February 6, 2025

NEO: Trump’s second term so far: I guess this is what “draining the swamp” looks like.

There’s so much going on that I can’t cover everything in depth. What I’ve been doing, and what I plan to keep doing, is concentrating on the efforts I find most interesting or important, and also providing overviews such as this one. And of course links such as these:

From Ace, “USAID and the CIA Funded Trump’s First Impeachment.”

At Legal Insurrection, “US State Department Recalls All USAID Staffers from Foreign Assignments.”

From The Federalist, “The Constitution Vindicates Trump’s Firing Of 17 Inspectors General.”

From The Federalist, “If Presidents Can’t Control Executive Agencies, Elections Are Fake.”

There’s much, much more.

It’s also one thing to make light of the reaction of the left, such as “heads are exploding.” But there’s really nothing light about this. The press and the left are labeling it a coup, a dictatorship, an illegal takeover. The grounds for believing that – even on the part of relatively moderate Democrats – have been prepared for many many years. This is an extremely volatile situation.

Interesting times.

Indeed. And note the formulation the left is making by calling Trump’s efforts to shrink the federal bureaucracy a “coup:”

For once in his life, Reich is actually right about something. A “coup d’etat” is a brief and bloodless revolution. In America, we have those every four or eight years — they’re called elections.

Posted at 6:39 pm by Ed Driscoll

WE NEED TO DECIDE IF WE ACTUALLY WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO BE THAT MUCH MORE EFFICIENT AT WHAT IT DOES:

I mean, you know, given what it does.

Posted at 6:17 pm by Glenn Reynolds

AOC LATEST DEM PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1859: Ocasio-Cortez: Illegal Aliens Are Why Americans Survived Coronavirus Pandemic.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) claimed during a recent interview that the reason Americans survived the COVID-19 pandemic was because of illegal aliens.

AOC made the remarks during an interview with Maria Hinojosa on Latino USA while talking about the subject of illegal immigration.

“These are human beings, but they are also assets to the United States of America,” AOC said. “Now, when I move to the economic case, I want to say first that, yes, it is fraught, you know, because it is painful to see sometimes people only talk about the economic case because we’re more than just a labor force. We’re more than just a people to be exploited.”

Ocasio-Cortez said that people who vote on the issue of illegal immigration are not compassionate and do not see the “humanity” in people.

“And so if you want to be hard-nosed about it, understand that America’s immigration force and our community of immigrants, including and especially the millions of undocumented people in this country, are why America has prospered, especially why we survived the COVID-19 pandemic,” she claimed.

“And for all of the people who cast a vote based on grocery prices and inflation, if you think your groceries are expensive now, wait until the farms are empty,” she said. “If you think houses are expensive now, wait until there’s no one building them.”

Wait, don’t you mean rebuilding them? From David Harsanyi right around this time in 2019, “The 10 Most Insane Requirements Of The Green New Deal,” including:

Gut and rebuild every building in America. [Sen Ed Markey, D-MA] and Cortez want to “retrofit every building in America” with “state of the art energy efficiency.” I repeat, “every building in America.” That includes every home, factory, and apartment building, which will all need, for starters, to have their entire working heating and cooling systems ripped out and replaced with…well, with whatever technology Democrats are going invent in their committee hearings, I guess.

Oh and speaking of Markey:

It’s probably just a health and safety issue while the building is being retrofitted with “state of the art energy efficiency.”

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

MAKING THE MOON THE 51ST STATE? I think we need to put people there first. Also, it’ll be like 54th, behind Canada, Greenland, and Gaza.

Posted at 5:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

QUESTION OF THE DAY IN D.C.: How many feds take up Trump’s buyout offer? My sources tell me the total is much more than the reported 40,000 so far, but a judge extending the deadline to Monday should boost the final total a good bit.

Posted at 4:51 pm by Mark Tapscott

‘EVERY NIGHT:’ MSNBC Seems to Have Found a New Obsession in Elon Musk.

On Tuesday night’s episode of MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, Stephanie Ruhle picked up where she had left off the previous night in vitriolically attacking Elon Musk and his new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk was a central feature of a panel discussion she hosted, featuring Bloomberg senior executive editor Tim O’Brien, and Max Chafkin, also of Bloomberg, who is also co-host of a podcast entitled Elon & Co., which, based on the name, is apparently and a little bizarrely devoted solely to the subject of Elon Musk.

“All right, Max,” Ruhle said, turning to Chafkin, “let’s talk about Elon Musk.” She fumed that Musk was “more than front and center” in the new administration. “I mean, this guy is getting more headlines than Donald Trump.”

Strangely, it seemed that in her eyes Musk’s involvement in government was pretty much criminal, while she showed no sign of having any problem with, for example, George Soros exercising tremendous influence for left-wing causes.

To paraphrase the Gipper, sometimes the left hand doesn’t know what the far left hand is doing. Back in 2011, MSNBC was running ads calling for new Hoover Dam-level projects (I know, I know). Surely the man making massive breakthroughs in rocketry and electric cars counts is playing in that league, right?

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

#WINNING: Carl’s Jr. Super Bowl ad brings back bikini-clad burger models after yearslong clampdown.

