ESPECIALLY WHEN TRUMP’S LAWYERING IS SO MUCH BETTER: Sometimes The Battle Is Well Worth The Fight — The Upside To The TRO’s Coming With The Imperial Judiciary.

This isn’t 2017. The nascent Trump Administration isn’t unprepared on both a policy and personnel basis to fight back against the onslaught of lawfare that has been unleashed as was the case 8 years ago.

There has always been a plan this time around.

The Executive Orders (EOs) that are the source of the lawfare now being waged by the Democrats’ Marxist/Progressive allies were carefully written — unlike in 2017 when the new Trump Administration was largely unprepared for the surprising upset of Hillary Clinton.

The EOs that led the way in 2017 — the Travel Ban, Expediting Environmental Review for Critical Infrastructure Projects, etc., — were scattershot, written on the fly, and without having a clear understanding how they would be challenged in courts across the country. . . .

In 2025, the Trump Transition Team had a plan. Dozens of EOs were carefully drafted with a coherent theme — directly attacking the Administrative bureaucracy — the “Resistance” — that strangled his first term in its cradle. There was never any question that the Democrats and the Administrative bureaucracy would rerun the same playbook — charge into federal courts where they knew they would find politically sympathetic judges (GOP did the same to Biden in Texas in 2021) and seek TROs and Injunctions to grind all the new reform efforts to a halt.

But I don’t think the Democrats/Progressives anticipated Elon Musk and his engineer boy-geniuses, nor did they expect that the first target that would take multiple incoming torpedos from DOGE would be the federal programs that have funneled huge sums of money to the left-wing NGOs through a variety of slush funds.

Read the whole thing.

FEAR AND LOATHING ON KALORAMA HEIGHTS:

In a town with only one industry, reducing government is a sacrilegious act. It is one thing to run on reducing government and quite another thing to actually mean it…https://t.co/jYQLE1uhQI

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) February 16, 2025

The idea of a transfer of power—especially one resulting from (gasp) an election—is terrifying to The Deep State™️ and to The Uniparty™️

Unrivaled, unreviewable, unchecked power is their whole game

And they’re about to lose https://t.co/ClxitjWgaX

— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) February 16, 2025

Worth watching. Klobuchar appears genuinely uncomfortable, even nervous. Also pretty scattered narrative attempt.

Panic from Dems. https://t.co/cRkstlg5zT

— Jeff Carlson (@themarketswork) February 16, 2025

They’re terrified of the money spigot closing and the accountability spigot opening.

Meanwhile, election-deniers are calling this peaceful transfer of power a “coup,” and declaring today a “national day of action” to oppose it. Sounds insurrection-y to me.

MAKING AMERICANS’ LIVES BETTER INSTEAD OF WORSE: Trump Officially Ends Biden-Era War On American Appliances.

LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND OBSCURE:

The impossibly rich lifestyle of DC liberals, funded by YOU the taxpayer, without your consent or approval. This is how they live, and the receipts prove it.

USAID, the NEA, and other taxpayer-funded programs issue billions of dollars in grants. John and Jane, or Pete and Pete,… pic.twitter.com/qwq2o2GusA

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) February 15, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: What Abolishing the Income Tax Would Mean.. Plus an AI experiment.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China invites bids for lunar satellite to support crewed moon landing missions.

AVERSION TO FIRING EMPLOYEES: A Cross-Cultural Study.

THIS WOULD NOT ONLY SAVE PEOPLE MONEY, BUT ELIMINATE HUGE AMOUNTS OF HASSLE, AND GOVERNMENT CONTROL: DOGE and Military Cuts Could Enable Eliminating Individual Income Tax.

All those people complaining about DOGE as a threat to privacy — why is it okay for the government to know how much money you make and what you spend it on?

WELL, THAT’S GOTTA HURT HIM TO SAY:

ABC’s Jon Karl: Trump’s favorability is now HIGHER than it ever was in his first term.

– 63% want the government to recognize only two sexes
– 60% support deporting illegal aliens
– 60% favor expanding oil & gas productionpic.twitter.com/9fUNRCY0Yp

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 16, 2025

BEEGE WELBORN: The Dems’ P-Word Problem And Its Historical Parallels. “I saw that and I was like, ‘I am so writing this post. This is history come to life.’”

Related:

You can have a volunteer military made up of dudes like the one on the left or the one on the right.

One will repel the other.

You have to choose. https://t.co/bsGYjiZA8r pic.twitter.com/2deus1THt3

— The Deseret Stone (@DeseretStone) February 14, 2025

BREAKING AUTOMOTIVE NEWS: The Best Floor Mats of 2025, Tested.

ABOLISH THE ATF: How a Replica Submachine Gun Landed a Sailor in Jail for 20 Years.

HMM: Maternal acetaminophen (paracetamol) use may alter placental gene expression, raising ADHD risk in children.

MGS: MACHINE-GENERATED SMUT. ChatGPT can now write erotica as OpenAI eases up on AI paternalism: ChatGPT relaxes rules on sex and “gore” generations while prohibiting illegal content. There’s not really any such thing as “illegal content” here; they mean depictions of illegal behavior. “The Model Spec outlines formalized rules for restricting or generating potentially harmful content while staying within guidelines. OpenAI has divided this kind of restricted or iffy content into three categories of declining severity: prohibited content (‘only applies to sexual content involving minors’), restricted content (‘includes informational hazards and sensitive personal data’), and sensitive content in appropriate contexts (‘includes erotica and gore’).”

STARSHIP IS SEXY, BUT FALCON IS STILL DELIVERING THE MAIL: SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 booster launches 21 Starlink satellites from Florida.

AN AMERICA MOST LEFTISTS AND JOURNALISTS — BUT I REPEAT MYSELF — DON’T KNOW:

🚨 WATCH: President Trump just did an EPIC flyover at the Daytona 500

The crowd went absolutely WILD! 🔥

It’s like one big MAGA rally!
pic.twitter.com/VujMEBZpZo

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) February 16, 2025

I’M NOT SURPRISED: Depression can speed onset of long-term physical illness, study says.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Smart bots: China’s sex doll makers jump on AI drive. “The firm admits improving the features has been difficult partly because experts aren’t interested in putting much effort into developing AI technology for adult products.”

Coming soon in the New York Times: “As a flesh man, can I date robot women to advance my anti-robophobia?”

Not 2020. 2025. pic.twitter.com/GNAnL2V1rN

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) February 16, 2025

WILLIAM MARSHALL: The Genius of the DOGE Exposures.. “No doubt when Musk sets his genius young elves to work applying their AI algorithms on the Department of Health and Human Services and the Defense Department’s budget data, they will find waste so massive that it dwarfs that of USAID’s $40 billion annual outlay. But it’s a bit harder for the public to grasp the wastefulness of the government paying many times the price that it should be paying for anti-aircraft missiles, say, or ineffective vaccines. From a public relations standpoint, it’s much easier to see the lunacy of the US taxpayer shelling out $2.5 million for an electric vehicle project in Vietnam or $1.5 million to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in Serbian workplaces.”

(Sorry, had wrong author credited. Fixed now.)

PROBABLY: Will the Deep State Be Beaten via a ‘Kobayshi Maru’ Maneuver by DOGE Team?

THIS CALLS FOR A LAWSUIT: Teachers under investigation for allegedly wearing ‘Gulf of America’ t-shirts. “Teachers at a majority-Hispanic north New Jersey high school are under investigation for allegedly donning ‘offensive’ ‘Gulf of America’ t-shirts.”

It now identifies as the Gulf of America. Stop deadnaming it with the slave name given to it by Spanish colonizers.

A SMALL MEASURE OF ACCOUNTABILITY: UCLA Students for Justice in Palestine suspended after harassing UC regent and his family, vandalizing home.

CORRECTION: YOU WEREN’T ALLOWED TO ASK.

Having world war level of national debt without fighting a world war is catastrophic.

The @DOGE team is tracing and stopping the insane levels of waste and fraud very quickly. https://t.co/v8JweQMmxF

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 15, 2025

ACTUALLY, IT ONLY BENEFITS SOME MEN, NOT “MEN” AS A GROUP: Who Really Loses In Hook-Up Culture? Many men are left out, as women ruthlessly engage in hypergamy. Men outside the top 20-30% likely do much worse than under traditional arrangements.

RELATED: The Typical Man Disgusts the Typical Woman. I don’t think this is anything inherent. I think it’s a combination of hypergamy, and media-induced narcissism.