Musk: “USAID Is A Criminal Organization. Time For It To Die.”
February 3rd, 2025Looks like some of it will be moved into the State Department.
Via: Independent:
Elon Musk has threatened to shut down America’s $50-billion-a-year foreign aid agency, USAID, calling it “criminal” and “beyond repair”.
The billionaire tech mogul said President Donald Trump had agreed with him to close the federal agency, which was founded by JFK and has the largest budget of its kind in the world.
USAID said its Washington D.C. headquarters were closed on Monday, and told staff to work from home on Tuesday. Several hundred employees reported being locked out of the agency’s computer systems.
“He agreed we should shut it down,” Musk said during a live discussion on X Spaces. “It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm in it. What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair. We’re shutting it down.”
He branded USAID a “criminal organization”, without anything to back up the wild claim, adding: “Time for it to die”.
Mexico, U.S. Reach Deal to Delay Tariffs for One Month
February 3rd, 2025Via: Reuters:
U.S. President Donald Trump paused new tariffs on Mexico for one month after Mexico agreed on Monday to reinforce its northern border with 10,000 National Guard members to stem the flow of illegal drugs.
The agreement also includes a U.S. commitment to act to prevent trafficking of high-powered weapons to Mexico, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on X. The two leaders spoke by phone on Monday, just hours before U.S. tariffs on Mexico, China and Canada were set to take effect.
Anti Immigration Enforcement Protest Downtown Los Angeles
February 2nd, 2025Via: ABC7:
Thousands of people marched in downtown Los Angeles Sunday in protest of President Trump’s planned mass deportations blocking several streets and taking over the 101 Freeway, causing “major gridlock”, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
The 101 Freeway reopened at around 8 p.m. as thousands were still protesting in downtown Los Angeles attempting several times to get back on the freeway, but Los Angeles police officers managed to keep them off.
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🤡
Live:
Captain Rebecca Lobach Identified as Third Black Hawk Pilot Who Died in Collision with American Airlines Flight in DC
February 2nd, 2025There’s so much shrill noise on X about incompetence, DEI hires, etc.
Please stop.
This is the opposite of incompetence:
Two new videos obtained by CNN show new angles on Wednesday night’s midair collision above Washington DC.
In the videos both aircraft can clearly be seen flying towards each other, then exploding and falling into the river after the fatal explosion. pic.twitter.com/W89o5387fp
— Breaking Aviation News & Videos (@aviationbrk) January 31, 2025
Would this have even been possible without some sort of computer guidance?
Via: Daily Mail:
The U.S. Army has identified the third pilot of the H-60 Black Hawk Helicopter that collided with an American Airline CRJ-700 passenger jet on Wednesday as it was on approach to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, killing 67 people.
Captain Rebecca M. Lobach, 28, from Durham, North Carolina was one of three soldiers aboard the chopper that crashed into the jet just as it was coming into land.
The Army had initially refused to identify Lobach at the request of her family but the decision to release her name came ‘at the request of and in coordination with the family,’ according to a statement released by the Army.
‘We are devastated by the loss of our beloved Rebecca. She was a bright star in all our lives,’ her family said. ‘Rebecca was a warrior and would not hesitate to defend her country in battle.’
Lobach had worked as a White House aide during the Biden administration and had served as an aviation officer in the Army from July 2019 until January 2025.
Critical Air Safety System NOTAM Goes Down Nationwide
February 2nd, 2025Via: New York Post:
Flights across the US could be delayed Sunday after the Federal Aviation Administration’s critical NOTAM warning system experienced an outage —mere days after two deadly plane crashes rocked the nation.
Notice to Air Missions — which relays important information about possible hazards to pilots and airports — went dark Saturday night, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy wrote on X.
“The primary NOTAM system is experiencing a temporary outage, but there is currently no impact to the National Airspace System because a backup system is in place,” he said, noting the agency activated its contingency systems to keep flight operations running.
Musk’s Team Given Access to U.S. Government Payment System
February 1st, 2025They’re going to quickly stumble on to payments for black world projects and operations and potentially not realize what they’re looking at. It’s hard to imagine that the actual deep state would allow anyone to start pulling on those threads…
My guess is that we’ll hear more about things like Social Security fraud and less about whatever it is that LockheedMartin actually did with over $61 billion just in 2023.
Via: Reuters:
Billionaire Elon Musk and his government efficiency team have been given access to the U.S. Treasury Department’s payment system, resolving a days-long standoff, the New York Times reported on Saturday.
Musk, who chairs the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency, has been tasked by President Donald Trump to identify fraud and waste in the government and had sought access to the system Treasury uses to dole out federal funds.
His efforts were resisted by a career Treasury official, David Lebryk, who was placed on leave this week and then retired. On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave Musk’s team access, the Times reported.
The system sends out more than $6 trillion per year in payments on behalf of federal agencies and contains the personal information of millions of Americans who receive Social Security payments, tax refunds and other monies from the government.
Canada and Mexico Poised to Retaliate Against Trump Tariffs
February 1st, 2025Update: Mexico Hits Back at Trump’s Tariffs with Tariffs of Its Own on U.S. Imports:
Mexico will retaliate against tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump with tariffs and other measures of its own, President Claudia Sheinbaum has announced.
Sheinbaum said on Saturday that she had ordered her economy minister to implement tariff and non-tariff measures to defend her country’s interests, after the US slapped across-the-board duties on goods coming from Mexico.
—
Here we go…
Via: Bloomberg:
Canada is set to introduce escalating retaliatory counter-tariffs to try to turn Americans against President Donald Trump’s 25% levies on Canadian goods, a threat that’s causing the country to rethink its dependence on its southern neighbor.
“You will find when we do respond, at least initially, that we will focus on tariffing American goods that actually are sold in significant quantities in Canada, and especially those for which there are readily available alternatives for Canadians,” Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said in an interview on Friday, hours after Trump reiterated his plan to bring in tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China.
Canadian officials were told by US officials on Saturday that the tariffs would be implemented on their goods on Tuesday, according to people familiar with the situation.
Billions of Dollars in Short Bets on U.S. Markets
February 1st, 2025…maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.
Via: Telegraph:
Hedge funds have bet billions of dollars against Donald Trump’s America amid fears of a market crash.
Data from Goldman Sachs show there has been a surge in “short” bets against US stocks, meaning traders will make money when they fall in value, in a sign of growing concerns about the market.
In January, investors have placed 10 times more bets on US stocks falling than equivalent bets that shares in leading American companies would rise, the investment bank said. It suggests many traders are sitting on huge profits from the chaos earlier this week, when shares in big tech stocks slumped following a panic over the success of rival Chinese AI DeepSeek.
Musk Reveals Treasury Has Been Auto-Paying Everyone, ‘Even Known Terrorist Groups’
February 1st, 2025Via: ZeroHedge:
Well, well, well – DOGE moves into the Treasury, triggering their longest-serving, highest-ranked career official to quit in a huff, and they find that department has essentially been auto-paying everyone, according to Elon Musk.
“The @DOGE team discovered, among other things, that payment approval officers at Treasury were instructed always to approve payments, even to known fraudulent or terrorist groups,” said Musk in a Friday night tweet.
“They literally never denied a payment in their entire career.”
Musk Aides Lock Government Workers Out of Computer Systems, “That Contain the Personal Data of Millions of Federal Employees”
January 31st, 2025Via: Reuters:
Aides to Elon Musk charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials.
Since taking office 11 days ago, President Donald Trump has embarked on a massive government makeover, firing and sidelining hundreds of civil servants in his first steps toward downsizing the bureaucracy and installing more loyalists.
Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO and X owner tasked by Trump to slash the size of the 2.2 million-strong civilian government workforce, has moved swiftly to install allies at the agency known as the Office of Personnel Management.
The two officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said some senior career employees at OPM have had their access revoked to some of the department’s data systems.
The systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, the officials said.