Carl’s Jr. is bringing back its bikini-clad burger models just in time for the Super Bowl.

TikTok influencer Alix Earle stars in a new commercial from Carl’s Jr. promoting its new “hangover burger” for football fans needing a pick-me-up after game day.

“Just what you need to cure that post party bug,” Earle says, dressed in a skimpy outfit as she parades through a car wash and takes a bite of the super-loaded breakfast burger.

The Super Bowl-themed ad comes about eight years after the fast-food chain vowed to end its sexualized campaigns, which included partnerships with Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian.

The brand’s return to racy advertising comes as major companies have been dismantling their diversity programs, following President Trump’s call for “merit-based” policies.

Studying this year’s Super Bowl ads, Kremlinology-style for their tone and subtext will be fun on Sunday. (Hopefully the game will be watchable as well.)

 

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

BEGORRAH: Israeli Defense Minister: Countries like Ireland ‘legally obligated to allow any Gaza resident to enter their territories.’

Israel’s defence minister has said countries like Ireland, Spain and Norway are “legally obligated” to take in Palestinians.
It comes as Defence Minister Israel Katz said he has instructed the army to prepare plans for large numbers of Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip in line with US president Donald Trump’s proposal for the war-ravaged territory.

Mr Katz said on Thursday that the plan “will include options for exit at land crossings as well as special arrangements for exit by sea and air”.

He said he welcomed Mr Trump’s “bold plan, which could allow a large population in Gaza to leave for various places in the world”.

Mr Katz did not say whether Palestinians would be able to one day return to Gaza, which has been rendered largely uninhabitable by Israel’s 15-month military campaign against Hamas.

When asked who will take in the Palestinians, Mr Katz said it should be countries who have opposed Israel’s military operations in Gaza.

“Countries like Spain, Ireland, Norway, and others, which have levelled accusations and false claims against Israel over its actions in Gaza, are legally obligated to allow any Gaza resident to enter their territories,” he said.

“Their hypocrisy will be exposed if they refuse to do so. There are countries like Canada, which has a structured immigration program, that have previously expressed a willingness to accept Gaza residents.”

Well, the Palestinians will feel right at home in Ireland: As William Jacobson of the Legal Insurrection blog warned in December, “Ireland maybe be about to Bud Light itself:” Ireland has brought a diplomatic disaster on itself.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

OF COURSE THEY DIDN’T AIR ANYTHING THAT WOULD MAKE HER LOOK BAD:

Posted at 3:51 pm by Stephen Green

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT [VIP]: The Left’s Endgame: Are You Not Entertained? “Note: Most Thursdays, I take readers on a deep dive into a topic I hope you’ll find interesting, important, or at least amusing in its absurdity. These essays are made possible by — and are exclusive to — our VIP supporters.”

Posted at 3:20 pm by Stephen Green

OUT ON A LIMB: If Presidents Can’t Control Executive Agencies, Elections Are Fake.

If the executive cannot control his own personnel, agencies, and funding lawfully given to him by a duly elected Congress, elections mean nothing. If the executive is not actually an executor, then the entire bureaucracy is an autocratic, self-licking ice cream cone. It runs the country, not any elected official. And Congress is complicit, because it allows the distribution of opium funds to Afghanistan and queer “safe spaces” in Kenya without ever having to take a public vote on any of this garbage, so long as these taxpayer-provided slush funds slather their retirements and relatives with “nonprofit” and “contractor” lard.

Whatever you want to call unelected bureaucrats and “nonprofit” grifters distributing funds obtained from American citizens against our consent as expressed in elections and line-item votes, it is not a republic, nor a democracy. If Trump can’t fire his own employees and redistribute public funds the executive branch has been given by law, he’s not really the president, and elections are fake.

All this means Trump isn’t “weaponizing” or “politicizing” these agencies. He’s fighting their inherent weaponization. Firing and investigating people who abuse public power, and ending the theft of American labor to fund evil international patronage schemes — that isn’t retribution, it’s justice.

Nervous employees of the Ministry of Truth tell state-run media that their current state is an “Orwellian nightmare!”

UPDATE: Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein on the Crazy USAID Spending Being Uncovered.

 

Posted at 2:55 pm by Ed Driscoll

HEH, INDEED: Pictured: The golden pager symbolizing Israel’s renewed friendship with the US.

Benjamin Netanyahu gave Donald Trump a golden pager in a symbolic reference to the covert operation that turned Hezbollah devices into lethal explosives in an attack last year.

Text on the pager, placed in the middle of a dissected tree trunk, reads: “Press with both hands.”

A small placard on the bottom of the trophy-like gift, says: “To President Donald J. Trump, our greatest friend and greatest ally. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

A source familiar with the gift told The Telegraph that Mr Trump replied on receiving it: “That was a great operation.”

Mr Trump then gave the Israeli prime minister a photo of the two of them from the latter’s US visit, inscribed: “To Bibi, a great leader.”

The US president used the meeting a the White House to announce his ambitions to resettle Palestinians from Gaza and take the Strip into US ownership.

Yes, the golden pager will look awesome in the lobby of the Gaza Trump Tower.

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll