February 4, 2025

SHOCK AND AWE: Purge begins as DOGE enters FBI to obtain names of 5,000 agents who worked January 6 cases and face firing.

The FBI is being forced by Elon Musk’s DOGE to hand over the names of 5,000 officials who worked on January 6 cases.

Those officials could face being fired for failing the Trump ‘loyalty test’ being given to rank-and-file employees.

Officials working for Musk at DOGE were spotted by CNN entering FBI headquarters on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., to collect the information.

FBI agents filed a lawsuit Tuesday trying to block the release of their names or identifying details after Trump administration officials demanded documents about who worked on January 6-related cases.

The agents say their jobs could be terminated within days.

The ‘loyalty’ test asks questions such as: ‘What was your/your employee role in the investigation(s) or prosecutions(s) relating to events that occurred at or near the US Capitol on January 6, 2021? Select all that apply.’

It then lists a series of boxes that includes investigatory work such as surveillance, a grand jury subpoena, or an arrest.

According to the lawsuit ‘the very act of compiling lists of persons who worked on matters that upset Donald Trump is retaliatory in nature.’

It said the move was ‘intended to intimidate FBI agents and other personnel, and to discourage them from reporting any future malfeasance and by Donald Trump and his agents.’

The group of agents warned of ‘unlawful and retaliatory’ actions against them, and said the information sweep could violate civil service protections.

As long as they haven’t done anything wrong, what do they need to worry about? (To coin a phrase.)

Posted at 5:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

YOU DON’T NEED A WEATHERMAN TO SEE WHICH WAY THE WIND IS BLOWING: DC Council expels Trayon White over allegations he took bribes.

The D.C. Council voted unanimously Tuesday to expel Council member Trayon White Sr., an unprecedented rebuke stemming from federal allegations that he took $35,000 in bribes from a government contractor.

White’s expulsion — the first imposed by the council in its 51-year history — forces the Democrat to immediately surrender his seat representing Ward 8, a swath of blue-collar neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River.

White, 40, who has pleaded not guilty to the bribery charge, is scheduled to go on trial next January. Despite the council’s action, he is eligible to run in a special election to fill his seat and represent the ward, where he won reelection to a third term in November, four months after his arrest.

Touted as a potent new political voice when he joined the council in 2017, White styled himself as an acolyte of the late former mayor Marion Barry, whose populist touch and deep connections with Black Washingtonians helped him also win a seat on the council representing Ward 8.

Like Barry, White achieved political success despite making critical missteps, including in 2018 when he claimed on social media that a Jewish banking family controlled the weather, an assertion that made him the target of international scorn.

Flashback to 2018: Holocaust Museum tour by lawmaker who said Jews control the weather does not go well.

The photo, taken in 1935, depicts a woman in a dark dress shuffling down a street in Norden, Germany. A large sign hangs from her neck: “I am a German girl and allowed myself to be defiled by a Jew.” She is surrounded by Nazi stormtroopers.

D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) studied the image. “Are they protecting her?”

Lynn Williams, an expert on educational programs at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and White’s tour guide for the day, stared at the photo.

“No,” she said. “They’re marching her through.”

“Marching through is protecting,” White said.

“I think they’re humiliating her,” Williams replied.

* * * * * * *

The tour, scheduled to last 90 minutes, was halfway done. Seven of White’s staff members stayed with the guide, who soon was showing them an exhibit on the Warsaw Ghetto. As she explained the walling in of Polish Jews, one aide asked whether it was similar to “a gated community.”

Glazer spoke up.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t call it a gated community,” she said. “More like a prison.”

As I said at the time, Larry David’s next Curb Your Enthusiasm just wrote itself:

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Trump Becomes First* Fascist In History To Reduce Size Of Government.

President Donald Trump has just become the first fascist in the history of humankind to use his despotic powers to reduce the size of the government.

While most other fascist leaders throughout history have used their power to increase the scope of government influence in their respective countries, Trump has broken with tradition to become the very first fascist with a focus on dismantling his own government’s overreaches.

“Only time will tell, but Trump must have something extremely nefarious up his sleeve if he’s doing his fascism by making government smaller,” said Lee Glyde-Jennings, who teaches several classes on the history of fascism at Harvard. “It’s entirely unlike every other fascism in history to this point — I’m just waiting to see how he’s going to wind up instituting a fascist dictatorship by carefully picking apart the government bureaucracy.”

* FDR, who retroactively smeared Calvin Coolidge, a proponent of a much smaller government, as being a fascist in his 1944 State of the Union speech might like a word here.

Posted at 4:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

CLIFTON DUNCAN: The Suicide of the Celebrity.

Imagine losing to literally Hitler.

Such was the fate of soon-to-be-ex Vice President Kamala Harris—a brown woman who inspired antiracists across America to form whites-only advocacy groups without a shred of self-awareness.

But Madame Harris and her white saviors didn’t suffer defeat alone—the stars who gave their all to ensure her triumph over Donald Trump also lost bigly. It was a valiant effort: Hamill harangued; Ruffalo ranted; Deniro raged; JLo cried; Cardi B powered through a reading assignment. And so on.

Alas, America overwhelmingly preferred Hitler to Hollywood. Defeat was decisive: Trump would not just take the electoral college, he would become the first Republican in 20 years to win the popular vote, and the second president in American history to serve two non-consecutive terms.

But how could the electorate shun the cast of The Avengers? How could Julia Roberts’ appeal to politically closeted (presumably battered) wives fail to win more women? Why did Meghan Thee Stallion’s cheek-clapping not mesmerize more black men? How could George Clooney—who helped raise millions for Joe Biden (weeks before urging him to step aside)—make so little impact?

There has always been some animus against “Actorvists”—people generally prefer not to be condescended to by soft-handed and obscenely rich entertainers. Still, Stars were far more tolerated before than they are now. Many were even liked.

That’s not the case anymore.

Here’s why.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

GOOD GUYS WITH GUNS: Band Dads Thwart Active Shooter In Pasadena. “The MSM loves to report on successful mass shootings to further their gun control agenda of mass civilian disarmament, but pays far less attention when one is thwarted.”

Posted at 3:49 pm by Stephen Green

DEMOCRATS DON’T LIKE DEMOCRACY AND THEY LIKE CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLICS EVEN LESS:

Related from Mollie Hemingway: “This last week is complete vindication of the claim that cries about supposed ‘threats to democracy’ only made sense if understood as “‘threats to bureaucracy.'”

Posted at 2:47 pm by Stephen Green

BLUFF CALLED: Phil Murphy Splutters After Tom Homan Goes FAFO on Story of Garage-Dwelling Illegal Immigrant.

On Monday, we wrote about the stunning claim made by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) during a recent interview in which he strongly implied he and his wife, NJ First Lady Tammy Murphy, were harboring a female illegal immigrant above their garage.

“Tammy and I were talking about – I don’t want to get into too much detail, but there is someone in our broader universe whose immigration status is not yet at the point that they are trying to get it to,” Murphy stated. “And we said, you know what? Let’s have her live at our house above our garage.”

Even more shockingly, Murphy appeared to taunt ICE to try and take the alleged illegal immigrant he was allegedly harboring from them.

“And good luck to the feds coming in to try to get her,” he dared.

As RedState’s Rusty Weiss reported, border czar Tom Homan responded accordingly to Murphy’s statement, confirming on Fox News that “I got note of it. Won’t let it go. We’ll look into it.”

“And if he’s knowingly harboring and concealing an illegal alien, that’s a violation of Title VIII of the United States Code 1324,” Homan also observed, while adding that prosecution would then be sought.

Perhaps with the thought in mind that their boss might have just admitted to a federal crime, Murphy’s office hit the panic button, and suggested the governor, who is serving his last year in office due to term limits, had been wildly taken out of context:

To be fair, Murphy wouldn’t be the first Democrat governor of New Jersey who was simply living “his truth” to the max.

Posted at 2:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

CHANGE: Starlink profit growing rapidly as it faces a moment of promise and peril. “The key takeaway I want everybody to walk away with is, if SpaceX was building the Starlink system to pay for a Mars colony, we’ve got evidence that the company will generate the type of free cash flows from the business that could pay for said endeavor.”

Posted at 2:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

FASTER, PLEASE: U.S. Begins Migrant Flights to Guantanamo Bay.

The first two flights carrying detained migrants from the U.S. to Guantanamo Bay have headed to the naval base in Cuba, as the Trump administration begins to expand a small migrant-detention center there.

One flight from Fort Bliss to Guantanamo has roughly a dozen migrants on board, people familiar with the matter said. An additional flight left the U.S. on Monday, one of the people said.

The U.S. base at Guantanamo has always had a facility to detain some migrants, typically those caught heading for the U.S. at sea. The base is now equipped to hold 120 migrants, and the administration has said it would expand operations there to hold up to 30,000.

CTRL-F “Illegal” brings up zero results, curiously enough.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

MIKE ROSEN: Obama’s third term as president ends with a gasp and wheeze.

The obstacles and landmines Biden planted in his successor’s policy path will be easily cleared by President Trump, as he amply demonstrated just hours after the inauguration with a tsunami of executive orders overriding all of Biden’s, on which the ink had barely dried. Clearly, Biden’s deteriorating state of mind could not have crafted the intricate obstructions pouring out of the oval office in the final days of his presidency.

