A coalition of conservative activists is urging Congress to reinstate a ban on one of the “swampiest” practices used by lawmakers in the nation’s capital. 
Led by the organization Advancing American Freedom, 24 conservative advocates sent a letter to every member of Congress on Wednesday asking them to reinstate a ban on earmarks as they consider government funding for the next fiscal year. Earmarks are provisions inserted into appropriations bills by lawmakers to allocate taxpayer dollars to a particular project or entity they want to fund. 
“As the United States Congress proceeds with Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 appropriations, many of your colleagues will once again seek to direct taxpayer dollars to their favorite pet projects through earmarks, one of the swampiest features of policymaking in Washington, D.C.,” wrote Advancing American Freedom President Tim Chapman in a <a href="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/AAF-Earmark-Coalition-Letter-9.17-24.pdf">letter</a> obtained by The Daily Wire. 
The letter says that earmarked funds from fiscal year 2024 went toward leftist projects, including “abortion centers, transgender indoctrination, radical climate activism, and entities engaged in crass antisemitism.”
An appropriations bill is currently making its way through the House with a September 30 deadline before the previous funding bill expires. The current House bill is a seven-week continuing resolution, meaning that spending would continue at previous approved levels. 
Chapman and the other signatories want Congress to reinstate a ban on earmarks that Congress agreed to in 2011 that lasted until around 2021. 
“Historically, conservatives recognized the problem with using earmarks to lure legislators into supporting reckless budget agreements,” the letter said. “For good reason, the House Republican Conference prohibited earmarks for more than a decade. In fact, earmarks were so broadly unpopular that President Obama committed to vetoing any bill containing earmarks, and former Speaker Pelosi refrained from reinstating the practice for the first two years of her tenure.”
Other signatories of the letter included Eagle Forum President Kristen Ullman, Open the Books CEO John Hart, Students for Life Action Government Affairs Coordinator Savanna Deretich, and former Virginia Representative Bob Good. 
“In the 2024 elections, voters delivered a clear mandate to Republicans to overturn a broken status quo, granting them a federal trifecta,” they wrote. 
Earmarks in the past have sent millions of dollars <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/report-congress-secures-16-billion-in-earmark-funding-for-local-pet-projects">towards projects</a> such as the American LGBTQ+ Museum, the  “National Great Blacks in Wax” museum, and the Universal Hip Hop Museum.

Capitol Hill Prepares Ahead Of Full House Vote On Impeachment Articles This Week

Congress Urged To End One Of D.C.’s ‘Swampiest’ Practices

Congress Pushed To End One Of The 'Swampiest' Features Of D.C.

Congress

House of Representatives

Spending Bill

The Swamp

On January 24, 2017, just four days after Donald Trump was inaugurated for his first term in office, the FBI sent two agents to the White House to interrogate Trump&#8217;s national security adviser, Michael Flynn. It wasn&#8217;t billed as an interrogation at the time; they convinced Flynn that it was just an opportunity for a friendly chat. But in retrospect, their goal could not have been any more clear: They wanted to manufacture a pretext to secure Flynn&#8217;s termination. Getting rid of Flynn would enable the FBI to continue to conduct a series of fraudulent investigations into the Trump administration. It would insulate the bureau from any kind of large-scale reform. And it would help the FBI spread the narrative that the Trump administration was secretly working for Russia in some way.
Therefore, the FBI asked Flynn a few questions in the White House. Then they convinced Mike Pence that Flynn had lied to them — even though to this day, no one can explain what exactly Flynn said, because the conversation wasn&#8217;t recorded. In any event, Pence took the FBI&#8217;s word for it. Michael Flynn was fired after less than a month. His tenure as national security advisor was the shortest in American history.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1580-the-coordinated-hit-job-on-pete-hegseth-must-be-exposed-and-defeated-member-exclusive?elementPosition=0&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
What happened to Michael Flynn is worth recalling this week because it was not a one-off. This wasn&#8217;t a random act of sabotage by some unelected, shadowy officials. It was, in fact, standard operating procedure. It is the default response of a bureaucracy that feels threatened. They will come up with a smear campaign, launder it through sympathetic media outlets, and ultimately pressure the decision-makers to get rid of their target. Eight years ago, this is precisely how they got rid of Michael Flynn. And right now, it&#8217;s how they&#8217;re trying to destroy Donald Trump&#8217;s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.
From the moment Hegseth was nominated, there was a concerted effort to smear him as an alcoholic who was too inexperienced to do the job. It was almost like the Brett Kavanaugh hearings all over again. Anonymous accusations began surfacing every other day. We were even told, if you can believe it, that Pete Hegseth once celebrated St. Patrick&#8217;s Day, live on the air on &#8220;Fox &amp; Friends.&#8221; That was supposed to be profoundly scandalous. In reality, the point of that fake scandal was never to convince anyone of anything. Instead, the point was to send a message to the incoming Trump administration. The message was that the most powerful forces in Washington did not want Pete Hegseth to be confirmed. They wanted Donald Trump to pull his nomination and select someone more conventional — someone who would be more responsive to the needs of defense contractors, for example.
But Trump didn&#8217;t abandon Hegseth&#8217;s nomination. He decided, after what happened in his first term, to trust his own instincts and stand by his selection. The result has been predictable. Just a few months into Donald Trump&#8217;s term, Hegseth&#8217;s enemies have begun yet another smear campaign. And like the campaign to oust Michael Flynn, it&#8217;s not meant to withstand any kind of scrutiny. The point is to move quickly, create panic, and ultimately pressure the White House to fire Hegseth.
It&#8217;s not exactly a subtle operation. Yesterday morning, NPR came out with this story, which directly states the outcome they want to achieve: 
<blockquote>Exclusive: The White House is looking to replace Pete Hegseth as defense secretary.</blockquote>
According to NPR:
<blockquote>The White House has begun the process of looking for a new leader at the Pentagon to replace Pete Hegseth, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly. This comes as Hegseth is again mired in controversy over sharing military operational details in a group chat.</blockquote>
So here we have an unnamed source — just one person, who&#8217;s described only as a &#8220;U.S. official&#8221; — stating that the White House is planning to fire Pete Hegseth. And based on this one nameless official, who supposedly serves somewhere in the United States government, the narrative has been set. Pretty much every outlet picked up this story: They&#8217;re all trying to convey the perception that Hegseth&#8217;s removal is a foregone conclusion.
Meanwhile, there&#8217;s a steady drip of new information that&#8217;s supposedly even more damning than the last hit piece. Tune into CNN, and they&#8217;ll tell you that Hegseth needs to be removed because of a new Signal chat that&#8217;s suddenly been uncovered. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="004 Ex Hegseth aide" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NWXmVI-Ge94?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>
&nbsp;
Before we go into the specifics, I need to make it clear that I was a fan of the Hegseth pick when it was initially announced. But after seeing this unrelenting smear campaign that started before he was confirmed and hasn&#8217;t let up since, I am now an even bigger fan of the pick. It&#8217;s clear that the establishment sees this guy as a threat to their agenda. He&#8217;s in a position to do extraordinary damage to their interests. And it seems like he&#8217;s already doing a lot of damage — which is why he needs to stay in his position at all costs.
And as you saw, Donald Trump doesn&#8217;t need to be told that. He understands exactly what CNN and the rest of the corporate press are doing. The coverage is breathless and fast-moving because you&#8217;re not supposed to scrutinize it. If you think about it for five seconds, you&#8217;ll realize that — as was the case with Michael Flynn — the hysteria makes absolutely no sense.
To recap: The case against Pete Hegseth is that the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-national-security-story?author=Ben+Shapiro&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=The+National+Security+Story" target="_blank" rel="noopener">mistakenly added</a> Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, to a classified group chat about a U.S. military strike. Even if this is true — even if we pretend for a moment that a rabidly anti-Trump journalist, with extensive ties to the deep state was somehow &#8220;accidentally&#8221; added to a highly sensitive group chat — it&#8217;s still not remotely clear why Pete Hegseth should be fired as a result. He&#8217;s not the one who made the mistake.
The next alleged scandal, as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/us/politics/hegseth-signal-chat.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> by The New York Times, concerns a Signal chat that involved Hegseth and a dozen other people, including his lawyer, his wife Jennifer and his brother Phil, who works at the Pentagon. The chat, which was called &#8220;Defense Team Huddle,&#8221; also reportedly included Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick, two former Hegseth advisers who were just fired after a leak investigation. Supposedly, during this chat, Hegseth again discussed war plans involving Yemen, although no one&#8217;s sure exactly what was communicated.
Now, under the circumstances, it would be reasonable to wonder if Dan Caldwell or Darin Selnick might have had a role in placing this story in the New York Times. After all, they were just fired from the Pentagon for leaking. They were both members of this group chat. And now they&#8217;re publicly attacking Pete Hegseth&#8217;s Defense Department, and implying that the Pentagon wants to pursue a reckless war with Iran.
As it relates to unelected operatives in the Pentagon, that may be true. I&#8217;m not in a position to dispute that claim. But anyone who&#8217;s paying attention to what Pete Hegseth is doing, both in public and in private, knows that he&#8217;s going to do everything he can to prevent that outcome.
Here&#8217;s what <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QTwlqbkbos" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hegseth told</a> Fox News earlier this month:
<blockquote>[Trump] is dead serious that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. &#8230; He&#8217;s said that for 20 years, he&#8217;s been consistent, that is clear. He&#8217;s dead serious that he wants it done at the negotiating table, he wants it done peacefully, and that&#8217;s why he&#8217;s going straight to these talks, he&#8217;s set that deadline. &#8230; But he&#8217;s also dead serious that if we can&#8217;t figure this out at the negotiating table then there are other options, to include my department to ensure that Iran never has a nuclear bomb.</blockquote>
In other words, his primary objective is not to attack Iran. It&#8217;s a peaceful, diplomatic resolution.
A couple of days later, The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/us/politics/trump-israel-iran-nuclear.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">confirmed</a> that, in private, Hegseth had personally helped avert a military strike on Iran that could&#8217;ve spiraled into World War III:
<blockquote>Israel had planned to strike Iranian nuclear sites as soon as next month but was waved off by President Trump in recent weeks in favor of negotiating a deal with Tehran to limit its nuclear program, according to administration officials and others briefed on the discussions. &#8230; Inside the Trump administration, some officials were becoming skeptical of the Israeli plan. In a meeting this month — one of several discussions about the Israeli plan — Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, presented a new intelligence assessment that said the buildup of American weaponry could potentially spark a wider conflict with Iran that the United States did not want. A range of officials echoed Ms. Gabbard’s concerns in the various meetings. Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff; Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; and Vice President JD Vance all voiced doubts about the attack</blockquote>
That report was published on April 16. It states, very clearly, that Hegseth had helped stop a military attack on Iran, which could&#8217;ve easily devolved into all-out warfare.
Four days later, on April 20, the Times published <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/20/us/politics/hegseth-yemen-attack-second-signal-chat.html">a story</a> outlining Hegseth&#8217;s second Signal chat, which is supposedly grounds for his termination. In other words, we get a new scandal, right after Hegseth enrages the defense contractors that would&#8217;ve made many millions of dollars, if not more, from an all-out conflict with Iran. And then, hot on the heels of the new scandal, we get an unverified, barely-sourced report about how the White House is looking to replace Hegseth.
At this point, I can only assume that&#8217;s another fake smear. It would be a disastrous mistake for Trump to cave to the pressure and offer up his Defense Secretary as a sacrifice. It&#8217;s the kind of mistake that could derail his entire presidency. And it would be a major victory for establishment Washington, which is becoming increasingly desperate by the day.
You can see the signs everywhere. Here&#8217;s one of them: On Monday, four more Democrat lawmakers made a <a href="https://thepostmillennial.com/four-dems-denied-meeting-with-kilmar-abrego-garcia-after-flying-to-el-salvador#google_vignette" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pilgrimage</a> to El Salvador to visit that MS-13 gangbanger, following the visit by Senator Chris Van Hollen that we discussed last week. The lawmakers were Robert Garcia of California, Maxwell Frost of Florida, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, and Maxine Dexter of Oregon. These politicians, like the rest of the Washington establishment, are pulling out all the stops to defend their open borders, globalist agenda. Making a martyr out of Abrego Garcia, and a scapegoat out of Hegseth, is all part of that plan.
To be clear, I see no indication that this is going to work. It doesn&#8217;t look like this MS-13 gangbanger is going to be returned to the United States, any more than it looks like Pete Hegseth is about to be replaced by another Raytheon board member. The idea that the White House is planning to cave to the demands of establishment Washington, at the moment, seems like yet another fabrication from the corporate press. For the sake of the world, which wouldn&#8217;t exactly benefit from nuclear armageddon, it should remain a fabrication and nothing more.

Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth Meets With El Salvador Minister Of National Defense Rene Merino Monroy At The Pentagon

The Coordinated Hit Job On Pete Hegseth Must Be Exposed And Defeated

Democrats

Kilmar Abrego Garcia

Leftists

Matt Walsh

Michael Flynn

New York Times

Opinion

Pete Hegseth

President Trump

Washington D.C.

The Atlantic published a fascinating <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/covid-youth-conservative-shift/681705/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">piece</a> yesterday by Derek Thompson. In it, he discusses the radical shift in the voting patterns of young people in the United States.
What he found is that COVID and BLM basically shoved an entire generation of people to the Right. He writes:
<blockquote>For decades, America’s young voters have been deeply—and famously—progressive. In 2008, a youthquake sent Barack Obama to the White House. In 2016, voters ages 18 to 29 broke for Hillary Clinton by 18 points. In 2020, they voted for Joe Biden by 24 points. In 2024, Donald Trump closed most of the gap, losing voters under 30 by a 51–47 margin. In one recent CBS poll, Americans under 30 weren’t just evenly split between the parties. They were even more pro-Trump than Boomers over 65.</blockquote>
So what exactly is happening? Thompson suggests that this is essentially a reaction to government overreach during COVID, that the bizarre institutional failures during COVID — ranging from the idea that proper political credentials brought about riots in the streets and protection from a COVID attack to the idea that kids had to be locked out of schools — shoved an entire generation of young people to the Right and radicalized them.
And this, of course, is true.
This is evidence too that people are incredibly variable and vacillating when it comes to their politics. Exogenous events can shove entire generations of people one way or another.
This has happened several times over the course of my lifetime. I remember after 2001, a brand new security boom prompted people, particularly suburban moms who had traditionally voted Democrat, to suddenly vote Republican.
Then, COVID apparently shoved many young people to the Right. Wokeness shoved many young people to the Right.
This is a good reminder to everyone in politics that while you may think the pendulum will never shift back over to the other side, it absolutely will.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2141-member-exclusive" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
And thus, two points ought to be taken from that.
First, politicians ought to be very careful with their use of political power. That doesn&#8217;t mean they shouldn&#8217;t move fast and break things. It means they should be very careful not to set a trip wire that is going to blow up.
Second, they have to move with alacrity when they get to power; the Left always does, and the Right rarely does. This is one of the differences between MAGA and prior conservative Republican movements.
Prior Republican movements took that first bit of advice — “move cautiously; don&#8217;t break too many things” — but they neglected the fact that if you don&#8217;t break enough things, that if you don&#8217;t move fast enough in breaking up things, you don&#8217;t get enough done and the Left comes back in.
And when the Left gets in power, they move fast and they break things.
Barack Obama was not shy about using his power in 2009-2010 in order to shove forward Obamacare and a vast expansion of the federal government. President Trump is doing precisely the opposite.
On Tuesday, President Trump set about issuing a number of new executive orders. Some of them are incredibly consequential. One of them is just a reinstatement of his stated purpose, which is to create more governmental transparency. He issued an executive order titled Radical Transparency about Wasteful Spending, which <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/memorandum-for-the-heads-of-executive-departments-and-agencies-7c05/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reads</a>:
<blockquote>The United States Government spends too much money on programs, contracts, and grants that do not promote the interests of the American people.  For too long, taxpayers have subsidized ideological projects overseas and domestic organizations engaged in actions that undermine the national interest.  The American people have seen their tax dollars used to fund the passion projects of unelected bureaucrats rather than to advance the national interest.  The American people have a right to see how the Federal Government has wasted their hard-earned wages.
I therefore direct the heads of executive departments and agencies (agencies) to take all appropriate actions to make public, to the maximum extent permitted by law and as the heads of agencies deem appropriate to promote the policies of my Administration, the complete details of every terminated program, cancelled contract, terminated grant, or any other discontinued obligation of Federal funds.</blockquote>
Again, this is all part and parcel of the DOGE approach to American government.
As part of that, President Trump also <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensuring-accountability-for-all-agencies/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">issued</a> an executive order on Tuesday “ensuring accountability for all agencies,” the goal being to re-enshrine the unitary executive theory of the federal government.
In the Constitution, there is no unelected fourth branch of government that is sort of half-run by Congress and half-run by the executive. If Congress delegates power to the executive, it is the job of the executive to perform those powers.
That means if an executive branch agency exists, that executive branch agency is headed by the president of the United States. That was the point of this particular executive order. It states:
<blockquote>Previous administrations have allowed so-called “independent regulatory agencies” to operate with minimal Presidential supervision.  These regulatory agencies currently exercise substantial executive authority without sufficient accountability to the President, and through him, to the American people.  Moreover, these regulatory agencies have been permitted to promulgate significant regulations without review by the President.  
These practices undermine such regulatory agencies’ accountability to the American people and prevent a unified and coherent execution of Federal law.  For the Federal Government to be truly accountable to the American people, officials who wield vast executive power must be supervised and controlled by the people’s elected President. 
Therefore, in order to improve the administration of the executive branch and to increase regulatory officials’ accountability to the American people, it shall be the policy of the executive branch to ensure Presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch.</blockquote>
This is a restatement of the constitutional principle that the president runs the executive branch. All the pseudo-shocks from Democrats on this particular point stems from their long-standing assumption that an independent agency would be run by Democrats. They always assumed that “career bureaucrat” meant Democrat.
There was, in fact, a deep state. It was permanent political appointees who were supposedly insulated from any Republican president who would take power.
And now, Trump is saying no, that&#8217;s not the way this is going to work.
As part and parcel of that, President Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114027416979768016" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> on Truth Social, “Over the past four years, the Department of Justice has been politicized like never before. Therefore, I have instructed the termination of ALL remaining “Biden Era” U.S. Attorneys. We must “clean house” IMMEDIATELY, and restore confidence. America’s Golden Age must have a fair Justice System &#8211; THAT BEGINS TODAY!”
There&#8217;s a lot of hue and cry over this, but this is not, in fact, a rarity. President Bill Clinton fired 93 U.S. attorneys shortly after taking office in 1993, and when Barack Obama came into office, he cleared out many in the justice system who had been appointed by George W. Bush.
This sort of change-over of career bureaucrats in these particular agencies, including the DOJ, is not a rarity; it’s a regular part of American government.
It&#8217;s only Republicans who are chided about this.
And this time, we don’t give a damn.

President Trump Signs Executive Orders At Mar-a-Lago In Palm Beach, Florida

T​​rump Cleans Out Deep State

Ben Shapiro

Deep State

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

Elon Musk

Federal Government

Republicans

U.S. Politics

You know, every now and again, I like to call “time out” on all the divisiveness and anger that threaten to tear apart the very fabric of our society by over-emphasizing the irreconcilable differences that sometimes spring up between American patriots&#8230; and Democrats. Sure, the patriots want to restore the founding principle of a federal government limited to those few powers enumerated in the Constitution, and the Democrats want to gut the very body of our Republic and then swarm over the hollow corpse of its former greatness to devour the shredded entrails of our freedom as if the Democrats were really just a bunch of maggots — even the straight ones — and God knows there aren’t that many of those. 
But really, when we stop and think about it, there must be many things that all right-thinking citizens have in common … with Democrats, who clearly want to see the flickering flame of liberty swallowed by the grotesquely globular mass of an ever-growing bureaucracy, which squats feeding like a monstrous leech on the stolen riches of hard-working bread-winners and creative superior minds in order to sustain its parasitic existence long enough to watch the ennobling inheritance of struggling centuries reduced to the feculent discharge of its insatiable hunger for power.
So for instance, let’s just for a moment, split the difference between the opinions of decent everyday Americans and the glowering demonic forces of the left, and try to take an unbiased and objective look at some of Donald Trump’s efforts to make America great again, and the Democrats’ efforts to, you know, stop that from happening.
For example, in the wake of the disaster that has reduced Los Angeles to rubble and ashes, Trump has proposed that all the people who live in that area should be resettled in neighboring countries while L.A. itself is cleaned up and turned into the beautiful resort God obviously meant it to be. No, wait, sorry, that’s Gaza. No, that’s Los Angeles, right? No, no, it’s Gaza. It’s Gaza. Sorry, that was just wishful thinking on my part. Maybe we should move on to another topic. 
Let’s instead take a look at Trump’s attempts to trim waste from government spending and rein in the bureaucrats who have essentially replaced the will of the American people with whatever lunatic Stalinist whim comforts them this week for the perennial failure of every single one of their ideas and policies.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Andrew Klavan Show</a></h3>
The leftist argument against this was best stated by a federal judge appointed by Barack Obama whose ruling states, “You can’t take our money. We stole that money. Now it’s our money. Get your hands off our money. Money, money, money.” Bernie Sanders, the senator from the state of unwavering socialist conviction in the face of unrelenting socialist misery and murder, added that billionaires and millionaires should pay their fair share of Sesame Street programs in Iraq, transgender opera in Colombia, and transgender surgeries in Guatemala to provide more sopranos for the transgender opera in Colombia. Sanders said he was going to ask The Count from Sesame Street to calculate exactly what that fair share is, but unfortunately the Count was too busy sucking the lifeblood from the western infidel.
Donald Trump has also proposed making Canada the 51st State, in order to produce the first openly non-binary governor in black face who’s also the secret child of Fidel Castro, because that would be hilarious. But Democrats oppose this delightful plan, pointing out that Canada has progressed beyond America by having free universal health care, which helps our economy by forcing sick Canadians to pay American doctors to please, please treat them at exorbitant prices before Canadian doctors kill them for free.
Finally, Donald Trump has proposed that we take over the Panama Canal so we can import the weapons we need to take over Greenland from which we can destroy the Chinese navy and take over China to stop the production of their new Artificial Intelligence chip DeepSeek. DeepSeek is against these actions and has proposed to send an unstoppable android back in time from the future in order to terminate Trump’s mother. The Democrats have offered to fund DeepSeek’s efforts with millions of American tax dollars, and expect you to pay your fair share.
* * *
This excerpt is taken from the opening satirical monologue of “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Andrew Klavan Show</a>.”
Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. He is the bestselling author of the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fourth installment, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1613165536?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_thcv_3&amp;storeType=ebooks" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A WOMAN UNDERGROUND</a>,” is now available. Follow him on X: @andrewklavan
The views expressed in this satirical article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

TOPSHOT-US-JAPAN-POLITICS-DIPLOMACY-TRUMP

As Trump Drains The Swamp, Democrat Sea Creatures Emerge

Andrew Klavan

Donald Trump

Humor

Satire

The federal government is out of control and President Trump is working overtime to fix it, but the bureaucrats causing the problem have powerful allies striking back at the president from outside.
The basic problem isn’t just the woke spending at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), though that is a prime example of the central issue.
The problem is that unelected bureaucrats have real power to determine policy, and they consider themselves intellectually and morally superior to the people and their elected representatives. This mentality explains why 64% of Washington, D.C.,-based bureaucrats who voted for Kamala Harris in November say they won’t follow a lawful Trump order if they consider it bad policy.
This should also remind Americans of how aggressively certain actors within the executive branch opposed Trump during his first term. Agents within the government helped prop up the conspiracy theory that Trump was a Russian agent, and a news outlet partially funded by USAID helped launch the first Trump impeachment. At least one bureaucrat openly described himself as “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html">part of the resistance</a> inside the Trump administration.”  
The rot runs deep, and rooting it out won’t be easy. To make matters worse, the deep state has allies outside the government who are working hard to prevent Trump from changing the system.
<h3>The Freak Out</h3>
Democrats have taken to the streets of Washington, D.C., to protest Trump’s restructuring of the federal government, acting as though cutting waste and abuse from the bureaucracy amounted to a national crisis.
“People need to know how serious this is,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) whose congressional district is home to more than 70,000 federal workers, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/power-democratic-lawmakers-take-streets-rally-opposition-trump-rcna190842">said at a recent protest</a>. “You tear down the federal government, you also tear down our whole society. If you eliminate one of the three branches of government, you can’t run a country.”
Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) aren’t tearing down the entire government, and they’re not even eliminating one of the three branches. Rather, they’re making the administrative state — effectively a fourth, extra-constitutional branch of government — accountable to the people’s elected president. 
The Democrats and their allies don’t like it because it involves rooting the woke activism out of the entrenched bureaucracy. 
For example, USAID had been funding Marxist “equity,” transgender activism, and climate alarmism, the woke ideologies voters rejected in November. USAID had partnered with the Open Society Foundations, the massive funding apparatus of Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros and his son Alex. 
In one particularly egregious example, <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/02/07/usaid-george-soros-foundation-bankrolled-news-outlet-spurred-first-trump-impeachment/">USAID and Open Society funded</a> the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. This news outlet attacked conservatives for criticizing Soros and released the report that spurred the first Trump impeachment in 2019.
Conservatives should be familiar with George and Alex Soros. Soros and his son have bankrolled almost every leftist cause you’ve ever heard of, and the Open Society Foundations played a major role in propping up the leftist groups that called the shots in the Biden administration.
As my book, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Woketopus-Money-Manipulating-Federal-Government/dp/B0DFVK74TZ" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government</a>,” reveals, woke activist groups fed staff into the Biden administration and pressed the administration to implement woke policies. Scratch the surface of any Biden policy, and you’re likely to find activists with the Center for American Progress, the Human Rights Campaign, or the Natural Resources Defense Council. America’s largest unions, such as the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees Industrial Union, also had tremendous access and influence in the administration.
Now, those same groups are gearing up to defend the deep state, and they’re doing more than just picketing outside USAID.
<div id="attachment_876335" style="width: 828px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-876335" class="size-large wp-image-876335" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-2198968410-818x576.jpg" alt="WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 11: Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, joined by his son X Musk, delivers remarks alongside U.S. President Donald Trump during an executive order signing in the Oval Office at the White House on February 11, 2025 in Washington, DC. Trump is to sign an executive order implementing the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) &quot;workforce optimization initiative,&quot; which, according to Trump, will encourage agencies to limit hiring and reduce the size of the federal government. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)" width="818" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-2198968410-818x576.jpg 818w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-2198968410-300x211.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-2198968410-768x541.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-2198968410.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 818px) 100vw, 818px" />Andrew Harnik/Getty Images</div>
<h3>Anti-DOGE Lawsuits</h3>
Many activist groups have sued to block DOGE and SpaceX founder Elon Musk from accessing federal data.
The AFL-CIO; the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees; and the SEIU — three of the major unions that helped fund the Woketopus and influenced policy in the Biden administration — <a href="https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/federal-unions-sue-doge-over-department-of-labor-data-access/">joined other unions in suing</a> DOGE and the Department of Labor to prevent DOGE from accessing the department’s data. A federal judge temporarily blocked DOGE from accessing the data. 
“DOGE seeks to gain access to sensitive systems before courts can stop them, dismantle agencies before Congress can assert its prerogatives in the federal budget, and intimidate and threaten employees who stand in their way,” the lawsuit states. “The results have already been catastrophic.” 
Democracy Forward is representing the unions <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/01/29/who-are-nonprofits-sued-block-trumps-federal-funding-freeze/">in the lawsuit</a>. Marc Elias, the left-leaning election lawyer who tried to reverse the results of the 2024 U.S. Senate election in Pennsylvania, serves on the board of this group.
<a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.277055/gov.uscourts.dcd.277055.1.0.pdf">The SEIU also sued</a> Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, aiming to block Treasury from sharing data with DOGE. A federal judge <a href="https://fedscoop.com/judge-blocks-treasury-payments-systems-from-doge/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">limited DOGE employees’ access</a> to the data in a ruling Thursday. Nineteen Democratic attorneys general, not to be left out, filed a similar case Friday, and a judge <a href="https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-doge-lawsuit-attorneys-general-5733f8985e4cf7ad5b233fddefef4d01" target="_blank" rel="noopener">issued a preliminary injunction</a> blocking DOGE access Saturday.
<h3>Blocking Key Reforms</h3>
In addition to DOGE, Trump has directed key reforms to the administrative state that would make the bureaucracy more accountable to the people’s elected president. Schedule F, for instance, creates a new classification of federal employee that makes bureaucrats who make policy easier to fire. 
The Woketopus has taken aim at Schedule F. 
Governing for Impact, a shadowy activist group that advised top Biden administration bureaucrats after getting launched through the dark money network established by Arabella Advisors, released a memo outlining what it calls the “<a href="https://governingforimpact.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Legal-Vulnerabilities-of-Schedule-F-2.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Legal Vulnerabilities of Schedule F</a>.” This document appears to be a roadmap to inspire lawsuits against the reform.
On Jan. 29, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, one of America’s largest unions and an arm of the Woketopus, teamed up with the American Federation of Government Employees — which represents 800,000 federal employees — to sue President Trump and the Office of Personnel Management. The same left-leaning law firm that <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/01/29/who-are-nonprofits-sued-block-trumps-federal-funding-freeze/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">represented left-leaning nonprofits</a> in attempting to block Trump’s funding freeze is representing AFSCME and AFGE.
AFSCME and AFGE claim that Trump’s executive orders aim to “politicize the civil service,” but these orders aim to prevent woke bureaucrats from undermining the president’s ability to deliver on his promises to the American people.
<h3>&#8216;Deferred Resignation&#8217;</h3>
President Trump has reversed policies that allow federal employees to work remotely. He has required all staff to return to work, but he also gave them an offramp should they refuse to return to the office. The Office of Management and Budget has offered to pay federal employees through the end of the year if they resign before Feb. 6.
The AFSCME and a few other unions filed a lawsuit to block President Trump’s offer. The lawsuit asks the court to issue a stay to block the deferred resignation practice. On Feb. 6, a federal judge <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/judge-request-block-trumps-federal-government-employee-buyout/story?id=118535508" target="_blank" rel="noopener">extended the deadline</a> through Feb. 10.
As of Feb. 14, more than 75,000 employees have indicated they will resign, <a href="https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/75000-federal-workers-trump-buyout/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according to News Nation</a>. That represents over 3% of the workforce.
<h3>Constitutional Acid</h3>
Democrats and the Woketopus may act as though Trump’s reforms are the end of the world, but the president’s acts arguably represent a long-overdue attempt to bring a metastasized administrative state to heel.
As the head of the executive branch, Trump should have the ability to reform the federal government, and Congress should aid him in this task. The president has taken strong steps in the right direction, but the Woketopus’ response shows that the path ahead will not be easy.
The deep state isn’t just a threat to Trump — it’s an acid corroding the constitutional structure of our government. Americans cannot afford to forget just how corrupt the bureaucracy is, and we should support Trump’s goal of rooting out the deep state.
* * *
Tyler O&#8217;Neil is senior editor at The Daily Signal and the author of two books: &#8220;<a href="https://amzn.to/3Kmvi0u" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center</a>,&#8221; and &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Woketopus-Money-Manipulating-Federal-Government/dp/B0DFVK74TZ/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government</a>.&#8221;
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Capitol Building from Pennsylvania Avenue

