trafficking Orders purport to combat. &#8230; The [Fentanyl] Trafficking Orders do not &#8216;deal with&#8217; their stated objectives. Rather, as the Government acknowledges, the Orders aim to create leverage to &#8216;deal with&#8217; those objectives.</blockquote>
In other words, the court is acknowledging that the fentanyl tariffs are being used by the Trump administration as a form of leverage, which can force foreign countries to &#8220;deal with&#8221; the fentanyl problem. But they&#8217;re claiming that, under the law, that&#8217;s not allowed. That&#8217;s not how you&#8217;re supposed to &#8220;deal with&#8221; fentanyl, according to this three-judge panel. The judges are saying that the Trump administration is assuming too much power, and that &#8220;leverage&#8221; isn&#8217;t the appropriate way to &#8220;deal with&#8221; an emergency. Therefore, apparently, the Trump administration needed to impose a tariff specifically on fentanyl imports, or something like that — even though it would obviously accomplish nothing at all, because no one is declaring their fentanyl shipments at the border.
I want to emphasize this a little more, because this part of the ruling really deserves more attention than it&#8217;s getting. Congress passed a law that allows the president to &#8220;deal with&#8221; any emergency he declares. And now, decades later, this trade court is saying, in effect — &#8220;no, you can&#8217;t deal with it like that.&#8221; But there&#8217;s nothing in the law that justifies their ruling. The court just makes it up. The only reasoning that the court provides — which is contained in two paragraphs at the end of their opinion — is that the Trump administration&#8217;s approach would justify any kind of tariff they wanted to impose, no matter how ridiculous. They&#8217;re saying that, if Trump can use &#8220;leverage&#8221; as a justification, then he can impose whatever tariff he wants. But that&#8217;s not true. There has to be an underlying emergency, first of all. And the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans every year certainly qualifies.
Additionally, there&#8217;s evidence that, in this case, Trump&#8217;s &#8220;leverage&#8221; is indeed working. Within days of Trump&#8217;s sweeping tariffs on Canada, for example, Trudeau appointed a fentanyl czar and pledged to screen exports more carefully, in order to prevent fentanyl from entering into this country.
So we&#8217;re not talking about some arbitrary tariff that has no connection to reality. We&#8217;re talking about a tariff that has already produced tangible results that will stem the flow of fentanyl. But apparently, that&#8217;s not good enough.
I&#8217;m highlighting this part of the ruling because it underscores the extent of the judicial coup we&#8217;re witnessing. Congress delegated authority to the president to &#8220;deal with&#8221; an emergency. He attempted to do that. And then the court overrides him, based on ad hoc reasoning that invalidates the will of the voters, who elected the Trump administration (and the members of Congress who passed that emergency tariff law). Again, it&#8217;s fine if you think the tariffs are a bad idea, or good idea, or if you have mixed feelings about it. But the solution, in that case, is for Congress to rescind the tariff power — in whole or in part. The solution is not for random courts in Manhattan to override the president and the Congress, based on very strained interpretations of the law.
This ruling has already been appealed, and it&#8217;s clear that the Trump administration can still impose tariffs — albeit reduced ones — under the non-emergency tariff powers that have been passed by Congress. And late on Thursday, a federal appeals court put a temporary stay on the court&#8217;s ruling. So the ultimate outcome here is still uncertain. What&#8217;s not uncertain is that federal judges, once again, have undermined what&#8217;s left of their legitimacy with this ruling. If this had been the very first injunction against a Trump administration policy, it wouldn’t be as much of a crisis. People may even give the judges the benefit of the doubt throughout the appeals process. But we&#8217;ve seen more than 100 rulings like this by now. This is unsustainable — to the point that, if one of these federal judges somehow manages to issue a good ruling, no one will follow it. That&#8217;s not the ideal outcome for this country or the rule of law, obviously. But with this decision from a court that no one has ever heard of — which erases the president&#8217;s congressionally-approved authority to &#8220;deal with&#8221; national emergencies — it&#8217;s the outcome that now appears to be inevitable.

Federal Judge Strikes Down Trump Executive Order Aimed At WilmerHale Law Firm

These Federal Judges Are Trying To Stop Trump From Dealing With The Fentanyl Crisis

Canada

Fentanyl

Judges

Matt Walsh

Mexico

Opinion

President Trump

Tariffs

President Trump is apparently pushing for a higher tax rate. That’s a nonstarter.
The tax regime that President Trump put into place in his first term, his tax cuts, were a boon to the economy. They actually disproportionately benefited people who were middle and lower class. Revising the tax regime to pay for more loopholes and tax breaks in particular areas by increasing taxes on the highest income earners will sink investment capital. That&#8217;s what it does.
As somebody who has been in most tax brackets at one point in my life, I can tell you I will invest less if I have less money to invest. That&#8217;s true for everyone who is a high net earner. Increasing the income tax on the top income tax bracket in order to pay for more useless government spending — because nobody has the actual guts to say in American politics that we spend too much on our social welfare programs, which we do, particularly our means tested social welfare programs — will break the American economy.
It&#8217;s like shifting deckchairs on the Titanic.
Increasing the marginal tax rate at the top by 2% or something similar is not going to save anything. If the Republican Party is now the tax-raising party and the tariff party, we will have to see how that works out for them at the polls.
I do not think it is going to work out particularly well.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2196-member-exclusive?elementPosition=3&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
According to some reports, President Trump is privately urging speaker Mike Johnson to raise the top tax rate and close the so-called “carried interest loophole.”
You hear about the “carried interest loophole” all the time. Very often the media will use a term and call it a loophole when it&#8217;s not a loophole at all. Here’s an example: They will refer to a “gun show loophole,” claiming that if you&#8217;re a federally licensed firearms dealer, you can just go to a gun show and sell a gun randomly, which is not true. They say the “gun show loophole” means a private person who sells a gun to his friend doesn&#8217;t have to necessarily go through all of the federal background check, which just means that if you are a federally licensed firearms dealer and you&#8217;re a private individual, that these rules don&#8217;t apply to you in the same way.
So what is the “carried interest loophole”? Is it a loophole at all? What is carried interest? “Carried interest” works like this: Fund managers typically receive two forms of compensation. If you work at hedge fund or in private equity or venture capital, you have two forms of being paid.
One is a management fee, which is just income. You simply get paid a flat fee to handle people&#8217;s portfolios.
Then there&#8217;s the so-called “carried interest,” which is a share of the fund&#8217;s profits. The fund makes a profit; you get a share of the profit. But in order for it to qualify for capital gains tax as opposed to income tax, the underlying investments have to be held for more than three years.
Management fees are taxed at the regular income rate; carried interest is taxed as the long-term capital gain at a maximum rate of 20% if the underlying investments are held for more than three years.
So here is the question. If you have a share of the profits, isn&#8217;t that more like owning a stock? That&#8217;s the reason why it&#8217;s not treated as a form of typical income. It&#8217;s more like selling a stock because you actually are getting a share of stock that was profitable and then it was sold. Thus it&#8217;s more like a capital gain than it is like income.
Now you can make an argument that capital gains should be taxed the same as income. But stop pretending that the “carried interest loophole” is a form of normal income that&#8217;s getting carved out for hedge fund managers. That&#8217;s not what it is.
This populist leftist economic policy for heavy trade restrictionism for the sake of trade restrictionism as a subsidy to particular areas of the American economy added to higher tax rates, and I&#8217;m wondering what the difference is between that economic policy per se and leftist Democrat senator Sherrod Brown&#8217;s economic policy when he was senator from Ohio.
That is not the economic policy that President Trump enacted in his first term that was so wildly successful in increasing the earnings of everybody from the bottom part of the spectrum to the top part of the spectrum.
This would be a mistake.

Trump Hails The Election Of First US Pope As A ‘Great Honor’

Why Raising The Top Tax Rate Is A Recipe For Economic Decline

Ben Shapiro

Economy

Income tax

Taxes

Wealth Tax

Welfare

Poorly equipped, unsanitary, and understaffed facilities. A sewage leak caused patients to vomit. Positive sexually transmitted infection results went unreported. 
The New York Times gave a shocking <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/15/us/planned-parenthood-clinics.html">glimpse</a> behind the curtain of Planned Parenthood. Although the legacy media usually defends and promotes the largest U.S. provider of abortion (nearly <a href="https://cdn.plannedparenthood.org/uploads/filer_public/ec/f4/ecf43d92-fcd2-4d11-b299-e67b5c3ac394/2024-ppfa-annualreport-c3-digital.pdf">39%</a> of <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-united-states">all</a> abortions in our country), some things are too egregious to ignore. 
This is what Planned Parenthood dispenses under the guise of providing “necessary women’s health care.” 
These grotesque lapses aren’t due to a lack of funding, but a lack of desire to provide quality care. According to its 2022-2023 annual <a href="https://cdn.plannedparenthood.org/uploads/filer_public/ec/f4/ecf43d92-fcd2-4d11-b299-e67b5c3ac394/2024-ppfa-annualreport-c3-digital.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a>, the collective organization received over $2 billion in income, including $699.3 million in taxpayer funding and $997.5 million in private donations. Yet, they don’t prioritize “care, no matter what,” as their advertising claims. Instead, they funnel money into lawsuits and to loyal politicians, spending nearly <a href="https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/tipsheets/the-quickie-planned-parenthood-votes-launches-2024-electoral-program" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$40 million</a> in the 2024 election cycle.
Their goal is to overturn any limitations on abortion, even <a href="https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/abortion/types-attacks/trap-laws" target="_blank" rel="noopener">arguing against</a> basic safety standards that would improve care for the women Planned Parenthood claims to be concerned about.
I have seen the disintegration of Planned Parenthood’s mission firsthand, as I worked part-time for a local Planned Parenthood while I was an OB-GYN resident 30 years ago. At the time, I wasn’t concerned with my ideological differences on the abortion issue, especially since they never asked me to perform abortions. I enjoyed my time there, caring for underserved women, performing necessary gynecologic services such as pap tests, well-woman exams, STI testing, and contraceptive management. Like many Americans, I assumed that abortion was only a small part of the services they provided, and that other services were addressing women’s needs. 
When I compare Planned Parenthood’s 1996-1997 annual report, which coincides with my employment there, to today, their mission is clearly more focused on abortion to the neglect of other services. Whereas they provided 1.5 million pap tests in 1996, that has plummeted by 87% to 197,617 in 2022. Adoption referrals dropped 72%, from 6,274 to 1,721. 14,292 prenatal clients have decreased to 6,316 prenatal services.
Meanwhile, the number of abortions they sell rises every year, from 153,367 in 1996 (11.3% of the 1,366,000 abortions performed that year, <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/journals/psrh/1998/11/abortion-incidence-and-services-united-states-1995-1996" target="_blank" rel="noopener">per</a> Guttmacher Institute) to 392,715 of the estimated one million abortions sold in the U.S. in 2022 (39%). Planned Parenthood only has a few options to resolve a woman&#8217;s pregnancy: prenatal services, adoption, miscarriage care, and abortion. <a href="https://lozierinstitute.org/fact-sheet-planned-parenthoods-2022-23-annual-report/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">97%</a> of the time, she&#8217;s sold an abortion. As an organization, then, Planned Parenthood appears to care far less about helping women through their pregnancies or plans for adoption than they do about selling women abortions. 
My recent experiences with Planned Parenthood are far different from my impression three decades ago. As an obstetric hospitalist, I have provided care for several women who suffered complications from the abortions Planned Parenthood sold them. In each case, Planned Parenthood failed to offer them an appointment or offered nonsensical advice like “rub your tummy” when they reported heavy bleeding.
But don’t just take my word for it. The media have been recently sharing horror stories highlighting their poor-quality care.
We’ve seen the stories of incomplete abortions, an IUD placed in a pregnant woman resulting in a stillbirth, and an improperly placed contraceptive which resulted in nerve damage, reported in an exposé by The New York Times.
18-year-old Alexis Arguello <a href="https://catholicvote.org/investigation-teen-dies-from-planned-parenthood-abortion-complication/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recently died</a> after a late-term abortion at a Fort Collins, CO, Planned Parenthood. According to a physician who testified about her death, the facility waited too long to notify emergency responders when she experienced a complication during her abortion at 22 weeks’ gestation. EMS was allegedly advised not to use sirens to facilitate her rapid transport to the hospital.
Instances of Planned Parenthood employees <a href="https://lawecommons.luc.edu/annals/vol23/iss1/5/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">failing</a> to ask questions to identify and assist trafficked women and facilitating transport of minors out of state for abortions without parental notification have been documented many times.
Since Planned Parenthood facilities are preferentially providing abortion drugs, frequently by mail, women can’t go to them if they experience complications. Instead, these women will go to the ER, where hospitalists like me will care for them. And even if a Planned Parenthood facility were nearby, they would be incapable of providing proper treatment.
Planned Parenthood marketing has successfully gaslit Americans, convincing them that desperate women would have no health care options without Planned Parenthood. This is untrue. There are thousands of federally qualified health center service sites (FQHCs) in the U.S., providing many health services for women in need. Medicaid health insurance is accepted by most private health care providers, expanding the options for women, and also providing the prenatal services that Planned Parenthood rarely provides.
We must look beyond Planned Parenthood’s slick marketing and gaze into the soul of this heartless organization. Better care is available for women from other organizations, and women deserve better than what Planned Parenthood offers.
* * *
By Dr. Ingrid Skop, M.D., FACOG, Vice President and Director of Medical Affairs for Charlotte Lozier Institute.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Daily Wire.

US-VOTE-POLITICS-DEMOCRATIC-CONVENTION

Gaslighting Women: It’s Time To Look Past Planned Parenthood’s Slick Marketing

Abortion

Doctors

Planned Parenthood

The New York Times

Women

We have been hearing for a while that the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) under the tutelage of Elon Musk has been a giant failure.
We’ve been hearing this from the legacy media, who have been saying that all the cuts are basically fake, that nothing is happening, that it&#8217;s chaos that&#8217;s wrecking the country.
It is true that not one Social Security check has been stopped. The Medicaid and the Medicare checks are also still going out. The government, unfortunately, is still running much as before.
But — much spending has really been stopped. There&#8217;s been an open question as to how much spending will be stopped, how much can be temporarily frozen versus actually just cut. Will firing these employees actually stick?
But Democrats are caterwauling because, as it turns out, DOGE has been quite effective in stopping an enormous amount of spending. Trillions of dollars? No. Is it hundreds of billions of dollars? Yes.
According to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-withholding-43687-billion-approved-spending-top-democrats-2025-04-29/">Reuters</a>:
<blockquote>U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has so far withheld at least $436.87 billion of congressionally approved funding, the top Democrats on the U.S. Congress&#8217; appropriation committees said on Tuesday. The frozen allotments span the federal government, according to the first estimate of the potential impoundments in the project led by Senator Patty Murray from Washington and Representative Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut. Almost $42 billion was frozen or canceled for the State Department, including the frozen support for USAID, along with another $62 billion-plus in competitive grant funding for the Transportation Department, according to the estimate. The Democrats also detailed $943 million frozen for the Head Start early-education program.</blockquote>
Head Start is one of the great failures in federal history. The data on Head Start has been pretty solid for a long time, showing effectively no difference between kids who go to Head Start and kids who do not. There&#8217;s also been some $10 billion frozen and canceled for the Natural Resources Conservation Service as well.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2189-member-exclusive?elementPosition=3&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
Democrats, of course, are very angry about all of this. All of the spending is going to have to be put permanently into the “no-spend” category by Congress. They can do so with a simple 50 vote majority in the Senate. That is presumably the path Congress is going to have to take.
The focus needs to move to Congress, because the truth is that President Trump and DOGE can temporarily freeze a lot of this funding, but unless it&#8217;s rescinded by Congress, it will go right back into place after a certain period of time.
This is the reason why Democrats are freaking out about all of this.
They&#8217;re worried that Republicans are going to start passing rescission bills that would make many of the freezes permanent and then turn the freezes into cuts.
According to Reuters, “The administration has cited Musk&#8217;s Department of Government Efficiency and the undoing of the federal government&#8217;s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as reasons for blocking congressionally approved funding.”
The question is how much the executive branch can actually block that funding under the 1974 Impoundment Control Act. Usually the president has to tweak levels by proposing cuts. That would be the rescission. That has not happened so far.
Which brings us to Congress. Right now it would be an act of political magic. Every time you get a Republican majority together, it&#8217;s a bit of political magic. The reason for that is because the Republican House majority is unbelievably narrow.
Even in the Senate of the United States, you have to acknowledge that senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) are likely to go the other way on major legislation. That cuts the GOP majority to 51 votes. There are still holdovers like Mitch McConnell (D-NY), who may vote against something President Trump wants. There are a wide variety of other senators with various interests.
So getting this whole thing together is an attempt to herd cats by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), as well as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA).
Can they do it? That&#8217;s the question.

President Trump Holds “Make America Wealthy Again Event” In White House Rose Garden

It’s Up To Congress Now

DOGE

John Thune

Mike Johnson

You knew it was coming. You woke up and the sun seemed a little brighter.
The birds are singing. Planes are flying — mostly full of gang members headed to their new, secure home in El Salvador. Yes, things are returning to normal.
It’s Norming in America.
So go ahead, touch some grass. As Ben Shapiro likes to say, “The era of weird is over and the era of the normie is back.”
And to celebrate Norming in America, we put together this neat video for you.
<iframe loading="lazy" title="It&#039;s Norming in America." width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/P-V3aL9MxtA?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Today, we’re actually arresting shoplifters and fewer businesses are being burned down. All over America, pronouns are being dropped from bios. Men are (still) not having babies. And fewer drag queens are flashing their genitals at children.
What is Norming in America, you ask? Easy.
It’s the return of the word &#8220;illegal.&#8221; It’s Tom Homan on CNN citing chapter and verse of America’s legal code.
It’s leaving &#8220;wokeness and weakness&#8221; behind at the Pentagon. And it’s the sound of federal employees scattering as “Big Balls” from DOGE enters the building.
It’s the return of the Easter Bunny to the White House lawn instead of the trans guy flashing his chest for the camera.
It’s a press secretary who makes sense when she speaks. And it’s trying to keep up with a president who only needs three hours of sleep to make it through the day compared to a president who needed three naps.
It’s the return of biological reality and the removal of men from women’s sports and female prisons.
It’s America feeling like America again.
So join us, and let’s never go back to those weird, angry, divisive times again.

Daily Wire

It’s Norming In America. Feels Different, Doesn’t It?

It's Norming In America. Feels Different, Doesn’t It?