Instead, the fingerprints of White House staff were all over them. USA Today calculated that three quarters of Biden’s top 100 advisors had worked for Obama. The open secret in Democrat DC circles was that Biden didn’t matter. He may have had the title of president, but Obama-era young radical aides were really running the country. (And those whiz kids must have had a hearty laugh inserting America-hating left-wing billionaire George Soros among Biden’s picks for the Presidential Medal of Freedom.)

Biden was the figurehead for the equivalent of Obama’s third term, who had promised to “fundamentally transform America.” NPR reported that 12 of Biden’s first 16 senior appointments were Obama alumni. Biden was a puppet whose ego was flattered by handlers portraying him as the new FDR who would create his own “social justice” New Deal (including a Green New Deal), expanding the administrative state, driving up social spending, opening the border, and codifying the Left’s cultural agenda. Rather than bringing spending sharply down from the hyper-elevated COVID levels, they pretended endless deficits don’t matter and don’t ignite inflation. Turns out, they do.

What matters just as much is derailing the federal gravy train that props up Democrats and their causes far beyond any genuine popularity — but the DOGE boys are on it.

Posted at 1:45 pm by Stephen Green

NEW DNC CHAIR: Democratic Party ‘not dead.’

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said the party was “not dead” despite the party’s loss of the White House and Senate majority in last fall’s elections.

“We’re not dead as a party. We’re still alive and kicking, and we’re going to fight for our values, and we’re going to fight for American values at this time, when people are seeing what Donald Trump and the Republicans are doing at this time,” Martin said during a Monday appearance on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

Martin won the race to become the next DNC chair on Saturday in a highly-contested race. Democrats are looking to Martin to reestablish the party’s presence in states across the nation as preparations for midterm elections kickoff.

Live look at Martin uttering his stirring cri de coeur:

Posted at 1:40 pm by Ed Driscoll

NOTHING IS MORE FRIGHTENING TO THE OTHERWISE UNEMPLOYABLE THAN SEEING THEIR GRAVY TRAIN DERAILED:

It’s hard to believe Trump is only in his third week.

Related (From Ed): Sunlight is the best disinfectant:

UPDATE (From Ed):

Posted at 1:35 pm by Stephen Green

SADLY: Not the first time rank-and-file government employees abused their trust. JustTheNews is reporting that:

Airport workers have been charged for allegedly giving surveillance video to the news media of the deadly midair crash last week at Reagan National Airport, just outside of Washington, D.C., according to news reports Tuesday.

Less than three years ago, Kobe Bryant’s estate filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles Countyafter Kobe Bryan’s crash , alleging that:

“First responders took graphic photos of human remains at the scene as “souvenirs” and shared them with others. She claimed she suffered emotional distress and sued for negligence and invasion of privacy. In August 2022, a jury awarded Vanessa Bryant $16 million in her invasion of privacy trial against Los Angeles County.”

Aside from the Chiquita Banana phone hack (Gannett) and the Brown & Williamson case (CBS) I can’t think off hand of too many media outfits who bore the brunt of damages. There is an interesting line of cases about privacy and “ride-alongs” where any qualified immunity granted to the cops was not extended to the press.

Posted at 1:33 pm by Charles Glasser

TRUMP’S TRADE WAR EXPOSES GERMAN CARMAKERS TO A ‘FULL-ON STORM:’

The German chancellor’s visit to Chequers, in Buckinghamshire, the Prime Minister’s countryside retreat, was supposed to demonstrate thawing relations between Britain and the Continent ahead of a key European summit.

Instead, the pair’s carefully choreographed diplomacy was being drowned out by a cacophony of threats emanating from Washington.

Hours earlier, Donald Trump had stunned allies by announcing US tariffs on all goods imported from neighbours Canada and Mexico – and threatened to do the same to the European Union “soon”.

While tariffs on Mexico and Canada have since been delayed by a month after last-minute concessions, the threat remains.

For Scholz, the moves risk creating another almighty headache for Germany’s flatlining economy – and in particular the country’s prized carmaking industry.

American tariffs on EU exports threaten to clobber German automotive champions such as Volkswagen, BMW and Audi, at a time when they are already battling cut-throat competition from China and tough EU emissions rules.

“This isn’t a headwind for German carmaking, it’s a full-on storm,” says Sander Tordoir, the chief economist at the Centre for European Reform think tank.

Nick Parker, an automotive expert at AlixPartners, agrees, warning: “I think this does become an existential threat.”

Germany’s automotive industry will be the biggest loser by far if Europe is dragged into a trade war, according to modelling by Oxford Economics.

Should the US and the EU hit each other with 25pc tariffs, the consultancy estimates that German car exports to the US will drop by 7pc.

But that’s good, right? German greens have been pushing for “deindustrialization” for years, a sort of self-inflicted Morgenthau Plan. Trump appears to be eager to help them finish the job.

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll