OH, SHE’S GOOD:
🇺🇸 PRESS SEC: TAXPAYERS EXPECT FEDERAL WORKERS TO SHOW UP
Reporter:
“But is there any concern that we risk losing people with years of experience, like doctors and, let's say, scientists?”
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt:
“Most doctors who work in actual hospitals and… pic.twitter.com/msUgR5sVwG
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) January 29, 2025
To be fair, it probably doesn’t take any great skill to make a GMA anchor look ridiculous.
REESTABLISHING THE BORDER: Trump rolls back deportation protections for thousands of Venezuelans. Here’s what that means.
The Trump administration’s decision to revoke the recent extension of Temporary Protected Status granted to Venezuelans by former President Joe Biden could affect hundreds of thousands living and working in the United States, setting the stage for possible deportations.
Here is a look at some of the key questions and answers about the issue.
What is Temporary Protected Status?
TPS is a federal program that gives temporary deportation protections and work permits to people in the United States from countries in turmoil. The secretary of the Department of Homeland Security has the authority to designate a country for TPS. Besides Venezuela, countries that currently also have the status include El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, Nicaragua and Ukraine, among others. To qualify, people must have been in the United States before a certain cutoff date that Homeland Security sets when it announces the designation.
When was Venezuela designated for TPS status?
The Biden administration first designated Venezuela for Temporary Protected Status in March 2021, a decision that was widely celebrated in South Florida. In October 2023, Biden created a second designation for Venezuela that included an additional half-million people.
People are upset because everybody understood that “temporary” for the Biden Cabal really meant “forever.”
MAKE AN EXAMPLE: Portland Police Chief Blatantly Refuses to Help ICE, Enforce Laws.
WHEN YOU’VE RUN OUT OF THINGS TO SCARE PEOPLE WITH…: Climate change could spark outbreaks of DIARRHOEA in Britain, scientists warn.
PRO-CHOICE: GOP Lawmakers Introduce Bill to Expand School Choice. “Introduced Wednesday, the Educational Choice for Children Act provides a charitable donation incentive for individuals and businesses to fund scholarships for students to cover expenses related to K-12 public and private education. School Choice Week began Monday.”
And on the Senate side: Sen. Mike Lee Introduces ACE Act to Promote School Choice. “The ACE Act increases tax exemptions for families to make private school or homeschooling more affordable for parents and encourages states to adopt school choice programs.”
Full text:
There cannot be a “hostile takeover of the civil service.” The civil service is not a check on the Executive Branch- it IS the Executive Branch. If a Department, Office, Bureau, program, or individual is doing something counter to the will of the Executive, it’s well within the Executive’s right to nip such behavior in the bud. Because the Executive was elected by the will of the people. The bureaucracy was not.
“Prevent the civil service from becoming the President’s henchmen.” What absolute drivel.
Left-wing ideals have been left to fester and seep into every aspect of the so-called civil service, to the point it feels emboldened to act as an unelected, unvetted check on the President. Nonsense. There are three branches of gov’t that are intended to check and balance each other: Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. There is no fourth branch called “The Bureuacracy” that has the right to check or balance the other three.
The bureaucracy in DC is as entrenched as a tumor grown in the bone, sucking the life force out of this country. It will take a lot of surgery – some of it messy – to fix all that damage.
There will likely be collateral damage but, at this point, fewer and fewer people probably give a damn.
IT WOULD TAKE A COUPLE OF YEARS TO CLEAR IT OUT, AND THAT’S IF DISNEY EVEN WANTS TO: Disney’s Pipeline Still Clogged With Woke. “Disney is in a weird place right now. They’ve sort of, kind of, announced that (like most of the rest of corporate America) they’re backing away from wokeness, to the extent that they’re cutting woke storylines from Pixar properties, and Disney was able to course correct in enough time to make Moana 2 and Inside Out 2 big hits last year (plus Deadpool & Wolverine, which I suspect was too rude to ever be infected with wokeness), but the company itself is still infected with DEI, and they still have an awful lot of very expensive turds, conceived and crafted in the woke era, sliding down the alimentary release canal.”
Related (From Ed): The Critical Drinker on “Captain Anti-America.”
I’M EXPECTING AT LEAST TWO YEARS OF FREAKOUTS AND ENJOYING THEM ALL — THE INJUNCTIONS, NOT SO MUCH: The Great Federal Freeze Freakout Is on Hold.
COLONIALISM, STRAIGHT UP:
Shia Muslims take over Westminster Bridge in London and conduct self-flagellation in honor of Imam Musa Kazim Martyrdom Procession 2025
26th January 205
Westminster Bridge
London pic.twitter.com/tbwWclNhLW— Actual Coverage (@actualcoverage) January 27, 2025
HOWARD BEALE VS THE DEEP STATE: We’re as Mad as Hell and We’re Not Going to Take This Anymore.
JOANNE JACOBS: Dumber and dumber: Americans, young and old, are slipping.
“Americans are getting dumber,” writes Chad Aldeman on The 74. Achievement peaked about a decade ago on “a wide range of national and international tests, grade levels and subject areas.” Since then, students — and adults – are doing worse.
The pandemic made it worse, but the downward trend started years before lockdowns and zoom school.
Scores have fallen faster for lower-performing students, he notes. Achievement gaps, which were narrowing, are growing, points out Nat Malkus of the American Enterprise Institute. In a new report, he writes that “external societal factors — not just school-related influences —are at play.”
At the start of the decline, writes Aldeman, the Obama administration relaxed federal accountability rules. It would make sense to blame that — except that U.S. adults are doing worse in literacy and numeracy on international tests, with lower achievers again losing the most.
Just another case of the better-off closing doors of opportunity to potential competitors from the less well-off.
Thanks, Obama.
BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY DO:
Astounding. Reporters at RFK hearing have pre-written negative headlines. pic.twitter.com/CY5VGXJH2O
— Calley Means (@calleymeans) January 29, 2025
“Astounding? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
More seriously, those anti-Trump/pro-government narratives don’t establish themselves, you know — and the busy little beavers in the legacy Complicit Media understand that their job is to further the Cause, not report the truth.
ROBERT SPENCER: Former CNN ‘Journalist’ Makes a Stunning Admission About Fauci. “I screwed up. Back in May 2020, I wrote how Anthony Fauci had ‘crushed’ Donald Trump’s lab-leak theory for how Covid-19 originated The CIA said over the weekend that they now believed the virus leaked from a lab.”
The screw-ups still always seem to go in the same direction.
CHANGE (IT BACK):
🔥 New EO:
“Accordingly, it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called “transition” of a child from one sex to another…” pic.twitter.com/GkR8Yn9RpV
— Jon Herold (@patel_patriot) January 28, 2025
He doesn’t rest, does he?
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Hey, Elon — Take a Chainsaw to THIS.
Congratulations, taxpayers of America. Last year you spent more than $15 million on [checks notes] advanced concepts in yarn.
Courtesy of DataRepublican (small r) — a data-crunching genius on X — there’s now a searchable, online database of federal grants to nonprofits and NGOs. “Ever wonder exactly which government grants fund nonprofits? Now you can know—because I’ve cracked the code,” DataRepublican explained in her X announcement on Monday. “Unlike older tools that only sift through nonprofit 990s (which don’t directly show government dollars), I’ve mined the USASpending database to create fuzzy matches between nonprofits and their linked government grants.”
She set it up so you can search by keyword, recipient, funding agency, and much more. Or you can do what I did this morning and be a jerk about it. I thought, “What is the most boring thing in the world and how much taxpayer money is Washington giving away on it this year?”
“Yarn,” I immediately decided.
Much more at the link.
FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY: Trump administration will offer all 2 million federal workers a buyout to resign.
A senior administration official told NBC News that they expect 5%-10% of the federal workforce to quit, which, they estimate, could lead to around $100 billion in savings.
“American taxpayers pay for the salaries of federal government employees, and therefore deserve employees working on their behalf who actually show up to work in our wonderful federal buildings, also paid for by taxpayers,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “If they don’t want to work in the office and contribute to making America great again, then they are free to choose a different line of work, and the Trump Administration will provide a very generous payout of 8 months.”
Those are permanent, annual savings, and I presume they’ll come on top of the savings generated by firing workers who refuse to come back to the office and DEI “burrowers” for insubordination.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: I’ll Take My New Immigration Policy on ICE, Please. “It’s so refreshing to see the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents being allowed to do their real jobs again. The fact that the Biden administration hamstrung them so severely while taunting them with open borders is yet another example of the Democrats’ hatred for all law enforcement.”
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY (MOSCOW EDITION): Putin growing concerned by Russia’s economy, as Trump pushes for Ukraine deal.
President Vladimir Putin has grown increasingly concerned about distortions in Russia’s wartime economy, just as Donald Trump pushes for an end to the Ukraine conflict, five sources with knowledge of the situation told Reuters.
Russia’s economy, driven by exports of oil, gas and minerals, grew robustly over the past two years despite multiple rounds of Western sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
But domestic activity has become strained in recent months by labour shortages and high interest rates introduced to tackle inflation, which has accelerated under record military spending.
That has contributed to the view within a section of the Russian elite that a negotiated settlement to the war is desirable, according to two of the sources familiar with thinking in the Kremlin.
Trump, who returned to office on Monday, has vowed to swiftly resolve the Ukraine conflict, Europe’s biggest since World War Two.
This week he has said more sanctions, as well as tariffs, on Russia are likely unless Putin negotiates, adding that Russia was heading for “big trouble” in the economy. A senior Kremlin aide said on Tuesday that Russia had so far received no specific proposals for talks.
“Russia, of course, is economically interested in negotiating a diplomatic end to the conflict,” Oleg Vyugin, former deputy chairman of the Central Bank of Russia said in an interview, citing the risk of growing economic distortions as Russia turbo-charges military and defence spending.
I don’t pretend to know what Putin’s concerns are and, for all anybody outside the Kremlin knows, Reuters’ five sources could be deliberately spreading misinformation about Putin’s concerns.
That said, Russia’s 21% interest rate is real, is expected to rise, and is unlikely to do much to combat inflation. Most of Russia’s inflation is due to the war, and reducing war expenditures won’t happen until there’s peace.
As for Putin’s cheerleaders in the West who seemed convinced Trump would sell out Ukraine, Trump says he’ll go after the Russian economy even harder.
Trump wants peace. Hopefully he’ll get it. But selling out to Putin is no way to get it — something Trump clearly understands.
DON’T GET COCKY: Democrats’ 2026 Problems Have Already Started.
Democrat Gary Peters won’t seek re-election in 2026, the two-term Michigan senator said Tuesday, complicating Democrats’ path to reclaiming a majority in the chamber.
“At this point in my life, I have been able to write many different chapters, and I look forward to the new ones with both anticipation and excitement,” Peters said in a video message. He cited the birth of his grandson as a reason for stepping away from Congress.
Peters’s announcement comes after a bruising 2024 election for Democrats in which they failed to win back the House and lost control of the Senate and the White House. Republicans now have a 53-47 Senate majority, and Democrats were hoping to claw back seats in 2026 in competitive states such as North Carolina and Maine. Michigan was already expected to be a tossup seat, as is Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff’s in Georgia.
President Trump won Michigan last fall—49.7% to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’s 48.3%—en route to his demolition of the “blue-wall” states, and Republicans hold the majority in the state’s delegation to the House.
There might not be anything better Trump can do to secure midterm victories than to keep delivering on his campaign promises.
LEFTISM AS A NEUROSIS, PART #1,000,006: Leftists Are so Upset About Trump That Even the Shrinks Need Shrinks.
BOOM:
🚨🇺🇸HEGSETH REVOKES GEN. MILLEY'S SECURITY DETAIL AND ORDERS REVIEW
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the immediate revocation of retired Gen. Mark Milley's personal security detail and security clearance.
He cited allegations that Milley "undermined the chain of… pic.twitter.com/mdLb5IJIA5
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) January 28, 2025
Civilian control of the military isn’t just written into the Constitution, it’s paramount for a civil society — and Milley undercut nearly 250 years of it.
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