Pete Hegseth

The Daily Wire

Tom Homan

As a former member of the House Ways and Means Committee, the leading tax-writing body in Congress, I am encouraged to see the White House finally providing the legislative branch the support it needs to reform the Internal Revenue Service.
During a recent Ways and Means subcommittee hearing, Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) stated, &#8220;Taxpayers deserve an agency that keeps up with the times, operates efficiently, and acts as a responsible fiduciary of the American people&#8217;s money.&#8221; Unfortunately, for generations, they have received anything but this. Everyone knows that the IRS has been plagued by inefficiency, poor customer service, and outdated operational processes. It is no surprise that it remains one of the most unpopular federal agencies.
Under President Donald J. Trump&#8217;s leadership, real change is finally underway.
On March 25, he signed an executive order directing the IRS to modernize its payment processing — transitioning it away from slow, outdated mail-based methods and towards electronic payment processing. This long-overdue move will significantly benefit millions of Americans each year, reducing delays and improving agency efficiency.
More importantly, however, Trump is forcing the IRS to begin operating like a business, not a bureaucracy.
In January, he issued a hiring freeze on IRS employees, preventing the agency from filling new or vacant positions so that his administration can assess what is (and isn&#8217;t needed). The importance of this move can&#8217;t be overstated.
Before Trump took office, the IRS appeared to be undergoing an identity crisis, expanding beyond its intended role without first working out the kinks of delivering on its core mission (tax collection). Before it hires thousands more employees to further this misguided expansion, the administration is wisely insisting on a strategic reassessment.
A prime example of the IRS&#8217;s overreach is its recent attempt to enter the tax preparation business. Despite the existence of highly effective private-sector solutions, the IRS launched a pilot program in 2024. A Treasury Department Inspector General report from March 20, 2025, revealed serious flaws. For example, the Direct File program failed to allow taxpayers to claim key deductions, including the education tax credit — potentially costing some filers nearly $1,000 in overpayments.
The system also proved rather complicated to use, so only one-third of those who started a return through Direct File actually completed and filed an accepted one.
The cost of Direct File? A staggering $61 million once over 2.3 million use it, at least according to IRS estimates — though the Inspector General warns that actual costs may be even higher.
Why is the IRS expanding its reach into tax preparation while continuing to fail at its core responsibility — tax collection?
In 2022, the agency reported a tax gap — the difference between taxes owed and taxes collected — of $606 billion.
Despite receiving an $80 billion funding boost from the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS has yet to show any real progress in closing this gap.
Maybe that is because, instead of focusing on its fundamental mission, it is diverting resources to unnecessary new initiatives that create more inefficiencies and confusion.
President Trump understands that before an organization expands, it must first perfect its primary function.
Successful businesses refine their operations before scaling; failing ones expand too early and collapse under their own inefficiencies. The IRS is behaving like the latter — a bloated bureaucracy that is overextending itself.
That&#8217;s why Trump&#8217;s IRS hiring freeze is so crucial. By pausing new hires, the administration is forcing the agency to reassess its priorities, eliminate waste, and become a leaner, more effective agency. This is common sense and deserves broad bipartisan support.
The Ways and Means Committee will undoubtedly back these necessary reforms, and for the sake of American taxpayers, the rest of Congress should do the same. The future of meaningful IRS modernization depends on it.
 * * *
Mike Bishop represented Michigan in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019, where he served on the Committee on Ways and Means.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Tax Day 2025: Why Trump’s Effort To Reign In The IRS Makes Sense

U.S. House of Representatives

By pushing its flagrant extremist agenda to the detriment of its predominantly rural, blue-collar residents, Maine’s Democrat majority reveals a deep-seated disrespect for Maine residents and an ideological misalignment with voter preferences, federal guidelines, and the timeless democratic principles that this country was built upon.
In the name of bolstering the state’s culture of equity, inclusion, and social justice, Maine Democrats have destroyed these virtues by forcing their progressive redefinition and implementation at the expense of Maine voters — a disturbing trend that is plaguing the country at large in a widespread cultural decline.
This is seen most glaringly in the transgender craze that’s possessed Maine’s elected leaders and educational bureaucracy. Countless parents, athletes, coaches, and state legislators have spoken out against Maine’s defiance of federal guidance prohibiting biological men from participating in women’s and girls’ sports. This is more than just anecdotal; <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-trump-trans-athletes-womens-sports-maine__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!3KREuUGLNJperg_9upddiHG3dlNgmGJqVv4ICai4oQ5KUQtyca9uE7x1TOxzGCVTop8i_lBGOJbCbeIGytNsZtE$" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recent polling found</a> that a majority of Mainers (including the highly coveted independent bloc) believe high school sports should be separated by biological sex.
Maine Governor Janet Mills’ aggressive pushback against President Trump’s “<a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/keeping-men-out-of-womens-sports/__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!3KREuUGLNJperg_9upddiHG3dlNgmGJqVv4ICai4oQ5KUQtyca9uE7x1TOxzGCVTop8i_lBGOJbCbeIG2fwqsv0$">Keeping</a><a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/keeping-men-out-of-womens-sports/__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!3KREuUGLNJperg_9upddiHG3dlNgmGJqVv4ICai4oQ5KUQtyca9uE7x1TOxzGCVTop8i_lBGOJbCbeIG2fwqsv0$" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> Men Out Of Women’s Sports</a>” executive order wasn’t just a media stunt or political statement: it’s going to have a very real impact on Maine students and teachers if millions of dollars of much-needed federal funding is taken away from them as a result of the governor’s obstinate allegiance to this extremist agenda.
Yet the state’s Democrat majority persists in its radical agenda, insisting that they know better than the very constituents who elected them in the first place. It’s the reason why dozens of Maine school districts regularly withhold information from parents about their children’s gender transition process and the schools’ “gender plans” to help “affirm” students’ new identities. This condescension is both an insult to Maine residents and an astonishing abuse of parental rights — and underscores the contempt that the elected have for their electors.
Lest you think this deep disrespect for the electorate is unique to The Pine Tree State, think again. Across the country, the chattering class has been pushing a radical gender agenda against the will of families, and to the detriment of the country’s most vulnerable students. As part and parcel of this radical agenda, 12 states and the District of Columbia have declared themselves “transgender sanctuary states” to offer protections for youths seeking gender procedures while <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://defendinged.org/investigations/list-of-school-district-transgender-gender-nonconforming-student-policies/__;!!PxibshUo2Yr_Ta5B!3KREuUGLNJperg_9upddiHG3dlNgmGJqVv4ICai4oQ5KUQtyca9uE7x1TOxzGCVTop8i_lBGOJbCbeIGIoXlfBg$" target="_blank" rel="noopener">over 1,200 school districts across both red and blue states</a> have similar parental exclusion policies on the books, impacting more than 12 million children.
This isn’t just an assault on the parent-child relationship; it’s also a weaponization of tax dollars against the very people who pay them in the first place. Parents have a right to know what happens while their children are under the care of school personnel, and willfully concealing students’ information in the name of “inclusion” and “equality” is a clear violation of federal law.
Ultimately, Maine’s Democrat leaders are more focused on pushing their coercive agenda than fighting for what Mainers truly need and want. At best, their agenda is out-of-touch; at worst, it’s tyrannical.
Maine isn’t an ideological test lab where politicians can experiment with the effects of their extremist political philosophy — it’s a state with real people with tangible needs and priorities. It’s time for the state&#8217;s leaders to relinquish the activism and get back to the business that the people of Maine elected them to conduct.
At the end of the day, Mainers — and Americans as a whole — want common-sense policies that respect their values and protect their freedoms. Politicians should listen to voters and be responsive to their needs, rather than pushing an agenda far removed from the demands of their constituents. Let Maine be a warning to other blue states: should you choose to push your radical social justice agenda, be prepared to suffer the consequences.
* * *
Nicole Neily is the President &amp; Founder of Defending Education.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

