Trump regime

Dirt Diggers Digest -  Donald Trump and Elon Musk keep claiming that their scorched-earth approach to remaking the federal government is made necessary by the prevalence of fraud and waste. Musk’s DOGE attack-squad tabulates its progress on a Wall of Receipts that currently purports to have saved Uncle Sam $65 billion.

That number appears to have been plucked out of thin air. The savings for the 2,300 individual contracts listed on the site add up to only $9.6 billion, and even that amount is shaky. For example, the single biggest savings, $1.9 billion, is attached to a Treasury Department contract that is reported to have ended during the Biden Administration. More

DOGE gives no details of any fraud it may have found in the contracts. That is not surprising, since it is impossible to have done a careful examination of that many contracts in such a short amount of time.

Time -  U.S. Agency for International Development workers who have been fired or placed on leave as part of the Trump administration's dismantling of the agency began paying mournful final visits to their abruptly closed Washington headquarters on Thursday, under the administration's 15-minute windows to clear out their offices while escorted by federal officers. Some staffers wept as they carried out grocery bags and suitcases with what was left from their life's work. Supporters clapped and cheered outside or drove by tapping their car horns to bolster their spirits.

Reuters - In a memo on Sunday evening, the FBI Agents Association told its 14,000 members that new director Kash Patel had assured them that he would follow tradition and name a career special agent with operational expertise as his deputy director.

"Director Patel agreed," said the memo, which Reuters reviewed.

 

An hour after the memo was sent, Dan Bongino, a right-wing podcaster who has never been an FBI agent and who has called the agency “irredeemably corrupt,” was named to serve as Patel’s deputy director. That position oversees day-to-day operations and carries enormous power to supervise investigations across the nation.

 

The unprecedented appointment of two loyalists to President Donald Trump has rattled the FBI community and lawyers who worry that their lack of experience and overt statements supporting retribution for the president’s critics could presage a misuse of the nation’s most prominent investigative agency, according to 14 former FBI employees and prosecutors interviewed by Reuters.

 

“FBI agents’ oaths to support and defend the Constitution will be tested as never before,” said David Laufman, who worked with FBI agents on sensitive investigations for decades, including as chief of counterintelligence for the Justice Department.

 

CNN -   President Donald Trump said Thursday tariffs of 25% on Mexican and Canadian goods are set to take effect on March 4, while also threatening to impose an additional 10% on Chinese imports on the same date.  Mexico, China and Canada are America’s top three trading partners. Simultaneous tariffs on all three nations could lead to soaring prices for American consumers, especially at a time when inflation is already heating up.