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[British Columbia](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia)

Chinese crime networks and Mexican cartels are using Canadian ports to trade highly lucrative fish bladders for the precursor chemicals needed to produce fentanyl.

## Totoaba fish worth tens of thousands being traded for component parts of fentanyl: CBSA report


The totoaba is an endangered fish species living in the waters off the west coast of Mexico, which sells for such high prices it's been dubbed "the cocaine of the sea." (Omar Torres/AFP)

Chinese organized crime networks and Mexican cartels are using Canadian ports to trade highly lucrative fish bladders for the precursor chemicals needed to produce fentanyl, according to a memo from the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).

It said organized criminal networks transport the fish — called totoaba — from the West Coast to China, while the chemical precursors to make toxic drugs are sent through Canadian ports. 

The report from the CBSA, first [obtained by Radio-Canada](https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2139566/totoaba-fentanyl-canada-chine-cartel) through a freedom of information request, said Canada is being used as a "transit point" for the illegal product — though the quantity of fish passing through Canada and the amount of fentanyl precursors being exchanged for it, were not included in the report. 

The document, originally published in French in October of 2024, says, "Chinese organized crime, in collaboration with Mexican cartels, facilitates the illicit movement of totoaba. Illicit wildlife trafficking networks are of a poly-criminal nature and engage in serious criminal behaviour."

Poly-criminal groups refer to networks that traffic more than one illicit commodity, such as counterfeit goods or illicit drugs.

The CBSA report indicates that a new criminal network known as the "Dragon Cartel," comprised of Chinese and Mexican nationals, has been created to deal specifically with totoaba trafficking.

The seven-page document says western ports are a target, and that "people in Canada regularly engage in the illicit import, export and breeding of protected species."

Luis Horacio Nájera, a Mexican journalist who has investigated cartel activity, said the Vancouver port, in particular, is vulnerable to criminal activity because it connects the West Coast ports of Manzanillo and Los Angeles to Asian and European markets.


Cargo terminals at the Port of Vancouver, taken July 2023 from a helicopter. (Gian Paolo Mendoza/CBC)

"As the world is globalized, organized crime is also globalized," he said.

"This is kind of the strategic point for doing this exchange of illegal goods, and they found the opportunity, the possibility and the infrastructure to do these illegal trades in Vancouver."

A 2023 press release from the U.S. Treasury Department also found Vancouver has become a "strategic" post for the [Sinaloa cartel](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-canada-mexican-drug-cartel-1.7382951) in the distribution of fentanyl.

## $80K per kilo

The totoaba is an endangered fish species living in the Gulf of California off the west coast of Mexico. The species can reach two metres in length and has been the subject of massive levels of poaching for several years.

But the fish are mainly known for their swim bladders, which sell for such high prices they've been dubbed "the cocaine of the sea." 

Totoaba swim bladders are sold on the Chinese black market for use in traditional cuisine, medicine and cosmetics, and can sell for as much as $80,000 per kilogram.

The rare product is so lucrative some types of porpoises have been [pushed to the brink of extinction](https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-friday-edition-1.4123806/chinese-demand-for-liquid-cocaine-fish-pushes-porpoise-to-brink-of-extinction-1.4124431), illegally killed off in droves as poachers attempt to extract the fish, also endangered, from them. 

Nájera said Canadian authorities will face an uphill battle cracking down on the totoaba trade because of the huge amount of cargo passing through ports, combined with the difficulty of identifying illegally traded bladders amid other legal fish products. 


Fish swim bladders are placed in a basket to dry on the side of a main road outside a dried goods shop in Hong Kong. (ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP/Getty Images)

"It is hard because this is not cocaine, right? Cocaine is usually packed solid. It's easily identifiable at some point. This is fish — and how do you know which fish is this or that?" he said, adding the CBSA may need to invest in specialized training and infrastructure to identify smuggled products. 

"When you have a container full of tilapia or octopus or whatever among these cargoes, you can smuggle these totoaba bladders."

According to the CBSA report, totoaba swim bladders are often smuggled alongside frozen fish and squid.

And while often transported in coolers and backpacks, criminal networks are expanding their methods to include smuggling them in gasoline tanks, spare tires, and hidden vehicle compartments. 

## Spotlight on fentanyl from Canada

The revelation comes at a time of heightened political attention on the flow and production of fentanyl from Canada.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly raised the drug coming into the U.S. as justification for sweeping tariffs, which are on hold for now. 

In response, Canada has [appointed a fentanyl czar](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/fentanyl-czar-kevin-brosseau-cbsa-1.7457308) in a bid to bring the already low percentage of the deadly opioid smuggled south into the United States down to zero.

Canada has also recommitted to [a previously announced $1.3-billion border security plan](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/border-plan-leblanc-trump-1.7412456) that includes reinforcing the 49th parallel with new choppers, technology and personnel and said it will designate cartels as terrorist organizations.


Totoaba is fished illegally from the waters of Mexico's west coast. (Guillermo Arias/AFP)

Figures from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) show seizures of the highly toxic drug along the Canadian border are relatively low compared to other countries. The agency [seized 19.5 kilograms](https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/drug-seizure-statistics) of fentanyl at the Canadian border last year, compared to 9,570 kilograms at its border with Mexico. 

Fentanyl has had a devastating impact on both the U.S. and Canada. Over 49,000 Canadians have died of overdoses from toxic drugs since 2016, the same year B.C. declared the toxic drug crisis a public health emergency. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [said the drug killed more than 74,000 Americans in 2023.](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2024/20240515.htm)

While there is renewed focus on the distribution of fentanyl from Canada, Nájera said it's difficult to quantify what portion of the fentanyl components are being diverted to other international markets once they're traded.

"Those chemicals coming from China, some of them may stay here in Canada, but I'm sure a significant amount of them go all the way back to Mexico to the port of Manzanillo or to the area of Los Cabos."

According to the Brookings Institute, economic ties between China and Mexico have expanded rapidly, with trade between the two countries reaching $100 billion US in 2021.

## ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Michelle Ghoussoub is a reporter and anchor for CBC News based in Vancouver. She has received two nominations for the Canadian Screen Award for Best Local Reporter. She can be reached at michelle.ghoussoub@cbc.ca.


A teenage grooming gang victim allegedly used as a “sex slave” by [Asian](https://www.standard.co.uk/topic/asian) men in [Rochdale](https://www.standard.co.uk/topic/rochdale) was labelled a “prostitute” from the age of 10 by social services, a court heard.

The victim, now in her 30s, who had been in care as a youngster, had read her file held by Rochdale social services, she told Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester.

In it, the local council’s department for looking after children claimed the youngster was selling herself for sex.

“It was in my file, when I looked it up,” she told the jury at the trial of eight men accused of grooming her and another teenager.

“I read it. I was picked up by the police for loitering and prostituting from the age of 10.”

The woman, identified only as girl B, said she was repeatedly sexually abused from the age of 13, that “everybody knew what was going on”, and the description of her as a prostitute was “vile”.

And she denied claims by lawyers defending the accused that she was claiming she was abused to get compensation money.


Eight men are on trial for grooming offences in Rochdale (Dave Thompson PA)

PA Archive

She said it was not about money, but she wanted Rochdale social services to “take responsibility”.

“Because they were the ones supposed to care for me and look after me and a lot of bad things happened,” she said.

“I have never been able to lead my life at all. I struggled to enjoy anything, to do anything. Depression, anxiety to the point I didn’t want to be here.”

Rossano Scamardella KC, prosecuting, said: “It was suggested to you, when you were 13 you looked a lot older?”

### Read More

The witness was given a photo of herself at that age to look at, and said: “I look like a little kid.”

Girl B said when the abuse began she was living in a children’s home and started to hang around Rochdale market, where Mohammed Zahid, then in his 40s, owned a stall.

Each week she was taken to a shop in Rochdale owned by another man – Mushtaq Ahmed.

In the cold, damp basement under the shop, she was repeatedly raped on a dirty bare mattress by both the stall-holder Zahid and shop owner, Ahmed, she claimed.

Mr Scamardella said: “Did the two of them take turns to do that to you?”

I was closing my eyes and praying for it to be over

Girl B

“Yes,” she replied, “in the same night. I was closing my eyes and praying for it to be over.”

On other occasions she said Ahmed would drive her and Zahid to a house in Chadderton near Rochdale.

There would be the three of them and other men there, who spoke a language she did not understand, including another man, Kasir Bashir, who would sexually abuse her.

“I would go upstairs and wait in the bedroom,” the witness said.

Mr Scamardella said: “Did you know what was about to happen? This was when you were 13?”

“Yes,” the witness replied. “I would get undressed and lie on the bed.”

Mr Scamardella continued: “What would they do to you?”

“Rape me,” the witness said.

The eight accused, all either taxis drivers or connected to Rochdale market, all deny multiple sexual offences including rape, indecent assault and indecency with a child between 2001 and 2006.

They are: Mohammed Zahid, 64, of Station Road, Crumpsall, Manchester; Naheem Akram, 48, of Manley Road, Rochdale; Mohammed Shazad, 43, of Beswicke Royds Street, Rochdale; Nisar Hussain, 43, of Newfield Close, Rochdale; Roheez Khan, 39, of Athole Street, Rochdale; Arfan Khan, 40, of Grouse Street, Rochdale; Mushtaq Ahmed, 66, of Corona Avenue, Oldham; and Kasir Bashir, 50, of Napier Street East, [Oldham](https://www.standard.co.uk/topic/oldham).

The trial was adjourned until February 24.

[

## Corruption Chronicles

](https://www.judicialwatch.org/corruption-chronicles/)

[Corruption Chronicles](https://www.judicialwatch.org/corruption-chronicles/) | February 14, 2025

The frenzy over President Trump’s crackdown on flagrant waste at the nation’s scandal-plagued global aid agency is finally bringing widespread attention to the outrageous programs it funds with taxpayer dollars and many Americans may not realize it has been occurring for years under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Not surprisingly, the reckless spending skyrocketed under Biden with a multitude of problematic initiatives, including a costly [ill-fated effort run by Vice President Kamala Harris](https://www.judicialwatch.org/vps-failed-initiative/) to curb “irregular migration” from three targeted countries known as the northern triangle—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The money, hundreds of millions of dollars, flowed continuously through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), even as illegal immigration from the targeted Central American nations shattered records. The former vice president insisted however, that the investment would help improve conditions in the three impoverished countries “so people do not feel compelled to leave their homes.”

Harris’ disastrous root causes experiment to curtail illegal immigration is just a snippet of controversial USAID spending that should alarm the nation’s tax paying citizens. For well over a decade Judicial Watch has reported and exposed rampant fraud and corruption at the famously bloated agency, which has a massive budget of around $40 billion with little oversight or accountability to supposedly provide global economic, development and humanitarian assistance. This has included hundreds of millions of dollars to promote leftwing billionaire [George Soros’ radical globalist agenda in Latin America](https://www.judicialwatch.org/u-s-funds-entities-promoting-soros-radical-globalist-agenda-guatemala/), a failed [Clinton-backed port and power plant in Haiti](https://www.judicialwatch.org/clintons-pushed-most-wasteful-of-u-s-funded-haiti-projects/), help [Asians learn enough English](https://www.judicialwatch.org/u-s-spends-10-mil-to-train-asian-call-center-workers/) to work in offshore call centers and a project to develop a Pakistani version of the iconic educational children’s program Sesame Street. Other USAID allocations have funded a condom strategy in Eswatini, bicycles for rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa and racial equity.

The list goes on and on, perpetually cheating the American public year after year with highly questionable foreign projects that often operate in secrecy or fill the coffers of our enemies. USAID has funded a Scandinavian humanitarian group that [helps Islamic terrorists](https://www.judicialwatch.org/u-s-funds-scandinavian-humanitarian-group-helps-islamic-terrorists/) and has provided monstrous amounts of aid without oversight to countries largely controlled by Islamic extremists, even after reports of widespread fraud, abuse and corruption by radical elements that limit the humanitarian assistance from reaching those in need. Among them is Syria, which has received billions from USAID despite federal audits documenting that for years the agency has [“lacked a framework to manage fraud risks in humanitarian responses”](https://www.judicialwatch.org/us-gives-terrorist-nation-15-billion-in-aid/) in the Middle Eastern country that has appeared on the State Department’s list of nations that sponsor terrorism for over four decades. USAID also continues to send enormous amounts of aid to Afghanistan even though the funds go to the Taliban after the 2021 U.S. military withdraw. A federal audit [slammed USAID for refusing to cooperate](https://www.judicialwatch.org/billions-keep-flowing-to-afghanistan/) with an investigation involving efforts to ensure that U.S.-funded programs supporting the people of Afghanistan do not result in the illegal transfer of funds to the Taliban or the Haqqani Network.

Fraud and waste are so rampant in foreign programs that receive enormous amounts of money from USAID that a few years ago the U.S. government spent [$30 million](https://www.judicialwatch.org/us-spends-30-million/) to counter corruption in the projects it already funds. The multi-million-dollar anti-corruption plan aimed to systemically address pervasive governance weaknesses that corrupt actors commonly exploit, according to a press release unveiling the initiative. “This funding will strengthen the systems and actors needed to close loopholes, detect illicit finance and dirty money, follow its movement across borders, and ultimately hold corrupt actors accountable,” USAID writes in the announcement that also says the investment will boost high priority reforms such as countering pervasive money laundering and enhancing asset recovery. “At the regional and global levels, this award will fund multi-country efforts to enhance international cooperation in tracking and blocking transnational corruption; and test tools and approaches that move anti-corruption practice forward.”

It was too little too late for a fraud-infested government agency long gripped by corruption and secrecy. Over a decade ago, Judicial Watch [reported](https://www.judicialwatch.org/u-s-charity-run-amok-60-mil-in-malaria-drugs-for-africa-stolen-yearly/) on a USAID scandal involving $60 million in Malaria drugs provided to Africa by the U.S. government that get stolen annually and sold on the black market. The agency leads a program called President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) that distributes the medication in Africa where the disease kills more than half a million people each year, but more than 20% of the drugs are diverted annually. Several years later U.S.-funded malaria drugs were still being sold on the black market in Africa and the problem got so bad that USAID launched [“malaria hotlines”](https://www.judicialwatch.org/u-s-funded-malaria-drugs-still-sold-black-market-africa/) to offer cash rewards for information about the illicit operations that have fleeced American taxpayers out of tens of millions of dollars.

A key issue that the Trump administration will hopefully address is that USAID does not divulge to whom millions of dollars in contracts and grants are being sent. In fiscal year 2024 and 2025 the agency has awarded at least $961 million in new funding to undisclosed recipients, with the largest contract of [$447 million](https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_72012124C00003_7200_-NONE-_-NONE-) to provide “strategic technical and procurement advice” to Ukraine’s energy sector. Last year Judicial Watch [sued](https://www.judicialwatch.org/27m-grants-gaza/) USAID for failing to provide under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) records involving $27 million in Gaza grants that went to “Miscellaneous Foreign Awardees.”


The pastor cousin of accused Long Island serial killer [Rex Heuermann](https://www.aol.com/news/gilgo-beach-serial-killer-suspect-192358204.html) was himself accused of sexually abusing a young girl for seven years.

The Rev. Kenneth Heuermann, a pastor at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in upstate Camillus, drugged and sexually abused the girl starting from when she was 8, allegedly using clerical stoles to bind her, the victim claims in a 2019 lawsuit.


The Rev. Kenneth Christian Heuermann died in November. Buranich Funeral Home

Now an adult in her early 70s, “R.W.” sued the Evangelical Lutheran Church for $45 million in damages. She claimed she suffers from dissociative identity disorder due to the years of “ritualistic” abuse she’d endured.

The first attack happened when the girl’s mom dropped her off at the church for play rehearsal — she was picked to portray the Virgin Mary in the church’s annual Christmas pageant.


The Reverend’s accuser spoke to the media in 2019. WTVH

From then on, Kenneth Heuermann, known as “Pastor Ken,” abused her between 1961 and 1968 — usually in the presence of other male congregants and one of their wives, according to the lawsuit.

The alleged sicko used stones during the sexual assaults that either had letters written on them or were arranged to spell specific words, according to the lawsuit.

The victim failed to elaborate on what was allegedly written on those rocks, or what words they spelled once laid out.

The assaults sometimes occurred inside the church — on the altar or in the sanctuary, she claimed in court documents.


Rex Heuermann is accused of a decadeslong murder spree. Newsday

The victim told several church leaders about the alleged abuse, yet they did nothing to stop the pastor — and instead, protected him, she claimed in the lawsuit.

The victim also said Rev. Heuermann had threatened to harm and kill her, the victim claimed.

During a deposition, Rev. Heuermann was asked if he’d ever touched the victim, and responded, “Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.”

The lawsuit is pending in Onondaga County court. Rev. Heuermann died Nov. 4, 2024, at an assisted living facility in Camillus, near Syracuse.


R.W. said some of the sexual assaults happened inside St. Michael’s. WTVH

The victim approached the Onondaga County prosecutor’s office in 1991 about the alleged abuse, but she was told the statute of limitations expired.

She was only able to sue the church after the adoption of the Child Victims’ Act, which [went into effect August 2019](https://nypost.com/2019/08/13/new-york-courts-brace-for-surge-of-cases-under-new-child-victims-act/), opening up a year-long window for adult survivors of child sexual abuse to file claims against their perpetrators, regardless of when the crimes occurred.

[Rex Heuermann](https://nypost.com/2024/06/07/us-news/gilgo-beach-suspect-heuermann-not-as-intelligent-as-he-thinks-da/)‘s grandfather, William Heuermann, and Rev. Heuermann’s father, Alfred Heuermann, were brothers, according to public records. However, [the pastor’s obituary](https://obits.syracuse.com/us/obituaries/syracuse/name/kenneth-heuermann-obituary?id=56725291) fails to name Rex, 61, as a surviving relative.

[Rex Heuermann](https://www.aol.com/news/accused-gilgo-beach-killer-rex-171210642.html) has been charged with the murders of seven of the 11 people investigators found along Ocean Parkway near Gilgo Beach in Suffolk County between December 2010 and April 2011.

Updated 10:35 AM PST, February 14, 2025

NEW YORK (AP) — Danielle Sassoon had served just three weeks as interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York when she penned a letter to recently confirmed U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi saying she could not follow [a directive](https://apnews.com/article/eric-adams-indictment-109ef48bd49bc8adc1850709c99bf666) to drop the office’s corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Sassoon wrote in [her letter](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25526481-sassoon-letter/) obtained by The Associated Press that the directive to drop the charges issued by Bove would violate her sworn duty to uphold the law.

The directive, “raises serious concerns that render the contemplated dismissal inconsistent with my ability and duty to prosecute federal crimes without fear or favor and to advance good-faith arguments before the courts,” she wrote.

Sassoon did not return a message seeking comment. But in her letter, she alluded to some details of her 10 years of public service that shed light on how she came to the decision to resign and who the [now-former](https://apnews.com/article/new-york-city-us-attorney-0395055315864924a3a5cc9a808f76fd) federal prosecutor who made headlines for defying the new DOJ is.

## What are Sassoon’s credentials?

Sassoon, 38, graduated from Harvard College in 2008 and from Yale Law School in 2011, according to her [biography](https://web.archive.org/web/20250211201736/https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/meet-us-attorney) on the Department of Justice website, which was taken down Thursday.

Sassoon served as a foreign law clerk to Justice Hanan Melcer of the Israel Supreme Court in 2009, according to a [biography](https://home.innsofcourt.org/AIC/Awards_and_Scholarships/Temple_Bar_Scholarships/Temple_Bar_Scholarship_Reports/2013_Danielle_Sassoon.aspx) attached to an essay she wrote while on a legal scholarship in London. Sassoon wrote in an [editorial](https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2008/4/23/the-forgotten-refugees-at-17-as/) while at Harvard about her grandmother’s journey as a Jewish teenager fleeing persecution from Syria to Lebanon and eventually Italy in 1947.

Sassoon also clerked for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III in the Fourth Circuit in Charlottesville, Virginia, and for late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

In a 2016 tribute to the late justice, who was an outspoken stalwart for the court’s conservative wing, Sassoon, a Republican, called Scalia “the real deal.”

“Sometimes, when you peek behind the curtain of power, you suffer a rude awakening. What you find is corruption, ego, or a lack of ideals and intellectual heft. Stepping behind closed doors with Justice Scalia elevated my faith in the judiciary and deepened my love of the law,” she wrote in the tribute posted to the [SCOTUS blog](https://www.scotusblog.com/2016/02/tribute-a-mentor-and-a-mensch-remembering-justice-scalia/).

Sassoon also cited Scalia in her letter objecting to the directive to drop charges against Adams, a Democrat who has curried favor with President Donald Trump’s administration partly based on immigration issues.

Sassoon cited her objections to what she called a political “quid pro quo” with Adams’ legal team for the mayor to enforce Trump’s immigration policies only if he was freed from the looming prosecution. Attorneys for Adams, who pleaded not guilty to the charges, denied any offer or suggestion of a quid pro quo.

## What is Sassoon’s track record at the U.S. attorney’s office?

After clerking for Scalia, Sassoon was a litigation lawyer and an adjunct law professor at New York University before being hired in 2016 as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. She focused on murder and racketeering cases as part of the Violent and Organized Crime Unit, according to the now-defunct DOJ biography.

She worked on a handful of high-profile cases including the case against [Lawrence Ray](https://apnews.com/article/lawrence-ray-abuse-lawsuit-sarah-lawrence-college-9f40c4dd7150638643bedd2c276ebf56), who was convicted of trafficking and other offenses after living in his daughter’s college dorm room and coercing a group of college students to engage in prostitution. Sassoon also conducted the cross-examination of [Sam Bankman-Fried,](https://apnews.com/article/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-crypto-bitcoin-baa4c94f2c4237c860475ff92e6bcf42) the cryptocurrency executive convicted of defrauding customers out of billions of dollars. Both men are appealing their convictions.

The DOJ biography notes she was most recently co-chief of the Criminal Appeals division in the office. It also notes numerous awards from the department in recent years, including the FBI Director’s Award in 2024 for Outstanding Criminal Prosecution.

She was appointed as the interim U.S. Attorney for the district on Jan. 21 and had not brought the initial charges against Adams. Those charges were brought by former U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, a Democrat who resigned after Trump won reelection.

## What happens next?

After a stunning dayslong standoff, Sassoon’s resignation was accepted in a scathing [letter](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25527022-bove-letter/) Thursday from acting Attorney General Emil Bove. Bove placed case prosecutors on paid administrative leave and said they and Sassoon would be subject to internal investigations.

It was unclear what agency would do that investigation and what sanctions would be at stake since Sassoon is no longer employed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Meanwhile, Matthew Podolsky, who has spent a decade in the office, was named the new acting U.S. attorney after Sassoon’s departure. Trump’s ultimate pick for the office, Jay Clayton, a former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, has not yet been confirmed.

As of Friday afternoon, motions to dismiss the charges against Adams had not been filed and a handful of employees from the department’s public integrity section have also left.


Feb. 14, 2025

Senior Writer, Infectious Diseases

The Trump administration’s campaign to slash the federal civil service hit one of the crown jewels of global public health on Friday. Members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, a legendary training program run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were warned on Friday morning that they were about to be fired, two people with knowledge of the meeting told STAT.

The 135 members of the two-year program were informed that many would be hearing of their dismissals by late in the day. But by late Friday afternoon, none had yet received a notice of their firing, one of the sources said.

It is believed there will be a small number of exceptions: people who are in the Public Health Service and military officers who had been on the CDC staff before entering the program. Those two groups make up only a quarter of the current roster of EIS officers.

[The EIS](https://www.cdc.gov/eis/php/about/index.html), as it is known, is the world’s premier training program for applied epidemiology. Many public health leaders at the CDC and elsewhere in the world are graduates of the EIS, which was established in 1951 by the CDC’s then-chief epidemiologist Alexander Langmuir, in part because of Cold War era concerns about the threat of germ warfare.

EIS officers make up the frontline in public health emergencies, both in the United States and abroad. When a difficult disease outbreak hits, when state health departments need assistance tracing the source of foodborne illnesses, EIS officers are dispatched. They were among the first responders when [letters laced with anthrax](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5042a1.htm) were mailed to legislators and news outlets around the country in 2001. They were even portrayed on the big screen: In the 2011 Steven Soderbergh movie Contagion, about the start of a pandemic, Kate Winslet’s character was an EIS officer sent to investigate the unnerving new disease that an American businesswoman had unwittingly transported to Minneapolis.

“For more than 70 years, EIS officers have served on America’s front line as its disease detectives, ready at a moment’s notice to protect Americans by responding to emerging outbreaks here in the U.S. and around the globe,” said former CDC director Tom Frieden, who is president and CEO of the non-profit Resolve to Save Lives.

“The loss of this next generation of highly qualified leaders will make our nation — and the world — less safe, and less prepared to prevent, detect, and respond to health threats.”

The fact that the cuts might decimate a program that has repeatedly proved its worth caught many in the public health world by surprise.

“This will destroy the EIS, which is one of the absolute crown jewels of global public health,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. 

Members of the EIS are highly trained experts — people with Ph.D.s and medical degrees make up the bulk of EIS classes, though veterinarians, pharmacists, and nurses with advanced degrees are also among the members. Many stay with the agency following their EIS training; others join state public health departments.

“It was in the Epidemic Intelligence Service that I fell in love with public health and saw firsthand the power it held to save lives and protect health,” said Richard Besser, who went from the EIS into the CDC and was acting director at the start of the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic.

“As an EIS officer, I worked to protect our country from cholera that was spreading around the globe. I investigated an outbreak of E. coli that had hospitalized children in Massachusetts and identified contaminated apple cider as the culprit; that investigation halted the outbreak and probably saved lives,” said Besser, who is now president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “Slashing this program means that we don’t believe in public health and how it can improve the lives of people here and around the world. That is frightening.”

Some of the EIS alumni are from other countries; the training helps health ministries abroad develop the skills of their workers. Former CDC director Bill Foege noted that during the catastrophic West African Ebola outbreak of 2014-2016, spread to Nigeria — Africa’s most populous country — was contained with the help of people who had trained in the EIS.

“It’s almost beyond belief,” Foege said of the news when approached by STAT. “When I hear about us leaving \[the World Health Organization\] or leaving the Paris \[Climate\] Agreement, we’re cutting out the EIS — a chill goes up my spine. Because I realize that we’re dealing with people who are in a different reality. They don’t understand public health. They don’t understand what it was like to encounter the dangers of the past.” 

EIS officers are hired under Title 42, a mechanism that allows the federal government to bring in the best and the brightest, in some cases paying them at rates higher than the typical public sector wages. It offers workers fewer job protections, however, making Title 42 workers easier to fire.

One of the program’s many alums, who is still at the CDC and asked not to be named, said the health of Americans will be negatively affected by these cuts.

“The actions taken against the federal workforce thus far by the administration have already dramatically diminished the capacity of CDC to respond adequately, in the way that Americans deserve, to emerging public health threats,” the person said. “And cutting EIS will make Americans and global populations less safe in years to come.”

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Calls for Termination of Biden-Harris Financial Agent Agreement and Return of Entire Fund Balance to the U.S. Treasury

February 13, 2025

**WASHINGTON –** U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency has [found billions of taxpayer dollars<svg class="icon icon--exit is-spaced-before" role="img"><title>Exit EPA’s website</title><use href="https://www.epa.gov/themes/epa_theme/images/sprite.svg#launch"></use></svg>](https://x.com/epaleezeldin/status/1889840040622321778) parked at a financial institution by the Biden-Harris Administration. Administrator Zeldin is calling for termination of the financial agent agreement, and for the immediate return of the entire fund balance to the United States Treasury to ensure EPA oversight. Administrator Zeldin also announced that he will be referring this matter to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and Congress, and the agency will work with the U.S. Department of Justice. 

“Roughly twenty billion of your tax dollars were parked at an outside financial institution by the Biden EPA. This scheme was the first of its kind in EPA history and it was purposefully designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight,” **said Administrator Zeldin.**  

“One of my very top priorities at EPA is to be an excellent steward of your hard-earned tax dollars. There will be zero tolerance of any waste and abuse,” **continued Administrator Zeldin.** “We will review every penny that has gone out the door. The days of irresponsibly shoveling boat loads of cash to far-left, activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over.” 

Two months ago, a [video<svg class="icon icon--exit is-spaced-before" role="img"><title>Exit EPA’s website</title><use href="https://www.epa.gov/themes/epa_theme/images/sprite.svg#launch"></use></svg>](https://x.com/epaleezeldin/status/1889038796873937348) circulated on social media featuring a Biden EPA political appointee talking about “tossing gold bars off the titanic,” intentionally rushing to get billions of tax dollars recklessly out of the agency before Inauguration Day. During Administrator Zeldin’s confirmation hearing, he committed to ensuring he would work hard to research and account for every dollar spent at EPA, not only during his tenure, but also from the last administration.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) voiced her concerns over the influence of Elon Musk and President Donald Trump at a House Financial Services Committee hearing, pressing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on whether he would allow Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) into the Fed’s systems.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Waters aggressively questioned Powell about Musk’s potential access to the Federal Reserve, suggesting a great fear among Democrats that Musk and Trump might wield undue influence over the nation’s financial infrastructure.

“When Musk comes knocking at the Fed’s door, are you going to let him in?” Waters asked.

Powell, appearing hesitant to engage with the line of questioning, replied, “I don’t have anything for you on that.”

Waters then pressed further: “Would you like to tell us today that you won’t let DOGE into the Federal Reserve or have access to the systems and the data?”

Powell remained firm in his refusal to speculate on the matter, saying, “So we don’t, I don’t have any, we’ve had no contact and I don’t really have, I have nothing for you to report today on that.”

“Well, you know what happened at Treasury and you know what happened over at the CFPB and the people of this country are being violated because all of our privacy is being taken up by Elon Musk and Trump and we don’t know what all they have on us, our bank accounts, everything in our lives,” Waters admitted.

**WATCH:**

During the congressional hearing on Tuesday, Powell countered Musk’s allegations that the Federal Reserve has too many employees. “No, I would say that, you know, overworked maybe, not overstaffed. Everybody at the Fed works really hard,” Powell said during the hearing.

Musk has been vocal about his belief that the Federal Reserve is “absurdly overstaffed,” and has even suggested that DOGE should audit the Fed, adding to his previous criticisms of the Fed’s monetary policy decisions.

“When the pandemic hit kind of out of the blue and economies all over the world are shutting down, the U.S. Treasury market is stopping to function, companies can’t roll over their commercial paper, economists are writing about a depression. People at the Fed who went through the global financial crisis 10 years before stepped forward to say, ‘We got this,’” Powell said Tuesday.

“We know what to do. Here’s what we do with money market funds, here’s what we do with companies that can’t get any financing. The markets were closed, and companies were having maturing debt that they had to roll over.”

Regarding concerns about DOGE’s influence, Powell has clarified that neither Musk nor DOGE personnel have attempted to access the Federal Reserve’s secure payment systems. He assured that he would promptly inform Congress if any such attempts were made.

Powell is set to address the House Financial Services Committee on Wednesday according to [Fox Business](https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/powell-pushes-back-musk-doge-says-fed-overworked-not-overstaffed?utm_source=chatgpt.com). He will deliver his semiannual update on monetary policy and the economic landscape to House lawmakers.

**MUNICH, Germany —** Amid a growing scandal over the British government’s [reported](https://therecord.media/uk-government-reportedly-demands-backdoor-apple-icloud) attempt to force Apple to provide the country’s authorities with access to encrypted iCloud accounts, a former intelligence chief has called for more transparency from spy agencies.

Speaking at the Munich Cyber Security Conference on Thursday, Sir Jeremy Fleming — who headed the cyber and signals intelligence agency GCHQ [from 2017 to 2023](https://therecord.media/britains-cyber-intel-agency-gchq-to-start-search-for-new-director-as-fleming-signals-departure) — said he felt “really strongly” the agency’s “license to operate” had to be based on public understanding and trust.

Fleming’s comments came in the wake of The Washington Post [reporting](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/13/apple-uk-security-back-door-adp/) that senior politicians on the Senate Intelligence Committee were calling for the U.S. to limit intelligence sharing with the United Kingdom if the British legal notice was not retracted.

The Washington Post described the notice — which has not been made public — as creating a “back door allowing \[British authorities\] to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud,” although the British government has historically disputed the “back door” description. 

British legislation instead describes the legal power as one that would require Apple to maintain the capability to provide iCloud content in response to a legal warrant, as Apple could do before introducing end-to-end encryption for iCloud in December 2022. 

The U.K. stresses that such a lawful access mechanism is distinct from the kinds of covert unauthorized access traditionally described as “back doors” in which an attacker would secretly hack into Apple’s systems without the company’s knowledge.

Privacy groups have [collectively disputed](https://cdt.org/insights/cdt-joins-global-encryption-coalition-letter-on-uk-governments-use-of-investigatory-powers-act-to-attack-end-to-end-encryption/) the British government’s description. Speaking on Thursday, Fleming said it was “incumbent on intelligence agencies” to “explain, not exactly how they do stuff, but what they do,” adding there was “a difference between what is allowed in law and what the intelligence agencies can do, with how they are operating, taking into account the latest generation of technologies or the context.”

Apple has not responded to requests for comment regarding the legal order. The British government continues to decline to respond to reportage about the notice, stating: “We do not comment on operational matters, including for example confirming or denying the existence of any such notices.”

Fleming said it was “often very hard for politicians, for oversight agencies, for the general public, to understand how things are being applied,” adding that he thought it was a conversation that politicians struggled with.

“There is little political capital to be had in a debate about how much agencies, or law enforcement, should intrude on privacy — and yet if you don’t have that conversation then the agencies are left feeling like they haven’t got the license to operate,” said Fleming, who spoke alongside former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt and Dag Baehr, vice president of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service. The panel was moderated by Recorded Future CEO Christopher Ahlberg — The Record is an editorially independent unit of the company.

“In the UK, that debate last happened following the Snowden disclosures… About every decade in my career we have another conversation about the license to operate, another debate about the balance between privacy and security. I have to say, the pace of that really has to increase,” stressed the former GCHQ director.

“It’s not good enough to have a debate every decade about this sort of stuff, because the way in which the agencies operate is changing. So I firmly believe that this conversation ought to be one that we have in much more depth, much more frequently.”

**READ MORE: [Munich Cyber Security Conference 2025 Live Updates](https://therecord.media/munich-cyber-security-and-security-conference-2025)**

Tags

- [GCHQ](https://therecord.media/tag/gchq)
- [Apple](https://therecord.media/tag/apple)
- [United Kingdom](https://therecord.media/tag/united-kingdom)
- [Sir Jeremy Fleming](https://therecord.media/tag/sir-jeremy-fleming)
- [spy](https://therecord.media/tag/spy)
- [encryption](https://therecord.media/tag/encryption)
- [intelligence agency](https://therecord.media/tag/intelligence-agency)

[](https://therecord.media/author/alexander-martin)

[

Alexander Martin

](https://therecord.media/author/alexander-martin)

is the UK Editor for Recorded Future News. He was previously a technology reporter for Sky News and is also a fellow at the European Cyber Conflict Research Initiative.

Two remarkable things happened last Wednesday—the chief advisor visited "Aynaghar" (House of Mirrors), the secret torture cells set up by security and intelligence agencies to confine, interrogate, psychologically break, demoralise, and physically torture a select group of opponents and dissenters whom the political governments of day wanted either eliminated or at least tortured and intimidated into submission.

On the same date, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued its long-awaited report on the Sheikh Hasina government's handling of the July uprising and the killings that took place. The UN fact-finding mission, citing senior security officials, stated: "The prime minister herself told the security force officials to kill protesters to quell the protests and specifically demanded 'arrest the ringleaders of the protests, the troublemakers, kill them and hide their bodies.'" The report quoted testimonials from a meeting held on July 19, 2024. This, seen in conjunction with party secretary general, Obaidul Quader's statement to the press on the same day that security forces had been given orders to "shoot on sight," reveals the diabolical mindset that appears to have dominated the thinking of the former prime minister. The previous day, July 18, the home minister, chairing a meeting of the "core committee," told the BGB commander "to order the use of lethal force more readily."

Nothing could have revealed the atrocious levels to which our intelligence agencies had descended more than the chief advisor's visit to the "Aynaghar." We owe it to the Sweden-based Netra News for breaking the news in 2022 about the secret torture centres set up by the DGFI to torture political opponents. We carried the news one week later. Those of us who operated inside the country were highly constrained and took courage in seeing some Bangladeshi fellow journalists doing the unthinkable.

As we fret over, write about, and condemn what happened, the real challenge is to take effective steps to prevent it all from happening again. The OHCHR has made some vital recommendations that we must now implement—ones that were prevented from being put into practice in the past. We hope that the spirit of the July uprising will ensure nothing similar happens now.

A crucial recommendation is to reform the colonial-era Police Act of 1861. It is quite incredible that we have lived with it even after more than 53 years of independence. We have been demanding police reforms for years, especially training them to become a force for the people instead of being an instrument of violence against them. They need to be trained in modern tactics for handling protests and controlling crowds. Given our history of spirited and immensely politically relevant student movements, our police should have received special training for peaceful crowd control. Instead, they retained the colonial-era habits of violently attacking demonstrators, beating them, and resorting to lethal weapons. Then, of course, there is torture in custody, which has resulted in many deaths. 

We have protested for decades the use of lethal weapons to disperse crowds. None of our elected governments made any attempt to reform the police, though both of our main political parties—the Awami League and BNP—were victims of police atrocities while in opposition. In this regard, the suggestion to set up an independent commission to investigate police violations of the law, modernise investigation techniques, reduce mass criminal charges and arrests, and minimise reliance on coerced confessions needs urgent implementation. The establishment of a National Police Commission for fair, transparent, and merit-based recruitment also deserves swift action.

Regarding institutionalised impunity and a politically pliant justice sector, the recommendation to establish a genuinely independent judiciary reflects a long-expressed desire of our people. The suggestion to create an independent mechanism for the recruitment of judges, protection against intimidation, and guaranteed tenure must also be implemented urgently.

The setting up of an independent public prosecution service and a witness protection programme would greatly contribute to dispensing justice.

A most serious issue highlighted in the UN report is the use and abuse of intelligence agencies, especially the DGFI and NSI, by the political masters of the day. The "Aynaghar" detention and torture centres would not have been set up unless the DGFI and others complied. The relevant question is: did they have the option not to?

The DGFI is mostly manned by members of the armed forces but does not report to the army hierarchy. It reports to the Prime Minister's Office and, as such, must obey the orders of the political masters of the day. So, the crucial question is: what can that institution do if ordered to undertake illegal activities, as most dramatically exemplified by the establishment of "Aynaghars." Its complicity in forced disappearances, human rights violations, arbitrary confinements, and many other abuses is well known. It is a fact that all governments—both military and civilian—used the DGFI for their own political goals. However, under Sheikh Hasina, it reached its most coercive height. Not only was it used to intimidate, torture, and punish political opponents, but it was also used to fulfil the agendas of notorious private companies—such as capturing banks and securing lucrative contracts. This led to massive corruption. Such misuse of this vital intelligence agency, closely linked to our national security, not only greatly damaged its image and reputation but also compromised its integrity, independence, and ability to serve the nation.

It is our considered view that all our intelligence agencies, especially the DGFI and NSI, must be prevented from being misused by future elected governments. And this is the moment to do it. No past governments did it. And future ones are unlikely to do so, as these agencies are the most convenient tools for oppressing the opposition and implementing highly partisan goals.

Political powers also used the DGFI to intimidate the free and independent media. Private companies were instructed not to advertise in The Daily Star and Prothom Alo at the direction of Sheikh Hasina's government. This unofficial "ban" lasted for eight years, starting in 2016. Media institutions were aghast to observe that DGFI became involved in manipulating elections for journalist bodies such as the DRU, DUJ, BFUJ, Press Club, including vetting participants in TV talk shows.

In its obsession with remaining in power, Sheikh Hasina's government distorted and misused all institutions, including the judiciary, bureaucracy, police, and intelligence agencies. This facilitated the creation of the fascistic ruling structure from which we have now been freed by the student-led people's uprising.

To save our vital intelligence institutions from naked abuse, we must set up legal and institutional frameworks to prevent their future misuse and thereby save these vital national security institutions from politicisation.

Most importantly, an institutional governance structure—with clear channels of communication, supervision, and accountability—must be set up to provide all intelligence agencies with clear mandates so that each institution and those working in them know what they are expected to do, and what falls outside their mandate. This will give each institution and their chiefs the right and the legal cover to refuse performing any tasks which fall outside of their mandates. The vagueness of current mandates allows political leadership to misuse them. In today's world, the term "security" is used to justify actions that create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. It must also be mentioned that some overenthusiastic individuals within these institutions allowed such abuses because it gave them a chance to take advantage of the situation for personal aggrandisement. After all, a sense of unlimited power triggers many unwarranted things within a person.

We must establish an independent and democratic oversight institution that will help govern them better and also prevent their political, partisan, and sometimes even personal misuse. There must also be fiduciary transparency in regard to budget and their utilisation. Examples abound all over the world where powerful intelligence agencies are monitored by parliamentary or other independent oversight bodies. All intelligence agencies—DGFI, NSI, SB, DB—would benefit from such oversight, which will help them operate independently to serve national interest instead of partisan ones.

With the gradual collapse of the law-based world order, the necessity and rising relevance of intelligence agencies, particularly those linked to defence establishments, are greater than ever. We acknowledge this need. However, we must also ensure that these institutions are trained, equipped, and elevated to global standards. For that to happen, we must eliminate political and partisan influence over these critical institutions.

Just as we value these institutions and need them to serve us better in handling our security issues, we also need the legal and governance related infrastructure to prevent the kind of abuse and misuse that we have witnessed and suffered from in recent years.

While Hamas announced a delay in the next round of prisoner exchanges—prompting accusations that it violated the ceasefire—Israel has been in breach of the agreement since the first hours of its implementation on January 19. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear from the outset that he viewed the deal as merely a temporary pause.

Just one day before the ceasefire was set to take effect, Netanyahu publicly [declared](https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ceasefire-qatar-starts-sunday-1.7435230), “President \[Donald\] Trump and President \[Joe\] Biden have given full backing to Israel’s right to return to combat,” [emphasizing](https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ceasefire-qatar-starts-sunday-1.7435230) that the truce would not be permanent.

The ceasefire was scheduled to begin at 8:30 AM local time on January 19. Yet, in the final 30 minutes before its implementation, Israeli officials threatened to scrap the deal, citing Hamas’s delay in submitting a list of three Israeli captives set to be exchanged for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners later that day. The agreement contained no clause allowing Israel to postpone the truce on these grounds.

At the ceasefire deadline that morning, Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari announced that military operations would continue until Hamas provided the required list of captives. In the interim, Palestinians briefly took to the streets, celebrating what they believed to be the official end of the war. The moment was short-lived. Within 15 minutes, Israeli drones returned to the skies, followed by airstrikes and gunfire from Israeli forces, [killing](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2025/1/19/live-countdown-to-ceasefire-in-gaza-as-israel-continues-attacks?update=3451212) at least 19 Palestinians.

Hamas submitted the list soon after, repeatedly insisting that the delay was due to a technical issue. However, the ceasefire did not officially [take effect](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2025/1/19/live-countdown-to-ceasefire-in-gaza-as-israel-continues-attacks) until 11:15 AM. Despite the delay, Hamas upheld its side of the agreement, releasing three Israeli female captives on time. Israel, in contrast, [postponed](https://www.democracynow.org/2025/1/20/palestinian_prisoners) the release of 92 Palestinian women and children from 3:00 PM to 3:00 AM the next morning. Israeli forces also fired on families waiting near Ramallah in the West Bank for the release of their relatives.

On January 20, the first day of the ceasefire, a harrowing [video](https://truthout.org/articles/israeli-sniper-killed-child-in-gaza-1-day-after-ceasefire-went-into-effect/) circulated widely on social media, capturing the execution of 15-year-old Zakariya Hameed Yahya Barbakh. The footage showed an Israeli sniper in Rafah shooting the Palestinian teenager. As bystander Nader Ajlan attempted to drag Barbakh’s body to safety, he too came under Israeli gunfire.

Despite the formal ceasefire, airstrikes, incursions, and shootings continued. On January 28, an Israeli airstrike targeted a horse-drawn cart in Gaza’s Nuseirat area, [killing](https://english.wafa.ps/Pages/Details/153979) two Palestinian civilians, including 5-year-old Nadia Mohammed al-Amoudi. Meanwhile, Hamas and other Palestinian factions had not responded with a single bullet or rocket.

A document shared with MintPress News and other media outlets by a senior Hamas official details what the group claims are 270 recorded Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreement between January 19 and February 11. According to Hamas, these violations resulted in the deaths of 26 Palestinians and injuries to 59 others. The report further alleges 105 airspace violations, 36 instances of gunfire, nine bombardments, 29 unauthorized ground incursions, and the detention of five drivers and fishermen.

The document states that “The occupation’s aircraft continued to fly on a near-daily basis during the designated prohibition periods (10-12 hours daily). A total of 105 violations were recorded involving the flighting of reconnaissance planes and drones, including (Hermes 450, Hermes 900, Super Heron, Zoveit, Quad Copter), with many of these carrying ammunition, particularly over areas designated for captive’s handover.”

Regarding the prisoner exchange, the document accuses Israel of delaying the handover of a list of 400 Palestinian prisoners. Specifically, it states that the release of detainees in the third batch was postponed from 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Additionally, Hamas claims that Palestinian prisoners were subjected to beatings and humiliation upon their release from Israeli detention centers.

The document also highlights Israel’s continued obstruction of humanitarian aid, fuel, and essential supplies from entering Gaza, a violation that has been independently documented by multiple sources. Israeli authorities are on record denying entry of critical aid to the civilian population.

Ramy Abdu, chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, underscored the severity of the situation, [stating](https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6610/Humanitarian-situation-has-not-improved-despite-Gaza-ceasefire;-crisis-is-worsening), “Only 9,500 tents—small and poor in quality—have arrived in Gaza, while 120,000 are urgently needed. Hundreds of thousands remain without shelter, yet Israel has failed to fulfill its obligations under the ceasefire.”

From the outset, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled his intent to undermine the ceasefire before it could transition into its second phase. Some Israeli officials even [proposed](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/pressure-to-extend-ceasefire-in-gaza-mounts-as-israeli-troops-withdraw-from-key-corridor) prolonging the first phase of the agreement to prevent the war from ending and to maintain the ongoing prisoner exchange. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has taken an aggressive stance, [warning](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-gaza-war-ceasefire-hamas-hostages-trump-latest-news-b2696844.html) that if Hamas fails to release all Israeli captives by noon on Saturday, he will “open the gates of hell.”

Feature photo | Palestinians walk through the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on February 12, 2025. Majdi Fathi | AP

***Robert Inlakesh** is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47*

**Republish our stories!** MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

*Editor’s Note | Originally published on November 24, 2021, this investigation by Alan Macleod delves into Tulsi Gabbard’s political metamorphosis—from self-proclaimed anti-war progressive to champion of military intervention. Given her recent confirmation as Director of National Intelligence, we are republishing the piece to shed light on the ideological journey that has led Gabbard to the helm the America’s most powerful intelligence apparatus.*

While many on the American left have denounced the acquittal of Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse as handing a get-out-of-jail-free card to racist militias, former Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard openly celebrated the verdict. “The jury got it right — finding Rittenhouse not guilty on all charges,” [said](https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1462004154281259013) the 40-year-old lieutenant colonel, adding that the prosecution was so obviously politically motivated and his innocence so obvious that bringing charges against him should be considered “criminal” in itself.

The Rittenhouse trial was clearly flawed from the start. Among other decisions, Judge Bruce Schroeder refused to allow into evidence either video showing Rittenhouse fantasizing about killing Black Lives Matter protesters just days before the Kenosha shooting or [images](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/14/kyle-rittenhouse-proud-boys-bar/) of him partying with the far-right group Proud Boys, flashing white nationalist hand gestures. Schroeder, who has a [long history](https://madison.com/news/local/hundreds-ask-to-avoid-court-of-kenosha-judge/article_4d0c5b84-f94d-534f-b58b-d491b4650e4c.html) of questionable rulings, also [ruled](https://www.npr.org/2021/10/26/1049458617/kyle-rittenhouse-victims-arsonists-looters-judge-ruled) that those killed by Rittenhouse must not be referred to as “victims” in court, preferring the terms “looters” and “arsonists.”

To Gabbard, however, those questioning the verdict had merely had their minds poisoned by “pro-Antifa” mainstream media, a [phrase](https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1460247464884113410) she has [repeatedly](https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1460185304707612673) [used](https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1460247464884113410) over the past week. She [tweeted](https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1458792879871213569):

> With no evidence, mainstream media and antifa-loving politicians immediately labeled Rittenhouse a white supremacist terrorist. It’s obvious now that he was just a foolish kid who felt he needed to protect people and the community from rioters and arsonists because the government failed to do so.”

“Anyone who disagrees with pro-antifa mainstream media bias on \[the\] Rittenhouse trial is smeared as a white supremacist terrorist. Disgusting,” she [added](https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1460247464884113410).

Doubling down on her stance, on Tuesday she released a [video](https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1463087630766145540) condemning those trying to view the shooting through the prism of race and racial justice. “We are all connected. We are all children of God, no matter our race, religion, or where we come from. So, please let us stop the RACIALIZATION of everyone and everything. This is what our country and world need most right now,” she wrote.

The former congresswoman’s words did not convince everyone. “Tulsi going all in on All Lives Matter,” remarked California-based media analyst [Steve Patt](https://twitter.com/leftiblog). “I have never seen any politician move right as fast as Gabbard,” he added.

Today, Gabbard posted a clip of her on *Tucker Carlson Tonight* condemning the handling of the Waukesha murder case — an incident where an SUV [drove](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/suspect-waukesha-parade-deaths-charged-5-counts-intentional-homicide-rcna6536) into a crowd of spectators at a Christmas parade, killing six people. Gabbard argued that the incident showed that leftists are endangering America. Linking defunding the police to the release on bail of the suspect charged with multiple murders, she [said](https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1464176371811246082):

> We have politicians, we have activist judges and prosecutors who are not enforcing the law, people trying to defund the police, people who have really screwed up priorities who seem to be more interested about protecting criminals than protecting our community. “

“They are let out on to our streets, continuing their terror sprees,” she added.

## Fox News star

These positions might surprise many who remember Gabbard from the 2016 and 2020 election cycles as a “[rising star](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/us/politics/tulsi-gabbard-rising-democratic-star-from-hawaii-makes-mark-on-party-by-defying-it.html)” on the progressive left. However, in recent weeks, she has pivoted hard to the right, appearing on *Fox News* virtually daily, espousing traditionally conservative talking points. In the past month alone, she has appeared on *Fox* shows *Tucker Carlson Tonight, Hannity, Gutfeld!, Neil Cavuto Live, Fox News Primetime, The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton,* and *Watters World.* Over the same timeframe, she has not appeared on *MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, CBS* or *ABC*.

She has spent most of her time on the network chastising the Democratic Party, despite once being DNC vice-chair. In a *Fox News Prime Time* segment last week titled “Dems Target their Political Enemies,” she presented her own colleagues as perhaps the greatest threat to liberty in America, [warning](https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1462726171095814144):

> You’re either with them – agreeing with them, supporting them, carrying the water for them — or you’re not. You’re either part of their team or you’re not. And if you’re not (and this is what we’re seeing happening now. It is what I’ve experienced), then they will target you, censor you, demonize you and call you a domestic terrorist and sick the attorney general on you.”

This built on a previous [interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ--MV21WAc) with Steve Hilton titled “Dems have become the party of hate and division,” where she warned against the ominous “darkness” of the “far-left” party, and a Tucker Carlson [segment](https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1461288323071234053) where she claimed her party was pursuing “an intentional strategy to tear us apart based on the color of our skin.”

Gabbard also openly celebrated the Republican victory in the Virginia gubernatorial election earlier this month, which saw Glenn Youngkin defeat Democrat Terry McAuliffe, [telling](https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1456025843281633283) Carlson that “McAuliffe’s loss is a victory for all Americans.” “This is where I find hope for the future,” she [added](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ--MV21WAc).

She also [condemned](https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1457289934918668291) leftists who complain about Republicans using racial dog whistles, claiming that they were comparing the American public to dogs. “Please let us stop the racialization of everyone and everything. Racialism. We are all children of God and are therefore family in the truest sense, no matter our race or ethnicity,” she said, adding, “Please, let us not allow ourselves to be led down this dark and divisive path of racialism and hate.” Choosing to do this on *Fox News* — a network whose entire business model is dedicated to spreading animosity and riling up their overwhelmingly [elderly](https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/how-old-is-the-average-fox-news-viewer-in-america.html/), [white](https://pos.org/whos-watching-a-look-at-the-demographics-of-cable-news-channel-watchers/) base against minorities and liberals — is a particularly noteworthy decision.

President Joe Biden himself has also been a key target of Gabbard’s ire. In September, at the height of the Haitian migrant scandal, where Border Patrol Agents were filmed whipping black people trying to cross into the United States, Gabbard attacked Biden from the right, [claiming](https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=814235699241905) that his “open border policy” was hurting America and helping gang members and sex traffickers enter the country. Going further, she presented Trump as a sensible leader, praising him for his efforts to shore up the southern frontier with Mexico (In reality, “open borders” Biden has deported nearly [1.3 million](https://unitedwedream.org/protect-immigrants-now/biden-stop-deportations-now/) people in less than a year in office — nearly three times the figure Trump achieved in four years).

This was not the only recent shot Gabbard has aimed at the 46th president. Earlier this month, she directly [accused](https://video.foxnews.com/v/6281356760001#sp=show-clips) him of “undermining the fundamental principles of our country” and “tearing our country apart.” Four days later, she [warned](https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/1459888599806185473) *Fox* viewers that his Build Back Better bill will allow “unelected bureaucrats” to “stick their noses into every aspect of our lives, furthering this cradle-to-grave mentality of government dependence that makes us lose even more of our autonomy.” “Government is already too big and powerful as it is. The Build Back Better bill will only make it worse,” she concluded, using classic conservative rhetoric.

## From anti-war hero to drone queen

Perhaps the most surprising shift in her metamorphosis into boilerplate conservative is her seemingly shifting stance on war. Appearing on *Fox News* just after the Biden administration was forced to admit that a [drone strike](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-supports-full-investigation-into-afghanistan-drone-strike-2021-09-20/) it ordered on “terrorists” in Kabul actually targeted ten civilians, she vehemently defended the policy. Clearly not expecting such an answer (the segment was titled “Afghan Disaster: Who Is Getting Fired?”), host Tucker Carlson looked surprised as Gabbard launched into a spirited defense of both drones and the endless war on terror.

“I think it’s important for the American people to understand that Islamist jihadists are continuing to wage war against us,” she [said](https://www.foxnews.com/media/tulsi-gabbard-islamist-jihadists-wage-war). Then, barely acknowledging that the slain Afghan children were not terrorists, she added:

> We have to work to defeat them militarily and ideologically. And militarily, we have two choices in how we do that. Number One: We can continue to invade and occupy in nation-building \[sic\] countries around the world — just as we did in Afghanistan at great cost. Number Two: We can take a targeted approach using airstrikes, using our special forces to go in and go after these terror cells.”

“We’ve seen a near-180 from Tulsi Gabbard this year. Her opinions on many subjects are now indecipherable from *Fox News* — which is why they’ve been inviting her on regularly,” Lee Camp, a political comedian who has followed Gabbard’s career trajectory closely, told *MintPress*, adding:

> Many of her tweets seem to pretend race is not an issue in America — a country with overwhelmingly white-supremacist foreign and domestic policy. Much of her ire and concern has shifted from those without healthcare to those refugees coming through our “open borders.” Tulsi now feeds into the toxic nationalism and xenophobia that has allowed the American empire to abuse other peoples and cultures for generations (ironically including white America’s annexation of her home state of Hawaii).”

Gabbard’s heel turn accelerated in the fall after she [returned](https://www.instagram.com/p/CU1_AOwrZaF/) from active deployment on what she called a “Special Operations mission to go after al-Qaeda affiliated jihadists,” in the Horn of Africa. Many congratulated her on her promotion to lieutenant colonel, but others were surprised to hear that the U.S. military was at war in Africa at all.

All this seems a far cry from the woman who [resigned](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/28/tulsi-gabbard-quits-dnc-support-bernie-sanders) from the DNC in 2016 in order to stand with Bernie Sanders. Gabbard consistently shared anti-war opinions on potential conflicts with Russia or Syria, to the point where she was constantly accused of being an agent of both governments. She also gained plaudits and followers after [condemning](https://www.sandersinstitute.org/blog/video-rep-tulsi-gabbard-end-the-unconstitutional-war-in-yemen-now) the Saudi war on Yemen and attacking establishment figures like [Hillary Clinton](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/10/22/20924999/hillary-clinton-tulsi-gabbard-fight-explained) and [Kamala Harris](https://www.businessinsider.com/tulsi-gabbard-slams-kamala-harris-criminal-justice-democratic-debate-2019-7?r=US&IR=T) when few others would.


Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., holds hands with Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, during a town hall at Gettysburg College, April 22, 2016, in Gettysburg, Pa. Evan Vucci | AP

On race, too, she has taken an even more abrupt rightward shift. In 2017, she [demanded](https://twitter.com/tulsigabbard/status/1093977385161117696) that America must “dismantle the systemic racism that causes Black men to disproportionately receive harsher sentences compared to other races and ethnicities for the same types of crime.” Yet when a movement emerged raising these same points, she attacked it, siding with Rittenhouse.

Likewise, on immigration, only last year she condemned Trump for the policies she now says were correct. During the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination debates, she [said](https://www.ontheissues.org/2020/Tulsi_Gabbard_Immigration.htm):

> Our hearts break when we see children at these detention facilities who’ve been separated from their parents, when we see human beings crowded into cages in abhorrent, inhumane conditions. We can have both secure borders as well as humane immigration policies. We have to stop separating children from their parents, make it easier for people to seek asylum, make sure that we are securing our borders and \[sic\] by reforming those laws.”

While it is certainly possible to hold left-wing economic views without subscribing to liberal social values (many Americans do just that), claiming that Biden’s border policy, which is demonstrably far more authoritarian than Trump’s, constitutes an “open border” is harder to understand, as is scaremongering about the perils of big government.

## A big fan of Modi, Sisi, Apartheid

While many have been surprised by Gabbard’s rightward shift, there were a number of warning signs in her past that suggested her progressive, anti-war bona fides were not as rock solid as they might appear. Tulsi is the daughter of Republican-turned-Democratic State Senator Mike Gabbard, who came to prominence nationally as a leader in the anti-LGBT movement. In the 1990s, he was president of the group “Stop Promoting Homosexuality America” and host of the radio show “Let’s Talk Straight Hawaii.”

Tulsi took after her father in many respects. One of her first political gigs was working for an anti-gay group that promoted conversion therapy. “As Democrats we should be representing the views of the people, not a small number of homosexual extremists,” she [said](https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/13/politics/kfile-tulsi-gabbard-lgbt/index.html). To be fair to her, her public pronouncements on the subject have greatly changed since then. In 2013, she joined the LGBT Equality Caucus and consistently voted for increased rights for sexual and gender minorities.

Perhaps even more alarming are her links to far-right Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) paramilitary movement. Modi, a Hindu nationalist, first came to worldwide attention while he was chief minister of Gujarat state during the [massive wave](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/07/narendra-modi-massacre-next-prime-minister-india) of anti-Muslim pogroms in 2002 that saw over 2,000 killed and 200,000 Muslims driven from their homes thanks to RSS handiwork.

As prime minister, Modi has led [drives](https://www.mintpressnews.com/millions-protest-india-anti-muslim-citizenship-law-govt-crackdown/263712/) to strip millions of Indian Muslims of their citizenship and overseen other anti-Muslim violence. Members of Modi’s cabinet have [floated](https://www.mintpressnews.com/india-minister-hindu-nationalist-mistake-not-committing-genocide-against-muslims/265076/) the idea of genocide against India’s Muslim population (thought to be nearly 200 million).

Gabbard, a practicing Hindu, gifted Modi her childhood copy of the sacred text “The Bhagavad Gita,” condemned the U.S.’ 2014 decision to block his entry into the country owing to his history of inciting religious violence, and [voted against](https://www.ontheissues.org/2020/Tulsi_Gabbard_Foreign_Policy.htm) a House resolution condemning his attacks on Muslims. Senior members of the RSS — an organization often compared to the [Ku Klux Klan](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/bjp-indian-variant-of-ku-klux-klan-jaswant/articleshow/4938885.cms?from=mdr) or [Hitler’s brownshirts](https://zeenews.india.com/india/pak-pm-imran-khan-compares-rss-to-hitlers-brown-shirts-warns-about-genocide-of-muslims-2254590.html) — [attended](https://pieterjfriedrich.medium.com/the-princess-of-the-rss-and-me-d067d64a424a) Gabbard’s Hawaii wedding.


Hindu extremist and BJP spokesperson Ram Madhav at Gabbard’s wedding. Source | [Pieter Friedrich](https://pieterjfriedrich.medium.com/the-princess-of-the-rss-and-me-d067d64a424a)

Whether Modi has influenced Gabbard’s views on Islam is unclear. However, what is evident is that her beliefs about the religion drive much of her domestic and foreign policy positions. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in 2015, she [fumed](https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/05/tulsi-gabbard-president-sanders-democratic-party) that President Barack Obama was not nearly tough enough on Islamic extremism, telling *Fox News* that “radical Islamic ideology” had to be defeated militarily, not just ideologically. She also [constantly attacked](https://jacobinmag.com/2019/01/yes-tulsi-gabbard-iran-deal-war-hawk) Obama on his deal with Iran, calling the Islamic Republic “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.” On U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, however, her position was completely the opposite, saying that it was “understandable” if they developed atomic weaponry.

Another Middle Eastern dictatorship she supported was Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s Egypt. In 2015, she [traveled](https://twitter.com/tulsipress/status/668991012849741825) to Egypt to meet Sisi, who has already [suggested](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/4/5/will-sisi-rule-egypt-for-life) he might rule for life. There, she offered a glowing endorsement of his autocratic rule. “President el-Sisi has shown great courage and leadership in taking on this extreme Islamist ideology, while also fighting against ISIS militarily to keep them from gaining a foothold in Egypt,” she [said](https://www.ontheissues.org/2020/Tulsi_Gabbard_Foreign_Policy.htm), urging the U.S. to recognize him and “stand with him in this fight against Islamic extremists.”

This rhetoric is a far cry from the image of a sober, war-skeptical outsider many of her champions presented her as. While she does challenge many U.S. policies, it does not come from a position of being against war (she is, after all, a high ranking member of the U.S. military). “When it comes to counterproductive wars of regime change, I’m a dove… When it comes to the war against terrorists, I’m a hawk,” she [explained](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/tulsi-gabbards-foreign-policy-and-the-progressive-left.html), while failing to recognize that the war on terror is inextricably linked to regime-change wars and that one begets the other. Iraq, of course, supposedly started because of Saddam Hussein’s involvement in 9/11 and terrorism, but quickly morphed into a regime-change war lasting two decades, destabilizing an entire region and turning it into a breeding ground for radical Islamic terror.

On Israel, Gabbard has also been a loyal ally and was even chosen to [speak](https://mondoweiss.net/2019/08/gabbard-condemn-cosponsor/) at Christians United for Israel, a [far-right](https://english.alaraby.co.uk/opinion/pro-palestine-lefts-curious-support-tulsi-gabbard) pro-occupation organization. There, she [shared](https://jewishhomela.com/2015/07/17/cufi-americas-largest-supporter-of-israel-celebrates-their-tenth-year-anniversary/) a stage with Benjamin Netanyahu, Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. So forthright was her support for the Apartheid State that the next year she [received](https://therealnews.com/tulsi-gabbard-is-not-your-friend) the Champion of Freedom award from the controversial Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, an acolyte of mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. Nevertheless, she still managed to cultivate an image of being against war and empire.

## Playing both sides

Gabbard has been courted by the right-wing for a long time, so her recent shift should perhaps not have come as such a surprise. A [favorite](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/12/us/politics/tulsi-gabbard.html) of individuals such as Mike Cernovich, Richard Spencer and David Duke, she even went to Washington to interview for a position in the Trump administration. This was reportedly presidential advisor Steve Bannon’s idea. “He loves Tulsi Gabbard. Loves her…\[he\] wants to work with her on everything,” a source close to Bannon [told](https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/307106-bannon-set-up-trump-gabbard-meeting) *The Hill.*

Last year, she also sided with notorious right-wing organization Project Veritas to [promote](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election/aoc-tulsi-gabbard-ilhan-omar-voter-fraud-project-veritas-b843112.html) the idea that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) had cheated her way to election victory, stuffing ballot boxes with votes. In this light, then, her [decision](https://www.mintpressnews.com/war-pillaging-and-peace-why-tulsi-gabbard-did-not-vote-to-impeach-trump/263657/) not to vote to impeach Donald Trump (an action that infuriated her own party), might seem less like a principled stand and more like a long-term strategic move.

American politics is often compared to the charade of pro wrestling, with participants secretly working together to put on a show for the public. Gabbard’s latest heel turn is merely the latest in a long line of metamorphoses from conservative anti-LGBT campaigner to progressive anti-war activist to boilerplate Republican. Her latest actions might disappoint some on the anti-war left. However, a closer look at her past suggested her opposition to militarism was always limited in scope. Unfortunately, the United States is so starved of genuine anti-imperialist leaders that many are willing to compromise to an incredible degree.

“Gabbard has switched from championing the oppressed to championing the oppressors. It’s tough to say whether she ever truly believes anything she says or merely points her trajectory towards the greatest number of clicks and attention,” Camp told *MintPress*, adding:

> Rather than stick to her (supposed) beliefs, she has now recalibrated to the Fox News audience. Most of our ruling elite in both parties are sociopaths who don’t actually have empathy for others. Perhaps Gabbard has always been just more of the same.”

Feature photo | Tulsi Gabbard, applauds during Gabbard’s Senate Select Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing, January 30, 2025. Tom Williams | CQ Roll Call via AP

***[Alan MacLeod](https://twitter.com/AlanRMacLeod)** is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: [Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting](https://www.routledge.com/Bad-News-from-Venezuela-Twenty-years-of-fake-news-and-misreporting/Macleod/p/book/9781138489233) and [Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent](https://www.routledge.com/Propaganda-in-the-Information-Age-Still-Manufacturing-Consent-1st-Edition/MacLeod/p/book/9781138366404?fbclid=IwAR2xQQWJd98C25wapG4ynmlEnGvL5wxG_mp5RwpBwtwPDxInjNZ1Oo7KD-E), as well as [a](https://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/65/56) [number](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306396818823639#articleShareContainer) [of](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/blar.12940) [academic](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00064/full) [articles](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0896920518820934). He has also contributed to [FAIR.org](https://fair.org/author/alan-macleod/), [The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/profile/alan-macleod), [Salon](https://www.salon.com/writer/alan-macleod), [The Grayzone](https://thegrayzone.com/author/alan-macleod/), [Jacobin Magazine](https://jacobinmag.com/author/alan-macleod), and [Common Dreams](https://www.commondreams.org/author/alan-macleod).*

**Republish our stories!** MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

#### Posted by Richard Willett - Memes and headline comments by David Icke Posted on 13 February 2025



[](https://shop.ickonic.com/product/the-reveal-by-david-icke-out-now)


Elon Musk meets with President Trump in the Oval Office

Elon Musk and his adorable son, X, traveled to the White House on Tuesday to meet with President Trump in the Oval Office.

President Trump signed a new executive order mandating federal agencies work with DOGE.

Elon Musk said DOGE will begin investigating federal government workers who have managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars.

“We do find it sort of rather odd that there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who who have essentially a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars, but somehow manage to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position,” Elon Musk said

“We’re just curious as to where it came from. Whether they have very good investing in which that case we should take their investment advice perhaps,” Musk said. “They seem to be mysteriously getting wealthy and we don’t know why – where did it come from? I think the reality is that they are getting wealthier at the taxpayer expense.”

Elon Musk continued, “There are massive amounts of blank checks that just go out…”

WATCH:

On Monday, Elon Musk wondered how Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren managed to accrue a net worth of at least $12 million (it’s likely much higher) on a relatively modest $200,000 per year Senator’s salary.

“Has anyone tracked how she got $12M from a $200k salary?” Elon Musk asked the reporter who confronted Senator Warren about her high net worth.

“This is a real question,” he added.

As one of the most censored independent news outlets, we fight to bring you the truth the mainstream media won’t. Big Tech silences us, ad networks blacklist us—but our numbers grow because of supporters like you. Every dollar fuels the fight for free speech and honest reporting. Donate to The Gateway Pundit to help us keep exposing the lies and defending your right to know.

*The question is* ***not whether academia wields power in Washington*** *but whether* ***Washington is merely an extension of academia itself****.*

*Legacy media, as always, wants you to* ***pick a side****—turning the judge’s ruling into just another partisan brawl instead of what it is: a question of whether taxpayer money is being misused. Unfortunately, much of alt-media is falling into the same trap, turning it into a* ***battle of teams rather than an issue of accountability****. The real problem isn’t left vs. right; it’s whether we keep letting academia and its NGO network treat federal funds like a personal ATM.* ***When we stop playing their game*** *and start demanding accountability instead of soundbites, we* ***take back control of the conversation****—because no matter who you voted for, we’re all paying the bill.*

*Beatrice Wayne is the research director, and Alex MacIsaac is the senior research co-ordinator, of the Samara Centre for Democracy.*

In July, 2024, the social-media platform X was flooded with posts supporting Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre, purportedly from attendees of an event in Kirkland Lake, Ont. But savvy users quickly identified an issue: these accounts all used similar, repetitive language and although they appeared to belong to Northern Ontarians, many listed their locations as being outside of Canada. Other users quickly dubbed these posts as inauthentic.

The Kirkland Lake incident generated [accusations](https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/ndp-calls-for-an-investigation-into-bot-posts-about-poilievre-rally-1.6995411) that the Conservative Party had created bots to post in its favour, but an analysis by the Canadian Digital Media Research Network [found no evidence](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-study-finds-no-evidence-tories-were-behind-bot-campaign-that-posted/) that the Conservative Party was involved. More likely, it was an amateur X user experimenting with a “bot pipeline” that sourced its information from media coverage, and the Kirkland Lake event was caught in the mix.

Despite the number of news stories it generated, the Kirkland Lake incident was a drop in the bucket of the widespread, complex and pervasive manipulation of public opinion that occurs daily, across social media. At the Samara Centre for Democracy, we’ve been tracking the growth of a new and malevolent online phenomenon called “astroturfing.” It involves small, politically motivated groups posing as larger grassroots (hence, astroturf) movements in order to manipulate public opinion. While this practice predates the internet, technology has made it increasingly sophisticated. As generative-AI tools become more powerful and accessible, and as social-media companies [reduce transparency](https://www.samaracentre.ca/articles/bring-back-the-bots), astroturfing has become much easier to conduct, and much harder to detect.

This is concerning, because Canadians’ understanding of public opinion and belief in verifiable facts is actively shaped by civic discussions taking place on social media. Astroturfing and other types of inauthentic engagement in online spaces are skewing these discussions, misinforming and misrepresenting the opinions of real Canadians.

We’ve found evidence that very small groups of users are having an outsized impact in online discussions about Canadian elections. In the [2023 Alberta election](https://www.samaracentre.ca/sambot-alberta-2023), just 200 users published 12 per cent of all tweets sent to candidates and political parties. In both the Alberta election and the [Toronto mayoral by-election](https://www.samaracentre.ca/sambot-toronto-2023) that same year, 50 or fewer users generated over 10 per cent of all abusive content we monitored. These highly active power users (or power abusers) could include high proportions of astroturfers. Regardless of their intentions, granting outsized influence to any very small group of users skews our perceptions of public opinion.

While the Kirkland Lake bots were simple and repetitive, consumers now have access to AI-powered, large-language models (LLMs) that can produce unique posts at massive scale and run autonomously. The online activity these models can produce is often [indistinguishable from authentic human interaction](https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/28/23775311/gpt-3-ai-language-models-twitter-disinformation-study). Imagine thousands of bot accounts replying to news articles, arguing with other users, and posting disinformation all on their own, but helped along by certain narratives that bad actors wish to promote.

Astroturfing goes beyond just posting content. Inflating likes, retweets, replies, views and other forms of platform-specific engagement boosts particular content. Recommendation systems then drive this content to your newsfeeds, and more users are then exposed to it, creating feedback loops of artificially elevated engagement. Astroturfing can be done manually, automatically, or both. Co-ordinated inauthentic behaviour plagues online political discussions – researchers have found [organized constellations](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-08404-9) of astroturfing accounts operating across multiple countries.

Astroturfing groups, domestic or foreign, may promote particular candidates, parties, or ideologies and spread disinformation. They can work to exacerbate [distrust in institutions](https://www.cyber.gc.ca/en/guidance/national-cyber-threat-assessment-2023-2024#fn15-rf), polarization, confusion and anger more broadly. The sheer volume of online noise and manipulation prevents us from forming a reliable understanding of authentic public opinion. Astroturfing acts as a significant barrier to Canadians understanding each other, and living in a shared reality. It is critical that the federal government, post-proroguing, not abandon efforts to pass legislation that demands [more transparency](https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/april-2024/online-harms-bill-transparency/) and increased consumer protections from digital platforms.

We need to understand the extent of astroturfing before we can adequately combat it. Digital platforms provide [unreliable or narrow data](https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/fake-accounts-social-media-epistemic-uncertainty-and-need-independent-auditing) on inauthentic behaviour, and they’re not currently required to share *any* public-interest data with Canadian policy-makers or civil society; combatting online astroturfing will require both increased transparency and platform accountability. Canada should require that these platforms share data with researchers so that the public can understand the prevalence of information threats, and so that policy-makers and civil society can effectively advocate for better digital regulation and platform design.

Beyond the continuing work toward regulation, Canada should also undertake a [national digital-media literacy strategy](https://www.samaracentre.ca/articles/learning-loss-as-civic-loss) targeted across all demographics. Public awareness campaigns and educational outreach are essential to help inoculate Canadians against online manipulation. Understanding this complex ecosystem of digital-media manipulation is crucial to preserving the integrity of our democratic systems, and the resilience and strength of our communities.

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Attorneys general from **22 blue states** along with Washington DC and San Francisco signed a secret agreement just 3 days after President Trump won the 2024 election **for a coordinated response to resist Trump's anticipated actions to end birthright citizenship**.

[

*California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D)*

](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/GAUGJKAWQAAf0bs.jpg?itok=Tnl7xS0Q)

According to an investigation by the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project, the 22 AGs agreed to legal collaboration and communication to defy Trump's immigration enforcement initiatives, including any deemed confidential or privileged.

**All shared information would be used to coordinate various legal schemes**, as well as pre-lawsuit investigations, litigation strategies, complaints, dispositive motions, merits briefs, and amicus briefs. **The agreement also bars third parties from accessing any of this shared information**, which is defined as all documents, materials, information, and communications exchanged between the attorneys generals’ offices prior to the agreement. 

The agreement does allow for public records requests, but requires any AG to give five days' notice to the other AGs about the request before it was due.

"**The Parties have agreed that they have a common interest in developing potential litigation to challenge executive action** related to ending or curtailing birthright citizenship," according to the agreement.

As [*AZ Free News*](https://azfreenews.com/2025/02/ag-mayes-joined-secret-pact-to-resist-trump-immigration-enforcement/) notes further, the other attorneys general to enter the secretive agreement oversaw California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, as well as Washington, D.C.

**The city and county of San Francisco, California also joined the agreement last month.** 

Trump [issued](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-the-meaning-and-value-of-american-citizenship/) an executive order ending birthright citizenship during his first day in office. The order extends to children born of illegal immigrant parents in the U.S. It prohibits the federal government from issuing or accepting citizenship documents from persons born under those circumstances after its effective date, which is scheduled to take place later this month. 

“\[T\]he Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States. The Fourteenth Amendment has always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’” read the order. 

The order flies in the face of longstanding court precedent on the matter.

That precedent led three federal judges in separate cases to block Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. The first two occurred in Washington and Maryland, with the third occurring on Monday in New Hampshire. 

Mayes joined Arizona to the case [blocked](https://www.azag.gov/press-release/judge-blocks-trumps-unconstitutional-birthright-citizenship-order-case-brought) in the Washington district court earlier this month. Based on the timeline of the secretive agreement and the filing of their lawsuit, it appears the case emerged directly from that agreement.

“**The court’s decision to block this illegal executive order nationwide protects the basic right to birthright citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendmen**t,” said Mayes. “I will keep fighting to protect the Constitutional rights of all Arizonans from the Trump administration’s illegal actions.”

Several of those states signed onto the secretive agreement — Washington, Oregon, and Illinois — were partnered on the lawsuit with Mayes. 

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Several bombshell claims were made on Tucker Carlson's show while he interviewed Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a retired United States Army officer who was awarded a Bronze Star for valor in Afghanistan.

Carlson stated that billions of dollars' worth of US arms are being **siphoned off and sold to America's enemies**. While the black market arms trade in Ukraine during the war has long been documented, including in [mainstream media sources](https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/20/politics/pentagon-watchdog-report-ukraine-weaponry/index.html), Carlson and his guest Col. Davis agreed that many weapons have made it into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, among other criminal organizations.

[

*Illustrative: USAF/Reuters*

](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/armspallot.jpg?itok=WLYYg1BZ)

Ukraine receives American weapons, they are skimmed by Ukrainian military officials, who then sell them to the cartels, the show asserted.

"**They sell weapons to drug cartels... the fact is that the Ukrainian military sells a huge percentage, up to half of the weapons we send them**. **And this is not my guess. This is a fact**. Not speculation. They sell it, and a lot of it ends up with drug cartels on our border. So this is a crime," Carlson said, quoted by RIA Novosti.

"They're selling it, and **a lot of it winds up with the drug cartels on our border**," he also said.

However, the claim has [come under fire](https://x.com/ioangrillo/status/1889056129050955855) and much scrutiny online, particularly the statement that "half" of all US-provided arms end up with the cartels, given **no particular evidence for this was presented in the show**.

Given many tens of billions worth of US and Western arms have been sent over the nearly 3-year course of the Ukraine war, this would be an immense amount of weaponry requiring large military transport planes or else steady streams of trucks going back across Ukraine's border to foreign destinations. This level of illicit arms trade would require immense logistics and would be incredibly difficult to conceal. Carlson suggested CIA assistance or profiting from the scheme, however.

But certainly it's easy enough to believe that **at least some quantities of black market US-provided arms or ammo have gone from Ukraine into an array of criminal networks worldwide**, including possibly to the Mexican cartels just south of the US border.

*The Blaze* has meanwhile reviewed of the Ukraine to Mexico arms pipeline reporting [as follows](https://www.theblaze.com/news/tucker-carlson-ukraine-military-aid):

> *However, multiple reports have denied that this was evidence of any nefarious use of the money. Outlet [Voice of America](https://www.voanews.com/a/false-russian-allegations-that-ukraine-stole-100-billion-of-us-funds/7967072.html) painted the claim as Russian propaganda, while PolitiFact [claimed](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2025/feb/05/facebook-posts/zelenskyys-statement-about-ukraine-aid-didnt-revea/) any accusations were based on a misunderstanding of how the aid has been distributed.*
>
> *At the same time, a June 2024 [study](https://hir.harvard.edu/facts-or-false-alarms-the-state-of-illicit-arms-in-ukraine/) by Harvard said it was **"highly likely that some weapons will go missing over the course of the conflict" but admitted it would be hard to prove the extent of which illicit weapons were being sold**.*
>
> *Harvard, too, stated that sales of arms to sources like "Finnish gangsters, French rioters, Nigerian fighters, and Mexican cartels" were debunked as "Russian propaganda" and cited a [report](https://riskbulletins.globalinitiative.net/ukr-obs-001/01-monitoring-illicit-arms-flows-from-the-conflict-in-ukraine.html?ref=hir.harvard.edu) from the Global Initiatives Against Transnational Organized Crime as evidence.*

Watch the full interview here:

In 2023, the Pentagon's Office of Defense Cooperation-Kyiv admitted after conducting an investigation that it "was **unable to conduct required \[end-use monitoring\] of military equipment that the United States provided to Ukraine** in FY 2022."

"The inability of DoD personnel to visit areas where equipment provided to Ukraine was being used or stored significantly hampered ODC-Kyiv’s ability to execute" the monitoring, the report stated. Reports have since shown that the lack of monitoring and tracking situation has **grown even worse since then**.

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It was early October. A friend and colleague reached out to see if I'd be interested in doing a guest segment on an Irish radio show to discuss the upcoming election, as she was unable to. I said, "Sure, why not?" I'm no stranger to radio and guest segments. That sounded like fun.

I don't recall if the station ([RTE Radio](https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/) in Dublin) mentioned it ahead of time, but this was a panel segment, with myself and another guest both on at the same time. It wasn't someone I'd heard of, but I learned she was a Democratic National Committee Finance member, so figured we'd probably have differing perspectives. 

We did. Which was fine. But frankly, I was caught a bit off guard by the furious spin and degree of disdain and outright scorn she expressed — not toward me, she was cordial enough toward me, but toward then-candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance. I don't know why exactly. I'm used to seeing it online and even on the cable news shows. In any event, I came away from the initial interaction with a sense of "Wow, that was...interesting."

I looked her up on [Twitter](https://x.com/lindyli) — sorry, X. Yep — full-on apparatchik. Lots of "Here I am with this high-profile Dem," and "I'm so stoked about our candidate!" and "I love this Dem so much!" 

That became a recurring theme in our subsequent interactions. (Yes, we were brought back two more times before the election and once the morning after.) When she wasn't slamming Trump or Vance, she was emphasizing her closeness to the Bidens and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff and Tim and Gwen Walz — she was on a cozy first-name basis with them, it seemed. Well, fair enough for a DNC committee member and donor-wrangler. No doubt she did rub elbows with the crew on multiple occasions. It's just that the way she kept highlighting it seemed...a little cloying. 

Look, I'm a partisan, too. And maybe just a little catty. What can I say? 

Except our second segment together in mid-October really drove home the fact that Lindy Li loved her some Democrats and hated her some Republicans — I took another gander at her X timeline and found the below gems. I didn't think at the time to ensure the date was included in the screenshot, but since I snagged it in mid-October, it had to have been around that same time. Whatever the date, Li had some exceedingly unkind things to say about Trump. (And it ended up being fortuitous that I took that screenshot...because these tweets curiously appear to have been deleted.)


No gray area there. According to Li, he was dementia-ridden and fecally incontinent. Yikes!

And, okay, fine, politics ain't beanbag, nor is social media. But Li shared the dementia diagnosis with gusto in our [second appearance](https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/today-with-claire-byrne/2024/1014/1475353-today-with-claire-byrne-monday-14-october-2024/) on "Today With Claire Byrne." (Our segment starts at the 1:30:18 mark.) The topic was Kamala Harris' release of her medical records and why Trump wasn't releasing his:

> Byrne: Well, Lindy Li, what’s your view on this? We can see that Donald Trump is well, he’s released his physicians’ notes on him, and they say he’s fit to be president and he’s in good health. What more do you need to know?
>
> Li: Well, going back to Susie’s point, the visuals actually belie this belief that Trump is well. He goes on tangents for hours on end. I personally believe that his pre-frontal cortex is disintegrating because his inhibitions are completely just shot. He goes on tangents about batteries, sharks, Hannibal Lecter — nothing to do with what Americans care about, which is kitchen table issues and the economy. He just talks about himself for hours on end — it’s even worse now than it was in 2016 and 2020. He’s been on a downward slope…
>
> Byrne: But, Lindy, that mightn’t signify that there’s anything wrong with the man. That might be just how he chooses to conduct his rallies, right?
>
> Li: I’m not the only one. Even Governor Chris Christie came out, too — this is a Republican saying that Trump is experiencing cognitive decline. And if he were so confident about his medical records, why doesn’t he just release them? Clearly, he has something to hide — just like he did with his tax returns, just like he did with his property valuations. It’s a pattern here. It’s all about conceal, conceal, conceal, and running out the clock, and just not telling the American people the truth.

But it wasn't just that Trump was physically and mentally unfit, per Li — according to her, in addition to being "fragile," he was a terrorist insurrectionist traitor (emphasis mine):

> Byrne: And just on that point — that, you know, this is really tight, Lindy, we have a New York Times poll showing Kamala Harris within one point of Donald Trump in North Carolina. So, if you take that as the standard bearer, this couldn’t be closer.
>
> Li: It couldn’t be closer. You’re absolutely right. But I want to say one thing — I don’t want to let Susie off the hook quite yet. Every single serious presidential candidate has released his medical records, released his tax returns, went on “60 Minutes,” did a second debate. These are all things that he’s copping out of because he’s simply incapable. **He doesn’t want to debate again because he knows he’s going to be annihilated. He can’t stand up to the brunt that is Kamala Harris. He’s just completely incapable. And how do we expect somebody like him, in his fragile state, to stand up to Vladimir Putin?** He’s not — he’s secretly sending COVID machines over there. He’s not capable of standing up to our adversaries, like Russia or China or Iran. 
>
> Byrne: Well, voters don’t seem to mind because it’s pretty much 50-50 in those all-important swing states.
>
> Li: Well, Pennsylvania, where I am right now — I am seeing so much excitement. I live in Philadelphia. It’s a liberal stronghold. But we’re not just going to rest on our laurels here. We’re going into those rural areas, like Erie County and Scranton, Pennsylvania, and trying to just claw into Trump’s margin. And, you know, at the end of the day, **Americans are going to realize that we’re running against someone who is, frankly, a terrorist insurrectionist, who invaded our Capitol because he didn’t want to relinquish power. People need to stop mincing words and call it like it is. This is a guy who’s a traitor, attacked the government because he didn’t want to let go of power. He undermined our hard-won republic for his own ego.** 

No punches pulled there. Trump was the enemy and was to be destroyed. And not just Trump — Vance as well. In our initial [appearance](https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/today-with-claire-byrne/2024/1002/1473169-today-with-claire-byrne-wednesday-2-october-2024/) (starts at 1:29:47) the morning after the vice presidential debate, Li accused Vance of "traffick(ing) in lies and conspiracies" and said, "He was expecting to be a fire hydrant of lies and deception without any pushback."

Which, again, fine — at least we knew where Lindy stood on things. 

Or...so I thought. 

I'll tell you when I started to feel confident that Trump and Vance were going to win: October 30. Li and I were back on with [Claire Byrne](https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/today-with-claire-byrne/2024/1030/1478205-today-with-claire-byrne-wednesday-30-october-2024/) (1:28:55 mark), and Li was asked about the now infamous Joe Biden "garbage" remark regarding Trump supporters. Rather than leaping to defend the remark, Li deftly noted that it was a "tricky situation" before going on to note some other recent Biden slip-ups. Her whole tone and demeanor in that third appearance were different. She was definitely still advocating for the Harris campaign, but it almost seemed as though she was trying to temper expectations. My sense was that whatever internal polls she was seeing (or being told about) weren't looking all that great for Harris-Walz. 

Li and I were paired one more time on the [show](https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/today-with-claire-byrne/2024/1106/1479425-today-with-claire-byrne-wednesday-6-november-2024/) — the morning after the election. (Our segment starts at the 1:01:42 mark.) Li shared some seemingly introspective thoughts on why Trump won, pointing to immigration and inflation as key issues. This was, I thought, a fairly productive conversation. (Might have been easier for me to enjoy, given the electoral outcome.) 

I wasn't terribly surprised to see Li begin showing up more regularly on conservative outlets. I chuckled about it a bit, simply having witnessed such a rapid and sharp departure from the Lindy I first encountered. But politics and media are a business, and a gal's gotta self-promote and hustle if she wants to succeed, right? 

The race had been called but the bodies were still warm when Li began calling out the Harris campaign.

Press Release **Published:** Feb 11, 2025

WASHINGTON—House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) announced the establishment of a task force titled the “Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets.” The task force’s mission is to examine the declassification of materials in the public interest and will be led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.). This announcement follows President Trump’s executive order entitled “Declassification of Records Concerning the Assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”  

“For too long, the federal government has kept information of public interest classified and the American people are demanding greater transparency. This secrecy has sowed distrust in our institutions. The Task Force will build on the Trump Administration’s efforts to declassify records of national importance and ensure Americans get the answers they deserve. Representative Luna is committed to shining a light on the truth and ending the era of secrecy. It’s time to let the sunlight in and finally provide answers the American public has long demanded,” **said Chairman Comer (R-Ky.).**

“The federal government has been hiding information from Americans for decades. We have spent years seeking information on the assassinations of President Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, Reverend King, and other government secrets without success. It is time to give Americans the answers they deserve, which is why I am honored to lead this bipartisan task force that seeks truth and transparency. We will also investigate UAPs/USOs, the Epstein client list, COVID-19 origins, and the 9/11 files. We will work alongside President Trump and his cabinet members to deliver truth to the American people. From this moment forward, we will restore trust through transparency,” **said Representative Luna (R-Fla.).**

The task force is authorized for six months pursuant to Committee Rules. Members of the task force will be announced at a later date.

Additionally, today Chairman Comer and Rep. Luna sent 11 letters to initiate the Task Force’s efforts to declassify information of national interest. The letters can be found [here](https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Task-Force-Letters.pdf).

**Background:**

On January 23, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order (EO) on “Declassification of Records Concerning the Assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” The EO requires the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General, in coordination with the National Security Advisor and White House Counsel, to prepare for the President within 15 days a plan “for the full and complete release of records relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.” Additionally, the EO requires that within 45 days the same personnel prepare for the President a plan “for the full and complete release” of records relating to the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The work of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is “absolutely essential to our ability to reclaim the government,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) said during an appearance on “The Alex Marlow Show.”

Lee said DOGE, led by Elon Musk, is working to make it a “government of the people, for the people and by the people” once again.

“It has been kidnapped by the Deep State, and DOGE is coming in there. And for the first time in many, many decades, probably the first time in my lifetime anything like this has happened, you’ve got some experts who have been passed by the sitting President of the United States to weed out areas of waste, fraud and abuse,” Lee told Marlow, noting that everyone campaigns on that because it sounds good. But, very seldom — if ever — do they actually do it once they get to office, especially if they are inside the executive branch of government.

“Elon Musk and his DOGE team … are actually systematically going through this,” he said of the mass government audit, noting that the Deep State hates this.

“The Deep State doesn’t want to be tamed. It’s almost as if it’s an organic living thing that wants to protect its own life,” the senator observed. “And in the meantime, they’ve had litigation brought. You’ve got this judge in New York, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer just forbade all political appointees, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, from accessing Department of Treasury data,” Lee said.

**WATCH — “We Want the Keen Eye of DOGE” Hegseth Supports “Billions” in Cuts to Defense Dept:**

The four-page ruling, he continued, “appears to me to be all boiler plate and pretty generic language, zero substantive legal analysis.”

“It was issued ex parte, meaning the Trump administration, employers weren’t given notice, weren’t allowed to argue, weren’t even in the room. Only these, these Democrat attorneys general were heard. The judge cites no law or logic to support this really aggressive order,” he explained. “I don’t believe that the substance of the law is with the judge on this.”

Lee emphasized that he believes DOGE’s actions are legal, predicting that this particular stage of delay will not last.

“But I suspect this is the Deep State’s game. This is what they’re wanting to do. They wanted to delay every time they get the chance, recognizing that in some areas, the delay might be temporary, and others, it might be less temporary,” Lee said. “But our job is to make sure that the delays themselves are as temporary and few and far between as possible, so that the work of DOGE can go on undeterred.”

“The Alex Marlow Show,” hosted by Breitbart Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow, is a weekday podcast produced by Breitbart News and Salem Podcast Network. **You can subscribe to the podcast on** **[YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@AlexMarlowShow)****,** **[Rumble](https://rumble.com/c/c-6858779)****,** **[Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-alex-marlow-show/id1777276736)****, and** **[Spotify.](https://open.spotify.com/show/1eAxLA6IqEIlEV24mKWc66?si=09d7e2fcdde8489a)**

**[Annual Ad-Free Subscription… Join the Fight and Support Revolver Now…](https://revolver.news/subscribe)**

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Awww, poor Chelsea Clinton. She is very upset because people still DARE to question her family's foundation after all these years. Forget that we've seen plenty of questionable connections between the Clinton Foundation, Haiti, and Chelsea's wedding ... it's all lies and conspiracies, and THEY've HELPED MILLIONS.

REEEE.

We're not entirely sure why she thought this was a good idea, but we're glad she's not overly bright and went through with it anyway.

She had to know this wouldn't go well, right?

Post continues:

> ... worldwide. Our impact speaks for itself. I don’t take a cent from the Foundation. Never have. In fact, my family personally contributes meaningfully to our work each year.
>
> Misinformation isn't just noise—it's a weapon. Efforts to undermine good work won't stop us, and we stand in solidarity with those who are committed to truth, public health, progress, and the endless potential of our future.

Tell us you've never really had a real job in your entire life without telling us, Chelsea.

Oh, and yeah, there's this too:

Oopsies.

Maybe she meant to say she's been helped by spending MILLIONS?

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Yeah, Haiti is a big one, Chels.

MEEP.

Well, it is a family tradition.

Yeah, that WAS (and is) awesome.

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[Jasmine Crockett Takes Her Place as TRASHIEST, Dumbest Congress Member in Latest Anti-Trump Rant (Watch)](https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/02/10/crockett-says-trump-is-turning-us-into-russia-n2408122 "Jasmine Crockett Takes Her Place as TRASHIEST, Dumbest Congress Member in Latest Anti-Trump Rant (Watch)")

[Rapid Response 47 DISMANTLES Consumer Financial Protection Bureau AKA Elizabeth Warren's 'Brainchild'
](https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/02/10/rapid-response-47-consumer-financial-protection-bureau-thread-n2408123)

[Time to Shut Down the RACIST Department of Education (I Said What I Said)](https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/02/10/doe-dei-grants-during-biden-admin-n2408105 "Time to Shut Down the RACIST Department of Education (I Said What I Said)")

['HOLY CRAPOLA'! Federal Judge Gets Pretty INSURRECTION-Y in NEW Ruling Against Trump Admin (Thread)](https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/02/10/check-out-just-how-far-off-the-rails-judge-went-to-stop-trump-admin-from-auditing-treasury-n2408121 "'HOLY CRAPOLA'! Federal Judge Gets Pretty INSURRECTION-Y in NEW Ruling Against Trump Admin (Thread)")

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## Sex abuse survivors left furious after Church of England's ruling body votes to reject full independent safeguarding after string of damaging scandals

Published: 16:18 EST, 11 February 2025 | Updated: 17:50 EST, 11 February 2025

Sexual abuse survivors reacted with fury last night after the Church of England's ruling body voted to reject full independent safeguarding despite a string of damaging scandals.

Members of the General Synod yesterday chose not to adopt a new safeguarding model heavily favoured by victims, who described the move as a 'punch in the gut'.

Representatives of survivors said the outcome was 'incredibly disappointing' and showed the Church had decided to 'keep it in the family'.

It follows a series of scandals that have damaged public faith in the CofE and led to the resignation of former archbishop of Canterbury [Justin Welby](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/justin-welby/index.html).

Survivors had urged the Church to endorse a model which would have seen all safeguarding officers employed by the Church transferred to a new independent body not under the control of bishops.

But members instead voted for a less independent model 'as the way forward in the short term' with undefined 'further work' to be done to implement the move to full independence.

The endorsed model will see some staff move to a new body outside the Church but other safeguarding officers will remain. 

The more radical model would have immediately taken safeguarding out of the hands of the Church.

It follows a series of scandals that have damaged public faith in the CofE and led to the resignation of former archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby

Dame Jasvinder Sanghera, who led the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) probing abuse in the Church, last night called for the Prime Minister to step in

Bishop of Newcastle Helen-Ann Hartley (pictured) told Sky News: 'Many victims and survivors... were hoping that the Synod with go for the model that drove us immediately towards complete independence'

Dame Jasvinder Sanghera, who led the Independent Safeguarding Board (ISB) probing abuse in the Church, last night called for the Prime Minister to step in.

'Safeguarding can no longer be trusted to be managed by the Church of England,' she said.

'The current system failed to prevent abuse, there's been coverup after coverup, and today they had the opportunity to bring confidence back but instead what they've chosen to do is dress it up so they can keep on marking their own homework.'

They're saying option four is something they'll consider, but actually that's kicking the can down the road even further because we need that change now.'

Andrew Graystone, a longtime advocate for abuse survivors, said the vote showed the Church had decided to 'keep it in the family' and that it displayed 'shocking arrogance'.

He said: 'The Church of England had an opportunity to start to rebuild trust, by admitting that it needed expertise from outside. But instead they have chosen to keep it in the family.'

The Church has been plagued by safeguarding controversies in recent months. 

They have come after a damning report into serial abuser lead to the resignation of Dr Welby last year.

The Bishop of Newcastle Helen-Ann Hartley (centre) during the first day of the Church of England's General Synod

Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, who is the de facto leader of the CofE until a replacement to Dr Welby is appointed, has himself faced calls to step down over alleged safeguarding failings 

Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell, who is the de facto leader of the CofE until a replacement to Dr Welby is appointed, has himself faced calls to step down over alleged safeguarding failings.

On Monday he admitted he has 'made mistakes' in a speech to the Church's parliament, the General Synod, and said that the Church has 'failed greatly' on safeguarding.

Following the vote yesterday, the only bishop to publicly called for Dr Welby to step down said she was disappointed by the move, which she described as a 'punch in the gut' for survivors.

Bishop of Newcastle Helen-Ann Hartley told Sky News: 'Many victims and survivors... were hoping that the Synod with go for the model that drove us immediately towards complete independence.

'I'm afraid what this looks like is that we are just kicking the can down the road and we are failing our duty to victims and survivors.'

However Bishop of Blackburn Philip North, who proposed the safeguarding motion backed by Synod yesterday, denied this and said that full independent safeguarding 'is still very much on the table'.

He said: 'Synod has voted almost unanimously for real progress in independence in safeguarding.

'What we've got is a strong endorsement of moving immediately to setting up an independent scrutiny body and more work to ensure that operational independence is legally and practically deliverable.

'This gives us a chance to make immediate progress on what we can achieve whilst not slowing down the pace on more fundamental change.'

MAGA star Anna Paulina Luna has made a jaw-dropping claim that there were 'two shooters' in the JFK assassination.

Luna made clear her belief in a second shooter as she launched a new task force that will expose some of the government's most scintillating secrets. 

She and her team will declassify highly sought after [documents about](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14322625/JFK-files-Trump-kennedy-rfk-oswald-assassination-CIA.html) JFK's murder, and also files related to disgraced financier [Jeffrey Epstein](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/jeffrey_epstein/index.html).

In doing so the congresswoman dropped a bombshell about her own thoughts regarding JFK's shooting by assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963.

'I believe that there were two shooters, and we should be finding more information as we are able to,' she said.

Luna will also push to expose what the U.S. government knows about [UFOs](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ufos/index.html), and the assassinations of [Martin Luther King](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/martin_luther_king/index.html) Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.

Secret documents about the origins of [COVID-19](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/coronavirus/index.html) and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack could all soon be revealed, Luna shared.

The [Florida](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/florida/index.html) Republican added that her investigation into JFK's assassination will be more comprehensive than past efforts.

'In previous investigations, they didn't have access to the information that we are going to have access to, and so that's a big deal, especially if you're looking at what truly happened with JFK,' the 35-year-old continued.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., announced the creation of the 'Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets,' alongside House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., on Tuesday

The task force's first hearing will be about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. JFK is pictured above just minutes before he was assassinated

The task force will also examine the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., who is pictured above speaking to reporters in Birmingham, Alabama, on May 9, 1963

The task force will hold its first hearing in March and it will cover the Massachusetts Democrat's murder. A specific date for the hearing has yet to be determined.

Witnesses at the hearing could include individuals who were present in the operation room where JFK passed away, Luna said.

'There's people that have been publicly out there, for example, in the JFK stuff that were actually present in the room, at the operating room, where he was actually brought to right after the shooting,' the Floridian said.

'So we hope to bring those people in to testify. And again, these hearings will be open to the public.'

Luna and Oversight Chairman James Comer's new task force comes on the heels of Donald Trump ordering [the full release of the JFK files](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14322129/kennedys-war-trump-vow-jfk-assassination-files.html) shortly after taking office. 

His executive order requires the director of national intelligence and other officials to formulate a plan for the full release of the assassination files within 15 days.

Trump also ordered the release of the MLK and RFK files, requesting that the officials present him with a plan to do so within 45 days.

Luna shared that she will be working directly with the White House to reveal more about these high-profile murders.

Already Luna and Comer sent letters to the agency's responsible for the necessary documents.

Rep. Luna details the plan for witnesses for the JFK investigation

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Luna claimed during the press conference Tuesday she believes there were two shooters in JFK's assassination

The congressional panel will also examine Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 murder. RFK is pictured above before he was fatally shot on June 5, 1968 during his Presidential Campaign at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles 

The pair sent letters to Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Department of Justice to reveal more details about the Epstein files.

They have also sent letters to the National Security Agency, CIA, the Pentagon, and the State and Energy Departments.

Furthermore, the Republican-led task force will investigate unidentified aerial phenomena and unidentified submerged objects which have captured major public interest. 

On Monday, it was [revealed by Axios](https://www.axios.com/2025/02/10/trump-jfk-assassination-records) that the FBI had unearthed 2,400 new documents that could shed light on the enduring mystery of JFK's death.

These newly unearthed documents may include files on a CIA spy chief with a murky role in the affair, it has emerged.

The CIA man based in Miami funded a group of Cuban exiles, which assassin Lee Harvey Oswald tried to infiltrate weeks before he shot the president in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

'There's people that have been publicly out there, for example, in the JFK stuff that were actually present in the room, at the operating room, where he was actually brought to right after the shooting,' the Floridian explained at the Tuesday press conference. Above she is pictured with two rifles during a photo shoot she did before running for Congress

The Dallas Police Department mug shots of Lee Harvey Oswald following his arrest over the JFK assassination. Oswald claimed he was a 'patsy'.

U.S. President Donald Trump holds a signed executive order in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington, U.S., January 23, 2025.

According to Jefferson Morley, a leading expert on the assassination, the new documents could include files on George Joannides, who was chief of covert action at the CIA's station in Miami in 1963.

Joannides, who died in 1990, was also case officer for a group of anti-Castro students called the the Cuban Student Directorate, which had several interactions with Oswald, and received funding from the CIA.

JFK investigators have long been intrigued by Joannides - whose codename was 'Howard' - and wanted to know more about him.

They also want to know more about whether elements of the CIA, in the wake of the JFK assassination, used the Cuban Student Directorate to promote propaganda and a potential U.S. invasion of [Cuba](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/cuba/index.html). 

A collection of over 5 million government records at the National Archives was required to be opened by 2017, unless there were any exemptions designated by the president.

But about 3,600 of those records still have redactions and haven’t yet been fully released.

As he ordered their declassification with the stroke of a pen in the Oval Office, Trump said: 'All will be revealed.'

It has previously been speculated that hundreds of pages of documents relating to the Joannides episode may still exist. If they do, they could soon be made public by the newly minted congressional task force.

[

## Corruption Chronicles

](https://www.judicialwatch.org/corruption-chronicles/)

[Corruption Chronicles](https://www.judicialwatch.org/corruption-chronicles/) | February 11, 2025


A federal agent in a border region long known as a major corridor for Mexican cartels smuggling narcotics and Islamic terrorists into the United States has been arrested and charged with alien smuggling and drug trafficking. The case involves a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer in El Paso, Texas, where Judicial Watch years ago [uncovered](https://www.judicialwatch.org/cartels-corruption-terrorism-an-investigation/) an unprecedented partnership between Mexican drug cartels and jihadists as part of a decade-long investigation into crime, terrorism and corruption in the southern border. Back in 2017 Judicial Watch also produced an [investigative documentary](https://www.judicialwatch.org/videos/the-sun-city-cell/) detailing an elaborate narco-terrorist cell operating out of El Paso, which the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) confirms is a primary hub for Mexican opioids and methamphetamine enroute to every corner of the U.S.

Corruption within the law enforcement ranks has also been a problem in the region at both local and federal levels, Judicial Watch investigations show, with a number of federal agents caught taking bribes over the years. Back in 2014 Judicial Watch [reported](https://www.judicialwatch.org/strange-case-deputy-jesus-eddie-campa/) on the criminal indictment of Jesus Campa, the chief deputy of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office (EPCSO), a Texas agency responsible for patrolling more than 1,000 square miles with a population of about 870,000. After nearly two decades with the agency, he left abruptly amid allegations of embezzling $5.6 million in Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) funds. His boss, Sheriff Richard Wiles, was embroiled in several scandals. Besides looking the other way as one of his trusted deputy chiefs embezzled millions of dollars, Wiles attended a fundraising event at the home of a convicted felon with connections to the illegal drug trade while serving his third term as sheriff.

The recent CBP case involves an agent, Manuel Perez, who federal authorities say has helped smuggle illegal immigrants and cocaine for six years on the El Paso border. In multiple instances the disgraced 32-year-old agent admitted vehicles driven by illegal immigrants at the Paso Del Norte Port of Entry in El Paso as part of human smuggling operations, according to a [statement](https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdtx/pr/cbp-officer-arrested-el-paso-charged-alien-smuggling-and-drug-trafficking) issued by the Department of Justice (DOJ). Additionally, Perez conspired to possess cocaine from 2019 to February 2025 as part of an operation to distribute the drug throughout Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina and elsewhere in the country. The officer is charged with one count of conspiracy to bring aliens to the United States for financial gain, three counts of bringing aliens to the United States for financial gain, and one count of conspiracy to possess a controlled substance with intent to distribute. He faces decades to life in prison, according to federal prosecutors.

Perez’s case indicates that little has changed since Judicial Watch first traveled to El Paso over 10 years ago to expose the reality gripping a city long promoted by local officials as one of America’s safest. The truth is that the municipality, which sits along the Rio Grande across famously violent Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is a key smuggling route for Mexican drugs, illegal immigrants, and Islamic terrorists. Cartels smuggle foreigners from countries with terrorist links into a small Texas rural town near El Paso by using remote farm roads—rather than interstates—to elude Border Patrol and other law enforcement barriers, Judicial Watch [reported](https://www.judicialwatch.org/mexican-cartels-smuggle-terrorists-into-u-s-through-rural-texas-border-region/) a decade ago. We also broke a [story](https://www.judicialwatch.org/isis-camp-a-few-miles-from-texas-mexican-authorities-confirm/) in 2015 about an ISIS training cell just a few miles from El Paso in an area known as “Anapra” situated just west of Ciudad Juárez in the Mexican state of Chihuahua. Law enforcement and intelligence sources on both sides of the border confirmed to Judicial Watch that cartel-backed “coyotes” help smuggle ISIS terrorists through the desert and into the U.S. between Acala and Fort Hancock, Texas. The areas are targeted for exploitation by ISIS because of their understaffed municipal and county police forces and the relative safe havens the terrain provides for unchecked large-scale drug smuggling.

With four years of open borders under the Biden administration and corrupt federal agents like Perez, there is no telling how many terrorists have entered the country to plan attacks. Afterall, in 2016 Judicial Watch [uncovered](https://www.judicialwatch.org/cartels-help-terrorists-in-mexico-get-to-u-s-to-explore-targets-isis-militant-shaykh-mahmood-omar-khabir-among-them/) an operation in which Mexican drug traffickers helped Islamic terrorists stationed in Mexico cross into the U.S. to explore targets for future attacks and among them was a Kuwaiti named Shaykh Mahmood Omar Khabir, an ISIS operative who at the time lived in Chihuahua not far from El Paso. Khabir trained hundreds of Al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen, according to information provided to Judicial Watch by government sources.

(The Center Square) — A recent audit accused the CEO of the charter school Education Explosion for the misuse of over $2 million in funds for personal expenses.

The school says it intends to pursue legal action against the Louisiana Legislative Auditor over what the school says were factual inaccuracies in the report.

"Despite providing the auditors with documented facts and evidence refuting these claims, they still moved forward with publishing their report without making corrections," the statement said. "This disregard for factual accuracy has left us no choice but to take legal action to protect the integrity of our school and ensure due process."

The Louisiana Legislative Auditor [**reported**](https://app2.lla.state.la.us/publicreports.nsf/0/54f857c36cfd0f9086258c2a00567709/$file/00006cfda.pdf?openelement&.7773098) that Education Explosion's CEO, Chakesha Scott, diverted more than $1.5 million of the charter school funds to an account she controlled under the name of Friends of Impact Charter School. 

The audit states that an additional $171,659 was diverted to a third party by the FICS account and other funds were used for personal expenses. The auditors also found that $221,506 of funds paid by students and parents were diverted to the FICS account and other accounts not in control of the charter school. Cash payments totaling $71,487 collected by the school were reported to have not been deposited. 

Scott did not notify the Education Explosion Board of Directors about these transactions and misused these funds without their knowledge, according to the auditors.

Credit card records obtained by the auditors show Scott used her Education Explosion credit card for at least $130,494 on trips taken by the Scott family to places like Egypt, Disneyland Paris and others. The report also says $166,520 in charter school funds were for the lease and/or purchase of a 2017 Acura MDX and a 2021 Land Rover Velar from August 2017 to April 2024 in the report. 

Other personal expenses noted in the report accuse Scott of withdrawing $42,371 from the FICS bank account on May 27, 2023, to buy a cashier's check payable to NOLA Motorcars.

Records found by the auditors indicate Scott and her daughter purchased a pre-owned 2018 Tesla Model S from NOLA Motorcars on May 27, 2020, for $42,371. Evidence that Scott purchased Louis Vuitton bags was also present.

"By improperly diverting funds to FICS' bank account and using those funds for their personal benefit, Ms. Scott and her family may have violated the Louisiana Constitution and state and federal law," the **[audit summary](https://app2.lla.state.la.us/publicreports.nsf/0/54f857c36cfd0f9086258c2a00567709/$file/00006cfda.pdf?openelement&.7773098)** states.

Friends of Impact Charter Schools, which is a separate nonprofit that handles payments and other issues for the school, issued a response letter.

"Thank you for providing my office and Friends of Impact Charter Schools a draft of your investigative audit report on Education Explosion. As you know, our firm represents FOICS. As an independent nonprofit organization, FOICS operates outside the jurisdiction of the Louisiana Legislative Auditor. Therefore, FOICS respectfully declines to provide a response and objects to its inclusion in the audit findings. FOICS requests that any reference to it be removed from the audit report."

Education Explosion is a state nonprofit that operates a charter school in Baker, La. The nonprofit is funded by public funds and grants given by the Louisiana Department of Education. The auditors did an audit of records from July 2014 to Jan. 2024, which showed that 99% of Education Explosion funding was publicly funded. 

Scott is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Impact Charter, and she is the co-founder of Education Explosion. She has led the nonprofit since 2009. 

Impact Charter Schools released a statement that contested the auditor's findings, saying that every financial transaction was "board-approved, legally compliant and fully documented."

"The Louisiana Legislative Auditor's (auditors) report contains misleading and inaccurate claims that misrepresent the reality of our school's operations and financial integrity. It is essential that our community understands the truth," the statement said. "The auditors' report does not provide an official audit, opinion, or assurance of wrongdoing. The report itself states that it is based on selected inquiries and does not meet standard auditing procedures.

The findings in the report are not supported by factual evidence and present a distorted view of Impact Charter School's financial and operational practices."

Emilee Ruth Calametti serves as staff reporter for The Center Square covering the Northwestern Louisiana region. She holds her M.A. in English from Georgia State University and soon, an additional M.A. in Journalism from New York University. Emilee has bylines in DIG Magazine, Houstonia Magazine, Bookstr, inRegister, The Click News, and the Virginia Woolf Miscellany. She is a Louisiana native with over seven years of journalism experience.

A defense contractor that supplies parts for American military aircraft and advises the U.S. government on supply chain security is owned by an immigrant with extensive ties to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intelligence and influence agencies, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has found.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has [awarded](https://www.usaspending.gov/search/?hash=5cc4865bee4873126ada8325c4a4ab14) tens of millions of dollars in [defense contracts](https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/611ea7c2-a697-4c9f-bc81-2adeaddf1660.pdf) for fighter jet, attack helicopter and guided missile launcher parts to S&L Aerospace Metals LLC, a New York-[based](https://www.slaerospace.com/who-we-are/) company that [serves](https://www.cisa.gov/critical-manufacturing-sector-council-charters-and-membership) on a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) [council](https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-07/CM_SCC-Charter_20240614_508_0.pdf) on critical manufacturing. However, S&L’s CEO [Jerry Wang](https://www.slaerospace.com/our-team/) — whose Chinese name is [Wang Jue](https://web.archive.org/web/20240501041815/http://www.zjsql.com.cn/index.php?m=content&c=index&a=show&catid=82&id=35830) — has been identified as an official for multiple CCP influence and intelligence organizations in Chinese government and state media reports, raising concerns about the defense contractor’s connections to Communist Party elites — including Chinese dictator, [Xi Jinping](https://web.archive.org/web/20240430165233/https://www.chinanews.com.cn/news/2006/2006-05-08/8/726829.shtml).

Through an attorney, Wang denied any ties to “foreign political entities,” but did not deny being photographed at numerous Chinese government and CCP intel agency functions alongside high-ranking Party officials.

“Allowing someone with Wang’s background access to the inner workings of U.S. supply chains and critical manufacturing vulnerabilities is a glaring national security failure,” said L.J. Eads, a former U.S. Air Force intelligence analyst, after reviewing the DCNF’s findings. “It’s incredibly naive to think that the CCP is going to play by the rules when we hand them a front-row seat to our most sensitive industries.”

DOD and DHS did not respond to multiple requests for comment. **[(RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Chinese Communist Party Quietly Operates Shadow Justice System In US Cities)](https://dailycaller.com/2025/01/29/chinese-communist-party-quietly-operates-shadow-justice-system-us/)**

#### ‘Proxies For CCP Interests’

While leading S&L, several organizations run by a CCP [intelligence](https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/annual_reports/2016%20Annual%20Report%20to%20Congress.pdf) and Chinese [influence](https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/uf-101-memo-final-pdf-version.pdf) arm called the United Front Work Department (UFWD) have identified the aerospace CEO as a member.

The UFWD’s operations are a “unique blend of engagement, influence activities, and intelligence operations that the \[CCP\] uses to shape its political environment, including to influence other countries’ policy toward the \[People’s Republic of China\] and to gain access to advanced foreign technology,” [according](https://selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/selectcommitteeontheccp.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/uf-101-memo-final-pdf-version.pdf) to the House Select Committee on the CCP.

“Our defense industrial base is dangerously dependent on our foremost adversary. Reports that individuals linked to the CCP United Front are in control of key U.S. defense contractors are shocking,” Michigan Republican Rep. John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP, told the DCNF. “No entity or individual affiliated with the CCP United Front — an organization dedicated to advancing CCP interests — should ever have been allowed to infiltrate our defense supply chains. This is likely just the tip of the iceberg, and we must urgently address these vulnerabilities to safeguard our national security.”

Chinese government [records](https://web.archive.org/web/20220608172214/http://www.cofa.org.cn/lsml/311497.jhtml) and state media [reports](https://web.archive.org/web/20211021095632/http://jingji.cntv.cn/special/zsdh2011/20111027/105183.shtml) identify Wang as a “director” of one UFWD [organization](https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Research/China%27s%20Overseas%20United%20Front%20Work%20-%20Background%20and%20Implications%20for%20US_final_0.pdf) called the China Overseas Friendship Association (COFA), which is “an important platform through which the UFWD co-opts and interacts with overseas United Front figures,” [according](https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2023-11/Chapter_2_Section_2--Chinas_United_Front_and_Propaganda_Work.pdf) to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

May 2019 [footage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwiYLTDamXo) from a COFA conference in Beijing [shows](https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2019-COFA-Wang-applauding-XI.png) Wang applauding Xi Jinping. Chinese government and UFWD social media [posts](https://archive.ph/Zqfpd) that include [footage](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/8jfM_CvdjY946-cspKCQBQ) of a June 2019 COFA assembly in Hangzhou, Zhejiang also [identify](https://archive.ph/up5zY) Wang as a “deputy chairman” of COFA’s Zhejiang branch. Wang is [pictured](https://archive.ph/Zqfpd/4a89130123ca045e0a2e7ab3f07f088602ee62bb.webp) alongside other COFA officials on a dais with a [name card](https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Zhejiang-COFA.png) identifying him at the June 2019 event.

Photos also show Wang at [several](https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/92015-Xi-visits-NYC.jpg) New York welcome events for Xi as far back as May 2006, when Wang organized a party for China’s future leader, [according](https://archive.ph/s17Nn) to Chinese state media. One photo from the 2006 gathering [pictures](https://archive.ph/s17Nn/0dcbd466715bd2b8474d562cef522ae90d92b268.jpg) Wang presenting a statue of a bald eagle to Xi, who then served as the Zhejiang provincial Party secretary, and another [state media](https://web.archive.org/web/20240430165233/https://www.chinanews.com.cn/news/2006/2006-05-08/8/726829.shtml) image [shows](https://web.archive.org/web/20240430165423im_/https://www.chinanews.com.cn/news/2006/2006-05-08/8/U86P4T8D726829F107DT20060509133720.jpg) them together holding a piece of calligraphy.

An S&L spokesperson told the DCNF by email that Wang has not belonged to any organizations serving the CCP or the UFWD.

“Mr. Wang does not have any ties to any foreign political entities,” the spokesperson wrote.

Wang’s attorney, Christopher E. Chang, insisted that his client had no ties to foreign political entities after the DCNF inquired about some 13 photos picturing Wang at Chinese government functions alongside high-ranking Party officials. However, when pressed about whether Wang denied being in those photographs, Chang replied: “no.”

One of those photos, which was included in a March 2011 Chinese government [announcement](https://archive.ph/JJOcm), [shows](https://archive.ph/JJOcm/6321215fb24bb80e0b37ed17199fdc278c871e88.jpg) Wang in Beijing with the [deputy director](https://www.mfa.gov.cn/web/ziliao_674904/wjrw_674925/lrfbzjbzzl_674933/200810/t20081029_9881090.shtml) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other overseas delegates attending the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

“CPPCC delegates attend a high-profile annual meeting to receive direction from the CCP regarding the ways its policies should be characterized” and “serve as proxies for CCP interests,” [according](https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2023-11/Chapter_2_Section_2--Chinas_United_Front_and_Propaganda_Work.pdf) to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The CPPCC charter [states](https://web.archive.org/web/20210214044357/http://en.cppcc.gov.cn/2018-12/27/c_470021.htm) delegates must “facilitate implementation of state foreign policy,” “take advantage of the CPPCC as a United Front organization” and even “keep state secrets.”

A September 2019 Chinese state media article also [pictures](https://archive.ph/6DwYX) Wang in Beijing at an event held by the UFWD and one of its [agencies](https://www.justice.gov/d9/2024-09/sun_and_hu_indictment.pdf) called the All-China Federation Of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC). ACFROC identifies Wang as both an “[overseas committee member](https://web.archive.org/web/20241217213950/http://www.chinaql.org/n1/2018/0901/c421026-30265666.html)” as well as the “[executive deputy chairman](https://web.archive.org/web/20100329060743/http://www.zjsql.com.cn/ladchamberroutine.html)” of its Zhejiang youth committee.

The September 2019 picture [shows](https://archive.ph/6DwYX/e7433a214094baa1237413d88360a372a2600330.jpg) Wang in a group photo with Linda Sun, a former aide to New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, who was [indicted](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25085308-linda-sun-indictment/) in August for acting as a Chinese agent. Among other things, the Department of Justice alleges ACFROC hired Sun as a committee member at some point while she was in Beijing attending events with ACFROC and the UFWD in September 2019.

Years prior, Wang and [Sun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7d5pjH8wus) both attended a December 2008 welcome [banquet](https://dailycaller.com/2024/09/09/exclusive-dem-rep-grace-meng-once-praised-high-ranking-chinese-communist-leadersh-unearthed-footage/) in New York for ACFROC’s then-chairman, Lin Jun, footage shows. The DCNF also sent Wang’s attorney a [screenshot](https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/2008-Wang-w-ACFROCs-Lin-Jun.png) taken from that footage [showing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxQ0QyLrwoo) Wang seated beside the intel agency chief.

Wang’s apparent Chinese government and intelligence ties would pose a national security threat in light of S&L’s defense contracting work, Edward L. Haugland, a former military and intelligence analyst, told the DCNF.

China aims to “leverage the gaps and seams in the soft underbelly in our national security to exploit, subvert, and enable direct attacks on our infrastructure, personnel, and governance, which they will exploit tactically and strategically,” Haugland said. “The inherent access, even to unclassified information, about our government’s security measures, practices and protocols gives exceptional insights to any adversary.”


\[Image created by the DCNF with pictures from ding13524’s YouTube account, Chinese government and state media\]

#### ‘Blatant National Security Threat’

S&L has received approximately [$60 million](https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/611ea7c2-a697-4c9f-bc81-2adeaddf1660.pdf) in defense contracts and subcontracts, and serves on a DHS council for critical manufacturing security, according to the U.S. government.

Founded in 1947, S&L Aerospace originally produced bicycle parts, but transitioned into the aerospace industry in the 1950’s, its archived website [states](https://web.archive.org/web/20130415065446/http://www.slaerospace.com/). Wang immigrated to the U.S. from China in 1986, [according](https://web.archive.org/web/20250108201709/https://edc.nyc/sites/default/files/2020-08/IDA%20Board%20of%20Directors%20Meeting%20Minutes%20February%2018%202020.pdf) to the New York City Economic Development Corporation, and became S&L’s CEO in 2001 after acquiring the firm with a partner.

In 2009, Wang became the sole owner of S&L, which USASpending.gov [classifies](https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/cebc317b-122b-189b-3c1e-f881fd31375c-C/latest) as a “minority owned business.” S&L now [counts](https://www.slaerospace.com/who-we-are/) the Pentagon and many of the largest U.S. military aircraft manufacturers as its clients.

Among others, S&L’s website [states](https://www.slaerospace.com/military/) it produces parts for Lockheed Martin’s [F-16 Fighting Falcon](https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/f-16.html) and [F-35 Lightning II](https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/f-35.html) fighter jets, as well as several of the aerospace giant’s military helicopters, including the [CH-53K King Stallion](https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/sikorsky-ch-53k-helicopter.html), [MH-60R Seahawk](https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/sikorsky-mh-60-seahawk-helicopters.html), and [UH-60M Black Hawk](https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/sikorsky-black-hawk-helicopter.html). S&L has also won Lockheed Martin contracts for the CH-53 Sea Stallion, [according](https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/611ea7c2-a697-4c9f-bc81-2adeaddf1660.pdf) to HigherGov, a website [providing](https://www.highergov.com/about/) government contracting analytics.

A Lockheed Martin spokesperson told the DCNF the firm takes a “multi-faceted approach to assess and mitigate supply chain risks” and complies with “all applicable laws and regulations, including those related to supply chain risk management in our business dealings.”

Wang’s company also manufactures parts for Boeing’s [commercial](https://www.slaerospace.com/commercial/) jets, like the [747](https://www.boeing.com/commercial/747-8), as well as some of the [Fortune 500](https://fortune.com/company/boeing/) company’s [military](https://www.slaerospace.com/military/) aircraft, including the [C-17 Globemaster III](https://www.boeing.com/defense/c-17-globemaster-iii) transport plane and the [H-47 Chinook](https://www.boeing.com/defense/ch-47-chinook#overview) heavy-lift helicopter, according to its website. HigherGov’s records also [reveal](https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/611ea7c2-a697-4c9f-bc81-2adeaddf1660.pdf) S&L has won contracts to produce parts for Boeing’s F-15 Eagle and F/A-18E Hornet fighter jets.

Boeing did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

However, [according](https://cdn01.dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/611ea7c2-a697-4c9f-bc81-2adeaddf1660.pdf) to HigherGov, S&L’s most lucrative contracts have come from the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), which oversees the global defense supply chain for “the five military services, 11 combatant commands, other federal, state and local agencies and partner and allied nations,” its website [states](https://www.dla.mil/About-DLA/).

Federal records reveal the Pentagon has awarded S&L contracts to produce a variety of parts for combat aircraft and even weapon systems.

For example, S&L has an ongoing [$3.3 million](https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_SPRRA123F0007_9700_SPRRA120D0043_9700) contract for “aircraft landing gear components,” according to USASpending.gov, and another ongoing $24.3 million contract to produce “cylinders and pistons” for the U.S. Army, a Pentagon announcement [states](https://web.archive.org/web/20250125213520/https://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract/Article/2181939/). At the same time, Wang’s company has also [won](https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_SPE4A618P8073_9700_-NONE-_-NONE-/) weapon systems contracts for “small arms, ordnance and ordnance accessories manufacturing” as well as multiple [contracts](https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_SPE4A615M7514_9700_-NONE-_-NONE-/) for “[launchers, guided missile](https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_SPE4A615MB472_9700_-NONE-_-NONE-/).”

A DLA spokesperson told the DCNF that the Pentagon [requires](https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/issuances/dodi/520587p.pdf?ver=vFs4klii8Jg1dCa26CDI_Q%3d%253) agencies to mitigate risks related to foreign ownership, control or influence for contractors and subcontractors.

However, Eads characterized the U.S. military’s vetting process for defense contractors as a “self-disclosure system” with “significant blind spots.”

“Contractors are largely expected to provide information about their ownership and potential foreign influence themselves, and there’s limited enforcement to independently verify or investigate those claims,” Eads said.

Consequently, even a defense contractor with apparent Chinese government affiliations, like Wang, may go undetected, Eads said.

After reviewing the DCNF’s findings, Brian O’Shea, a former military and intelligence analyst, said that a U.S. defense contractor with Chinese government ties would pose a threat to the U.S. military’s supply chain.

“Logistics would be the key area in terms of an attack vector,” O’Shea said. “Disrupt the logistics, you shut down your enemy’s offensive.”

S&L is also a [member](https://www.cisa.gov/critical-manufacturing-sector-council-charters-and-membership) of DHS’s Critical Manufacturing Sector Coordinating Council (CMSCC), which [works](https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-07/CM_SCC-Charter_20240614_508_0.pdf) with the government to “plan, implement and execute sufficient and necessary sector-wide security and resilience programs for the nation’s \[critical manufacturing\] facilities and other infrastructure assets within the \[critical manufacturing\] sector.”

“\[The CMSCC\] position not only provides insight into potential risks, but also offers an opportunity to exploit those vulnerabilities,” Eads said. “\[A Chinese government asset\] could promote foreign agendas, subtly shape policies to align with CCP interests, and even steal intellectual property or sensitive knowledge shared within the council.”

The U.S. government must keep individuals with Chinese government ties from operating as U.S. defense contractors, let alone within CMSCC, Eads told the DCNF.

“Given his dual role in the aerospace defense sector, \[an individual with Chinese government ties\] could leverage this information to benefit the \[People’s Liberation Army\], undermining U.S. military readiness and supply chain security,” Eads said. “The CCP would use \[such a person\] to copy military components, map out supply chain vulnerabilities, steal intellectual property, and even sabotage critical manufacturing.”

“Congress needs to step in and fix this now because the DOD clearly isn’t doing enough to protect us from this blatant national security threat,” Eads said.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org](https://dailycaller.com/2025/02/11/exclusive-us-defense-contractor-sl-aerospace-fighter-jet-missile-parts-chinese-influence-agency/).

The Office of the Special Counsel has found a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employee’s directive to avoid houses with Trump campaign signs during Hurricane Milton violated Hatch Act prohibitions on electioneering.

The complaint with the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board recommends disciplinary action against Marn’i Washington, who has already been fired from FEMA.

The complaint details how Washington told members of her FEMA crew to avoid approaching homes that had Trump signs during October response and recovery efforts.

“By directing political activity at her subordinates, Washington used her official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election,” the Office of the Special Counsel (OSC) wrote.

While the complaint said there were no reports from Washington’s crew about public safety concerns, her internal guidance shared in the report shows she appeared to have safety in mind, telling colleagues to “practice de-escalation and preventative measures.”

FEMA employees were facing a [swirl of disinformation](https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4935039-hurricane-misinformation-republicans/) about the agency, including conspiracy theories that disaster funds were being redirected to migrants, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) seeming to suggest the government was able to control the weather.

Washington has defended her decisions [in interviews](https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/19/politics/fema-hearing-intv-marni-washington-deanne-criswell/index.html).

“I did not act on my own volition. Everything we did was out of the focus of safety and making sure our team felt comfortable,” Washington told CNN’s Laura Coates. “I don’t create policy. FEMA does. I just implement it in the field.”

Then-FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell testified before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee about the episode last November, shortly after the presidential election. Criswell has denied Washington was enacting any wider policy within FEMA or the Department of Homeland Security and said the agency would investigate the incident. 

Questioning at the hearing fell largely along partisan lines, with Trump allies such as Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) demanding answers on Washington’s claims about FEMA policies, while Democratic members including Rep. Maxwell Frost (Fla.) expressed concerns about the spread of misinformation around federal disaster relief efforts.

But Washington argued FEMA was denying the conditions experienced by workers.

“It would be nice if Ms. Criswell would be human and come to terms with the fact that FEMA has not addressed the safety concerns that the crew leads and the specialists experience out in the Field,” Washington said. “There are plenty of reports that discuss hostile encounters, is how FEMA describes it, and our method is avoidance. I don’t understand why we’re hiding that from the American people.”

Democratic members of the Oversight Committee pointed to those same fears during the Criswell hearing, particularly in light of the misinformation concerns and threats against FEMA personnel.

Both President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have signaled support for the outright abolition of FEMA and the outsourcing of its mission to state entities. 

The Hill has reached out to FEMA for comment. 

The announcement was the first action taken since special counsel Hampton Dellinger was fired from his post — only to be temporarily reinstated by a court while litigation continues.

Dellinger [revealed in a lawsuit Monday](https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5136145-whistleblower-protection-office-fired-lawsuit/) that he was fired by the Trump administration Friday.

The OSC investigates Hatch Act violations as well as whistleblower complaints, including protecting those who report from reprisal within their agency.

A federal judge temporarily restored Delligner to his post through Thursday.

Dellinger, a nominee of former President Biden, said his firing violates his appointment to a five-year term in the office.

“The recent spate of terminations of protected civil service employees under the new presidential administration has created controversies, both about the lawfulness of these actions and about potential retaliation against whistleblowers. The OSC is statutorily tasked with receiving such reports, investigating them, and taking appropriate action,” his suit says.

In comic book lore, “The Secret Wars” was a marketing campaign by Marvel to sell more toys to kids. The series itself was published in the mid-80s — and not-so-coincidentally, “Avengers: Secret Wars” [will be a Marvel movie in 2027](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Cinematic_Universe:_Phase_Six#Avengers:_Secret_Wars_\(2027\)) — but the reason it was named “Secret Wars” was because a [Mattel focus group reported that little kids](http://jimshooter.com/2011/04/secrets-of-secret-wars.html/) responded favorably to the words “secret” and “wars.”

Its crass commercial beginnings blossomed into a beautiful bouquet of timeless art. (Or something.) Regardless, “The Secret Wars” sold very well: Outperformed all the other superhero comics and [moved a ton of toys off the shelves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Wars_\(toy_line\)).

Turns out, little kids knew what they wanted better than the adults did. The grownups just needed to shut up and listen.

In a related note, Politico released a story today, “[Voters Were Right About the Economy. The Data Was Wrong.](https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/02/11/democrats-tricked-strong-economy-00203464)” It’s a fascinating article and well worth your time, although you may struggle to suppress your giggles. Here’s the opening paragraph:

> Before the presidential election, many Democrats were puzzled by the seeming disconnect between “economic reality” as reflected in various government statistics and the public’s perceptions of the economy on the ground. Many in Washington bristled at the public’s failure to register how strong the economy *really* was. They charged that right-wing echo chambers were conning voters into believing entirely preposterous narratives about America’s decline.

That’s a tasty setup, ain’t it? Sure, it kind of telegraphs the punchline, but nonetheless, try to enjoy it:

> What we uncovered shocked us. The bottom line is that, for 20 years or more, *including the months prior to the election,* **voter perception was more reflective of reality than the incumbent statistics**. Our research revealed that the data collected by the various agencies is largely accurate. Moreover, the people staffing those agencies are talented and well-intentioned. **But the filters used to compute the headline statistics are flawed.** As a result, they paint a much rosier picture of reality than bears out on the ground. \[emphasis added\]

The author is [Eugene Ludwig](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Ludwig), an American financial expert who served as U.S. Comptroller of the Currency under President Clinton, which makes sense: *Only a Democratic economist would be “shocked” to discover that the people actually know what’s going on!*

In the early 1960s, John F. Kennedy [warned of a missile gap](https://www.jfklibrary.org/events-and-awards/kennedy-library-forums/past-forums/transcripts/50th-anniversary-of-the-missile-gap-controversy). Thirty years later, [President Clinton warned of a “skills gap.”](https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/speeches/012899.html) President Obama followed it with the [“gender pay gap.”](https://www.weforum.org/stories/2016/02/president-obama-on-the-gender-pay-gap-how-does-your-country-compare-to-the-us/) 

Today, the [Democrats are suffering from a reality gap](https://pjmedia.com/scott-pinsker/2025/02/09/why-the-losing-losers-in-the-democratic-party-keep-losing-n4936832). They spent four years preaching that Bidenomics was the envy of the world; inflation wasn’t so bad; Trump is “literally Hitler”; and Biden is “as sharp as a tack.” *Each and every claim has been thoroughly discredited.* It’s decimated the Democrats’ credibility.

Many Americans were voting *for* Donald Trump in 2024, but millions were also voting *against* the broken promises and false claims of Joe Biden. *Reality is still the ultimate political litmus test.*

So, if you’re a Democratic kingmaker, what’s your next move?

CNN actually wrote it all down for you, in today’s article, “[Inside the GOP’s careful pushback to Musk’s DOGE effort](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2025/02/11/politics/congress-republicans-doge).” As with the Ludwig’s Politico piece, giggle-suppression could be an issue for conservative readers, because CNN’s “analysis” is hopelessly intertwined with all the standard leftwing assumptions. Their central thesis is basically this: *As we all know, Donald Trump is a terrifying, evil man, and he’s scheming with Elon Musk to destroy the Constitution. Unfortunately, the congressional Republicans are too scared of Trump to fight for what’s moral and just. But maybe — just maybe — a few brave Republicans might finally find the courage to do the right thing!*

And to prove their point, CNN did what it usually does: Rely on an anonymous Republican source to “sound the alarm” on Trump’s fascism.

> “If this was a Democratic administration with the same things happening, people would be lit up about it,” one GOP lawmaker told CNN. “So, I think we have to be careful about the precedent that they’re setting.”

The thing is, I don’t think CNN fabricated that quote. I suspect there are (multiple) RINOs on Capitol Hill who are actively plotting their exits — and collaborating with liberals in the process.

Amidst the flurry of Trump’s executive orders and dizzying pace of new MAGA initiatives, never forget that there’s still a Democratic ground game in D.C. It operates in secret, waging war on conservatives.

*And right now, its biggest priority — by far — is to identify Republican politicians who are willing to jump ship.*

They’ll be patient. Trump is still in his honeymoon period; they’ll wait until there’s blood in the water. But it’s Partisan Politics 101: When there’s a narrow majority, the minority only needs to pick off a handful of people. [It’s happened before](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jeffords#Departure_from_the_Republican_Party) and will certainly happen again.

The left still has ample assets to bestow upon traitors: Cable TV time-slots, book deals, pop-culture approval, and access to new pipelines of donors. They’ve been diminished, but their cupboard isn’t bare. And in the (likely) event that a GOP policymaker finds himself on the wrong side of a MAGA barb, jumping ship might be the only way to stay afloat in the ocean.

Besides, the left doesn’t even need Republicans to forsake their own party entirely. Capitol Hill is the land of committees, bureaucratic bloat, and enough red tape to choke a horse: There are countless ways to undermine the MAGA agenda while still maintaining your “plausible deniability.”

*Keep an eye on Republican politicians who make repeated appearances on liberal media outlets.* That’s the telltale sign that the two sides are playing footsie. Another tipoff is when a Republican suddenly receives positive praise from oft-hostile outlets and platforms: Overnight, they go from *persona non grata* to the next Liz Cheney.

Comedian Jon Stewart dissected the Democrats’ sales pitch to wayward Republicans last night. Check out this clip, beginning at the 14:09 mark (time-stamped for your convenience):


As Democratic Congressman Dan Goldman said, “We are going to need some Republicans, frankly, **who are willing to lose**, who are willing to be a Liz Cheney, and say, ‘I will lose my seat to do the right thing by this country — not the right thing by Donald Trump.’ I haven’t seen it yet. Let’s hope.” \[emphasis added\]

(Not the most inspiring sales pitch, but hey, they’re doing the best they can.)

Irrespective of its clumsiness, the Democratic recruitment campaign is fully underway in D.C., waging war in secret, searching for GOP defectors. And because it’s a ground game, it won’t always be visible from afar.

It’s Secret Wars, D.C.-style.

This is one of those stories that’s far from over. *More likely than not, the worst is yet to come.*

On December 6, 2024, a federal judge [ordered](https://www.sirillp.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/177117313088.pdf) the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to release documents related to the emergency use authorisation of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine. These documents had been hidden from public view.

The legal battle traces back to September 2021, when attorney Aaron Siri filed a [lawsuit](https://phmpt.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/001-Complaint-101021.pdf) under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) on behalf of the Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency. The plaintiffs sought access to the vast trove of documents the FDA relied on to approve Pfizer’s vaccine.

Initially, the FDA [proposed](https://blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/fda-to-release-pfizer-data-but-the-devil-could-be-in-the-detail) a slow release schedule. In November 2021, the agency stated it would release just 500 pages per month—a pace that would have stretched the full disclosure process to 75 years. 

However, in January 2022, District Judge Mark Pittman of Texas rejected the FDA’s proposal, [ordering](https://www.sirillp.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/ORDER_2022_01_06-9e24e298ae561d16d68a3950ab57077b.pdf) the agency to expedite its release to 55,000 pages per month, aiming to complete the disclosure of all 450,000 pages by August 2022.

As the documents trickled out, researchers began uncovering glaring gaps that prevented a systematic review of the data. These gaps fueled suspicions about what else the FDA might be withholding. 

It became evident that the FDA had withheld records directly tied to its emergency use authorisation of Pfizer’s vaccine, estimated to be over one million pages. 

**These documents, which the FDA had full knowledge of, were excluded from earlier disclosures, effectively misleading the judiciary and undermining public trust.**

Siri didn’t mince words. 

“The FDA has been hiding a million pages from the Court, the plaintiff, and the public. Only those concerned about the truth seek to conceal evidence,” said Siri in an interview.

“The FDA here is clearly concerned about the truth and lacks confidence in the review that it conducted to license Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine because it is doing everything possible to prevent independent scientists from conducting an independent review,” he added.

*Aaron Siri, Managing Partner of Siri & Glimstad LLP*

Judge Pittman’s latest court order to expedite the full disclosure of documents acknowledges the public’s right to scrutinise the data that underpin one of the most significant public health interventions in history. 

In his ruling, Judge Pittman invoked a powerful reminder from American revolutionary [Patrick Henry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Henry): “The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.” 

Pittman concluded, “The COVID-19 pandemic is long passed, and so has any legitimate reason for concealing from the American people the information relied upon by the government in approving the Pfizer vaccine.”

According to the latest court order, the additional documents are slated for release by June 2025. However, Siri is unsure about whether the FDA will release these records in installments or in a single tranche. Either way, he is not taking any chances. 

Siri issued a legal [notice](https://www.sirillp.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Ltr-to-HHS-re-Preservation_2024_12_08-551a3a3cbbde9948077be2f292e5edae.pdf) to the FDA and other agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services, warning against the destruction, deletion, or modification of any relevant documents and vowing to report any such violations to the Department of Justice.

“The FDA has spent far too long thinking it can do whatever it wants without accountability,” Siri said. 

He speculated that the FDA may try to extend its deadline and prolong the legal battle, given its army of attorneys and vast resources. 

“I think they’re hoping that we will just go away. What the FDA doesn’t know is that we’re never going away. We won’t stop fighting for freedom and rights, ever,” added Siri defiantly.

A spokesperson at the FDA said it “does not comment on ongoing litigation.”

Republished from the author’s [Substack](https://blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/fda-misled-the-judiciary-about-pfizers)

- 

Maryanne Demasi, 2023 Brownstone Fellow, is an investigative medical reporter with a PhD in rheumatology, who writes for online media and top tiered medical journals. For over a decade, she produced TV documentaries for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and has worked as a speechwriter and political advisor for the South Australian Science Minister.

[View all posts](https://brownstone.org/author/maryanne-demasi/ "View all posts")

**Programming note: Join me tonight for the latest episode of our current *Tale for Our Time* - Robert Hugh Benson's [Lord of the World](https://www.steynonline.com/14925/getting-here-from-there), a piece of speculative fiction from 1907 on the world of the early twenty-first century.**

~On last week's [Clubland Q&A](https://www.steynonline.com/14996/gaz-a-lago), I remarked en passant that almost everything connected with the Government of the United States turns out to be a racket, and it might be quicker for Elon Musk just to listen the seven things that aren't a racket. And several commenters protested that seven was a gross-overestimate of the non-racket component. After the weekend's revelations, I am inclined to agree with them.

Just as a f'rinstance, USAid funds nine out of ten media outlets in Ukraine, under the guise of supporting "independent journalism".

Hang on. If words mean anything, wouldn't the "independent" media in Ukraine be the tiny percentage that's *not* bankrolled by a single agency of one foreign government?

Whatever. It certainly hasn't done anything for what remains of the Ukrainian population.

Speaking of which, you see that unprepossessing building at top right? That would be 876 7th Street, Arcata, California 95521, Between them, USAid and the State Department have sluiced just shy of half-a-billion bucks of taxpayers' money through Number 876's ~~corner suites~~ ...~~atrium lobby~~ ...~~executive gym~~ ...er, stationary cupboard:

Don't try that at home, boys and girls. If you were laundering half-a-bil through an oversized storage locker at 927b No-Name Office Park, you could expect a dawn raid from the IRS SWAT team.

"[Internews](https://internews.org/)" sounds like Best Runner-Up in Nigeria's prestigious Least Convincing Name for a Corporate Scam competition. It's a 501(c)3, of course - that's what other countries call a "registered charity" - that receives ninety-five per cent of its funding from US taxpayers. Jeanne Bourgault, its president, pulls down 450 grand in salary, because "non-profits" are where the big bucks are, and 876 7th Street is so on the up-and-up that it's listed with the California Secretary of State as "her" office. But it doesn't appear to be attended terribly often by Ms Bourgault - a good friend of Bill and Hillary and their [African diarrheapalooza](https://x.com/wikileaks/status/1888080368441704598), and also a pal of Klaus Schwab, at whose Spectre board meeting last year she called for worldwide implementation of advertisers' "exclusion lists" to crack down on peddlers of "misinformation". Besides, if you're on the take from USAid, what do you need advertising for?

The front door to Internews is open in our picture because Ms Bourgault's office is now apparently abandoned. So, if you live in Arcata, it might be worth swinging by just on the off-chance the half-billion got left in the petty cash drawer, in small bills.

Incidentally, even in America, can you really be a "Non-Governmental Organisation" when all your money comes from one government agency?

Thirty years ago, Jeanne Bourgault was whiling away the Clinton Administration working out of the US Embassy in Moscow. Then she transitioned to USAid for six years. Then she transitioned to being a recipient of USAid largesse. And in recent days she's transitioned to frantically scrubbing her bio from the "Clinton Global Initiative" and various other websites.

The real divide in America is not between urban and rural, red states and blue, middle-class and lower, but between those in on the racket and those excluded from it. The former includes Fauci, Thoroughly Modern Milley, diarrhea queen Chelsea Clinton, Bill Kristol, Politico, Jeanne Bourgault and others. The latter group includes you and your kids.

Oh, did I mention that the former group also includes Islamic terrorists? For the first decade or so of this century, Anwar al-Awlaki made [regular cameo appearances at this website](https://www.steynonline.com/9837/diversity-unto-death):

> *Major Hasan sent fortnightly emails to Anwar al-Awlaki, sometime spiritual adviser to both the Fort Hood shooter and three of the 9/11 terrorists and an imam so radical he's banned from Britain, a land with an otherwise all but boundless tolerance for radical imams.*

Why was the vast bloated "intelligence community" so relaxed about Major Hasan chit-chatting with Mr Awlaki? [Ah, well...](https://www.steynonline.com/8128/when-opposite-world-moves-in-next-door)

> *You'll recall that when Major Hasan, the Fort Hood mass murderer, was discovered by **two US intelligence agencies** to be emailing with Mr al-Awlaki, they both concluded there was no need to worry because this lively correspondence was also consistent with his 'research interests'.*

Anwar al-Awlaki seems to be consistent with roughly half the planet's "research interests". It's not just US Army psychiatrists, but also gas engineers in the English Midlands. In Northamptonshire, [Muhammad Khan of Wellingborough](https://www.steynonline.com/8128/when-opposite-world-moves-in-next-door) went to his local copy shop and asked them to print fifty copies of Mr Awlaki's book, *Forty-Four Ways to Support Jihad*. Feeling a little queasy, the staff waited till he'd left and then reported him to the coppers. Happily, Northamptonshire Constabulary accepted Mr Khan's explanation that he was interested in forty-four ways to support jihad "as a student and researcher" - as no doubt many of his fellow gas engineers are.

And whaddaya know? It turns out that, like Bill Kristol, Politico and Jeanne Bourgault, Anwar al-Awlaki was brought to us by US taxpayers:

Mr Awlaki was born not in the Yemeni capital but in Las Cruces - which means that, had he blown up the Hoover Dam, the media would have reported the perp as a "New Mexico man". Yet USAid paid in full for him to attend college in Colorado as a "foreign exchange student". Did USAid also pay for his post-CSU training with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan?

Poor Mr Awlaki was subsequently droned by Obama, prompting complaints from Rand Paul and others about the unconstitutional droning of US citizens. But who knows? Maybe Barack just decided to off him before the Las Cruces boy's cunning reverse-birther status leaked out.

It's crap all the way down: crap-crap-crappity-crap. If you're wondering how a basic error such as listing your birthplace in San'aa, Yemen rather than in New Mexico was not detected by the world's most lavishly funded government, well, as we also learned this weekend, unlimited numbers of people can use the same Social Security number without the system flagging it:

That happens to suit both the open-borders left and the Chamber of Commerce right. It's a Uniparty thing. The latter certainly don't want to have to reduce their profit margins by having to hire American citizens and pay them market wages. That's crazy talk, and no CEO wants to wind up working out of 876 7th Street for real.

If you're wondering how you get to be the broke-brokey-brokiest nation in human history, this is it. I would be in favour of Trump signing an executive order temporarily limiting federal expenditures to two hundred bucks a week, which would easily cover the outlays that are neither corrupt nor incompetent.

~**We had a very busy weekend at SteynOnline, starting with my column on [Trump's restoration of the *America Alone* thesis](https://www.steynonline.com/15000/america-alone-again). My [weekly music show](https://www.steynonline.com/15008/nighties-and-counterpanes) offered a song for the season, a song for Mata Hari, and songs for the first concept album. Rick McGinnis's Saturday movie date was Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison in [The Ghost and Mrs Muir](https://www.steynonline.com/15011/love-and-death-gene-tierney-in-the-ghost-and-mrs), and our Sunday *Song of the Week* celebrated [a ballad of domestic contentment](https://www.steynonline.com/15013/the-folks-who-live-on-the-hill). Our marquee presentation was our current *Tale for Our Time* - Robert Hugh Benson's extraordinarily prescient [Lord of the World](https://www.steynonline.com/tfot/180/lord-of-the-world): Click for Part [Twenty-Two](https://www.steynonline.com/15005/remember-remember-the-first-of-january), Part [Twenty-Three](https://www.steynonline.com/15009/hooting-and-flapping-overhead) and Part [Twenty-Four](https://www.steynonline.com/15014/fear-and-fury-on-the-streets). Part Twenty-Five airs tonight at SteynOnline.**

**If you were too busy this weekend running a billion-dollar business out of your rec room, we hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a new week begins.**

~**In this eighth year of [**The Mark Steyn Club**](https://www.steynonline.com/club/)**, we're very appreciative of all those who signed up in our first flush a**nd are still eager to be here as we [cruise](https://marksteyncruise.com/) on towards our first decade. We're thrilled by all those across the globe - from Fargo to Fiji, Vancouver to Vanuatu, Surrey to the Solomon Islands - who've signed up to be a part of it. We have quite a bit of fun in** [**The Mark Steyn Club**](https://www.steynonline.com/7827/an-invitation-to-readers-listeners-and-viewers)**, with audio adventures, video poems, planet-wide Q&As, and much more (heart attacks permitting). We appreciate the Club is not to everyone's taste, but, if you're minded to give it a go, either for a full year or a three-month experimental period, we'd love to have you. You can find more details on The Mark Steyn Club** [**here**](https://www.steynonline.com/7827/an-invitation-to-readers-listeners-and-viewers) **- and, if you've a loved one who'd like something a little different for his or her birthday, don't forget our special** [**Gift Membership**](https://www.steynonline.com/club/gift-membership/)**.**

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Elon Musk's team of mid-20s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) disruptors has once again found wasteful spending—this time focusing on a $59 million payment sent by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to luxury hotels across New York City housing illegal aliens.  

"**The DOGE team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants**," Musk wrote on X early Monday morning. 

Musk explained, "**Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President's executive order**," adding, "**That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals!**" 

Musk did not specify which luxury NYC hotels received FEMA funding for migrants last week but noted that a "**clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds**." 

However, a December report revealed that NYC politicians spent [$220 million in a sweetheart deal](https://www.zerohedge.com/political/nuts-nyc-pays-pakistani-owned-roosevelt-hotel-220-million-house-illegal-aliens) with Pakistan to lease the prestigious Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan for illegal alien housing. The most alarming issue was that NYC paid a foreign government to house illegals. 

"**So let me get this straight; places like North Carolina and Maui get a pittance because FEMA says they lack funds, so we have to send our Military there to do work that could be put into the local economies.  Meanwhile FEMA blows its budget on housing illegal immigrants?**" one X user wrote in response to Musk's report. 

While illegals have lived 'the American Dream' on the taxpayers' dime, residents across Western North Carolina have only now begun receiving FEMA assistance amid the ongoing recovery from Hurricane Helene.

Many of these folks in North Carolina had limited to [no FEMA assistance under the Biden-Harris regime](https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/message-all-americans-storm-ravaged-western-north-carolina). That all changed after President Trump entered the White House on January 20. 

So what comes next for the DOGE team?


Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios

The FBI just discovered about 2,400 records tied to [President Kennedy's assassination](https://www.axios.com/local/dallas/2025/01/24/trump-jfk-declassify-assassination-files) that were never provided to a board tasked with reviewing and disclosing the documents, Axios has learned.

- The still-secret records are contained in 14,000 pages of documents the FBI found in a review triggered by [President Trump](https://www.axios.com/politics-policy/donald-trump)'s Jan. 23 [executive order](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/declassification-of-records-concerning-the-assassinations-of-president-john-f-kennedy/#:~:text=The%20President%20John%20F.%20Kennedy,an%20identifiable%20harm%20to%20the) demanding the release of all JFK assassination records.

**Why it matters:** The discovery — 61 years after Kennedy was [killed in Dallas](https://www.axios.com/local/dallas/2023/11/22/jfk-assassination-oswald-economy-racism) — follows decades of government reluctance to release all documents related to the assassination, which fueled a mountain of conspiracy theories.

- The existence of the new documents was disclosed Friday to the White House, when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence submitted its plan to disclose the assassination records under Trump's order.

**Zoom in:** The contents of the newly found records are closely held secrets. The three sources who relayed their existence to Axios said they hadn't seen the documents.

- But the discovery of thousands of records on one of the most scrutinized events in U.S. history is likely to raise questions about the procedures for vetting and releasing information across the entire government.
- "This is huge. It shows the FBI is taking this seriously," said [Jefferson Morley](https://jeffersonmorley.com/about-2/), an expert on the assassination and vice president of the nonpartisan [Mary Ferrell Foundation](https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Main_Page.html), the nation's largest source of online records of Kennedy's killing. He [sued the U.S. government](https://www.rcfp.org/court-denies-fee-award-jfk-assassination-records-suit/) for more records.
- "The FBI is finally saying, 'Let's respond to the president's order,' instead of keeping the secrecy going," Morley said.

**Reality check:** The remaining records to be disclosed — as well as the newly discovered tranche of 2,400 reports — are unlikely to definitively prove whether Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone-wolf assassin or was part of a broader conspiracy, experts say.

**Catch up quick:** Under the 1992 JFK Records Act, assassination records were supposed to be handed over to the [JFK Assassination Records Review Board](https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/review-board) and then to the National Archives. The archive maintains a [collection](https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk) of documents that were supposed to be fully disclosed in 2017.

- Administration officials determined these newly discovered records hadn't been submitted to or vetted by the assassination review board or the National Archives.
- When Trump was president in 2017, he delayed disclosure of the records the government had identified, on the advice of the CIA. President Biden then ordered [limited releases of records](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/biden-releases-jfk-assassination-records-rcna61286) that still didn't fully comply with the spirit of the JFK Records Act.
- Government secrecy advocates argued to Trump and Biden that full disclosure of the assassination documents could compromise "sources and methods" of intelligence gathering, and unfairly implicate officials involved in the controversy.

**The big picture:** Trump has regretted for years not releasing all the JFK records in his first term, according to those who have discussed the matter with him.

- During the 2024 campaign, Trump promised his supporters and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the late president's nephew, that he'd release the records on JFK's assassination in 1963, as well as those related to the 1968 killing of Kennedy's father, Robert F. Kennedy.
- RFK Jr., named by Trump to be Health and Human Services secretary, has [called for full disclosure](https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/24/jfk-nephews-biden-assassination-records-517049) for years, and believes both assassinations were part of a broader conspiracy.

**Trump's order** calls for a plan to release assassination records of RFK and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. by March 9.

- "PRESIDENT TRUMP IS ENDING THE ENDLESS DELAYS," a [White House fact sheet](https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/01/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-orders-declassification-of-jfk-rfk-and-mlk-assassination-files/) issued Jan. 23 says: "President Trump promised during his campaign to release assassination records to give Americans the truth."

**What's next:** Despite Trump's order, sources say, the various intelligence agencies with records of the assassination are still recommending redactions.

- "When POTUS hears about this stonewalling, he's gonna hit the roof," a White House official told Axios.
- "This is total Deep State bulls\*\*t," said another.
- "Don't be surprised if all these records just suddenly wind up online," a Trump adviser said. "He wants to move on and call this a promise kept."

**The intrigue:** The newly discovered FBI files could have relevance in the ongoing federal [lawsuit](https://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/files/jfkrecordslawsuit/mffvbidenfiledcmp.pdf) filed by the Mary Ferrell Foundation against the Biden administration in 2022. It alleges federal agencies had more documents related to the assassination that they weren't turning over to the National Archives. They include:

- **Jailhouse recordings of mobster Carlos Marcello,** who claimed he was involved in the assassination.
- **CIA files of George Joannides**. He was the chief of covert action at the CIA station in Miami and was a case officer for a New Orleans-based CIA-funded exile group that had a series of encounters with Oswald before the shooting. Joannides also was [accused of misleading](https://www.salon.com/2003/12/17/joannides/) a House committee investigating the assassination by failing to disclose his ties to Oswald. "The Joannides file sounds exactly like the newly discovered FBI files," Morley said. "It's something assassination-related that was never turned over to the Archives."

Elon Musk is targeting what he says is out-of-control [spending by the Federal Emergency Management Agency on migrants.](https://nypost.com/2025/02/10/us-news/fema-sent-59m-last-week-to-luxury-nyc-hotels-to-house-illegal-migrants-elon-musk-says/)

He has plenty of places to start. Federal spending on migrants skyrocketed under President Joe Biden, often in obscure ways.

The current crisis started in 2019, when President Trump — then in his first term — asked Congress for additional money to handle the influx of migrant children.

Democrats, who falsely claimed Trump was “caging kids,” took their time giving him the money to help. In summer 2019, $30 million was added to FEMA’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program.

Trump asked for EFSP to be ended in his FY 2020 and FY 2021 budget requests as duplicative of other federal activities, but as Ronald Reagan explained, “a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”

Consequently, EFSP received $125 million in FY 2020 and $130 million in FY 2021.

## **Money pit**

After taking office, President Biden pushed for legislation called the American Rescue Plan.

ARP appropriated $400 million for EFSP, plus an additional $110 million for “humanitarian relief,” which became a separate line item, EFSP-H.

Already a money pit, this is where things start getting ridiculous.

With millions of migrants flooding over the border, by 2023 the ESFP-H line item had morphed into the FEMA Shelter and Services Program. As a fact sheet explained:

“SSP bolsters the capacity of states, localities, tribes and nonprofit organizations to receive noncitizens after they have been processed by DHS. It also ensures appropriate coordination with and support for state, local and community leaders to help mitigate increased impacts to their communities.”

Note the use of “mitigate” and “impacts” in that passage, and couple it with the fact that this is administered by the *emergency* agency, and you’ll realize it’s all a tacit admission that the Biden-Harris migrant surge has been a disaster, both for the country as a whole and for the cities and states that are struggling to keep up.

Some $363.8 million was made available for SSP in FY 2023, broken up into two tranches, one of more than $291 million and a second of $77.3 million-plus.

Beginning in April 2024, that was increased to *$640.9 million,* administered through two separate programs.

Nearly all of that money is headed to states (Arizona alone received $19 million in FY 2024), cities (Los Angeles got more than $21 million in last fiscal year), and counties (El Paso hauled in $16.69 million for FY 2024), who were happy to get another federal gusher.

When you hear critics say that the Biden-Harris FEMA has “spent more than $1.4 billion since the fall of 2022 to address the migrant crisis,” you’ll know where the figures are coming from.

What began as a $30 million allocation to solve a temporary problem in 2019 now has its own program, its own bureaucracy and its own $640 million budget.

This monster must be tamed.

*Andrew Arthur is the fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.*

What happens when you are a public school teacher who displays even minor support for President Donald Trump? Activists might mount a pressure campaign in order to make you feel so uncomfortable that you resign.

That could have been the story of Brooke Zahn, a fourth grade teacher at Jeffers Pond Elementary School in Minnesota’s Prior Lake-Savage Area School District (Prior Lake), except she isn’t going anywhere.

On December 1, 2024, Zahn shared a picture that displayed support for one of the primary policy initiatives of the Trump administration: the deportation of illegal immigrants. That policy was one of the top messages of Trump’s campaign, and it is so popular, in fact, that Trump and Republicans across the board won a decisive election victory in 2024.

The picture Zahn shared showed an animated family with the words “a family that is deported together stays together,” essentially paraphrasing Trump border czar Tom Homan who, in late October during the campaign, [told](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-mass-deportation-plan-cost-consequences-60-minutes-transcript/) CBS News the Trump administration would be able to deport families together in order to avoid family separation.

“While the meme mentioned immigration, it really wasn’t about that. The whole reason I shared it was that President Trump’s agenda was not to break up families and was not to separate children from families,” Zahn told The Federalist in a phone interview.


(Courtesy of Rachel Carlson)

That didn’t matter to Prior Lake, which suspended her for seven days without pay for sharing the meme in a private Facebook group, called “Prior Lake Light Hearted Conservative Group.”

In a Dec. 11 letter informing her of her suspension, Prior Lake claimed that the post “caused significant educational disruption across the District,” citing emails, calls, media inquiries, and, notably, public comments made at a school board meeting by students and parents.

The letter even said that families had inquired about removing their children from her class, which she said has not happened. The district made a “support group” to “address the harm from \[the post\],” which seems to be something like a microaggression group in order to emotionally cope with the meme (as far as Zahn knows, no one ever attended).

“Your decision to post this message and refusal to acknowledge any harm it caused is conduct unbecoming a teacher,” the letter states.

“There was a big push for me to feel very uncomfortable in coming back to work,” Zahn said.

“I was made to feel that the entire staff, or almost the entire staff, hated me and loathed me, and I was an embarrassment to our community and our school,” she added. “Christmas was really hard. The entire month of December was hard, emotionally. It was this huge struggle for me. I was uncomfortable shopping in our town. I would go out of town to go to the grocery store.”

But once she returned to school, she found out that much of the district’s framing was, at best, disingenuous.

“Once I got back into school and kind of got back into the rhythm, I really just took the stance of holding my head up high because I didn’t do anything wrong, and I didn’t go out of my way to apologize to people or anything like that,” Zahn said. “I just kind of was there, and I let people come to me and people treated me like they treated me before.”

But that does not appear to be for lack of trying on the part of the district.

Not only did they deceptively frame the situation, Jeffers Pond principal Patrick Glynn sent a message to all families informing them of “concerns raised about a social media post,” while not naming Zahn specifically. Though, it appears the situation was stacked against Zahn anyway, because Glynn said “I want to assure you that we remain committed to fostering a respectful, inclusive, and supportive environment for all members of our school community.”

The email certainly fueled chatter online, including by a Facebook group “Lakers for Love – A Community,” which has a post saying, “Okay, who can help me understand what’s going on at Jeffers Pond?” noting the “mysterious email,” and adding, “I’m wondering what happened and whether I should be concerned about the culture there. Don’t way\[sic\] to be nosy, but I have a multi-racial child there and we try to raise him to honor and respect all people.”

One commenter, inevitably, wondered whether it was about Zahn.

To make matters worse, staff members were made aware of an open investigation into Zahn before it had been concluded, something Prior Lake communications director Kristi Mussman told The Federalist was a common practice when there is a “significant disruption.”

Administrators also met with a group of high school students to “acknowledge their concerns,” Mussman said. That is bizarre, though, because Zahn is a fourth grade teacher and does not teach in a high school in the district.

Directly after that meeting, however, two of the students, who had never met Zahn, gave impassioned pleas at a subsequent [school board meeting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8GPY7g7Ft8&ab_channel=PriorLake-SavageAreaSchools).

“A teacher meant to provide a safe and nurturing environment not only has openly said such a horrible and hurtful thing publicly, and to my knowledge, they will still have their position unless something is done,” high school senior Danny Nong said, implying Zahn should be fired. “I know many, many families within our district are disturbed and hurt by this, hurt by this news, and rightfully so. As a son of immigrants and as someone who works in tandem with organizations working against the wrongful deportation of people, I know how unjust and painful this is.”

Another senior, Jasmine DuHadway, was perturbed that Zahn had apparently “resisted taking inclusivity classes” and said that other teachers who agree with Zahn should face consequences.

Some in the district who spoke with The Federalist on the condition of anonymity suspect that those speeches were orchestrated by Dan Edwards, district executive director of academic services, Sam Ouk, district director of equity and inclusion, and Gust Abdallah, assistant principal at Prior Lake High School. Mussman claims that the speeches were not orchestrated and that district administrators were not trying to mount a pressure campaign against Zahn.

In the reprimand letter, Prior Lake said that although she shared the image in a private Facebook group, the fact that it had 876 members meant that the “intended audience, based on the name of the group, is clearly the ‘Prior Lake’ community” and that “regardless of the group’s designation as ‘private,'” Zahn “knowingly shared” the post.

She was disciplined under a school board social media policy, [Policy 428](https://www.plsas.org/uploaded/School_Board/Policies/400/428_-_Employee_Use_of_Social_Media.pdf), which states that “employees must be respectful and professional in all communications (by word, image or other means)” and “employees must make clear that any views expressed are the employee’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the District.”

Through a challenging web of logic, the district decided that her identification as a teacher for the district in a completely separate post supporting certain school board candidates was enough to violate the policy. That is all despite the fact that, as the Prior Lake letter admits, Zahn’s Facebook profile says “the views I share are mine & mine alone and only represent me” at the very top.

Families in Zahn’s classroom were informed that she would not be teaching and had been placed on leave.

## **Viewpoint Discrimination?**

Zahn has a target on her back, it seems, because this is her third infraction since 2021: In September of that year, she was defending students’ rights to not have to wear masks in school, despite the district’ having a mandate. She got reprimanded first for encouraging parents to push back against the school board’s decision to mandate masks — something which was not only [never based in scientific evidence, but was also incredibly harmful for children](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/3051134/fauci-unmasked-consequences-school-closures/).

The second infraction was a month later, when she refused to force students in her class to wear masks. She neither enforced the mandate nor said they could take their masks off. She was suspended.

This being her third infraction means that on a fourth, she could be fired — something that chills her free speech rights. That is how typical union dealings with districts work, and although she left the teachers’ union some years ago, Zahn was still required to work through them to advance legal proceedings. She said that the union, Education Minnesota, seemed to do a fair job telling her information she needed to know.

That same union, however, is part of the reason that there was a target on her back for sharing the meme, Zahn said. Prior to the meme, the union circulated a “pledge” to “stand up to bullies,” who it said was Trump.

Zahn publicly rebuked the pledge and told The Federalist that the message from the union was really that Trump-supporting teachers deserve to be bullied.

“I teach fourth grade, and we tell kids not to be bullies — to stand up to bullies,” Zahn said. “I know that it’s really unpopular for teachers to be not just be conservative, but allow it to be known that they’re conservative. And I know that if I speak up and say something, maybe other teachers will realize it’s okay.”

But that may not be the case for left-wing teachers and administrators in the district, and although Mussman assured The Federalist that it is not the policy or practice of the district to partake in viewpoint discrimination against conservative teachers, evidence suggests that there should be quite a few reprimands going around if that is the case.

One instance of left-wing reprimand was Prior Lake High School principal John Bezek, who posted a picture of him holding a Biden-Harris sign — another essentially anodyne political position — on social media. It is unclear if that was the reason for the reprimand, which the district confirmed, or if it was the picture of him posing next to a student who was wearing a shirt that read, “Who ate all the p\*ssy?” Prior Lake’s own email content filter would not even let The Federalist inquire about that shirt directly, and it did not respond to clarify which, or if both actions resulted in discipline.


(Courtesy of Rachel Carlson)


(Courtesy of Rachel Carlson)

In another instance, Andrea Alice, a special education teacher who goes by her maiden name online, shared a picture of a school house with a sign that reads: “Attention: this school protected from drag queens \[and\] dirty books.”

The meme depicts the school house full of bullet holes, alongside an upside-down American flag with bullet holes. It is unclear if she was reprimanded, and the district did not respond to confirm.


(Courtesy of Rachel Carlson)

One of the classroom doors at Hidden Oaks Middle School, another school in the district, is adorned with a “hate has no home here” sign that includes the Black Lives Matter logo and a gay pride flag. The door also says “people of quality don’t fear equality” and has a “land acknowledgement” stating “you are on Dakota/Ojibwe land.”

While Mussman said the “land acknowledgement” — a practice that distorts reality and claims that Americans are not the owners of their own land — is in line with “the District’s land acknowledgement.”

However, she also said that the district was unaware of the “hate has no home here” sign with the Black Lives Matter logo, meaning no one has been disciplined. Mussman did not respond to a follow-up inquiring if that logo violates district policy.


(Courtesy of Rachel Carlson)

There are countless other examples.

For now, however, Zahn has retained a lawyer and is in early stages of planning a legal strategy, as her appeal was already denied.

“I feel like my First Amendment Right has been taken away from me online,” Zahn told The Federalist, as she deleted her accounts out of precaution, but maintains that she will continue to teach fourth grade despite the impact it has had on her and her family.


US President Donald Trump holds the executive order he signed to declassify the files of slained former President John F. Kennedy, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on January 23, 2025. (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images)

OAN Staff [Abril Elfi](https://www.oann.com/tag/abril-elfi) 
6:22 PM – Monday, February 10, 2025

The FBI has reportedly uncovered thousands of undisclosed records connected to former President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination.

Advertisement

According to a report by *Axios*, the FBI has released 2,400 records in connection to the November 22^nd, 1963 Kennedy murder. 

When the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) submitted its plan to release the JFK files, it reportedly disclosed the existence of the records, according to sources familiar with the matter.

In late January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order authorizing its release — guaranteeing more transparency for Americans, especially in light of the fact that Kennedy is considered one of the most popular and well-liked former presidents in history.


(Photo screenshot via: [YouGov](https://today.yougov.com/ratings/politics/popularity/US-presidents/all))

Jefferson Morley, a Washington, D.C.-based historian, journalist, and editor who is considered to be an expert on the Kennedy assassination, spoke with *Axios* about the release.

> “This is huge. It shows the FBI is taking this seriously,” Morley stated. “The FBI is finally saying, ‘Let’s respond to the president’s order,’ instead of keeping the secrecy going.” 

Kennedy was assassinated in downtown Dallas on November 22^nd, 1963, as his motorcade passed in front of the Texas School Book Depository.

Kennedy’s assassin, 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, fired at the president from a sixth-floor sniper’s position before being killed two days later. However, many Americans, including [individuals who personally attended the Dallas event](https://www.oann.com/newsroom/1963-assassination-witness-raises-questions-about-jfk-magic-bullet-theory/) where Kennedy was shot, believe that Oswald was not the only gunman involved and that it was a coordinated incident.

Stay informed! Receive breaking news blasts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. [https://www.oann.com/alerts](https://www.oann.com/alerts)

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Donald Trump has [announced](https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-iron-dome-us-homeland-missile-defense-north-korea-iran-russia-china-1988815) his intention to build a gigantic anti-ballistic missile system to counter Chinese and Russian nuclear weapons, and he is recruiting Elon Musk to help him. The Pentagon has long dreamed of constructing an American “Iron Dome.” The technology is couched in the defense language – i.e., to make America safe again. But like its Israeli counterpart, it would function as an offensive weapon, giving the United States the ability to launch nuclear attacks anywhere in the world without having to worry about the consequences of a similar response. This power could upend the fragile peace maintained by decades of mutually assured destruction, a doctrine that has underpinned global stability since the 1940s.

## A New Global Arms Race

Washington’s war planners have long salivated at the thought of winning a nuclear confrontation and have sought the ability to do so for decades. Some believe that they have found a solution and a savior in the South African-born billionaire and his technology.

Neoconservative think tank the Heritage Foundation published a [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79e8Y2Mgq-0) last year stating that Musk might have “solved the nuclear threat coming from China.” It claimed that Starlink satellites from his SpaceX company could be easily modified to carry weapons that could shoot down incoming rockets. As they explain:

> Elon Musk has proven that you can put microsatellites into orbit, for $1 million apiece. Using that same technology, we can put 1,000 microsatellites in continuous orbit around the Earth, that can track, engage and shoot down, using tungsten slugs, missiles that are launched from North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China.”

Although the Heritage Foundation advises using tungsten slugs (i.e., bullets) as interceptors, hypersonic missiles have been opted for instead. To this end, a new organization, the Castelion Company, was established in 2023.

Castelion is a SpaceX cutout; six of the seven members of its [leadership team](https://www.castelion.com/team) and two of its four [senior advisors](https://www.castelion.com/team) are ex-senior SpaceX employees. The other two advisors are former high officials from the Central Intelligence Agency, including Mike Griffin, Musk’s longtime friend, mentor, and partner.


Castelion’s advisors and leadership team are extensively connected to SpaceX and the CIA

Castelion’s mission, in its own words, is to be at the cutting edge of a new global arms race. As the company [explains](https://www.castelion.com/news/announcing-castelion):

> Despite the U.S. annual defense budget exceeding those of the next ten biggest spenders combined, there’s irrefutable evidence that authoritarian regimes are taking the lead in key military technologies like hypersonic weapons. Simply put – this cannot be allowed to happen.”

The company has already secured gigantic contracts with the U.S. military, and reports [suggest](https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/united-states-test-new-hypersonic-missile-details-revealed/ar-BB1jKeuB?ocid=weather-verthp-feeds&apiversion=v2&noservercache=1&domshim=1&renderwebcomponents=1&wcseo=1&batchservertelemetry=1&noservertelemetry=1) that it has made significant strides toward its hypersonic missile goals.

## War and Peace

Castelion’s slogan is “Peace Through Deterrence.” But in reality, the U.S. achieving a breakthrough in hypersonic missile technology would rupture the fragile nuclear peace that has existed for over 70 years and usher in a new era where Washington would have the ability to use whatever weapons it wished, anywhere in the world at any time, safe in the knowledge that it would be impervious to a nuclear response from any other nation.

In short, the fear of a nuclear retaliation from Russia or China has been one of the few forces moderating U.S. aggression throughout the world. If this is lost, the United States would have free rein to turn entire countries – or even regions of the planet – into vapor. This would, in turn, hand it the power to terrorize the world and impose whatever economic and political system anywhere it wishes.

If this sounds fanciful, this “Nuclear Blackmail” was a more-or-less official policy of successive American administrations in the 1940s and 1950s. The United States remains the only country ever to drop an atomic bomb in anger, doing so twice in 1945 against a Japanese foe that was already defeated and was [attempting](https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2022/05/06/did-the-japanese-offer-to-surrender-before-hiroshima-part-2/) to surrender.

President Truman ordered the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a show of force, primarily to the Soviet Union. Many in the U.S. government wished to use the atomic bomb on the U.S.S.R. President Truman immediately, however, reasoned that if America nuked Moscow, the Red Army would invade Europe as a response.

As such, he decided to wait until the U.S. had enough warheads to completely destroy the Soviet Union and its military. War planners calculated this figure at around 400, and to that end—totaling a nation representing one-sixth of the world’s landmass—the president ordered the immediate ramping up of production.

This decision was met with stiff opposition among the American scientific community, and it is widely believed that Manhattan Project scientists, including [Robert J. Oppenheimer](https://www.deseret.com/1994/4/17/19103829/ex-spy-says-oppenheimer-others-gave-atomic-secrets-to-soviets/) himself, passed nuclear secrets to Moscow in an effort to speed up their nuclear project and develop a deterrent to halt this doomsday scenario.

In the end, the Soviet Union was able to successfully develop a nuclear weapon before the U.S. was able to produce hundreds. Thus, the idea of wiping the U.S.S.R. from the face of the Earth was shelved. Incidentally, it is now understood that the effects of dropping hundreds of nuclear weapons simultaneously would likely have [sparked](https://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/WiresClimateChangeNW.pdf) vast firestorms across Russia, resulting in the emission of enough smoke to choke the Earth’s atmosphere, block out the sun’s rays for a decade, and end organized human life on the planet.

With the Russian nuclear window closing by 1949, the U.S. turned its nuclear arsenal on the nascent People’s Republic of China.

The U.S. [invaded](https://www.mintpressnews.com/think-tanks-taiwan-cash-funding-push-war-china/276799/) China in 1945, occupying parts of it for four years until Communist forces under Mao Zedong forced both them and their Nationalist KMT allies from the country. During the Korean War, some of the most powerful voices in Washington advocated dropping nuclear weapons on the 12 largest Chinese cities in response to China entering the fray. Indeed, both [Truman](https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v07/d909) and his successor, [Dwight D. Eisenhower](https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/eisenhower-goes-to-korea), publicly used the threat of the atomic bomb as a negotiating tactic.

Routed on the mainland, the U.S.-backed KMT fled to Taiwan, establishing a one-party state. In 1958, the U.S. also [came close](https://jacobin.com/2021/05/1958-taiwan-strait-crisis-china-nuclear-war) to dropping the bomb on China to protect its ally’s new regime over control of the disputed island – an episode of history that resonates with the present-day conflict over Taiwan.

However, by 1964, China had developed its own nuclear warhead, effectively ending U.S. pretensions and helping to usher in the détente era of good relations between the two powers—an epoch that lasted well into the 21st century.

In short, then, it is only the existence of a credible deterrent that tempers Washington’s actions around the world. Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has only attacked relatively defenseless countries. The reason the North Korean government remains in place, but those of Libya, Iraq, Syria, and others do not, is the existence of the former’s large-scale conventional and nuclear forces. Developing an American Iron Dome could upset this delicate balance and usher in a new age of U.S. military dominance.

## Nuking Japan? OK. Nuking Mars? Even Better!

Musk, however, has downplayed both the probability and the consequences of nuclear war. On The Lex Friedman Podcast, he [described](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtN0bvU5plM) the likelihood of a terminal confrontation as “quite low.” And while speaking with Trump last year, he [claimed](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/elon-musk-japan-nuclear-attacks-b2595497.html) that nuclear holocaust is “not as scary as people think,” noting that “Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, but now they are full cities again.” President Trump agreed.

According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, there are over [12,000](https://www.icanw.org/nuclear_arsenals) warheads in the world, the vast majority of them owned by Russia and the United States. While many consider them a blight on humanity and favor their complete eradication, Musk advocates building thousands more, sending them into space, and firing them at Mars.

Musk’s quixotic [plan](https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/cjel/article/view/3728) is to terraform the Red Planet by firing at least 10,000 nuclear missiles at it. The heat generated by the bombs would melt its polar ice caps, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The rapid greenhouse effect triggered, the theory goes, would raise Mars’ temperatures (and air pressure) to the point of supporting human life.

Few scientists have endorsed this idea. Indeed, Dmitry Rogozin, then-head of Russian state space agency Roscosmos, [labeled](https://thehill.com/policy/transportation/499968-russian-space-chief-elon-musks-plan-to-bomb-mars-is-a-cover-to-put/) the theory completely absurd and nothing more than a cover for filling space with American nuclear weapons aimed at Russia, China, and other nations, drawing Washington’s ire.

“We understand that one thing is hidden behind this demagogy: This is a cover for the launch of nuclear weapons into space,” he said. “We see such attempts, we consider them unacceptable, and we will hinder this to the greatest extent possible,” he added.

The first Trump administration’s actions, including withdrawing from multiple international anti-ballistic missile treaties, have made this process more difficult.

## Elon and the Military-Industrial-Complex

Until he entered the Trump White House, many still perceived Musk as a radical tech industry outsider. Yet this was never the case. From virtually the beginning of his career, Musk’s path has been [shaped](https://www.mintpressnews.com/elon-musk-not-renegade-outsider-cia-pentagon-contractor/280972/) by his exceptionally close relationship with the U.S. national security state, particularly with Mike Griffin of the CIA.

From 2002 to 2005, Griffin led In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capitalist wing. In-Q-Tel is an organization dedicated to identifying, nurturing, and working with tech companies that can provide Washington with cutting-edge technologies, keeping it one step ahead of its competition.

Griffin was an early believer in Musk. In February 2002, he accompanied Musk to Russia, where the pair attempted to purchase cut-price intercontinental ballistic missiles to start SpaceX. Griffin spoke up for Musk in government meetings, backing him as a potential “Henry Ford” of the tech and military-industrial complex.

After In-Q-Tel, Griffin became the chief administrator of NASA. In 2018, President Trump appointed him the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. While at NASA, Griffin [brought](https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/michael-griffin-meets-with-elon-musk-nasa-renee-bouchard/RgH8IAgPUuu5bg?hl=en) Musk in for meetings and secured SpaceX’s big break. In 2006, NASA awarded the company a $396 million rocket development contract – a remarkable “gamble,” in Griffin’s words, especially as it had never launched a rocket. National Geographic [wrote](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/how-spacex-became-nasas-go-to-ride-orbit) that SpaceX “never would have gotten to where it is today without NASA.” And Griffin was essential to this development. Still, by 2008, both SpaceX and Tesla Motors were in dire straits, with Musk unable to make payroll and [assuming](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/without-nasa-there-would-be-no-spacex-and-its-brilliant-boat-landing/) both businesses would go bankrupt. It was at that point that SpaceX was [saved](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/without-nasa-there-would-be-no-spacex-and-its-brilliant-boat-landing/) by an unexpected $1.6 billion NASA contract for commercial cargo services.

Today, the pair remain extremely close, with Griffin serving as an official advisor to Castelion. A sign of just how strong this relationship is that, in 2004, Musk named his son “Griffin” after his CIA handler.

Today, SpaceX is a powerhouse, with yearly revenues in the tens of billions and a [valuation](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/11/spacex-valuation-surges-to-350-billion-as-company-buys-back-stock.html) of $350 billion. But that wealth comes largely from orders from Washington. Indeed, there are few customers for rockets other than the military or the various three-letter spying agencies.

In 2018, SpaceX [won](https://www.ndtv.com/science/elon-musk-spacex-to-retry-us-satellite-national-security-launch-1965155) a contract to blast a $500 million Lockheed Martin GPS into orbit. While military spokespersons played up the civilian benefits of the launch, the primary reason for the project was to improve America’s surveillance and targeting capabilities. SpaceX has also won contracts with the Air Force to [deliver](https://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract/Article/1557461/) its command satellite into orbit, with the Space Development Agency to [send](https://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract/Article/2460438/) tracking devices into space, and with the National Reconnaissance Office to [launch](https://interestingengineering.com/spacex-successfully-launches-spy-satellite-for-national-reconnaissance-office) its spy satellites. All the “big five” surveillance agencies, including the CIA and the NSA, use these satellites.

Therefore, in today’s world, where so much intelligence gathering and target acquisition is done via satellite technology, SpaceX has become every bit as important to the American empire as Boeing, Raytheon, and General Dynamics. Simply put, without Musk and SpaceX, the U.S. would not be able to carry out such an invasive program of spying or drone warfare around the world.

## Global Power

An example of how crucial Musk and his tech empire are to the continuation of U.S. global ambitions can be found in Ukraine. Today, around 47,000 Starlinks operate inside the country. These portable satellite dishes, manufactured by SpaceX, have kept both Ukraine’s civilian and military online. Many of these were directly purchased by the U.S. government via [USAID](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/08/us-quietly-paying-millions-send-starlink-terminals-ukraine-contrary-spacexs-claims/) or the [Pentagon](https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/pentagon-buys-starlink-ukraine-statement-2023-06-01/) and shipped to Kiev.

In its hi-tech war against Russia, Starlink has become the keystone of the Ukrainian military. It allows for satellite-based target acquisition and drone attacks on Russian forces. Indeed, on today’s battlefield, many weapons require an internet connection. One Ukrainian official [told](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/specialist-drone-unit-picks-off-invading-forces-as-they-sleep-zlx3dj7bb) The Times of London that he “must” use Starlink to target enemy forces via thermal imaging.

The controversial mogul has also involved himself in South American politics. In 2019, he supported the U.S.-backed overthrow of socialist president Evo Morales. Morales [suggested](https://thegrayzone.com/2024/11/23/evo-morales-grayzone-assassination/) that Musk financed the insurrection, which he dubbed a “lithium coup.” When directly charged with his involvement, Musk infamously replied, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it!” Bolivia is home to the world’s largest lithium reserves, a metal crucial in producing batteries for electric vehicles such as the ones in Musk’s Tesla cars.

In Venezuela last year, Musk went even further, supporting the U.S.-backed far-right candidate against socialist president Nicolás Maduro. He even went so far as to suggest he was working on a plan to kidnap the sitting president. “I’m coming for you Maduro. I will carry you to Gitmo on a donkey,” he [said](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1818845968890019936?lang=en), referencing the notorious U.S. torture center.

More recently, Musk has thrown himself into American politics, funding and campaigning for President Trump, and will now lead Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). DOGE’s stated mission is to cut unnecessary and wasteful government spending. However, with Musk at the helm, it seems unlikely that the billions of dollars in military contracts and tax incentives his companies have received will be on the chopping block.

At Trump’s inauguration, Musk garnered international headlines after he gave two Sieg Heil salutes – gestures that his daughter [felt](https://www.threads.net/@vivllainous/post/DFGruExTu9p) were unambiguously Nazi. Musk – who comes from a historically Nazi-supporting [family](https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2025/01/26/nazi-billionaires-fascism-in-the-elon-musk-family-tree/) – took time out from criticizing the reaction to his salute to [appear](https://thehill.com/policy/international/5107715-musk-tells-germans-to-get-over-past-guilt-at-far-right-afd-rally/) at a rally for the Alternative für Deutschland Party. There, he said that Germans place “too much focus on past guilt” (i.e., the Holocaust) and that “we need to move beyond that.” “Children should not feel guilty for the sins of their parents – their great-grandparents even,” he added to raucous applause.

The tech tycoon’s recent actions have provoked outrage among many Americans, claiming that fascists and Nazis do not belong anywhere near the U.S. space and defense programs. In reality, however, these projects, from the very beginning, were overseen by top German scientists brought over after the fall of Nazi Germany. Operation Paperclip transported more than 1,600 German scientists to America, including the father of the American lunar project, Wernher von Braun. Von Braun was a member of both the Nazi Party and the infamous elite SS paramilitary, whose members oversaw Hitler’s extermination camps.

Thus, Nazism and the American empire have, for a long time, gone hand in hand. Far more disturbing than a man with fascist sympathies being in a position of power in the U.S. military or space industry, however, is the ability the United States is seeking for itself to be impervious to intercontinental missile attacks from its competitors.

On the surface, Washington’s Iron Dome plan may sound defensive in nature. But in reality, it would give it a free hand to attack any country or entity around the world in any way it wishes – including with nuclear weapons. This would upend the fragile nuclear peace that has reigned since the early days of the Cold War. Elon Musk’s help in this endeavor is much more worrying and dangerous than any salutes or comments he could ever make.

Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News

***[Alan MacLeod](https://twitter.com/AlanRMacLeod)** is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: [Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting](https://www.routledge.com/Bad-News-from-Venezuela-Twenty-years-of-fake-news-and-misreporting/Macleod/p/book/9781138489233) and [Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent](https://www.routledge.com/Propaganda-in-the-Information-Age-Still-Manufacturing-Consent-1st-Edition/MacLeod/p/book/9781138366404?fbclid=IwAR2xQQWJd98C25wapG4ynmlEnGvL5wxG_mp5RwpBwtwPDxInjNZ1Oo7KD-E), as well as [a](https://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/65/56) [number](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306396818823639#articleShareContainer) [of](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/blar.12940) [academic](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00064/full) [articles](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0896920518820934). He has also contributed to [FAIR.org](https://fair.org/author/alan-macleod/), [The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/profile/alan-macleod), [Salon](https://www.salon.com/writer/alan-macleod), [The Grayzone](https://thegrayzone.com/author/alan-macleod/), [Jacobin Magazine](https://jacobinmag.com/author/alan-macleod), and [Common Dreams](https://www.commondreams.org/author/alan-macleod).*

**Republish our stories!** MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

[**Diddy**](https://archive.is/o/nC6Jk/https://www.tmz.com/people/p-diddy/) had a one night stand with a street performer ... problem is, the guy says he was raped ... at least according to a new lawsuit.

The Bad Boy Records founder is being sued by a **John Doe** who claims Diddy orally raped him and sexually assaulted him anally after spiking his drink.


Getty

In the lawsuit, obtained by TMZ, the man claims he was singing and playing guitar on the street outside a popular Los Angeles nightclub in November 2022 when a man claiming to be a talent scout for Diddy invited him to a Diddy party.

The John Doe claims he was driven to a private home where Diddy invited him to sit down, have a drink and talk about his music aspirations. He says as the conversation progressed he complimented Diddy's necklace and Diddy asked if he wanted to see more of Diddy's jewelry collection.

The guy claims Diddy then took him to a private room, where John Doe suddenly felt drowsy, off-balance and slightly euphoric ... despite consuming only one drink.


Feds Hit Diddy With New Superseding Sex Trafficking Indictment, New Alleged Victims | TMZ Live

Sean "Diddy" Combs is facing new allegations from federal prosecutors, who've now added 2 new victims to the case ... and accused him of a much longer reign of terror.

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  TMZ.com

He says the room had no jewelry and Diddy bluntly asked, "Have you ever sucked a d\*\*\* before?" He claims he told Diddy "no" and Diddy responded, "You should try it," while exposing his penis.

The guy claims Diddy forced him to perform oral sex, grabbing the guy's face and forcefully inserting his penis into his mouth. He says he became more incapacitated from the drugs Diddy gave him, and Diddy undressed him and assaulted him anally before leaving the room.

The next morning, the guy claims he woke up at the house to someone giving him an IV ... and he was driven back to the nightclub and dropped off ... never to hear from Diddy again.

He claims he's suffered pain, mental anguish, emotional torment, humiliation and shame as a result ... and he's going after Diddy for damages.


Shutterstock Premier

[**Tony Buzbee**](https://archive.is/o/nC6Jk/https://www.tmz.com/people/tony-buzbee/), the Texas attorney representing 120 alleged Diddy victims, filed the suit.

Attorneys for Diddy tell TMZ … “As we’ve said before, Mr. Combs cannot respond to every new publicity stunt, even in response to claims that are facially ridiculous or demonstrably false. Mr. Combs and his legal team have full confidence in the facts and the integrity of the judicial process. In court, the truth will prevail: that Mr. Combs never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone -- man or woman, adult or minor."

© 2025 EHM productions, inc.
all rights reserved.

[](https://apnews.com/author/meg-kinnard)

Updated 8:54 AM PST, February 11, 2025

CHAPIN, S.C. (AP) — Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina on Monday used a nearly hour-long speech on the U.S. House floor to accuse her ex-fiancé of physically abusing her, recording sex acts with her and others without their consent, and conspiring with business associates in acts of rape and sexual misconduct.

Mace said she was speaking out because her home state’s top prosecutor didn’t take action even after she alerted investigators. That same prosecutor is likely to be Mace’s opponent [if she runs for governor](https://apnews.com/article/nancy-mace-south-carolina-governor-f7fd1ca34f59ef81dfaf3ca50db4233a) of South Carolina in 2026, which she is considering.

Saying she was going “scorched earth,” Mace detailed how, in November 2023, she says she “accidentally uncovered some of the most heinous crimes against women imaginable. We’re talking about rape, non-consensual photos, non-consensual videos of women and underage girls, and the premeditated, calculated exploitation of women and girls in my district.”

Mace mentioned four men as being involved, including Charleston-area businessman Patrick Bryant, who was her fiancé until 2023 and went door-to-door stumping for her during her 2022 reelection campaign.

The AP wasn’t able to independently verify Mace’s claims. Bryant told AP: “I categorically deny these allegations. I take this matter seriously and will cooperate fully with any necessary legal processes to clear my name.”

Mace accused South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson of slow-walking any investigation of Bryant and the other men after she brought the photos and video to state authorities.

“Did South Carolina’s attorney general have any of these predators indicted after being provided clear cut-and-dry evidence including video, photos and witnesses?” Mace asked, noting that her office had set up a tip line for anyone with information on the allegations.

In a statement after Mace’s speech, Wilson’s office called her comments regarding the prosecutor’s conduct “categorically false” and said the office “has not received any reports or requests for assistance from any law enforcement or prosecution agencies regarding these matters.”

The State Law Enforcement Division, South Carolina’s state police agency, said in a statement that its agents had opened an investigation into Bryant in December 2023 on allegations of “assault, harassment, and voyeurism.” Noting that investigation remained active and would be sent to a prosecutor for review once completed, the agency said it had “conducted multiple interviews, served multiple search warrants, and has a well-documented case file that will be available for release upon the conclusion of the case.”

Mace, a former South Carolina state House member, was the first woman to graduate from The Citadel, the state’s military college, where her father then served as commandant of cadets. Briefly serving in the state House, in 2020 she became [the first Republican woman](https://apnews.com/mace-becomes-scs-first-republican-woman-elected-to-congress-3dbd491d0411acbf674add3a937831c8) elected to represent South Carolina in Congress, flipping the 1st District after a single term with a Democratic representative.

Her decision to air the allegations in a floor speech was unusual. In a release, Mace stressed that members’ statements on the House floor “are quintessential ‘legislative acts’” and thereby protected by the “speech or debate” clause, which generally protects lawmakers from being sued for what they say.

“This isn’t a story about bitter ex-girlfriends or consensual sex tapes — there are plenty of those. I don’t care what two consenting adults agree to do,” Mace said. She mentioned a dozen bills on which she had worked in the House, on topics ranging from stopping voyeurism to banning transgender women from using women’s bathrooms at the U.S. Capitol or House office buildings.

In 2019, Mace spoke publicly for the first time about a sexual assault she said had occurred more than two decades earlier, addressing South Carolina legislative colleagues in advocating for adding a rape and incest exception to a state House ban on all abortions after detection of a fetal heartbeat.

On Monday, Mace said she was joined in the House gallery by several women she said had been victimized by Bryant and the other men. Among the Republican lawmakers who sat behind Mace during her speech to show their support were Reps. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla.

“Nancy Mace is our friend and we wanted to support her and give her the encouragement she needed to get that message out,” Boebert said.

Mace, 47, [won a third U.S. House term](https://apnews.com/article/election-south-carolina-us-house-mace-91acdbe16aa2df2388ede433b4198fd7) in November and has said that she is “seriously considering” a 2026 run for South Carolina governor. If she enters that race, she will likely face Wilson — in his fourth term and also the son of Rep. Joe Wilson — in the Republican primary.

Mace [has largely supported President Donald Trump](https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-trump-mace-endorsement-7b54005b45cff0442a456b7ff5033936), working for his 2016 campaign but levying criticism against him following the Jan. 6, 2021, violence at the U.S. Capitol, critique that spurred Trump to back a GOP challenger in her 2022 race. Mace defeated that opponent, won reelection and was endorsed by Trump in her 2024 campaign.

Mace declined additional comment to reporters in the Capitol after the speech. Asked how she felt now, she said: “I’m at peace.”

## \_\_\_

Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Kevin Freking contributed.

## \_\_\_

Kinnard can be reached at [http://x.com/MegKinnardAP](http://x.com/MegKinnardAP).

We're not sure if Bill Ackman was asking this question because he legitimately didn't know OR if he was being coy and setting NGOs up for a serious dragging on X. Either way, we're glad he posted what he did.

Take a look:

His post continues:

> ... non-governmental?
>
> The answer according to Google is that an NGO is non-governmental because it operates without governmental control and oversight even though it receives government funding. 
>
> Why is it beneficial for there to be non-profit organizations, that is NGOs, that receive all or substantially all of their funding from our government, but don’t have any government oversight or control?
>
> Non-profits are not known for having good governance. The combination of funding without oversight and control creates the opportunity for fraud, waste and abuse that we have seen in some of the USAID grants that have been made public in the last week or so.
>
> In the private markets, that is the real world, a majority shareholder would have control and oversight. Why do we allow our government to make majority investments without control and oversight?  
>
> It makes no sense. It is time we scrutinize all NGOs and reconsider investing taxpayer money in private organizations without proper oversight and control consistent with what a majority investor would expect in a private corporation.

#### Recommended

[](https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/02/11/15-minutes-of-pure-fire-jd-vance-in-paris-n2408170 "America is BACK! JD Vance Delivers STRAIGHT-FIRE Speech on American Global Leadership and DAMN (Watch)")

This this this.

Bingo.

Remember when Obama openly called the Constitution a barrier to everything he wanted to get done? Yup.

Unfortunately, it looks more and more that way.

*Editor's note: We had a typo with Bill Ackman's name in our headline. It has been corrected. Thanks! - sj*

\==========================================================================

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['You're a MEME Now': Mike Lee's Response to Margaret Brennan CRYING About USAID Employee Is 100% BRUTAL](https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/02/10/mike-lee-margaret-brennan-n2408092 "'You're a MEME Now': Mike Lee's Response to Margaret Brennan CRYING About USAID Employee Is 100% BRUTAL ")

[Wajahat Ali TORCHED for RACIST AF, TDS-Inflicted, Embarrassingly BAD Garbage Take on Chiefs and Eagles](https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/02/10/wajahat-ali-chiefs-versus-eagles-n2408102 "Wajahat Ali TORCHED for RACIST AF, TDS-Inflicted, Embarrassingly BAD Garbage Take on Chiefs and Eagles")

[Andy Ngo Introduces X to 1 Former USAID Employee Who Just so Happens to be a Woke, Unhinged, Far-Left Nut](https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/02/10/andy-ngo-former-usaid-employee-far-left-activist-n2408094 "Andy Ngo Introduces X to 1 Former USAID Employee Who Just so Happens to be a Woke, Unhinged, Far-Left Nut")

['Weren't You PARDONED?' Liz Cheney Tries Lecturing JD Vance About the LAW and LOL-HOOBOY Talk About DUMB](https://twitchy.com/samj/2025/02/10/vance-calls-judge-out-n2408079 "'Weren't You PARDONED?' Liz Cheney Tries Lecturing JD Vance About the LAW and LOL-HOOBOY Talk About DUMB")

\==========================================================================

#### Recommended

#### Trending on Twitchy Videos

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency placed several members of its election security group on administrative leave last week, multiple sources familiar with the situation told CyberScoop.

According to one source, the moves happened Thursday and Friday of last week and were targeted at employees focused on CISA’s mis-, dis- and malinformation teams. The moves include four employees currently working on or assigned to the team, two more that left the team in the past four years but still hold positions at the Department of Homeland Security, and another two that work on elections misinformation or disinformation at DHS.

A second source confirmed that some, but not all members of CISA’s election security team, were placed on leave last week.  

The extent of the teams impacted by the decree is unclear. A third source told CyberScoop that a CISA employee set to attend an event in Florida on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence had to cancel at the last minute Friday, with the employee telling event planners they were being placed on leave. The individual said they had received notice of their impending leave that same day, according to text of the email shared with CyberScoop.

The decision to sideline DHS and CISA employees who previously or currently on mis- and disinformation happened the same week that Attorney General Pam Bondi [moved to dissolve](https://cyberscoop.com/doj-disbands-foreign-influence-task-force/) the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, which was stood up in 2017 to counter efforts by countries like Russia, China, Iran and others from meddling in U.S. elections, often through online propaganda campaigns.

When reached for comment, CISA’s press office referred CyberScoop to DHS’ Office of Public Affairs, which did not respond to multiple inquiries.  

Politico first [reported](https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/07/trump-guts-cyber-workers-00203087) on the moves Friday.

Kim Wyman, former Republican Secretary of State for Washington and former election security lead at CISA under the Biden administration, told CyberScoop that the impact of shuttering CISA’s mis- and disinformation work will fall mostly on smaller election jurisdictions that are not immune from the impact of online propaganda, but lack the resources, funding or expertise to effectively confront it.

“It’s overwhelming for those medium and small-sized jurisdictions, and the federal government and specifically CISA played a really important role of leveling that playing field. That’s the big void that’s going to occur,” Wyman said. “The larger jurisdictions are going to be able to pivot … but the small and medium counties were already struggling, and this is going to be a blow.”

CISA is the federal government’s lead agency for engaging with states and other stakeholders on election security initiatives after the sector was declared critical infrastructure following the 2016 presidential election.

Initially, the agency’s work focused heavily on leveraging its internal technical expertise to help states and localities identify and close off security vulnerabilities in election-related infrastructure, such as voting machines and voter registration systems.

That work continues to this day, after leadership quickly realized that bad actors spreading false information to undermine faith in the American electoral system was a key strategy of countries like Russia and China.

Following the 2018 midterms, CISA under then-Director Chris Krebs began exploring ways to coordinate messaging with state and local officials to raise awareness among the general public and push back on some of the biggest falsehoods. That included the use of clever marketing approaches — like a fictional debate about whether [pineapple belongs on pizza](https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/19_1008_cisa_the-war-on-pineapple-understanding-foreign-interference-in-5-steps.pdf) — to illustrate how foreign counties exploit online anger and disagreement for their own ends.

CISA’s dis- and misinformation work has always been largely focused on foreign influence campaigns, but the 2020 election scrambled that approach when the campaign of then-Republican President Donald Trump — in an effort to stay in power following his loss to Democrat Joe Biden — began echoing many of the falsehoods about election hacks and vote-switching that CISA had spent the past two years debunking.

Things came to a head when Trump fired Krebs after he publicly refuted claims that the 2020 election was subject to massive fraud and insisted no such evidence existed. Krebs’ assertion that the election was not stolen was validated through dozens of failed court challenges by the Trump campaign that failed to identify or overturn a single fraudulent vote.

But the episode shattered the bipartisan support for CISA in Washington, and Republicans like House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, began attacking the agency’s disinformation work as a form of censorship. 

The Biden administration’s stumbles around the issue — including a short-lived advisory board focused on disinformation that was quickly shuttered in the face of opposition on the left and right — only heightened those criticisms. Under CISA Director Jen Easterly, the agency [scaled back](https://cyberscoop.com/u-s-election-officialwhack-a-mole-strategies-less-effective-to-combat-disinfo/) its engagement with social media companies around disinformation in 2022 [in the face](https://cyberscoop.com/cisa-moves-away-from-trying-to-influence-content-moderation-decisions-on-election-disinformation/) of court challenges. 

A Supreme Court decision last year [concluded](https://cyberscoop.com/supreme-court-rejects-effort-to-limit-government-communication-on-misinformation/) that CISA’s work with social media companies did not constitute government suppression of free speech, and Easterly has adamantly asserted that CISA never pressured or demanded that social media companies censor American speech.

By 2024, conservative playbooks like Project 2025 that sought to guide Trump’s second term [were calling](https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/project-2025s-plan-cybersecurity-agency-threatens-election-security) for CISA to end all disinformation work and become less involved in supporting state and local elections. Newly confirmed Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem [told lawmakers](https://cyberscoop.com/dhs-secretary-nominee-kristi-noem-disinformation-misinformation/) in her confirmation hearing that CISA’s work has gotten “far off-mission” and that “the misinformation and disinformation that they have stuck their toe into and meddled with should be refocused back onto what their job is.”

Wyman noted that some of the agency’s work most controversial with Republicans, such as its interactions with social media companies, happened as election officials were adapting to an ongoing pandemic and dealing with widespread confusion from voters about basic voting procedures due to rampant mis- and disinformation online. 

“At the time you had this onslaught of people making commentary about the election process on social media, and we were just trying to get the information out about the time, manner and place of the elections,” Wyman said.

While Republican critics on the Hill have charged that CISA has become too focused on its disinformation mission, the agency still spends the bulk of its time on other missions, like protecting civilian federal networks. It appears to dedicate only a small fraction of its $3 billion budget to the problem.

In a House hearing last month, Brandon Wales, former CISA executive director, was asked how much the agency spent on its disinformation work.

“Last time we looked at this it was something less than $2 million,” said Wales, adding that he did not believe the work detracted from CISA’s other missions.

*CyberScoop senior reporter Tim Starks contributed to this article.*

## Ed Miliband faces fresh humiliation as he prepares to hand more millions of taxpayers' cash to Drax power plant

Published: 19:36 EST, 9 February 2025 | Updated: 19:43 EST, 9 February 2025

Ed Miliband faces fresh humiliation as he prepares to hand over more taxpayers' cash to a power station said to [burn wood from primary forests](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14163677/Ed-Miliband-humiliated-green-targets-Keir-Starmer-waters-manifesto-pledge-zero-carbon-electricity-2030.html).

The Energy Secretary will announce that Drax power station is to [receive hundreds of millions](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12395463/Ministers-renewable-energy-companies-Drax-accusations-subsidy-rules-avoid-repaying-hundreds-millions-taxpayers.html) of pounds more in 'renewable' subsidies.

The announcement may come as early as today and it is understood Mr Miliband could argue that the move can bring down energy bills and keep the lights on. 

But critics say primary forests – those that have remained relatively undisturbed by human activity – are environmentally important and not 'renewable'.

Drax has always denied burning primary forest but logging records show it sources trees from forests felled by other firms.

Mr Miliband was humiliated last week after being forced to back Heathrow expansion and continued drilling for oil and gas.

He backtracked on his net zero pledges, saying he does ['support what the Government is doing'](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14374595/humiliated-Ed-Miliband-runway-Heathrow-backtracks-net-zero-pledges.html) on Heathrow.

In 2018, Mr Miliband voted against a third Heathrow runway and [threatened to resign](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7957039/Stop-dithering-Boris-lift-Heathrows-vital-runway.html) over the issue in 2009. 

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband (pictured) will announce that Drax power station is to receive hundreds of millions of pounds more in 'renewable' subsidies

Drax (pictured) has always denied burning primary forest but logging records show it sources trees from forests felled by other firms

The power station, which burns wood pellets, has received billions of pounds in subsidies from government and bill-payers because wood-burning is classed as a source of renewable energy

His U-turn comes after Chancellor Rachel Reeves – desperate for economic growth after her disastrous Budget – bounced No 10 into adopting the runway as Government policy.

Last week he also suggested he would back the Government if it approves the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields development. 

Mr Miliband – who has said his green policies will knock £300 a year off energy bills – had previously called the Rosebank oil project 'climate vandalism'.

Tory energy spokesman Andrew Bowie said: 'Ed Miliband's energy policy is all over the place. And among all of this there is still no sign of the £300 off energy Labour promised.'

Drax power station, which burns wood pellets, is required to report where it sources its wood and whether it is from [natural, previously untouched forests](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/markets/article-12790333/Green-campaigners-slam-4-billion-Drax-handout.html).

The company paid a £25million penalty last year for misreporting this data after an investigation by energy regulator Ofgem. 

The BBC has reported that Drax did this for a further year, data not looked at yet by the regulator.

The power station, a converted coal plant in North Yorkshire, has received billions of pounds in subsidies from government and bill-payers because wood-burning is classed as a [source of renewable energy](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6592299/Subsidies-1billion-given-firms-burning-wood-power-stations-axed.html).

The Drax deal's cost is unclear but the contract is expected to last five years so is likely to be worth more than £1billion.

A Drax spokesman said it would not be commenting on 'rumours' regarding its discussions with the Government.

The Energy Department was contacted for comment.

## Arrests of illegal foreign workers reach a record 600 in just one month as channel migrants are detected in Britain's black economy

Published: 19:39 EST, 9 February 2025 | Updated: 19:46 EST, 9 February 2025

Record numbers of illegal workers are being arrested, figures show, as it was confirmed that small-boat migrants have been detected in Britain's black economy.

[Home Office](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/the-home-office/index.html) officials said 609 arrests of illegal workers were made last month, the highest since figures began being collected in 2019.

There were also 828 raids on workplaces suspected of illegally employing foreign staff in January, up from 556 in the same month last year and from 171 in January 2019. 

The Government has begun releasing details of the raids in the wake of polls showing [Labour](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/labour/index.html) would lose more seats to the Reform party than the [Conservatives](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/conservatives/index.html) would.

The Red Wall group of around 40 Labour MPs has called on its ministers to send a stronger message on immigration to head off the electoral threat.

Officers from the Home Office's Immigration Enforcement agency have uncovered migrants who arrived illegally across the Channel also working illegally, it was revealed. 

Premises targeted last month included nail bars, convenience stores, restaurants, takeaways, cafes and car washes.

Illegal workers can end up living in 'squalid' conditions and working 'inhumane hours' for 'little or no pay', Home Office sources said.

There were 828 raids on workplaces suspected of illegally employing foreign staff in January, up from 556 in the same month last year (pictured, a raid on a bed factory in the town of Tipton, West Midlands, in 2024) 

The Government has begun releasing details of the raids in the wake of polls showing Labour would lose more seats to Reform than the Conservatives (pictured, immigration enforcement officers taking part in a raid in the town of Warrenpoint, Co Down, in 2023)

Gangs involved in people trafficking have been driving illegal migration by giving migrants 'false promises' about their ability to work here, they added. 

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: 'The immigration rules must be respected and enforced.

'For far too long, employers have been able to take on and exploit illegal migrants and too many people have been able to arrive and work illegally with no enforcement action ever taken. 

'Not only does this create a dangerous draw for people to risk their lives by crossing the Channel in a small boat, but it results in [the abuse of vulnerable people, the immigration system and our economy](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6435589/The-40-000-DANGER-trip-Britain.html).

'That's why, as part of our Plan for Change, we are boosting enforcement to record levels alongside tough new legislation to smash the criminal gangs.' 

A raid on vape shops in Cheshire led to ten immigration arrests and two criminal arrests for counterfeit documents, a Home Office spokesman said. 

An enforcement visit to an Indian restaurant in Humberside led to seven arrests and four detentions. And one to a grocery warehouse in south London resulted in six arrests and four people being detained.

French president Emmanuel Macron's government has repeatedly blamed the small-boat crisis on Britain's black economy. 

Migrants board a smuggler's inflatable dinghy as they attempt to cross the English Channel to reach Great Britain at Sangatte beach near Calais, northern France, on January 15, 2025

French officials claim illegal Channel migrants are driven to come here by the prospect of being able to work illegally.

Mayor of Calais Natacha Bouchart said last year that the UK remained [an 'El Dorado' for migrants seeking illegal work](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10164357/One-migrant-dies-attempting-perilous-Channel-crossing-Britain-France.html).

New Government data said illegal working arrests jumped by 38 per cent between July 5 last year and January 31 compared with the previous equivalent period.

President Donald Trump has directed Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) **to audit the Pentagon**, after the Defense Department [failed](https://econofact.org/factbrief/has-the-pentagon-failed-its-7th-audit-in-a-row) its **seventh audit in a row**.

[](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/trump%20interview%202.JPG?itok=1cJ3iwLk)

During an interview with *Fox News*' Bret Baier set to air before the Super Bowl, Trump said **he was directing DOGE to investigate both the Department of Education and the Pentagon.**

"We're going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of **fraud and abuse,**" Trump said.

On Friday, Trump said during a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba that **he was directing DOGE to investigate "Pentgon, education, just about everything,"** adding that he thinks Musk will find "a lot" of waste, fraud and abuse.

"Sadly, you’ll find some things that are pretty bad, but I don’t think proportionally you’ll see anything like we just saw," Trump said, referring to USAID - where the new administration has placed 97% of the staff on leave. Last week, Trump said that **billions of dollars have been stolen by USAID.**

Reviewing the Pentagon will be no small task for an agency which sees roughly $800 billion flow through it, and has never managed to pass its own financial audits **with the exception of the Marine Corps**.

The Pentagon employs nearly 3.3 million service members and civilians.

Musk, who has been appointed as a "special government employee," is one of Trump's key advisers, who has set a goal for DOGE to cut up to **$2 trillion in federal expenses by July 2026**.

Last week, DOGE claimed that it had managed to save over $1 billion by slashing contracts related to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), through halting "the hiring of people into unnecessary positions, the deletion of DEI, and stopping improper payments to foreign organizations," as [*The Burning Platform*](https://www.theburningplatform.com/2025/02/09/doge-to-audit-pentagon/) noted on Sunday.

On Saturday, Musk [said](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1888314848477376744) that DOGE and the US Treasury Department have agreed to **new [anti-fraud measures](https://www.zerohedge.com/political/musk-says-doge-treasury-agree-new-anti-fraud-measures-claw-back-50-billion-payment-fraud)** aimed at preventing tens of billions of dollars in fraudulent government entitlement payments each year, including the following:

> \- **Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code**, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible.
>
> \- **All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field**, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING!
>
> \- **The DO-NOT-PAY list of entities known to be fraudulent or people who are dead or are probable fronts for terrorist organizations or do not match Congressional appropriations must actually be implemented** and not ignored. Also, it can currently take up to a year to get on this list, which is far too long. This list should be updated at least weekly, if not daily.
>
> The above super obvious and necessary changes are being implemented by existing, long-time career government employees, not anyone from @DOGE. It is ridiculous that these changes didn’t exist already!
>
> Yesterday, I was told that there are currently over $100B/year of entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN or even a temporary ID number. If accurate, this is extremely suspicious.
>
> When I asked if anyone at Treasury had a rough guess for what percentage of that number is unequivocal and obvious fraud, the consensus in the room was about half, so $50B/year or $1B/week!!
>
> This is utterly insane and must be addressed immediately.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently defended DOGE’s actions at Treasury - telling *Bloomberg* in an [interview](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-06/bessent-says-musk-s-doge-isn-t-tinkering-with-treasury-systems) with Bloomberg that the DOGE team is made up of highly trained professionals and “not some roving band running around doing things,” possibly in reference to claims by critics that DOGE has embraced and is applying the adage “move fast and break things,” which is part of the Silicon Valley start-up culture of being innovative, nimble, and disruptive.

## NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST

### ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX

Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem called the FBI "corrupt" and appeared to accuse the bureau of leaking plans for "large-scale" immigration enforcement plans in the [Los Angeles area](https://www.foxnews.com/category/us/los-angeles).

The [LA Times](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-02-07/document-immigration-enforcement-action) published an article Friday that said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would lead the operation, focusing on those without legal status in the U.S. or who have pending orders of removal, according to an internal government document reviewed by the publication.

The document was reportedly circulated among some government officials last week. The Times also reported that a federal law enforcement source who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal said LA FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration officers and agents are being called in to assist.

Noem shared the article on X, taking a dig at the FBI.

[**LA FREEWAY BLOCKED BY ANTI-DEPORTATION PROTESTERS IN RESPONSE TO TRUMP'S CRACKDOWN ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION**](https://www.foxnews.com/us/la-freeway-blocked-anti-deportation-protesters-response-trumps-crackdown-illegal-immigration)

"The FBI is so corrupt," Noem wrote. "We will work with any and every agency to stop leaks and prosecute these crooked deep state agents to the fullest extent of the law."

ICE sources told Fox News they do not know where Noem got the information or what she is basing it on.

Fox News Digital [reached out to DHS](https://www.foxnews.com/category/politics/executive/homeland-security) for comment, but did not immediately hear back.

The FBI had no comment on the matter.

[**LARGEST LAPD UNION SLAMS ANTI-TRUMP PROTEST DIRECTIVES, SAYS ARRESTS ‘SHOULD BE A NO-BRAINER’ IN ALTERCATIONS**](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/largest-lapd-union-slams-anti-trump-protest-directives-says-arrests-should-no-brainer-altercations)


Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem joined an ICE raid in New York City. Noem said communities will be safer because of targeted raids that go after criminal illegal immigrants.  (Department of Homeland Security)

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi joined "Fox Report" on Sunday, where she discussed immigration enforcement and was asked about leaks within the government.

"Well, you know, if anyone leaks anything, people don’t understand that it jeopardizes the lives of our great men and women in law enforcement, and if you leaked it, we will find out who you are, and we will come after you," Bondi said. "It’s not going to stop our mission. It’s not going to stop the president’s mission to make America safe again."

[**BORDER CZAR TOM HOMAN SENDS MESSAGE TO FAR-LEFT OFFICIALS PUSHING BACK AGAINST MASS DEPORTATIONS: 'GAME ON'**](https://www.foxnews.com/media/border-czar-tom-homan-sends-message-far-left-officials-pushing-back-against-deportations-game-on)


Anti-ICE protesters blocked traffic on both sides of the 101 Freeway in downtown Los Angeles. (FOX 11 Los Angeles)

She also said if people do not want to follow the law, the Department of Justice will prosecute them.

Bondi was then asked about an operation in Denver, Colorado, where individuals used bullhorns to let people know that ICE was coming, advising illegal immigrants of what they should and should not do if approached by agents.

In cases where people inform [illegal immigrants](https://www.foxnews.com/category/us/immigration) that they are in danger, Bondi was asked if anything could or should be done to stop it.

[**CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP**](https://www.foxnews.com/apps-products?pid=AppArticleLink)

"It very well could rise to the level of obstruction, and we will be looking at every single case where someone jeopardizes the lives of the great men and women in law enforcement, and they will be held accountable," Bondi said. "If you leak, if you do anything, like you said, if you come out with bullhorns that could jeopardize their lives, we will investigate it, and we will come after you."

Greg Wehner is a breaking news reporter for Fox News Digital.

Story tips and ideas can be sent to Greg.Wehner@Fox.com and on Twitter @GregWehner.

February 9, 2025//in [General](https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/category/general/)/

## [USAID Funded Massive ‘News’ Platform, Extending ‘Censorship Industrial Complex’ To Billions Worldwide](https://www.zerohedge.com/political/usaid-funded-massive-global-state-propaganda-news-matrix-nearly-billion-people-reach)

[](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2025-02-08_11-17-23.jpg?itok=aDELuMU2)

We wonder how the American taxpayer feels about their hard-earned cash being taken away from them and used for this purpose…

\*  \*  \*

In addition to propping up far-left corporate media outlets like [Politico and the BBC with taxpayer funds](https://www.zerohedge.com/political/politico-ny-times-propped-millions-dollars-us-government), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has funneled half a billion dollars to a secretive non-governmental organization operating a global news propaganda matrix.

WikiLeaks published the bombshell report in the overnight hours that shows the massive taxpayer-funded state propaganda network – operating as a shady NGO – called “*Internews Network”:* 

> *USAID has pushed nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6m) through a secretive US government financed NGO, “Internews Network” (IN), which has “worked with” 4,291 media outlets, producing in one year 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people and “training” over 9000 journalists (2023 figures). IN has also supported social media censorship initiatives.*
>
> *The operation claims “offices” in over 30 countries, including main offices in US, London, Paris and regional HQs in Kiev, Bangkok and Nairobi. It is headed up by Jeanne Bourgault, who pays herself $451k a year. Bourgault worked out of the US embassy in Moscow during the early 1990s, where she was in charge of a $250m budget, and in other revolts or conflicts at critical times, before formally rotating out of six years at USAID to IN.*
>
> *Bourgault’s IN bio and those of its other key people and board members have been recently scrubbed from its website but remain accessible at [http://archive.org](http://archive.org/). Records show the board being co-chaired by Democrat securocrat Richard J. Kessler and Simone Otus Coxe, wife of NVIDIA billionaire Trench Coxe, both major Democratic donors. In 2023, supported by Hillary Clinton, Bourgault launched a $10m IN fund at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). The IN page showing a picture of Bourgault at the CGI has also been deleted.*
>
> *IN has at least six captive subsidiaries under unrelated names including one based out of the Cayman Islands. Since 2008, when electronic records begin, more than 95% of IN’s budget has been supplied by the US government (thread follows).* 

…

Here are the downstream holdings on IN via public records forensics data:

[](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2025-02-08_12-25-34.png?itok=DFB2YnrK)

“Internews is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to empower local media worldwide to give people the news and information they need, the ability to connect, and the means to make their voices heard,” the NGO stated in an IRS 990 filing as its purpose of businesses.

Public records data shows IN has many business purposes worldwide, all in an effort to control a media matrix and ensure only state propaganda is told on the local level.

[](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2025-02-08_12-44-40.png?itok=0zbM_DKi)

How does it feel to know that your tax dollars are funding a state propaganda media matrix around the world?

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png 0 0 Kevin MacDonald https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/TOO-Full-Logo-660x156-1.png Kevin MacDonald2025-02-09 11:38:462025-02-09 11:38:46ZeroHedge: USAID Funded Massive ‘News’ Platform, Extending ‘Censorship Industrial Complex’ To Billions Worldwide

Meet agents, chatbots’ more powerful successor.

These new computer programs can supposedly serve as union representatives or book flights for us, take control of apps and compile research. 

“Using an agent today might be like: I'm going to give you access to my inbox so you can read all of the emails I've gotten in the past 24 hours; help me organize them, prioritize them, and then maybe, when I explicitly authorize you to, you can go and send replies,” explained Matt Fredrikson, a Carnegie Mellon University professor who started his own [AI safety company](https://www.post-gazette.com/business/tech-news/2024/08/11/companies-ai-pittsburgh-startup-graw-swan/stories/202408110042) last year.

“The potential is awesome, and like, I'm terrible at email, so that would be a huge win for someone like me.”The basic buzz around agents is that they can do more than the earliest artificial intelligence models.

So what can they actually do? Are they as accessible at ChatGPT? What’s the risk in trusting them?

A few hours before OpenAI unveiled its first agent last month, I sat down with another CMU professor who had designed his own.

At a time when everyone was panicked about a sudden competitor in China, CMU’s Graham Neubig was confident his research project could keep up with the best. Yet as I observed in his office, the agent he instructed to “Make a pie chart of the biggest expenditures of the Pittsburgh government in 2024” quickly ran into its first stumbling block.

In order to access a specific webpage, the agent had to prove it was human. (Thanks, Duolingo founder/CMU alum Luis von Ahn). Obviously, it failed.

Other check-ins from the agent revealed similar roadblocks, requiring subtle prodding from Mr. Neubig to retrieve his desired outcome.

On the whole, the computer assistant did save him time. But it required a human in the driver seat, and one with decent tech savvy at that.Mr. Neubig and the other experimenters I spoke with acknowledge that agents aren’t as accessible as chatbots, not only because tools like OpenAI’s “Operator” agent cost $200 a month for Pro subscribers.

The applications aren’t as obvious as writing a poem or drafting an email. And they require some finagling. But they do open the door, in a similar way chatbots did, to more powerful uses and experimentation.

There’s an open question about how much we will empower these new agents. The experts I spoke with said they wouldn’t trust current agents with their credit card information to order items online or book a flight. They noted that people already don’t rely on voice assistants like Alexa to compile shopping lists and order groceries, the way Amazon had originally expected and hoped for.

But if not a smash success on the consumer level, agents could still serve a significant function for businesses. Salesforce made a big splash last fall with a platform called Agentforce, which it said allowed companies to build a “limitless workforce.” Some of the entrepreneurs I’ve spoken with in Pittsburgh — including for an upcoming story on AI in the legal field — are optimistic about agents’ power to transform work.

While adoption remains uncertain, agents are the next big push for top tech companies. Expect their performance to be interwoven with arguments for data centers and other infrastructure spending. 

*Are you already using an AI agent in your workflow? Show me how at [ejohnson@post-gazette.com](https://www.post-gazette.com/business/tech-news/2025/02/09/artificial-intelligence-agent-evan-robinson-johnson/stories/) and @sightsonwheels*

First Published: February 9, 2025, 2:30 a.m.
Updated: February 9, 2025, 11:01 a.m.


## Astroturfing campaigns that target diverse audiences (here: Black Lives Matter activists in blue and Trump Republicans in red) are still connected in a message coordination network. Combined co-tweet and co-retweet network among IRA accounts that tweet in English. Node color is taken from a typology of Linvill and Warren, who manually classified IRA accounts according to their content²⁹.

Source publication

Online political astroturfing—hidden information campaigns in which a political actor mimics genuine citizen behavior by incentivizing agents to spread information online—has become prevalent on social media. Such inauthentic information campaigns threaten to undermine the Internet’s promise to more equitable participation in public debates. We arg...

... Despite their widespread success, social media have also provided a fertile ground for malicious users to orchestrate and execute coordinated disinformation campaigns, commonly referred to as astroturf campaigns 1 ==\[21\]==. Such disinformation campaigns come to augment the negative effects of fake news by spreading persuasive but inaccurate content across a social network. ...

Detecting organized political campaigns is of paramount importance in fighting against disinformation on social media. Existing approaches for the identification of such organized actions employ techniques mostly from network science, graph machine learning and natural language processing. Their ultimate goal is to analyze the relationships and interactions (e.g. re-posting) among users and the textual similarities of their posts. Despite their effectiveness in recognizing astroturf campaigns, these methods face significant challenges, notably the class imbalance in available training datasets. To mitigate this issue, recent methods usually resort to data augmentation or increasing the number of positive samples, which may not always be feasible or sufficient in real-world settings. Following a different path, in this paper, we propose a novel framework for identifying astroturf campaigns based solely on large language models (LLMs), introducing a Balanced Retrieval-Augmented Generation (Balanced RAG) component. Our approach first gives both textual information concerning the posts (in our case tweets) and the user interactions of the social network as input to a language model. Then, through prompt engineering and the proposed Balanced RAG method, it effectively detects coordinated disinformation campaigns on X (Twitter). The proposed framework does not require any training or fine-tuning of the language model. Instead, by strategically harnessing the strengths of prompt engineering and Balanced RAG, it facilitates LLMs to overcome the effects of class imbalance and effectively identify coordinated political campaigns. The experimental results demonstrate that by incorporating the proposed prompt engineering and Balanced RAG methods, our framework outperforms the traditional graph-based baselines, achieving 2x-3x improvements in terms of precision, recall and F1 scores.

... The term astroturfing is derived from the word "astroturf", a type of artificial grass often used on sports fields, and is a kind of wordplay on the expression "grassroots" because it relies on artificially creating the impression that the popularity of certain content is the result of people's natural interest in it, or at least is based on algorithmically attributed interest following those natural. The very design of digital astroturfing typically involves the coordinated use of paid or fake actors, bots, or automated systems to create the illusion of popular support for a particular cause or product ==(Schoch et al., 2022)==. It can include fake social media accounts, online reviews, comments on blogs or news articles, or even staged protests or rallies. ...

- [Dariusz Jakubowski](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dariusz-Jakubowski)

... The growth of astroturfing has gone hand in hand with the realization of its dangers. Today it is considered one of the most impactful threats online \[4\] and is prevalent across the globe ==\[5\]==. The realization that the malicious use of OSM platforms vitiates trust and faith, the cornerstones of any democratic society, has prompted a surge of research to counter it, specifically research based on artificial intelligence \[6\] and machine learning. ...

- [Jonathan Schler](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jonathan-Schler)
- [Elisheva Bonchek-Dokow](https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Elisheva-Bonchek-Dokow-2191732689)

The practice of online astroturfing has become increasingly pervasive in recent years, with the growth in popularity of social media. Astroturfing consists of promoting social, political, or other agendas in a non-transparent or deceitful way, where the promoters masquerade as normative users while acting behind a mask that conceals their true identity, and at times that they are not human. In politics, astroturfing is currently considered one of the most severe online threats to democracy. The ability to automatically identify astroturfers thus constitutes a first step in eradicating this threat. We present a complete framework for handling a dataset of profiles, from data collection and efficient labeling, through feature extraction, and finally, to the identification of astroturfers lurking in the dataset. The data were collected over a period of 15 months, during which three consecutive elections were held in Israel. These raw data are unique in scope and size, consisting of several million public comments and reactions to posts on political candidates’ pages. For the manual labeling stage, we present a technique that can zoom in on a sufficiently large subset of astroturfer profiles, thus making the procedure highly efficient. The feature extraction stage consists of a temporal layer of features, which proves useful for identifying astroturfers. We then applied and compared several algorithms in the classification stage, and achieved improved results, with an F1 score of 77% and accuracy of 92%.

... Twitter/X and co-parley on Parler) \[17,26,31,51,62,==109,==130,132,133\], co-image, and co-video \[140\] represent the publishing of posts with the same text, image, or video by multiple users. More specific co-actions are also possible, such as co-text-image that occurs when multiple users post images that contain the same text \[115\]. ...

... This approach, used by several recent works \[19,28,55,67,69,88,98,120,121,132\], is not biased towards fixed arbitrary levels of similarity or coordination, but instead erases network structures that convey limited information, allowing to focus on meaningful expressions of coordination. \[50\] evenly distributed overlapping 1 sec user single \[17\] evenly distributed overlapping from 1 sec to 250 sec content single \[62,108,==109\]== evenly distributed overlapping 1 min user single \[90\] evenly distributed overlapping from 1 min to 30 min user single \[1\] evenly distributed overlapping 5 min user single \[73,91\] evenly distributed overlapping 5 min user multiple (L=2) \[51,74,89\] evenly distributed overlapping 5 min user multiple (L=3) \[101\] evenly distributed overlapping 30 min user single \[121\] evenly distributed overlapping 1 week user single \[65\] action-driven overlapping from 1 sec to 1 hour user single \[26\] action-driven overlapping from 1 sec to 11 day user single \[100\] action-driven overlapping 10 sec user single \[27,72\] action-driven overlapping 10 sec user single, multiple (L=4) \[44-47, 52, 105, 115\] action-driven overlapping from 10 sec to 1 min user single \[11\] action-driven overlapping 25 sec user single \[140\] action-driven overlapping 1 min user single \[31\] action-driven overlapping 1 min, 1 hour, 1 day user multiple (L=4) \[133\] action-driven overlapping 10 tweets content single ...

... The few existing detailed temporal analyses examined user flows between coordinated communities or the variation of users between different time windows \[67,121\]. Other temporal analyses of user activity can involve examining bursts of account creations \[108\], abnormal post or retweet volumes \[13,23,25,44,59,61,62,66,105,108,==109,==118,130,132,134,138\], or inflated engagement metrics, such as the number of views \[105,132\]. The analysis of topics and hashtags over time can reveal the evolution of the narratives promoted or discussed by the coordinated actors \[121,133\]. ...

Coordination is a fundamental aspect of life. The advent of social media has made it integral also to online human interactions, such as those that characterize thriving online communities and social movements. At the same time, coordination is also core to effective disinformation, manipulation, and hate campaigns. This survey collects, categorizes, and critically discusses the body of work produced as a result of the growing interest on coordinated online behavior. We reconcile industry and academic definitions, propose a comprehensive framework to study coordinated online behavior, and review and critically discuss the existing detection and characterization methods. Our analysis identifies open challenges and promising directions of research, serving as a guide for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers in understanding and addressing the complexities inherent to online coordination.

... These arguments were expressed by nativist and exclusionary political movements that in the following years penetrated the Eurosceptic and far-right political wing. A scientific report from Schoch et al. ==\[7\]== demonstrated astroturfing political movements online showing coordination patterns across the world. According to this study, these centrally coordinated campaigns consisted of both automated and human-operated accounts and did not necessarily spread disinformation and fake news. ...

... Astroturfing tactics disguise top-down activities, initiated by actors with political interests, as bottom-up demands \[26\] and can take place both offline (fake grassroots movements, demonstrations, etc.) and online (campaigns, bots, influencers, etc.). Astroturfing on social media has been the object of research in the context of elections \[27\] with the use of bots, as a phenomenon of multiple accounts on different platforms with a single author \[28\], in mapping various detection techniques \[29\], but most importantly as a coordinated phenomenon across diverse political and geographic contexts and different periods of time ==\[7\]==. ...

... The premise of the study was that whether an account was automated or human-operated was of little consequence compared to its online activity. Besides, a recent study published in Nature Scientific Reports ==\[7\]== demonstrated that human amplifier accounts working under a central coordinating authority can easily match bot accounts activity (coincidentally during regular office hours) in terms of content creation and amplification. Additionally, a study conducted by MIIR \[66\] showed that during periods of low political activity amplifier accounts switch from promoting their political sponsors to promoting commercial products. ...

- [Dimitris Papaevagelou](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dimitris-Papaevagelou)

Detecting hate speech on social media and the way it spreads have proved trickier than originally thought. Alt-right politicians seem to be ahead of the technological curve, exploiting existing biases in society and platforms to promote hateful messages. As a result, messages get traction by both good and bad faith actors. In the following research, we examined 36.8 million tweets and 1.5 million unique accounts related to Greek politicians on Twitter, in an effort to map the information dissemination ecosystem. In this chapter, we present a scalable model to predict amplification accounts used by various actors in Greece, alongside a toxicity classifier for short messages. We mainly focused on the political context to scan for toxicity spreaders affiliated to Greek politicians. Our approach investigates behavioral characteristics that differentiate normal accounts with the amplifiers without addressing the binary logic—bot or not. Our preliminary results show that the majority of Greek politicians’ networks of followers are amplifier accounts without necessarily meaning that these are bot accounts. In compatibility with other research findings, we find that the majority of the accounts promoting toxicity are predominantly partisans from the right of the political spectrum.

... Finally, social media data could be influenced by inauthentic activities such as astroturfing campaigns and bots. As famously manifested in Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA) intervention in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, many organized or sponsored inauthentic social media operations are uncovered and documented ==(Schoch et al., 2022)==. ...

... The tools for manipulating social media discourse, now broadly accessible via online services, have expanded their reach beyond governmental institutions to everyday consumers (Al-Rawi and Rahman, 2020). These external influences have the potential to skew metrics and distort the representation of public opinion, particularly as some campaigns with political motivations deliberately exploit them to sway the course of social media dialogues ==(Schoch et al., 2022)==. If these kinds of inauthentic information operations and bot activities can influence Twitter activities, they can also create another bias in Twitter polls. ...

Polls posted on social media have emerged in recent years as an important tool for estimating public opinion, e.g., to gauge public support for business decisions and political candidates in national elections. Here, we examine nearly two thousand Twitter polls gauging support for U.S. presidential candidates during the 2016 and 2020 election campaigns. First, we describe the rapidly emerging prevalence of social polls. Second, we characterize social polls in terms of their heterogeneity and response options. Third, leveraging machine learning models for user attribute inference, we describe the demographics, political leanings, and other characteristics of the users who author and interact with social polls. Finally, we study the relationship between social poll results, their attributes, and the characteristics of users interacting with them. Our findings reveal that Twitter polls are biased in various ways, starting from the position of the presidential candidates among the poll options to biases in demographic attributes and poll results. The 2016 and 2020 polls were predominantly crafted by older males and manifested a pronounced bias favoring candidate Donald Trump, in contrast to traditional surveys, which favored Democratic candidates. We further identify and explore the potential reasons for such biases in social polling and discuss their potential repercussions. Finally, we show that biases in social media polls can be corrected via regression and poststratification. The errors of the resulting election estimates can be as low as 1%-2%, suggesting that social media polls can become a promising source of information about public opinion.

... Finally, social media data could be influenced by inauthentic activities such as astroturfing campaigns and bots. As famously manifested in Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA) intervention in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, many organized or sponsored inauthentic social media operations are uncovered and documented ==(Schoch et al., 2022)==. ...

... The tools for manipulating social media discourse, now broadly accessible via online services, have expanded their reach beyond governmental institutions to everyday consumers (Al-Rawi and Rahman, 2020). These external influences have the potential to skew metrics and distort the representation of public opinion, particularly as some campaigns with political motivations deliberately exploit them to sway the course of social media dialogues ==(Schoch et al., 2022)==. If these kinds of inauthentic information operations and bot activities can influence Twitter activities, they can also create another bias in Twitter polls. ...

Polls posted on social media can provide information about public opinion on a variety of issues from business decisions to support for presidential election candidates. However, it is largely unknown whether the information provided by social polls is useful or not. To enhance our understanding of social polls, we examine nearly two thousand Twitter polls gauging support for U.S. presidential candidates during the 2016 and 2020 election campaigns. First, we describe the prevalence of social polls. Second, we characterize social polls in terms of the engagement they elicit and the response options they present. Third, leveraging machine learning models, we infer and describe several characteristics, including demographics and political leanings, of the users who author and interact with social polls. Finally, we study the relationship between social poll results, their attributes, and the characteristics of users interacting with them. Our findings suggest how and to what extent polling on Twitter is biased in terms of content, authorship, and audience. The 2016 and 2020 polls were predominantly crafted by older males and manifested a pronounced bias favoring candidate Donald Trump, whereas traditional surveys favored Democratic candidates. We further identify and explore the potential reasons for such biases and discuss their repercussions.

... Extracting Multilingual Embeddings: A usual approach to identifying messages with slight lexical mutations may be to compare the edit distanced (Leskovec, Backstrom, and Kleinberg 2009), message keywords ==(Schoch et al. 2022)== or to use sentence embeddings with cosine similarity (Pacheco, Flammini, and Menczer 2020). However, posts on Indian social media contain multiple languages. ...

- [Shruti Phadke](https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Shruti-Phadke-2149165514)
- [Tanushree Mitra](https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Tanushree-Mitra-2048127394)

Increasingly online platforms are becoming popular arenas of political amplification in India. With known instances of pre-organized coordinated operations, researchers are questioning the legitimacy of political expression and its consequences on the democratic processes in India. In this paper, we study an evolved form of political amplification by first identifying and then characterizing political campaigns with lexical mutations. By lexical mutation, we mean content that is reframed, paraphrased, or altered while preserving the same underlying message. Using multilingual embeddings and network analysis, we detect over 3.8K political campaigns with text mutations spanning multiple languages and social media platforms in India. By further assessing the political leanings of accounts repeatedly involved in such amplification campaigns, we contribute a broader understanding of how political amplification is used across various political parties in India. Moreover, our temporal analysis of the largest amplification campaigns suggests that political campaigning can evolve as temporally ordered arguments and counter-arguments between groups with competing political interests. Overall, our work contributes insights into how lexical mutations can be leveraged to bypass the platform manipulation policies and how such competing campaigning can provide an exaggerated sense of political divide on Indian social media.

... Twitter users is non-representative (Wojcik and Hughes 2019), and the presence of bots, astroturfing accounts (Keller et al. 2020;Ferrara et al. 2016a), and foreign influence ==(Schoch et al. 2022)== further complicates the situation. The overrepresentation of certain perspectives, driven by a minority of users, can skew social media users' perceptions of reality and bias political processes. ...

... Digital Manipulation Inauthentic social media activities, such as bots and astroturfing, can contribute to social media biases. This phenomenon was famously manifested in Russia's Internet Research Agency (IRA) intervention in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, where many organized or sponsored inauthentic social media operations are uncovered and documented (Keller et al. 2020;==Schoch et al. 2022)==. Similarly, research has found that numerous bot accounts generate a significant amount of social media posts (Ferrara et al. 2016b). ...

... Tools for manipulating social media discourse, now broadly accessible via online services, also have expanded their reach beyond governmental institutions to everyday consumers (Al-Rawi and Rahman 2020). These external influences have the potential to distort the representation of public opinion, particularly as politically motivated campaigns deliberately exploit them to sway the course of social media dialogues ==(Schoch et al. 2022)==. ...

Social media platforms allow users to create polls to gather public opinion on diverse topics. However, we know little about what such polls are used for and how reliable they are, especially in significant contexts like elections. Focusing on the 2020 presidential elections in the U.S., this study shows that outcomes of election polls on Twitter deviate from election results despite their prevalence. Leveraging demographic inference and statistical analysis, we find that Twitter polls are disproportionately authored by older males and exhibit a large bias towards candidate Donald Trump relative to representative mainstream polls. We investigate potential sources of biased outcomes from the point of view of inauthentic, automated, and counter-normative behavior. Using social media experiments and interviews with poll authors, we identify inconsistencies between public vote counts and those privately visible to poll authors, with the gap potentially attributable to purchased votes. We also find that Twitter accounts participating in election polls are more likely to be bots, and election poll outcomes tend to be more biased, before the election day than after. Finally, we identify instances of polls spreading voter fraud conspiracy theories and estimate that a couple thousand of such polls were posted in 2020. The study discusses the implications of biased election polls in the context of transparency and accountability of social media platforms.

... For example, coretweet networks provide insight into coordinated content amplification on Twitter, where Twitter accounts (nodes) in the network are connected by an link or edge if they exhibit a pattern of retweeting the same tweet within 60 s of one another \[8,9\]. This methodological approach appears to be broadly effective at revealing online influence campaigns such as political astroturfing ==\[10\]==, where fake accounts attempt to hijack online conversations and simulate grassroots support for a political party, person, ideology, idea, or event. ...

... For example, co-retweet networks map coordinated retweeting on X (formerly Twitter) whereby accounts repost the same tweet repeatedly within a short time window of each other \[8\]. Similarly, co-tweet networks map coordinated tweeting whereby accounts post identical messages repeatedly within a short time window ==\[10\]==. Co-link networks map coordinated link sharing on Facebook where accounts post the same links repeatedly within a short time window \[11\]. ...

... An obvious approach to identify co-tweeting behaviour ==\[10\]== is to perform a simple string comparison for equality. This works for the most extreme cases of inauthentic coordinated behaviour where accounts are posting exact duplicate text, but can fail when even minor alterations occur. ...

- [Timothy Graham](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Timothy-Graham-6)
- [Sam Hames](https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Sam-Hames-2178731995)
- [Elizabeth Alpert](https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Elizabeth-Alpert-2178740568)

This paper introduces and evaluates the Coordination Network Toolkit, an open-source software package and methodological framework designed to detect and analyse coordinated behaviour on social media platforms. As the dynamics of online communication continue to evolve, coordination analysis has emerged as an important field of study with significant implications for understanding online influence, digital astroturfing, and online activism. Recognising the absence of a comprehensive, open-source tool for constructing coordination networks, our approach fills this gap, catering to multiple behaviors across diverse social media platforms. Our approach synthesises and significantly enhances various methods to provide a methodological framework for ‘multi-behaviour’ coordination detection, utilising weighted, directed multigraphs to capture intricate coordination dynamics. We evaluate our approach by revisiting a case study of the 2020 #ReopenAmerica Covid protest movement on Twitter. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for future work, emphasising the need for a tailored statistical framework for coordination analysis and a deeper exploration into the motives behind online coordination.

Our Founding Fathers understood the extreme hazard of allowing the state to create and disburse public funds without budget and oversight restraints. The inevitable outcome is that the men who hold state power will give money to their friends—that is, to influential persons and organizations who will, in turn, support and even augment the power of those who hold office.

In recent years it has often occurred to me that the U.S. government is now scarcely distinguishable from a giant racket that creates trillions of dollars out of thin air and gives it to a vast array of shady interests—pharmaceutical companies and Ukrainian oligarchs being notable recent examples. This corrupt enterprise has been accompanied by a relative paucity of resources for endeavors such as fire prevention in Maui and LA Counties and air traffic control at Washington Reagan.

Now comes the news—reported by Wikipedia—that USAID has funneled almost half a billion dollars to a dodgy international news network that most Americans have doubtless never heard of. As Wikileaks tweeted on Friday night:

> USAID has pushed nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6m) through a secretive US government financed NGO, "Internews Network" (IN), which has “worked with” 4,291 media outlets, producing in one year 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people and "training” over 9000 journalists (2023 figures). IN has also supported social media censorship initiatives. The operation claims “offices” in over 30 countries, including main offices in US, London, Paris and regional HQs in Kiev, Bangkok and Nairobi. It is headed up by Jeanne Bourgault, who pays herself $451k a year. Bourgault worked out of the US embassy in Moscow during the early 1990s, where she was in charge of a $250m budget, and in other revolts or conflicts at critical times, before formally rotating out of six years at USAID to IN. Bourgault’s IN bio and those of its other key people and board members have been recently scrubbed from its website but remain accessible at http://archive.org.
>
> Records show the board being co-chaired by Democrat securocrat Richard J. Kessler and Simone Otus Coxe, wife of NVIDIA billionaire Trench Coxe, both major Democratic donors. In 2023, supported by Hillary Clinton, Bourgault launched a $10m IN fund at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). The IN page showing a picture of Bourgault at the CGI has also been deleted. IN has at least six captive subsidiaries under unrelated names including one based out of the Cayman Islands. Since 2008, when electronic records begin, more than 95% of IN's budget has been supplied by the US government (thread follows).

Click on image below to see original Tweet:


[Share](https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/usaid-gave-472-million-to-internews?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjozMDc1NzM0MDcsInBvc3RfaWQiOjE1NjgwMTMyOCwiaWF0IjoxNzM5MTQ5MTk4LCJleHAiOjE3NDE3NDExOTgsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xMTE5Njc2Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.ttdJNinejzlLdVHUhlyabb6ddg7N2YZdqEvR1l6i_Bk)

https://sputnikglobe.com/20250209/french-development-agency-frances-usaid-in-disguise-1121550624.html

French Development Agency: France's USAID in Disguise?

French Development Agency: France's USAID in Disguise?

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Founded in 1941 by Charles de Gaulle to support equatorial Africa, the French Development Agency (AFD in French) operates under Paris’ supervision, funding projects via government allocations, bonds, and reinvested earnings, officially to fight poverty and promote sustainability worldwide.

2025-02-09T19:02+0000

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This benevolent activity apparently has a less benign side.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20250207/usaid-or-sorosaid-how-us-tax-dollars-fund-chaos-worldwide-1121545540.html

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french development agency, france development transparency, france ukraine aid

french development agency, france development transparency, france ukraine aid

Founded in 1941 by Charles de Gaulle to support equatorial Africa, the French Development Agency (AFD in French) operates under Paris’ supervision, funding projects via government allocations, bonds, and reinvested earnings, officially to fight poverty and promote sustainability worldwide.

This benevolent activity apparently has a less benign side.