MixCollage-26-Mar-2025-01-37-PM-9289

Maine’s Transgender Tug-Of-War Will Be Coming To A State Near You

Democrats

Education

Gender

Leftists

Maine

school district

Schools

Transgender

Women's sports

Here&#8217;s a headline that, if you&#8217;ve been making car insurance payments over the last few years, might seem pretty hard to believe. It turns out that average auto insurance premiums actually declined in March, month-over-month. Yes, for many people, premiums have gotten cheaper, even as car prices have remained high. Inflation has seemingly been defeated, at least in this particular industry. The declines were particularly steep in Florida, where insurers like Geico, Progressive and State Farm are cutting rates by as much as 10%. But there&#8217;s no question that this is a nationwide phenomenon. Insurance rates are down by roughly 1% across the board — which might not sound like a lot, but it&#8217;s a big difference from the typical double-digit increases that we&#8217;ve been seeing lately. When you go from 15-point average increases to a 1% decrease, you&#8217;re saving a lot of money, relatively speaking.
So why is this happening, exactly? Ask ten different people and you&#8217;ll probably get ten different answers. And all of them might be right, at least partially. But here&#8217;s one theory. It could be that insurance rates are going down because our roads are getting safer. And maybe our roads are getting safer because two grand Left-wing experiments — the BLM &#8220;de-policing&#8221; movement and the open borders agenda — have both finally come to an end.
Each of these movements clearly made driving significantly more dangerous, in their own way. Beginning in 2020, of course, BLM convinced police departments to stop enforcing laws — including traffic laws. And the effect was immediate. By one estimate, 35% more black people died in motor vehicle accidents in 2021, as compared with 2019. In other words, a lot of black motorists suddenly realized that they could drive however they wanted. They&#8217;d no longer be pulled over for supposedly &#8220;driving while black,&#8221; which was something they imagined was happening all the time. And they took full advantage of the situation. Insurance companies had to deal with the carnage that followed.
Along the same lines, as we&#8217;ve <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezo_P2uRNWY" target="_blank" rel="noopener">discussed</a> before, the flood of illegal aliens into this country under the Biden administration has led to a lot of drunk-driving collisions, which have wiped out entire families in some cases. Many of these illegal aliens don&#8217;t have driver&#8217;s licenses, and they refuse to obey the rules of the road. In the tiny town of Springfield, for example, one resident recently <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/09/12/us-news/influx-of-wild-driving-haitian-migrants-turning-streets-of-springfield-ohio-into-combat-zone/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">estimated</a> that she sees 8 to 10 traffic accidents per day. Haitian migrants, which now make up around one-third of the population, routinely drive into buildings and onto sidewalks. They&#8217;ve mowed down children and elderly women, with total impunity. One of these Haitian migrants <a href="https://nypost.com/2024/09/12/us-news/influx-of-wild-driving-haitian-migrants-turning-streets-of-springfield-ohio-into-combat-zone/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ran over</a> Kathy Heaton, a 71-year-old grandmother, while she was collecting her garbage cans. She died in the street, after an impact that was so severe that her socks were literally removed from her feet. The driver wasn&#8217;t even prosecuted.
This era of impunity is now over. Police departments are no longer being overrun with BLM mobs. Border security is being enforced again. The result is that the prices that American citizens have to pay — both in terms of dollar amounts, and lives that are lost — are coming down. It turns out that, when you have a society that enforces laws, everyone benefits.
The White House seems to understand this. That&#8217;s why, every other day, we&#8217;re hearing about a new plan to reduce the cost of these kinds of externalities for Americans.
Here&#8217;s the latest example. The New York Times is now <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/us/politics/migrants-deport-social-security-doge.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&amp;referringSource=articleShare" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reporting</a> that the Trump administration is canceling the Social Security numbers of foreign nationals who, for one reason or another, were allowed into this country during Joe Biden&#8217;s presidency:
<blockquote>The Trump administration has moved aggressively to revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were allowed into the country under President Biden. &#8230; Now, the administration is taking drastic steps to pressure some of those immigrants and others who had legal status to “self-deport” by effectively canceling the Social Security numbers they had lawfully obtained. &#8230; The goal is to cut those people off from using crucial financial services like bank accounts and credit cards, along with their access to government benefits.</blockquote>
According to the Times, thousands of &#8220;convicted criminals and suspected terrorists&#8221; are among the foreign nationals who just had their Social Security numbers revoked. Yes, apparently the Biden administration provided &#8220;convicted criminals and suspected terrorists&#8221; with Social Security numbers, so that they could obtain government benefits. The Biden administration determined that this course of action was preferable to just deporting these people, or throwing them in prison. Now the Trump administration is changing that policy.
Again, this will have the effect of reducing payments by taxpayers to people who shouldn&#8217;t even be here. It will also make our roads and our communities a lot safer, in all likelihood. More than anything else, this is what Americans voted for in the last election. If Republicans are going to remain in power in Washington, and avoid a Democrat takeover of Congress in the midterms next year, then this kind of thing has to continue. And more importantly, Congress has to start supporting it. That&#8217;s how we can ensure that the cost of living will continue dropping.
A large part of that equation is reducing government spending, which Congress controls. As we all know, when the government spends trillions of dollars every year, that money is either coming from taxpayers, or it&#8217;s being printed and borrowed (which reduces the value of the money we&#8217;re all holding). Either way, we&#8217;re losing a lot of money in the process. At the moment, it appears that a small contingent of Republican lawmakers in Congress recognizes that this arrangement needs to change, at least to some degree. They just held out for assurances that the next spending bill will slash one-point-five trillion dollars from the budget. And after a lot of hand-wringing, they apparently received those assurances. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="001 budget framework resolution" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fnwMlNZgVZ8?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
So there were two plans here, for a spending bill to fund the government. The Senate plan, which passed over the weekend, would only reduce the deficit by around four billion dollars. That&#8217;s basically nothing compared to the new House framework, which demands a minimum of one-point-five trillion dollars in deficit reduction.
But here&#8217;s the problem: Even this new framework isn&#8217;t binding. It just sets a broad outline for future negotiations between the House and Senate, which still need to finalize a budget. And several members of Congress — most notably Thomas Massie of Kentucky — believe that this deal is worth about as much as the paper it&#8217;s printed on. Thomas Massie has been in office for more than a decade, and he understands how Congress works. He knows that it&#8217;s one thing for lawmakers to promise spending cuts. But it&#8217;s a completely different matter for them to agree on a bill that actually cuts spending. Here&#8217;s what Massie told a reporter after the framework was announced:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="002 Thomas Massie" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/C5z901MgYh0?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
What&#8217;s surprising here isn&#8217;t anything Thomas Massie is saying. What&#8217;s surprising is that so few Republicans in Congress are agreeing with him. The reason voters elected Republicans to control both chambers of Congress, along with the White House, is that they want government spending and the cost of living to come down. That&#8217;s one of the top issues in every exit poll. And now that Donald Trump is doing that — or attempting to do it — Congress is refusing to codify any of his cuts into law. If a Democrat becomes president, he could override all these DOGE cuts in a day-one executive order.
And by the way, no matter what you think of Trump&#8217;s tariffs, Massie makes a good point. Why hasn&#8217;t Congress held a vote on them? Tariffs are a form of taxation. They have the potential to significantly raise the cost of goods in the United States, among other effects. Under the Constitution, Congress has the power to tax. Even if you approve of the tariffs, you should still want Congress to vote on them, for the simple reason that they&#8217;ll be harder to overturn in a future administration. On the other hand, if you&#8217;re skeptical of tariffs, a congressional vote would allow for a full debate on the issue. Instead of unilateral announcements from the White House, we&#8217;d be able to hear the arguments on each side.
But the GOP leadership in Congress hasn&#8217;t displayed any interest in holding a vote on tariffs. In fact they&#8217;ve blocked a vote on the topic. And they haven&#8217;t held votes on the DOGE cuts or any other significant spending cuts. In fact, they still haven&#8217;t reined in any of the trillion dollars&#8217; worth of spending in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which was full of giveaways to environmentalist groups and NGOs. Why exactly hasn&#8217;t any of that waste been rolled back? Why is no one bothered to even talk about it? Really congress has not codified any of Trump’s executive orders at all, which means they’re all susceptible to being overturned with the stroke of a pen by the next administration. Where is congress?
When it comes to spending, if you ask Missouri Congressman Eric Burlison, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, he&#8217;ll say that Republicans aren&#8217;t actually serious about cutting spending. Like Massie, he thinks the spending cuts will never actually happen. Here&#8217;s what he said:
<blockquote>I think that this town has got a lot of snakes in the grass who don&#8217;t want to accomplish it, and anyway that they can they&#8217;re going to stop it from happening. And I want to ensure we don&#8217;t end up in a place where we let the president down in that regard.</blockquote>
Whatever Donald Trump makes of the deal, at the moment, it looks like Republican voters might be let down. We&#8217;re talking about raising the debt ceiling by a historic amount, and potentially spending more than the Biden administration ever did. And we&#8217;re doing it at a time when we&#8217;re initiating a broader trade war, which means that we&#8217;ll have less access to money to borrow. This is not a recipe for a stable economic situation going forward. In separate interviews, Thomas Massie and Congressman Jodey Arrington of Texas outlined what&#8217;s at stake here. Watch:
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Even if you listen to that rhetoric and conclude that it&#8217;s overblown, or that there&#8217;s really no cause for concern, the fundamental point remains: Republicans ran on a platform that involved lowering the cost of living, which includes lowering taxes and government spending. If Republicans cannot deliver on that very simple promise, they will not be in power for very long. And they will be replaced by a party that&#8217;s even more committed to more taxes and government spending. 
This particular spending bill won&#8217;t be finalized for several weeks, in all likelihood. Between now and the moment this legislation is finalized, it&#8217;s hard to imagine that anything in Congress is more important than holding GOP leadership to their promise on these spending cuts — and pushing them further, for as many cuts as possible. If Republicans (and their voters) stay focused on that goal, they will have achieved something that the party has promised for decades, but failed to deliver. They will have permanently reduced the size of the American government, for the benefit of everyone living in this country. The White House is clearly committed to this goal. Now it&#8217;s time for every Republican in Congress — not just Thomas Massie and a few others — to follow suit.

House Tax Cut Fumble Shows Big Hurdles For GOP

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The federal government has reportedly shelled out $4.6 billion for new furniture since 2020 — during a time when only about half of all federal employees were even showing up to work in person.
The Republicans on the House Oversight Committee shared a <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/04/08/us-news/feds-forked-over-4-6b-for-new-furniture-since-2020-despite-just-half-of-employees-showing-up-for-work-watchdog/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> from the New York Post detailing the recent testimony of OpenTheBooks CEO John Hart.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
🚨Feds forked over $4.6B for new furniture since 2020 — despite just half of employees showing up for work: watchdog<a href="https://t.co/3Zk7ZqKkf5">https://t.co/3Zk7ZqKkf5</a>
&mdash; Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) <a href="https://twitter.com/GOPoversight/status/1909957793286594803?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 9, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Hart shared the findings reported through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, saying, &#8220;Since fiscal year 2021, executive agencies have spent more than $4.6 billion on furniture alone. That amount could buy 9.2 million American families a modest $500 kitchen table.&#8221;
&#8220;And of course, workplaces need desks, chairs and meeting tables, and it’s true that beautiful spaces can make us more productive, but beauty at what cost and on whose dime?&#8221; Hart said, arguing that at the reported costs, the government had been effectively &#8220;decorating and redecorating the administrative state.&#8221;
Hart also noted in his opening statement that the State Department had forked more than &#8220;$1.4 million on art and drawings to fill the walls of its embassies worldwide — including $200,000 for just two paintings by the modern abstract painter Alfred Jensen.&#8221;
&#8220;Our embassy in Islamabad is a place where you can put your feet up thanks to 40 Ethan Allen chairs, which cost taxpayers $120,000,&#8221; he added.
As the New York Post detailed, among the extravagant expenditures was &#8220;$4 million for furniture and cubicles in US Agency for International Development (USAID) offices in Ukraine, West Africa and Mozambique — the last of which filled spaces with $250,000 worth of Herman Miller chairs.&#8221;
All of these expenditures came during a period of time when, according to the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/house-republicans-target-federal-unions-after-11th-hour-deals-tie-trumps-hands-on-remote-work" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Office of Management and Budget</a> (OMB), more than half of all government employees were choosing to work remotely, either part-time or full-time, rather than physically reporting to work.
In addition, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) <a href="https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-23-106200" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> in 2023 that out of 24 agencies, 17 had reported gross underuse — less than 25% — of their facilities.

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See The Staggering Amount of Money Feds Blew On Office Furniture — Since 2020

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