Inside The Resistance: How Washington’s Deep State Counters Trump’s Policies

Inside The Resistance: How Washington's Deep State Counters Trump's Policies

Alex Soros

Books

George Soros

The following is an edited transcript of a recent interview between Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley and former British Prime Minister Liz Truss on a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/ten-years-to-save-the-west-with-liz-truss-sunday-extra" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sunday Extra edition of Morning Wire</a>. They discuss the importance of conservative leadership, the deep state, and her new book “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Years-Save-West-Truss/dp/1684515513" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ten Years to Save The West.</a>”
JOHN: Joining us now is Liz Truss, former U.K. prime minister in 2022. She is the author of “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Years-Save-West-Truss/dp/1684515513" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ten Years to Save the West: Leading the Revolution Against Globalism, Socialism, and the Liberal Establishment</a>.” Liz, thank you for joining us.
LIZ: Great to be on the show. 
JOHN: First, You’ve had time to reflect on your time as prime minister – brief as it was – what did you learn during your term?
LIZ: Well, I think the biggest thing I learned is the sheer power of the term “establishment” and the administrative state. Before I got to that job, I had spent 10 years in the British government. I had worked in the environment department, I had been a minister in justice and when I hit a brick wall, I assumed it was because I wasn&#8217;t senior enough. So when I got to the position of prime minister and I saw my plans essentially thwarted, I really understood just how powerful the establishment and the administrative state is.
JOHN: You tried to execute your vision of Britain as a low-tax, low-regulation, high-growth country – what happened? And why wasn’t the country ready for that?
LIZ: Well, I felt that it was the only way to get Britain back on track. We&#8217;d been stagnating for a few decades, economic growth hadn&#8217;t been high enough. The government was spending almost half of our national income taxes on the federal government — taxes which are at a 70-year high. I could only see the situation getting worse, so I wanted to change the trajectory and that vision did have popular support. I won the mandate of Conservative Party members. It was popular, in terms of the public.
When we put those policies forward, they included things like getting on with fracking, holding down government expenditure, reducing taxes, and reducing regulation, the economic establishment, including the Bank of England and the Office of Budget Responsibility — which is a bit like the Congressional Budget Office in the United States — those organizations actively work to undermine the policies and undermine the policies in the market.
What do I mean by that? Well, the day before we announced our budget, the Bank of England announced that it was selling 40 billion pounds worth of government gilts (bonds). So that was making it harder for us to fund the government. They didn&#8217;t tell us there was a tinderbox of bad regulation of pension funds — pension funds that were very, very susceptible to small changes in the interest rate. We were blindsided by that. And then, when the Bank of England stepped in to fix that problem, they said they would only do it for 17 days, thereby creating a deadline in the market. All the time, while they were doing these things, they were blaming the government&#8217;s policy for what was happening, rather than acknowledging their own mistakes. So, that is essentially what happened. The problem was, I was unaware that those problems existed. So when the media, as is the habit in Britain, started its “gotcha” activities, I did not know what was going on. And that was fundamentally extremely difficult.
<div id="attachment_732995" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-732995" class="size-large wp-image-732995" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/05/GettyImages-2147850121-864x576.jpg" alt="LONDON, ENGLAND - APRIL 16: Copies of the book &quot;Ten Years to Save the West&quot; by former British Prime Minister Liz Truss are displayed for sale in a bookshop on April 16, 2024 in London, England. The Conservative former prime minister, who was in office a mere 49 days, has released a memoir in which she writes that &quot;the Conservative movement across the West has been faltering for almost a generation.&quot; (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/05/GettyImages-2147850121-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/05/GettyImages-2147850121-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/05/GettyImages-2147850121-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/05/GettyImages-2147850121.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Carl Court/Getty Images</div>
JOHN: You phrased this in an interesting way in a recent speech at the Heritage Foundation. You talked about the “anti-growth” movement that&#8217;s focused on, as you put it, “redistributionism, stagnation, and the imbuing of woke culture into our businesses.” What did you mean by that? 
LIZ: What we&#8217;ve ended up with in Britain is a corporate sector big government. By that I mean the civil service and the government agencies, what we call “quangos” in Britain — quasi government organizations — and the wider media. They tend to live in London and the South East and they tend to benefit from government largesse. They don&#8217;t want the size of government to be reduced, they don&#8217;t want the subsidies to their business to be reduced, particularly if they&#8217;re in sectors like green energy. And they don&#8217;t want regulations to be reduced because they don&#8217;t want competition. So these people have been benefiting from the status quo. 
The problem is, for the average person in Britain, their life isn&#8217;t getting any better. They&#8217;ve seen massive inflation, they haven&#8217;t seen their wages go up, and they haven&#8217;t seen the economy grow. It&#8217;s become harder and harder to run a small business, because of all of the red tape. So you&#8217;ve got a real disconnect between those who benefit from the current status quo of big government, high taxes, high regulation, high immigration, and the average person in Britain who is struggling because of the very high cost of living.
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/ten-years-to-save-the-west-with-liz-truss-sunday-extra" target="_blank" rel="noopener">LISTEN: Catch the full interview with former Prime Minister Liz Truss on Morning Wire</a></h4>
JOHN: In your book, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Years-Save-West-Truss/dp/1684515513">Ten Years to Save the West</a>,” you emphasize the importance of conservative leadership, not only in England, but also the U.S. In your view, why is conservative leadership key to saving the West? 
LIZ: All of the problems we&#8217;ve got are due to bad ideas on the Left. Whether it&#8217;s Keynesian economics, the idea that the government can run the economy; whether it&#8217;s the climate change measures that are stopping us from producing enough energy; whether it&#8217;s the wokery in our schools saying that kids have 100 genders; or the DEI agenda pursued by major corporations, which means they&#8217;re not focused on delivering valuable products and delivering profits to their shareholders — they&#8217;re focused on ticking boxes and doing identity politics. All of those bad ideas have come from the Left and the issue is conservatives have not taken these ideas on enough. Instead, we&#8217;ve kowtowed to them, you know, we&#8217;ve tried to meet them halfway, and that has resulted in the current stagnation we&#8217;re experiencing, and it&#8217;s not just economic stagnation, it&#8217;s also a sense that, certainly in Britain, our country is not moving forward. People want the future to be better than the past, but it is not clear that that is happening. The other issue is the Left has been very effective at in Britain is embedding a human rights culture into our legal system, which essentially makes it very, very hard to deport illegal immigrants. The priority put on keeping illegal immigrants in the country seems to be higher than the priority of people already living in the country and people are immensely frustrated about that. Unfortunately, there are too many conservatives who want to be popular at London dinner parties, who want to get good corporate jobs, who have essentially gone along with this leftward drift. And that is the problem we&#8217;re facing. And that&#8217;s why conservatives need to fight back, in order to make our country dynamic again and put the power back in the hands of people and families rather than the power lying in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, which is where the power at the moment lies.
JOHN: And is that part of the reason you&#8217;ve been a supporter of Brexit? Does this connect politically and ideologically? 
LIZ: Yes it does, because Brexit was all about returning power from an unelected bureaucracy in Brussels to people in Britain. The problem is that while people voted for Brexit, we still have all the E.U. laws on our statute books, because the bureaucrats in London don&#8217;t want to change things. Because they are happy with high levels of regulation, it gives them more power, it gives them more influence. They do not want to see power returned to the people, and the people in Britain are very frustrated because they voted for change when they voted for Brexit in 2016. They voted again for change when they voted for Boris Johnson in huge numbers, and lots of people who didn&#8217;t normally vote conservative, people from what you would call the Rust Belt in America, voted conservative for the first time because they wanted to see a change and they wanted to see the status quo disrupted. The problem, however, is that the bureaucratic establishment, the corporate establishment in Britain, do not want to see that change happen and they&#8217;re resisting it. I&#8217;m somebody who went into government to try and change that and I got thoroughly trounced by what they did to undermine my policies.
JOHN: How do you feel about the current leadership? What direction do you feel like they&#8217;re taking the country? 
LIZ: Well, I want to see much stronger focus on conservative principles. We have to be honest with the British public. The reason why we haven&#8217;t been able to deal with illegal immigration, the reason why people&#8217;s energy bills are so high, the reason why people&#8217;s taxes are so high is that we have not taken on the administrative state, and we have not reversed all of the regulations and laws that Tony Blair put in place in Britain. I think we need to be honest with people and we need to be prepared to be much bolder in taking on these institutions that have acquired too much power in Britain. My book walks through my ten years in government and all the battles I had and the fact that, too often, decisions that used to be in the hands of elected representatives now lie in the hands of unelected bureaucrats. And the public are rightly frustrated by that, and I think conservatives have to be honest about the state we&#8217;re in and be prepared to make some very serious changes.
JOHN: You&#8217;ve talked a lot about the U.S. and what it needs to do – obviously we have a major election going on and polls show it’s a very tight race. If Donald Trump is elected, do you have hope for the U.S. to turn around some of this bureaucratic “stagnation,” as you say, in the sense that it&#8217;s difficult to make real changes in Washington? 
LIZ: I think you&#8217;ve got real problems with the administrative state here in the United States, who do not want to see the Trump agenda enacted. I want to see Donald Trump get elected as president, but that will not be enough. He needs to dismantle the administrative state. I&#8217;m very supportive of those changes because I know what it&#8217;s like to be in the trenches fighting against officialdom when you don&#8217;t have the power to change things. So, yes, he needs to win. I think if he wins and he successfully takes on the bureaucratic state, that will be a huge win for the West and it will send a signal to countries like the U.K. about what can be done.
JOHN: Final question. What is not being emphasized enough in British and American media in terms of the national political conversation?
LIZ: Well, the thing I&#8217;m trying to really highlight in my book is the way that unelected bureaucrats have seized power, in both of our countries, and the need to take them on. Too often politicians, and I&#8217;ve been there myself, get the blame for everything that happens. While that is not right, it&#8217;s also not going to help us fix our countries. We&#8217;ve seen the way woke, Left-wing ideas have taken over institutions. Look at what&#8217;s happening in universities in the United States, the appalling anti-Semitism that is being condoned by senior figures in those universities. That shows to me a system that has gone completely wrong. So, I want people to understand the scale of change we are going to need to see to deliver conservative ideas. We&#8217;re not in the 1970s or 1980s anymore. The Left has found new ways of fighting us. They&#8217;re not just fighting us in the ballot boxes, they&#8217;re fighting us in the institutions, they&#8217;re fighting us through the courts and we need to be absolutely resolute to take them on.
JOHN: Liz, thank you so much for joining us and for your analysis – and good luck with your new book.
LIZ: Thank you very much.
* * *
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/ten-years-to-save-the-west-with-liz-truss-sunday-extra" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Listen to the full interview with former Prime Minister Liz Truss on Morning Wire.</a>

Key Speakers At Conservative Political Action Conference

‘Ten Years To Save The West’: An Interview With Former British PM Liz Truss

'Ten Years To Save The West': An Interview With Former British PM Liz Truss

Conservatives

European Union

Great Britain

interview

Politics

Readers Pass

United Kingdom

Trump Campaign Holds Caucus Night Watch Party

The Deep State Announces Its Plan To Destroy The Next Trump Administration

2024 Election

Would it surprise you that a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/the-swamp" target="_blank" rel="noopener">top Biden official</a> is accused of doling out cushy, well-paying government jobs and contracts to her liberal friends?
No, probably not, but it is surprising that the Associated Press has temporarily shed its Democrat-Media Complex credentials and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/dea-corruption-fentanyl-cocaine-drugs-contracts-milgram-7fd24fe46c4b664f285773798357d418" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> that the Department of Justice&#8217;s Inspector General is investigating Anne Milgram, President Joe Biden&#8217;s Drug and Enforcement Agency chief, for allegedly rewarding her cronies with no-bid contracts.
Milgram is the former attorney general of New Jersey and a former law professor. Now, the IG is looking at millions of dollars in taxpayers&#8217; money allegedly given out for &#8220;strategic planning and communication” and other contracts to her friends. According to the AP, the pay for such contracts was given &#8220;at costs far exceeding pay for government officials.&#8221;
“Some of these deals look very swampy,” Scott Amey, general counsel of the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, told the AP.
Also included in the report is a $1.4 million payment made to the firm WilmerHale for an outside review of DEA foreign operations and how to prevent misconduct and reduce scandals. That review, the AP noted, was widely criticized for not being as thorough as it should have been. Who helped lead that review? Well, none other than former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara&#8217;s right-hand man, Boyd Johnson. Bharara, according to the media outlet, is a close friend of Milgram.
One of the other authors of the study was 87-year-old DEA veteran John Lawn, whose knowledge of foreign practices related mostly to the 1980s. Post-government employment, Lawn was in charge of a beverage industry group that funded an alcohol research study led by Milgram&#8217;s mother.
Adding to the swampiness is the fact that the typical government-bidding process was discarded. The DEA argued that the “threat of illicit foreign drugs to the health and safety of the American public has never been greater&#8221; and required &#8220;urgency &#8221; to complete the review.
Instead, the review took nearly a year and a half to complete when it was supposed to take six months at most.
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-describedby="sk-tooltip-9096" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://onelink.to/dwapp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1681913061093000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1nSUp7X_GMxrPR-OuaxTA7">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP</a>
One former DEA official, Matthew Donahue, described that review as &#8220;a complete waste of taxpayers’ money.&#8221;  Donahue had led the DEA&#8217;s foreign operations unit but retired after he allegedly &#8220;butted heads&#8221; with Milgram, according to the AP.
“It’s something that could’ve been written in three days,” Donahue said of the finished product from WilmerHale. He also added that he and other key DEA officials and used publicly available information from press reports.
At least one lawmaker is now attempting to hold Milgram and the DEA accountable. According to the AP, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent Johnson a request for records and information regarding his relationship with the DEA chief.
“Though DEA originally billed this report as a ‘comprehensive review’ of DEA’s foreign operations strategy, the report glosses over or ignores serious shortcomings at the agency and spends much of its 49 pages quoting from publicly available documents that one could have pulled off a web site,” Grassley said.
He added that WilmerHale&#8217;s review was &#8220;stunningly vague.&#8221;
There are other potential scandals, too, documented in the AP&#8217;s story.
For many, this will come as no surprise that a federal bureaucrat with connections to New Jersey and New York Democrats might be involved in corruption. It&#8217;s just another day in The Swamp.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/ex-gop-senator-offers-case-study-in-how-the-swamp-works" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ex-GOP Senator Offers Case Study In How The Swamp Works</a>

Anne Milgram

Another Day In The Swamp: Biden’s DEA Chief Accused Of Rewarding Friends With Cushy Government Contracts

Another Day In The Swamp: Biden's DEA Chief Accused Of Rewarding Friends With Cushy Government Contracts

Drugs

Executive

Joe Biden

Readers might remember ex-GOP Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri. His parting gift to the nation was to completely knee-cap the incoming Republican-controlled House as he voted to approve <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/here-are-the-18-republicans-who-just-screwed-over-america-by-supporting-the-mcconnell-schumer-1-7-trillion-spending-bill" target="_blank" rel="noopener">President Joe Biden&#8217;s $1.7 trillion omnibus bill</a> last December.
Well, Blunt is back and is providing all Americans with a perfect case study of how The Swamp works.
After not seeking re-election in 2022, he is now <a href="https://thehill.com/lobbying/3935722-former-sen-roy-blunt-joins-dc-lobbying-firm/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">joining a lobbying firm</a> connected to his former chief of staff and his own son.  On Wednesday, Husch Blackwell Strategies announced that Blunt joined the team &#8220;where he will launch and lead our new Leadership Strategies Advisory Services.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
We are thrilled to welcome U.S. Sen Roy Blunt to HBS where he will launch and lead our new Leadership Strategies Advisory Services w his longtime Senate COS Stacy McBride &amp; Deputy COS Richard Eddings <a href="https://t.co/pYKZ7pWPq5">https://t.co/pYKZ7pWPq5</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/governmentrelations?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#governmentrelations</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/HBS?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#HBS</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/HuschBlackwellStrategies?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#HuschBlackwellStrategies</a> <a href="https://t.co/T10bICOsP8">pic.twitter.com/T10bICOsP8</a>
&mdash; Husch Blackwell Strategies (@H_B_Strategies) <a href="https://twitter.com/H_B_Strategies/status/1643586486816604160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 5, 2023</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Per The Hill, Blunt will be advising clients and is barred from registering as a lobbyist for two years after leaving Congress. Yet, Blunt told POLITICO that he <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/05/roy-blunt-gop-next-move-00090427" target="_blank" rel="noopener">doesn&#8217;t ever anticipate</a> registering as one even when he becomes eligible to do so. Perhaps that&#8217;s because if he registers as a lobbyist, as opposed to being an &#8220;adviser,&#8221; then he would have to reveal who his clients are.
Blunt, of course, took pride in his bipartisanship and spent his time as a senator under Biden working with Democrats to advance infrastructure spending, codify same-sex marriage, pass the electoral reform act, and more. Conservative base be damned, he was all too eager to link arms with the Democrats on many crucial decisions.
Now, after being in D.C. for decades, he has decided to cash in on that experience and start selling his advice.
“I’ve been giving advice for free for a long time,&#8221; he told POLITICO. &#8220;And generally, people have been willing to take it and it worked out pretty well. The media outlet added that in his new role, &#8220;Blunt will concentrate on offering advice on how to navigate both state and local government.&#8221;
So, if you want to have a long and prosperous career in D.C. it appears to work like this.
You spend your career — especially the last couple of years where you don&#8217;t have to worry about re-election— voting for bills that advance the agenda of The Establishments of the Democratic and Republican Party while managing the slow decline of the nation. During that time, you make the right connections, don&#8217;t rock the boat too much, and then have your former staffers and even your flesh-and-blood prop up a lobbying firm where a cushy job awaits you after retirement.
Then you can stay around The Beltway, enjoy some lunches paid for by the firm, and get paid even more money to block out the conservative base from D.C. decision-making. That is, as some call it, just one aspect of Permanent Washington.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/here-are-the-18-republicans-who-just-screwed-over-america-by-supporting-the-mcconnell-schumer-1-7-trillion-spending-bill" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Here Are The 18 Republicans Who Just Screwed Over America By Supporting The McConnell-Schumer $1.7 Trillion Spending Bill</a>

GOP senators

Ex-GOP Senator Offers Case Study In How The Swamp Works

Roy Blunt

Senate

The Swamp&#8217;s reaction to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-jan-6-video-changes-narrative-brings-knives-out-for-tucker-carlson-says-ben-shapiro" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Fox News&#8217;s Tucker Carlson</a> airing of less than two hours total of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/history-has-changed" target="_blank" rel="noopener">January 6 video footage</a> proves that at best, the powers that be think you are really dumb and cannot handle doing your own research while weighing competing narratives and drawing your own conclusions about world events.
And that is at best. 
At worst, and perhaps far more likely, the entire legacy media and leaders from both political parties are criticizing Carlson because his footage has changed the historic record and disrupted their narrative.
Yet, for the purposes of this column, let us give folks like President Joe Biden and Senators Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) the benefit of the doubt; Let us pretend that they really do care only about protecting democracy and the unvarnished truth. Let us also say that they did not use January 6 to tarnish former President Donald J. Trump and more than 74 million voters with all their might.
Even if that were true, their reaction would still be insulting and belittling to the American people.
As reported, Schumer called for Fox News to silence its eight o&#8217;clock host and called Carlson&#8217;s first segment a &#8220;dangerous, unforgivable attempt to destabilize our democracy and rewrite the history of the worst attack on our constitution since the Civil War.&#8221;
He was not alone. McConnell also took umbrage with the news network for allowing one of its opinion commentators to go against the official government narrative.
&#8220;It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that’s completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks,&#8221; he said. Indeed, the U.S. Capitol Police also slammed Carlson for his coverage.
Biden also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-scolds-republicans-over-tucker-carlson-airing-january-6-tapes" target="_blank" rel="noopener">weighed</a> in on Wednesday, in part saying, &#8220;How dare anyone diminish or deny the hell they went through? I stand with the Capitol Police.&#8221;
Again, treating these folks in the most Pollyannish way possible, it is evident that they think the common man is too stupid to intelligently watch Carlson&#8217;s reporting, read the official January 6 Committee transcript, and scour the internet to make up their own opinions.
Our elected leaders — and I use that term loosely — in Washington believe that information must first flow through government hands, be packaged in a way that advances The Swamp&#8217;s interests, and then parceled out to approved &#8220;news sources&#8221; — again, using the word &#8220;news&#8221; loosely — where it will be regurgitated as propaganda.
Carlson, obviously, does not fit that bill — which is why they want to stop any more J6 content from getting out to the public — which is all nonsense and patronizing.
As left-wing radio host Jimmy Dore recently <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUNYOJASD1w" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> best-selling author Michael Malice on a similar topic,  &#8220;I don&#8217;t need a person in the government or in Silicon Valley to pre-read my news for me and decide if I can read it or not.&#8221;
You don&#8217;t need somebody to pre-read your news for you either. You are more than likely capable of reading many different sources and relying on the facts to ascertain the truth as well.
January 6th isn&#8217;t a one-off news story either. As readers well know, the lapdog media and their Beltway allies have consistently pushed the idea that there is only one accepted way to report on COVID-19 and its vaccine, the war in Ukraine, and other national news stories.
That state-supported singular messaging always seems to make Washington, D.C. stronger. Any journalist — citizen or corporate — who dares think differently is deemed a threat who must be stopped. Any American who entertains that the government is lying, or not being completely forthright, is treated with contempt and derision.
<a class="c-link" href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://onelink.to/dwapp" data-sk="tooltip_parent">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILY WIRE APP</a>
So, on one hand, The Swamp either thinks you are a gullible rube who must be protected against &#8220;disinformation&#8221; because you are too stupid to know any better; Or, they despise the average American — doubly so if they are a Trump supporter — and push propaganda around the clock while misleading the public for their own purposes.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle — which would mean The Swamp both hates you and thinks you are mindless.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 07: U.S. Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) (L) and Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (R) walk towards the House chamber to attend President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address at a joint meeting of Congress in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol on February 07, 2023 in Washington, DC. The speech marks Biden’s first address to the new Republican-controlled House.HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA – NOVEMBER 17: Tucker Carlson speaks during 2022 FOX Nation Patriot Awards at Hard Rock Live at Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Hollywood on November 17, 2022 in Hollywood, Florida.

At Best, The Swamp Thinks You Are Really Dumb

Chuck Schumer

January 6

Mitch McConnell

Tucker Carlson

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-nancy-pelosi-will-not-seek-job-as-top-house-democrat" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> that she will not seek re-election to Democratic leadership in the new <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-republicans-win-majority-in-house-projection" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Congress</a>. This can only mean that the 82 year old is one step closer to retirement.
Good riddance.
Since she was elected into office, America has been ruthlessly gutted of blue-collar jobs, strong borders, and precious life spanning all ages.
This, of course, was not solely her fault. It takes two to tango in Washington, D.C., and her team was aided and abetted by a Republican Party that often seemed to pass Democrat-lite policies.
It was no surprise then that former GOP Speakers of the House John Boehner and Paul Ryan wished Pelosi well as she stepped down from leadership.
&#8220;Congratulations @SpeakerPelosi on a remarkable, historic run of service in the People&#8217;s House,&#8221; Boehner <a href="https://twitter.com/SpeakerBoehner/status/1593352550828412930?s=20&amp;t=SnPmL48Eh5s0gxqKFx9XIg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tweeted</a> Thursday. &#8220;We were able to disagree without being disagreeable. You&#8217;ve been unfailingly gracious to me and my family.&#8221;
Ryan welcomed her arrival in a special D.C. &#8220;club.&#8221;
&#8220;I tip my cap as I welcome @speakerpelosi to the former speaker’s club and congratulate her on a historic career in the House,&#8221; he <a href="https://twitter.com/SpeakerRyan/status/1593296461172817920?s=20&amp;t=SnPmL48Eh5s0gxqKFx9XIg" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tweeted</a>.
Pelosi, elected in 1987, Boehner, elected in 1990, and Ryan, elected in 1998, were intimately involved in either creating a dismal America riddled with social ailments or allowing it to happen.
In other words, their legacy has consisted of constantly putting Americans last, especially those most vulnerable among us.
For example, since 1987, nearly 40 million babies have been aborted in the womb, <a href="https://nrlc.org/uploads/factsheets/FS01AbortionintheUS.pdf">according</a> to the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute.
Pelosi has constantly championed a woman&#8217;s so-called right to choose while also claiming that she is a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/pro-abortion-pelosi-describes-herself-as-devout-practicing-catholic-jokes-pro-lifers-would-like-to-throw-me-out" target="_blank" rel="noopener">devout Catholic</a>.
Her support for the &#8220;right&#8221; to kill children has been so profound that her own bishop has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bishop-who-denied-pelosi-communion-said-biden-brings-about-pain-and-death-elected-leader-of-pro-life-committee" target="_blank" rel="noopener">barred</a> priests from allowing her to receive the Eucharist — the source and summit of the faith, reserved for those in a state of grace (without mortal sin).
On the spiritual side, her anti-life stance has been a source of confusion and scandal for millions of Catholics, adding to her egregious behavior.
Boehner and Ryan are also Catholic, but evidently thought she was still worthy of praise.
Beyond fatalities in the womb, deaths from drug overdoses — preventable and otherwise — have skyrocketed. &#8220;In 2020, 83,558 people died from preventable drug overdoses – an increase of 649% since 1999,&#8221; <a href="https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/drugoverdoses/data-details/#:~:text=In%202020%2C%2083%2C558%20people%20died,%2C%20homicide%2C%20and%20undetermined%20intents." target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In 2021, more than 100,000 people <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/202205.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">died</a> of a drug overdose. Many of those deaths involved fentanyl.
Similarly, America has lost millions of manufacturing jobs over the past three decades. The nation has <a href="https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2018/beyond-bls/the-fall-of-employment-in-the-manufacturing-sector.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">seen</a> 5.5 million of those positions cease to exist since the year 2000.
Except, those jobs didn&#8217;t simply go away. D.C. policies often encouraged companies to create their products in far-off countries. Cheaper products would benefit the American people. In 2016, folks like Ryan were still <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/01/politics/paul-ryan-free-trade-koch-brothers" target="_blank" rel="noopener">arguing</a> that virtually unlimited free trade was a good thing, pushing back against policies he deemed &#8220;protectionist.&#8221;
To her credit, Pelosi spoke out against trade deals with China in the 1990s but was ultimately unable to stop the bleeding.
In the end, the evidence shows that the loss of jobs is partly <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6606896/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">responsible</a> for increased drug use since social degradation and loss of purpose lead to finding fulfillment in vices like drugs. In turn, a government <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6606896/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">focused</a> on creating as cheap a product as possible with little regard for the country’s social fabric, turns out, is a bad thing.
Now, despite hundreds dying each day, there does not seem to be a concern for the matter stemming from Washington. Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18-45, yet that was barely mentioned during the midterm campaigns by either party.
Where do those narcotics come from?
According to a <a href="https://trone.house.gov/2022/02/08/cnn-commission-report-fentanyl/#:~:text=Fentanyl%20is%20trafficked%20principally%20by,Postal%20Service%2C%20the%20report%20said." target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a>, the &#8220;dominant&#8221; source of fentanyl in the U.S. is Mexico.
Pounds upon pounds of the deadly substance are stopped by border patrol every year, but the numbers have gone up dramatically under Biden.
All three — Pelosi, Boehner, and Ryan — opposed varying degrees of tighter border security and often worked for some <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/boehner-gop-immigration-plan-not-amnesty-msna261096" target="_blank" rel="noopener">amnesty</a> for illegal immigrants.
That porous border has undoubtedly contributed to the epidemic of drug overdoses, a report from the federal Commission on Combating Synthetic Opioid Trafficking <a href="https://trone.house.gov/2022/02/08/cnn-commission-report-fentanyl/#:~:text=Fentanyl%20is%20trafficked%20principally%20by,Postal%20Service%2C%20the%20report%20said." target="_blank" rel="noopener">indicated</a>.
On that note, according to a 2018 Yale study, as many as 29 million illegal aliens have <a href="https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/yale-study-finds-twice-as-many-undocumented-immigrants-as-previous-estimates" target="_blank" rel="noopener">entered</a> the country since 1987. Our sovereignty has taken a dramatic hit since the 1986 amnesty bill heralded by then-Congressman Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
In recent years, Biden&#8217;s policies, supported by Pelosi, have created a tsunami of illegal immigration.
Again, how is that worthy of praise from former GOP elected officials like Boehner and Ryan?
Through it all, federal spending has also <a href="https://www.federalbudgetinpictures.com/federal-spending-per-person-is-skyrocketing/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">soared</a>, as has the size of government, yet when real conservative opposition formed in reaction to that reality — The Tea Party — Boehner, Ryan, and Pelosi threw them under the bus.
In 2021, Boehner <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/open/2021/04/john-boehners-political-memoir-disses-trump-and-tea-party-but-avoids-ohio-controversies.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> in his memoir, &#8220;What Nancy Pelosi and other sane Democrats — the ones who’ve been around long enough to know how things work — are dealing with from AOC and her Squad reminds me a lot of what I had to deal with during my days as Speaker from the far-right kooks of the Tea Party or the Freedom Caucus or whatever they were calling themselves.&#8221;
The Tea Party and Freedom Caucus simply wanted a government that stayed within its budget, returned power back to the states, defunded Planned Parenthood, and secured the border among other things that Republicans such as Boehner and Ryan had been promising to do for years.
To put into context how unbelievable Boehner’s remark is, Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was a founding member of the Freedom Caucus — which would mean that Boehner thinks of him as a &#8220;kook&#8221; as well.
The trio&#8217;s gripes with former President Donald Trump are well known, yet none of them seem to realize that their failure on matters discussed in this column can explain his rise and why Americans flocked to him.
Boehner resigned as speaker in 2015 after his apparent life goal of getting the pope to speak before Congress was accomplished. There was <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/09/john-boehner-resigned-after-the-popes-visit-there-was-nothing-left-for-the-house-speaker-to-achieve.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">nothing</a> left for him to do, he has implied numerous times. A pope speaking before Congress is nice, but it doesn’t really do anything for the American people.
Ryan decided against seeking re-election during the Trump administration and slinked away for a few years only to return in recent months to castigate Trump. Ryan is still arguing that Republicans <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-plan-to-save-americas-finances-fiscal-monetary-policy-debt-deficits-social-contract-midterm-election-healthcare-11668638378" target="_blank" rel="noopener">need</a> to focus mostly on economic issues and the threat of government in order to win big.
He says this despite social issue victories in states like Virginia and Florida. Trump’s policies, which Ryan has warned against, grew the party in ways Ryan only dreamed of. Now DeSantis and Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) are expanding on Trumpism.
Yet oddly enough, Boehner and Ryan have kinder words for Pelosi than they ever have had for Trump or the Tea Party.
Sure, she held her left-wing socialists at bay in recent years, but Pelosi also enriched herself with all-too-timely stock trades that have raised eyebrows.
Americans, meanwhile, have suffered under the Swamp as multiple generations of politicians from both parties have focused on all the wrong problems as they silence any true grassroots movements to shake up the system.
She scored wins for the Democratic Party, but those don&#8217;t translate into victories for the voters.
Why the praise, unless your worldview aligns more with the Democrats than the conservative base?
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Paul Ryan, Nancy Pelosi,  John Boehner

Pelosi And The Swamp: Millions Of Babies Killed, Record Overdoses, Job Loss, And Open Borders

Pelosi And The Swamp: Millions Of Babies Killed, Record Overdoses, And Open Borders

John Boehner

Nancy Pelosi

Paul Ryan

Menu

The Swamp

Congress Urged To End One Of D.C.’s ‘Swampiest’ Practices

The Coordinated Hit Job On Pete Hegseth Must Be Exposed And Defeated

Trump Cleans Out Deep State

As Trump Drains The Swamp, Democrat Sea Creatures Emerge

Inside The Resistance: How Washington’s Deep State Counters Trump’s Policies

‘Ten Years To Save The West’: An Interview With Former British PM Liz Truss

The Deep State Announces Its Plan To Destroy The Next Trump Administration

Another Day In The Swamp: Biden’s DEA Chief Accused Of Rewarding Friends With Cushy Government Contracts

Ex-GOP Senator Offers Case Study In How The Swamp Works

At Best, The Swamp Thinks You Are Really Dumb

Pelosi And The Swamp: Millions Of Babies Killed, Record Overdoses, Job Loss, And Open Borders

Menu

The Swamp

Congress Urged To End One Of D.C.’s ‘Swampiest’ Practices

The Coordinated Hit Job On Pete Hegseth Must Be Exposed And Defeated

T​​rump Cleans Out Deep State

As Trump Drains The Swamp, Democrat Sea Creatures Emerge

Inside The Resistance: How Washington’s Deep State Counters Trump’s Policies

‘Ten Years To Save The West’: An Interview With Former British PM Liz Truss

The Deep State Announces Its Plan To Destroy The Next Trump Administration

Another Day In The Swamp: Biden’s DEA Chief Accused Of Rewarding Friends With Cushy Government Contracts

Ex-GOP Senator Offers Case Study In How The Swamp Works

At Best, The Swamp Thinks You Are Really Dumb

Pelosi And The Swamp: Millions Of Babies Killed, Record Overdoses, Job Loss, And Open Borders

Trump Cleans Out Deep State