AFD claims its funding isn't tied to French firms, yet Disclose reports that 320 of 495 contracts (2015-2019) went to France-based companies.

In 2016, AFD issued a €46 mln ($47.5 mln) loan for Douala airport renovations, awarding €24.4 mln ($25.2 mln) in contracts to French firms Sogea Satom and Razel-Bec.

In 2018, Air France and 14 other airlines complained about the dismal state of the Douala airport that actually put their planes’ safety at risk.

The AFD refused to explain how the money it provided was spent on this project and whether it was audited or not.

[](https://sputnikglobe.com/20250207/usaid-or-sorosaid-how-us-tax-dollars-fund-chaos-worldwide-1121545540.html "USAID or SorosAid? How US Tax Dollars Fund Chaos Worldwide")

France’s Court of Audit in 2020 noted a lack of transparency in AFD’s “procedures, impact studies, public enquiries, and disbursements.”

The Disclose investigation also revealed that AFD has no qualms about funneling millions of euros to companies whose management faced accusations of mistreating its employees.

AFD employees have also been known to complain about problems with their management who allegedly seeks to increase the pay gap between them and decrease severance payments.

AFD has also been actively supporting Kiev, providing Ukraine with €400 mln ($413.2 mln) worth of budget support loans in 2022. AFD's private sector financing arm Proparco in 2024 announced its intent to join the European Bank for Development and Reconstruction’s support program for Ukraine.

Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Russ Vought has frozen all new funding to that agency. In a memo to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, Vought, who was just confirmed as Office of Management and Budget Director, said, "This letter is to inform you that in the Third Quarter of Fiscal Year 2025, the Bureau is requesting $0."

Earlier, Vought had announced that he'd discovered the CFPB was sitting on a $711.6 million "reserve fund."

Why CFPB thought it needed a "reserve fund" of nearly $1 billion is an open question, and it should figure prominently into some personnel decisions that I'm sure are on the way.

Yesterday, I posted on Vought reiterating to CFPB the same [stop work order](https://archive.ph/xLdiD#selection-1153.0-1203.130) that was given to them by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during the few days he was acting CFPB director; see [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Website Goes Dark and the Woodchipper Warms Up](https://redstate.com/streiff/2025/02/08/consumer-financial-protection-bureaus-website-goes-dark-and-the-woodchipper-warms-up-n2185373 "Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Website Goes Dark and the Woodchipper Warms Up").

> In the email, Vought said the regulator — which oversees banks, payment firms and other financial institutions — should cease all supervision activity. The CFPB has dedicated examination teams for large institutions.Vought also reiterated that staff should not be approving or issuing any proposed or final rules or formal or informal guidance, directed them to suspend effective dates for rules that have yet to take effect and ordered them to not open any new investigations, cease existing investigations and pause all investigative activities and enforcement actions.
>
> He also instructed staff not to issue public communications of any type, including research papers and compliance bulletins, approve any new agreements or make appearances or approve filings in any ongoing litigation from the bureau.In the email, Vought urged CFPB staff to “raise issues through your existing management for consideration by the Acting Director.”

The beauty of this move is that when Elizabeth Warren set up the CFPB, she attempted to insulate it from influence or management by either the Executive or Legislative branches. Contrary to other agencies that are managed by a group of directors who the president can remove, the CFPB had a single director who could only be removed for cause. The Supreme Court [struck down](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seila_Law_LLC_v._Consumer_Financial_Protection_Bureau#:~:text=The%205%E2%80%934%20decision%20ruled,violated%20the%20separation%20of%20powers.) that arrangement in 2020. She also had the CFPB draw funds directly from the Federal Reserve, bypassing the appropriation process. In the best "it isn't a tax" tradition of John Roberts's jurisprudence, that funding arrangement [survived](https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/05/supreme-court-lets-cfpb-funding-stand/) a Supreme Court challenge. This combination of events has led to a situation where one man, that would be Russ Vought, can do pretty much as he wishes because there is no Congressional oversight, and he can't be forced to spend money because there are no appropriations.

In short, the CFPB is going to be substantially cut down in size if not altogether eradicated.

#### READ THE LETTER TO JEROME POWELL

> Dear Chairman Powell: The Consumer Financial Protection Act requires the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System to transfer each quarter an “amount determined by the Director to be reasonably necessary" for the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection to carry out its authorities under law. 12 U.S.C. 5497(a)(1). In determining this amount, the Director must "take into account such other sums made available to the Bureau from the preceding year" or quarter. 
>
> This letter is to inform you that for the Third Quarter of Fiscal Year 2025, the Bureau is requesting $0. 
>
> During my review of the Bureau's finances, I have learned that the Bureau has a balance of $711,586,678.00 in the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Fund. By law, I must take account of this sum when determining the amount "reasonably necessary" for the Bureau to fulfill its statutory authorities.  
>
> I have determined that no additional funds are necessary to carry out the authorities of the Bureau for Fiscal Year 2025. The Bureau's current funds are more than sufficient — and are, in fact, excessive — to carry out its authorities in a manner that is consistent with the public interest. In the past, the Bureau has at times opted to maintain a "reserve fund" for financial contingencies. But no such fund is required by statute or necessary to fulfill the Bureau's mandate. The Bureau's new leadership will run a substantially more streamlined and efficient bureau, cut this excessive fund, and do its part to reduce the federal deficit.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has created a special federal task force to investigate the involvement of US persons and organizations in the October 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 people, including 47 Americans, in Israel. In one of her first acts as Attorney General, Bondi established "Task Force 10-7" for the purposes of:

> - Pursuing criminal charges, including capital crimes where applicable, against the perpetrators of the October 7 attack;
> - Providing services to the victims of the October 7 attack and coordinating as appropriate with others to facilitate the return of hostages;
> - Seeking the arrest and extradition of Hamas leadership charged in the complaint docketed as United States v. Haniyeh, No. 24 Mag. 438 (S.D.N.Y.);
> - Investigating and prosecuting acts of terrorism, antisemitic civil rights violations, and other federal crimes committed by Hamas supporters in the United States, including on college campuses;
> - Investigating and prosecuting those responsible for funding Hamas; and
> - Supporting efforts by the Israeli government, Department of Defense, and Department of Treasury to pursue non-criminal responses to the October 7 attack and other terrorist activities by Hamas.

There is no doubt that some of the perpetrators of October 7 used the out-of-control southern border to enter the United States. There is also no doubt that there was some degree of coordination between the organizers of pro-terrorist "river to the sea," tablecloth-wearing protests, and Hamas leaders in Gaza or Qatar. This task force will also enforce Trump's [Executive Order on Combating Anti-Semitism](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjDvJKV_baLAxXHl-4BHQkXOr0QFnoECBwQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftrumpwhitehouse.archives.gov%2Fpresidential-actions%2Fexecutive-order-combating-anti-semitism%2F&usg=AOvVaw3XXEmTnvIXAAiT9FverGle&opi=89978449).

The reference to *United States vs. Haniyeh* is something of a puzzler. The U.S. [indicted](https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-terrorism-charges-against-senior-leaders-hamas) Ismail Haniyeh, the now-deceased chairman of Hamas’s Politburo and the equally putrescent head of Hamas's Political Bureau, Yahya Sinwar, not long after the attack. The fact that supervisors and agents working on this case were trawled up in the same purge that engulfed January 6 goons leads me to believe that the FBI deliberately refused to investigate Hamas.

> Beyond the terminations of the eight employees, Bove directed Driscoll to identify by noon Tuesday, Feb. 4, "all current and former FBI personnel assigned at any time to investigations and/or prosecutions" relating to "the events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021" and United States v. Haniyeh, a terrorism case against six Hamas leaders charged with planning and carrying out the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel. 
>
> The defendants in that case include Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, high-level Hamas leaders believed to have been assassinated in 2024 by Israeli operatives.

On the whole, I think it is great to see the Department of Justice and FBI direct their energies against agents of a terrorist group instead of pro-life grandmas and traditional Catholics. This may be the small step back to sanity that they need.

READ THE MEMO

[DOJ Memo Establishing Task Force 10-7](https://www.scribd.com/document/825926415/DOJ-Memo-Establishing-Task-Force-10-7#from_embed "View DOJ Memo Establishing Task Force 10-7 on Scribd") by [streiff](https://www.scribd.com/user/549572083/streiff-at-redstate#from_embed "View streiff at redstate's profile on Scribd") on Scribd

While the destruction in the Middle East has been fierce, the media war surrounding who controls the narrative of events has been no less intense. And MintPress News has been caught up in it. Our investigations into Israeli attempts to manipulate public understanding of the genocide in Gaza have drawn the ire of The Jerusalem Post, who recently attempted to cancel us, labeling MintPress as part of a network of Iranian, Russian and Syrian-backed extremist websites pushing antisemitism.

Alan MacLeod, senior staff writer and podcast producer at MintPress News, will join the MintCast host to discuss this. Alan’s investigations, which revealed a network of former [Israeli spies](https://www.mintpressnews.com/revealed-israel-unit-8200-spies-american-media/288457/) and [lobbyists](https://www.mintpressnews.com/revealed-the-israel-lobbyists-writing-americas-news/288575/) working in newsrooms across America, went viral and were read by hundreds of thousands of people.

His [report](https://www.mintpressnews.com/revealed-israel-unit-8200-spies-american-media/288457/), entitled: “Revealed: The Israeli Spies Writing America’s News,” discussed how former agents from Israeli spying group Unit 8200 have found a home in some of the corporate media’s most prominent outlets, including Axios and CNN.

Unit 8200 is the centerpiece of Israel’s surveillance state and has been the source of many of the most controversial spying and hacking scandals of the last decade. Former Unit 8200 agents developed the Pegasus spyware, which was used to snoop on activists, journalists, world leaders and royals around the world.

His second [investigation](https://www.mintpressnews.com/revealed-the-israel-lobbyists-writing-americas-news/288575/) cataloged hundreds of ex-Israel lobbyists who went on to work in newsrooms across the country. One example of this is the NBCUniversal network. CNBC’s lead work report was, until 2011, a commander in the Israeli Defense Forces before moving back to America to work for the Friends of the IDF. This group raises money for supplies and support for Israeli soldiers, as well as encouraging Americans to enlist in the Israeli military. This pro-Israel bias goes straight to the top. MSNBC’s executive producer, Moshe Arenstein, is a former IDF intelligence commander.

The traction that these groundbreaking stories were receiving clearly put MintPress in the Jerusalem Post’s crosshairs, the Israeli newspaper publishing an attack against us.

Mnar and Alan begin the show by refuting the article’s claims and revealing ironic details about the Jerusalem Post itself.

They also discuss the recent TikTok ban and its relation to the Gaza genocide. TikTok has recently been under intense pressure to sell its platform to an American company. While the platform is far from pro-Palestine, it has not been as aggressively censorious of Palestinian voices as its American competitors have.

TikTok has attempted to placate Washington by moving many of its data centers to Texas and [hiring](https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-run-by-state-department-officials/284353/) a host of former U.S. government officials to run its internal operations. Yet, an action spearheaded by the pro-Israel lobby in Washington has driven the U.S. government to the brink of an outright ban on the platform.

See how former Israeli spies and lobbyists shape the news you consume—read Alan MacLeod’s groundbreaking investigations:

***Mnar Adley*** *is an award-winning journalist and editor and is the founder and director of MintPress News. She is also president and director of the non-profit media organization Behind the Headlines. Adley also co-hosts the MintCast podcast and is a producer and host of the video series Behind The Headlines. Contact Mnar at mnar@mintpressnews.com or follow her on Twitter at @mnarmuh.**MintPress News is a fiercely independent media company. You can support us by* [*becoming a member*](https://www.patreon.com/MintPressNews) *on Patreon, bookmarking and whitelisting us, and subscribing to our social media channels, including* [*YouTube*](https://www.youtube.com/user/MintPressNews)*,* [*Twitter*](https://twitter.com/mintpressnews?lang=en)*, and* [*Instagram*](https://www.instagram.com/mintpress/)*.*

*Subscribe to MintCast on* [*Spotify*](https://open.spotify.com/show/7qXgJyGwhTxDcgC8UeNF1s)*,* [*Apple Podcasts*](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mintcast/id1460817064)*, and* [*SoundCloud*](https://soundcloud.com/mpnews)*.*

*Also, check out rapper Lowkey’s video interview/podcast series,* [*The Watchdog*](https://www.mintpressnews.com/author/lowkey/)*.*

**Republish our stories!** MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

It’s been less than a month since President Trump reentered the Oval Office and he is already moving on his campaign promise to slash wasteful and reckless [foreign spending](https://apnews.com/article/trump-foreign-aid-9f5336e84c45a6e782fa95f60a919f47); one of his largest targets: the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Hundreds of protestors are [rallying](https://apnews.com/live/trump-presidency-updates-day-17) in Washington D.C. to protest Trump’s efforts to [dismantle](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx253xjnxrmo) the federal agency where billions of taxpayer dollars are siphoned off to foreign countries every single year under the guise of “saving lives” and “peace and justice.”

In an effort to stay relevant, Democrat lawmakers are marching against what they see as a dictatorship of billionaires stripping Americans of their rights…by shutting down a government agency that does anything *but* help American citizens in their times of need.

“We don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk,” [declared](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/usaids-dc-office-shuts-day-musk-trump-ramp-up-attacks-2025-02-03/) Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) while protesting outside of the USAID Headquarters.

Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) fed into the Left’s status quo fear mongering: “What’s happening to USAID is against the law. It’s flatly illegal, and it is dangerous to Americans at home and abroad.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) also took part in some [saber-rattling](https://x.com/collinrugg/status/1886906505863291026): “In the building behind me, Elon Musk is seizing power from the American people! We are here to fight back!” 

**Money For All, Except You**

If it is against the wishes of the Democrat party, it must be a “[threat to democracy](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-takes-departing-jab-trump-says-he-genuine-threat-democracy).” Let’s take a glimpse into what sorts of discrete projects our unelected bureaucrats have been committing our taxpayer dollars to [throughout the world](https://kfoxtv.com/news/nation-world/white-house-press-secretary-rips-usaid-amid-doge-scrutiny-insane-priorities-karoline-leavitt-elon-musk-trump-department-of-government-efficiency-federal-spending):

- $1.5 million to promote DEI in [Serbia](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14344255/trump-millions-dei-foreign-aid-programs-funding.html),
- $70,000 to put on a single DEI musical in [Ireland](https://www.usaspending.gov/award/ASST_NON_SEI30022GR0010_1900),
- $32,000 through the State Department for a LGBT-themed comic book in [Peru](https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/press-release/chairman-mast-exposes-outrageous-usaid-and-state-department-grants/),
- $51.3 million to encourage tolerance and “community resilience” in [Pakistan](https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_AID391TO1700001_7200_AIDOAAI1300013_7200),
- $73 million for children’s reading programs in [Senegal](https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_AID685TO1600003_7200_AIDOAAI1400055_7200),
- $7.8 million to study flavored cigarette use in LGBT and minority smokers,
- $118.6 million to buy billions of [male condoms](https://www.ghsupplychain.org/sites/default/files/2023-07/2022%20Condoms%20and%20Lubricants%20Comprehensive%20Report%20FINAL%20508%20compliant.pdf#page=10) for [60 foreign countries](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/29/gaza-condoms-fact-checker-trump/), and
- $44.8 million for [undisclosed purposes](https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_72030619C00004_7200_-NONE-_-NONE-) overseas.

While this is only a sample of what USAID and the federal government as a whole have committed to funding in recent years, it is barely the tip of the iceberg. With additional millions of dollars going to nonprofits linked to [terrorist groups](https://www.whitehouse.gov/uncategorized/2025/02/at-usaid-waste-and-abuse-runs-deep/) like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the federal government’s ceaseless spending shows just how much politicians prioritize the interests of foreign nations—and even those [who hate us](https://www.iranintl.com/en/202311150106)—over the needs of American citizens.  

This internal audit reveals another uncomfortable reality; something that the legacy media would rather stay hidden: the federal government has been awarding millions of taxpayer dollars to American news companies. This shouldn’t come as a surprise; the Biden administration [often colluded](https://www.newsweek.com/fbi-colluded-twitter-suppress-free-speech-where-outrage-opinion-1768801) with media companies during the Pandemic to [stifle free speech](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/new-dhs-disinfo-board-reveal-deep-big-tech-collusion-contradict-mayorkas-testimony-hawley). It appears the government has continued to exercise soft influence over our news sources years after, that is, until Trump put a stop to it.

So much for a free and fair press.

**The Free Press Is In the Government’s Pocket**

Records show how the left-leaning newspaper [Politico](https://www.foxnews.com/media/white-house-announces-doge-canceling-payments-politico) swept up around [$8.2 million](https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/fa0cefae-7cfb-881d-29c3-1bd39cc6a49e-C/latest) in state-sponsored awards after the federal government purchased hundreds of subscriptions to Politico Pro, a b2b service which offers, “non-partisan, real-time intelligence personalized to their area of policy focus.” Per online reports, these subscriptions could cost upwards of [$10,000 each](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14364887/doge-politico-payments-USAID-elon-musk-karoline-leavitt.html).

It appears media giant The Associated Press has also been taking funds from our government, netting [hundreds of thousands of dollars](https://x.com/kylenabecker/status/1887179349440290883) in recent years. Who knows exactly how much news agencies have been receiving from unelected bureaucrats, and for what purposes? 

Media entities have been receiving taxpayer dollars while openly subverting free and open discourse on modern speech forums like YouTube, various internet sites, and more recently X. With a palpable Leftist bias which has been honed to perfect the art of [fearmongering](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/donald-trumps-history-adolf-hitler-nazi-writings-analysis/story?id=105810745), [moving the goal posts](https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnn-panned-for-on-air-graphic-reading-fiery-but-mostly-peaceful-protest-in-front-of-kenosha-fire), [demonizing](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/20/godwins-law-trump-hitler-comparisons/) political opponents, and [shaming](https://x.com/newrepublic/status/1810009748697448541) others for inconvenient opinions, the fact that prominent American news networks have been receiving funds from the government with barely any oversight only twists the knife deeper.

This doesn’t bode well for legacy media’s public image either. [Only 31%](https://news.gallup.com/poll/651977/americans-trust-media-remains-trend-low.aspx) of Americans trust legacy media a great deal or a fair amount; this number will likely drop to new lows with each [new DOGE report](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/data-access-elon-musks-doge-us-treasury-lebryk/) on bureaucratic corruption and reckless spending on anything but American issues. 

With tens of millions of taxpayer dollars siphoned overseas for gender programs and humanitarian end which inevitably ends up in the hands of terrorists, and hundreds of thousands more gifted to domestic news giants, American citizens continue to suffer from the devastating effects of [Hurricane Helene](https://freethepeople.org/youre-only-worth-750-according-to-the-u-s-government/), the East Palestine [chemical spill](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-visit-east-palestine-ohio-one-year-after-derailment-2024-01-31/), and the [Maui fires](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/02/hawaii-fires-aid-fema-biden-maui-lahaina). Even the residents of [Flint, Michigan](https://www.nrdc.org/stories/flint-water-crisis-everything-you-need-know#update) are still reeling from the failure which was the Obama EPA. Who bothered to help them while USAID sent millions out of the country?

**Change is Coming, But Are We Ready?** 

Establishment media want Americans to believe that Trump is executing a “[hostile takeover](https://x.com/alx/status/1886647732040876032)” of our country. Meanwhile in reality, there is now a conscious effort by those in power to offer more transparency on the neglectful and disastrous spending waste which robbed Americans of much needed aid for years on end—why else would legacy media, career politicians, and establishment pundits push back so hard?

While the usual suspects hem and haw, threaten the end of democracy as we know it, and cry out against an imagined fascistic regime that dares to put money back into Americans’ pockets, change is coming, and the status quo of uncontested legislative pork and questionable foreign investments will hopefully go the way of the dinosaur and leave room for a new government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

USAID was just the beginning; there’s still more fat to trim.


*Image from Grok.*

Sunday, in a preview of his Super Bowl pregame show interview, President Donald Trump said Elon Musk was finding fraud and abuse in the government.

Trump said, “I don’t know if it’s kickbacks or what’s going on, but look, I ran on this, and the people want me to find it. And I’ve had a great help with Elon Musk, who’s been terrific.”

Fox News chief political anchor Brett Baier asked, “Bottom line, you say you trust him?”

Trump said, “Trust Elon? He’s not gaining anything. In fact, I wonder how he can devote the time to it. He’s so into it. But I told him, do that — and I’m going to tell him very soon, like maybe in 24 hours, to go check the Department of Education. He’s going to find the same thing. Then I’m going to go to the military. Let’s check the military. We’re going to find billions, hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud and abuse. And, you know, the people elected me on that.”

*Follow Pam Key on X* [*@pamkeyNEN*](https://twitter.com/pamkeyNEN/)

A Florida police officer has been arrested for using password-protected police databases and cameras to stalk his former girlfriend.

Jamarus Brown, 29, was charged with stalking and unauthorized access of a computer system/network and jailed on a $15,000 bail.

The Orange City officer was put on paid administrative leave in November when allegations surfaced, [the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported](https://www.news-journalonline.com/story/news/local/volusia/2025/02/06/florida-policeman-arrested-for-using-database-to-track-his-girlfriend/78260196007/). He was put on notice that he would fired on Friday if he didn’t appeal, which he apparently did not do.

Orange Beach Police asked the Volusion County Sheriff’s Office to conduct an investigation after the city department received a formal stalking complaint.

The woman involved told detectives ethat she met Brown in December 2023 and dated him for about 10 months, ending the relationship when he became increasingly controlling. She said he tried to distance her from family members and control the amount of makeup she could wear, and demanded that she provide her location to him at all times.

The charging affidavit says that on occasion, Brown sat in his patrol vehicle outside the woman’s workplace.

She said she became suspicious that Brown was using license plate readers to track her when he showed an image of her driving through an intersection during a video chat.

After they broke up, the woman said she struck up a friendship with another officer who told her that Brown had been spreading rumors she was suicidal. That officer also said that he used a law enforcement database to track her. It was then that the woman called police herself, utlimately calling the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office when she felt like Orange CityPolice weren’t moving on the case.

The affidavit says that Brown ran the license plate of the woman’s car, as well as the plates of her mother and brother, more than 100 times between April and November, although in an interview during the investigation, he said he only did it about 10 times.

In an interview with detectives, Brown told them that as their relationship was breaking apart, the victim refused to share her location with him or tell him who she was with, so he started running her license plate.

He told the sheriff’s office investigators “like I told my agency, it was dumb as hell on my end, emotions flowing, mind going.”

“Officer Brown knowingly and intentionally accessed the password protected computer systems, Flock and DAVID (police database) to run license plates of vehicles (the victim) frequently drove for her own personal reasons,” the investigator wrote in the report. “There was no work related, justifiable reasons to do so other than to track (the victim’s) whereabouts.”

It’s not clear if Brown has been released on bail. He is not listed in online jail records.

**For the latest true crime and justice news, [subscribe to the ‘Crime Stories with Nancy Grace’ podcast](https://www.crimeonline.com/podcast/).**

*\[Featured image: Jamarus Brown/Orange City Police Department\]*

As the U.S. Agency for International Development comes under scrutiny for what it’s been spending your money on — something it hasn’t been very forthcoming about before President Donald Trump’s administration made it one of the first targets of its Department of Government Efficiency downsizing initiative — the agency has come under fire for a whole lot of largesse that supported progressive, Democrat causes.

From the small but inexplicable ($32,000 for a [transgender comic book in Peru](https://www.westernjournal.com/fact-check-usaid-leftist-money-laundering-scheme/)) to the larger and more problematic (funding a supposedly independent journalistic non-profit referenced by a CIA analyst whistleblower responsible for catalyzing the first Trump impeachment [as a reason to suspect the president of wrongdoing](https://www.westernjournal.com/bombshell-usaid-cia-state-dept-played-role-1st-trump-impeachment-top-reporter-america/)), USAID has had its fingers in plenty of pies it shouldn’t have.

However, what if I told you that USAID played a part in the catastrophic pandemic that helped the Democrats dramatically (and illegally) overhaul election laws — and thus, it could be said, helped steal the 2020 election for Joe Biden?

I know, I know: I sound a bit like a slightly unbalanced Morpheus handing Neo [the red pill](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE7PKRjrid4). Breadcrumb it all back, however, and it begins to make a lot more sense than you’d think.

On Jan. 25, the Central Intelligence Agency announced that it believed the COVID-19 virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. While they asserted this with “low confidence,” according to [The Wall Street Journal](https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/cia-now-favors-lab-leak-theory-on-origins-of-covid-19-eff4e67c), it was a major shift for an agency that had long refused to take a position in the matter, particularly when most U.S. intelligence agencies favored a natural origin.

The CIA now believes, however, “that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin based on the available body of reporting.”

This comes as a surprise to virtually no one with a functioning brain. The virus most closely related to SARS-CoV-2 was not found naturally near Wuhan, nor was any original host animal found, nor were any bats — the source of that family of coronaviruses — ever found being sold at the wet market supposedly responsible for the outbreak.

There was, meanwhile, an institute of virology hundreds of meters from where the outbreak began. There were numerous safety issues documented there and [public evidence](https://www.propublica.org/article/senate-report-covid-19-origin-wuhan-lab) of a mishap there in October of 2019, around the time when scientists believe [the virus](https://www.westernjournal.com/alert-biden-gave-moderna-600-million-invent-new-mrna-shots-not-use-covid/) would have begun to spread.

While this can’t be said to be dispositive for a lab leak, the balance of the evidence is pretty clear — and despite their best efforts, even the Chinese Communist Party can’t come up with a plausible theory regarding animal-to-human transfer five years in.

To make matters worse, the research being done at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was — despite Anthony Fauci’s verbal prestidigitations in denying it — so-called “gain of function” research, which is to say it took viruses (in this case, bat coronaviruses), and looked at ways they could become more transmissible or deadly.

This was done at a research facility where, again, security concerns existed [going as far back as 2009](https://www.westernjournal.com/bombshell-wikileaks-email-hillary-knew-wuhan-bioweapon-threat-2009/). (No, I’m not missing a one somewhere in that number.)

One of the most controversial aspects of the research going on at the Wuhan Institute of Virology was that some of it was done by EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S. non-governmental organization which received millions grants from the government for, among other things, a program known as “PREDICT.”

And here’s where that darned red pill begins to take hold.

From EcoHealth’s [website](https://www.ecohealthalliance.org/program/predict?utm_source=chatgpt.com): “In an effort to **identify and respond to new zoonotic diseases before they spread to humans, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) established its Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) program**. The EPT program consists of four projects: PREDICT, RESPOND, IDENTIFY, and PREVENT. The PREDICT project seeks to identify new emerging infectious diseases that could become a threat to human health. PREDICT partners locate their research in geographic ‘hotspots’ and focus on wildlife that are most likely to carry zoonotic diseases – animals such as **bats**, rodents, and nonhuman primates.” \[Emphasis ours.\]

Not only that, [documents show that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s](https://www.westernjournal.com/released-nih-emails-show-faucis-department-not-knew-gain-function-raised-alarm-years-outbreak/) National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases knew about both the bat coronavirus gain of function research EcoHealth Alliance was doing and the safety risks at the [Wuhan Institute of Virology](https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-admin-authorizes-us-tax-funding-wuhan-institute-virology/).

USAID and the U.S. government continued to fund their work. And while there’s no evidence that EcoHealth Alliance specifically worked on the virus that intelligence services now believe leaked from the lab. What is known is that USAID continued the spigot of funding and refused to raise alarms publicly about the WIV.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump was riding a strong economy and, despite the aforementioned impeachment over Ukraine funding (which seems positively quaint now), seemed in good shape to win re-election.

All of a sudden, he was taking the blame for both not shutting the country down hard enough and for the economic effects of a country shut down pretty darn hard.

Any mention of the “[China virus](https://www.westernjournal.com/trump-pulls-reagan-zoomed-photo-shows-edited-speech-add-controversial-chinese-virus-comment/)” — as to emphasize its origins and curious fact it had originated from the same city where it just so happened bat coronaviruses were studied at a major research facility — was deemed to be racist and downplaying the origins of the virus, which we were told *ad nauseam* were completely, totally, absolutely the result of natural spillover from bats. Shut your trap about that pesky WIV, or EcoHealth Alliance — you *conspiracy theorist!*

Election rules were changed *en masse*, [often illegally](https://www.westernjournal.com/pa-judge-confirms-gop-case-states-allegedly-unconstitutional-mail-voting-scheme/). Mail-in voting became the norm. Soon, low-information voters were being served ballots on a platter at the same time they were being told their president was a quack who believed [injecting bleach](https://www.westernjournal.com/white-house-responds-media-furor-trump-disinfectant-comment-context/) into your veins would kill the virus. (As opposed to the [very scientific prophylactic](https://www.westernjournal.com/new-study-finds-mask-use-little-no-association-spread-covid-contradicting-cdc/) of wearing flimsy disposable masks, which would absolutely stop things if you just [wore like six of them](https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-calls-national-outdoor-mask-mandate-next-three-months-minimum/), and [put on a face-shield, too](https://www.westernjournal.com/dr-fauci-now-suggesting-people-wear-eye-goggles-face-shields-ward-off-coronavirus/).)

And, who would have thought: Joe Biden won! Fair and square, too — no thumbs on the scale, nosiree. The Freest and Fairest Election Ever™.

Mind you, Biden was clearly unable to do the job mentally when he was elected, just as much as he was when he was kicked to the curb for Kamala Harris last summer. The media certainly helped him over the finish line with that. He did no better on containing COVID — and arguably [did far worse](https://www.westernjournal.com/watch-look-bidens-face-reporter-confronts-800000-covid-deaths/) — than Donald Trump did. The national press covered for that, too.

That doesn’t erase the fact that a very predictable lab leak from an institution which received USAID funding through EcoHealth Alliance upended the 2020 election and allowed all of this to happen. Trump took all the blame, including for not discounting the lab-leak theory.

Meanwhile, a phalanx of U.S. government organizations — USAID among them — washed their hands of the responsibility of not just facilitating gain of function research, but doing it at an institution they should have blown the whistle on a decade prior. They shut up and pointed their fingers at the president, then propped up a senescent puppet.

No, that’s not stuffing the ballot boxes or [hacking voting machines](https://www.westernjournal.com/hakeem-jeffries-says-no-election-deniers-side-immediately-learns-isnt-case/) or any crazy notion like that. It’s stealing an election the good ol’ fashioned way: by massive deceit. And it was all subsidized by your tax dollars.

We’re now being told to swallow the blue pill: USAID, the Democrats tell us, is nothing more than an aid organization helping the poorest of the poor lift themselves out of destitution. EcoHealth Alliance? Wuhan Institute of Virology? What are those? Crazy talk.

Or, swallow that red pill and realize that, far from its original mission, USAID has become a taxpayer-to-NGO money transfer service that played a role — and however small or large you want to believe that role is, it’s still a role — in creating the conditions for upending the 2020 election, [among other outrages](https://www.westernjournal.com/usaid-utterly-obliterated-rubio-announces-97-staff-gone-africa-asia-share-20-staffers-total/).

Your dollars, your choice, America. I’d like to think you deserve the truth.

This article appeared originally on [The Western Journal](https://www.westernjournal.com/).

**Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm**

Some Syrian jihadist fighters deployed to Libya by Turkey have moved to Europe and other regions offering greater benefits, according to a report submitted to the UN Security Council.

Based on confidential sources, UN investigators identified at least 13 cases of Syrian fighters transferred to Italy, apparently with the assistance of Libyan military authorities who used migrant smuggling networks in Tripoli.

Turkey’s Islamist government, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has transported thousands of Syrian jihadist fighters to Libya to bolster Turkey-backed factions. The deployment has been accompanied by the significant presence of Turkish military and intelligence assets in Libya, a country plagued by civil war and instability since the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011.

Turkey provides Syrian mercenaries with monthly salaries, logistical support and the promise of Turkish citizenship for both the fighters and their families.

The vetting and selection process for these fighters was carried out by Turkey’s intelligence agency, MIT, which has been collaborating with jihadist groups in Syria since 2011 in an effort to overthrow Bashar al-Assad, a goal that was achieved in December.

“Syrian fighters backed by Türkiye remained present in several locations around Tripoli, including in the Hamza Camp, Watiyah airbase, Salah Eddine police school and Suq al-Khamis area,” said a report submitted to the UN Security Council on December 6, 2024 by the Panel of Experts on Libya.

*Excerpts from the UN Security Council report on Syrian fighters in Libya:*

The experts noted that reductions in salary and other financial benefits had led some fighters to seek opportunities in conflict zones with higher pay or to migrate to Europe, blending in with migrant smugglers.

This situation poses a significant security risk for European countries receiving these battle-hardened fighters, who are committed to jihadist ideologies, trained in the use of arms and explosives and equipped with sabotage and infiltration tactics provided by Turkish intelligence.

The highly sensitive issue was discussed during a visit by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who sought assistance from Turkish President Erdogan in January 2024. Meloni asked for assurances from Erdogan, who has been known to use the migration issue as a leverage in negotiations with the European Union, to halt the flow of fighters and migrants from Libya and other regions.

Syrian fighters were paid up to $2,000 per month, but financial difficulties faced by the Turkish government, coupled with the declining value of the Turkish lira, led to reductions in their pay. This caused resentment among the Syrian fighters, and at times, even led to demonstrations in Libya.

The UN has deemed Turkey’s deployment of Syrian fighters to Libya an act that threatens the peace, stability and security of Libya as well as one that obstructs or undermines the successful completion of the country’s political transition.


Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met with Libyan Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh in Ankara on January 15, 2025.

“The presence of foreign fighters and private military companies further destabilized the national security landscape,” the report noted.

In June 2020 UN rapporteurs sent a joint letter to the Turkish government requesting further information about its role in the recruitment, financing, transportation and deployment of Syrian fighters to Libya.

According to the allegations in the letter, Turkey effectively deployed mercenaries to the armed conflict in Libya by recruiting, transporting and paying fighters, including children, from various Syrian armed groups to participate in military operations in Tripoli in support of the Government of National Accord (GNA).

The UN letter also revealed how the Turkish government used its paramilitary contractor SADAT for those operations. “Turkish authorities allegedly contracted private military and security companies to facilitate the selection as well as the preparation of official and contractual documentation for the fighters, apparently in coordination with the Turkish security services. One of the companies cited in this context was Sadat International Defence Consultancy \[SADAT\],” the letter said.

In response, the Turkish government sent a letter in September 2020 rejecting the allegations as unfounded and accusing the UN rapporteurs of transmitting misleading and biased communications.

*The UN investigators identified Syrian fighters deployed to Libya by Turkey, confirming their presence in military camps affiliated with the Government of National Unity (GNU), which replaced the GNA in 2021.* 

Although Turkey denies its deployment of Syrian fighters to Libya, the Pentagon confirmed for the first time in July 2020 for that Turkey had sent between 3,500 and 3,800 paid Syrian fighters to Libya in the first three months of the year.

The report on counterterrorism operations in Africa by the Pentagon’s inspector general noted that Turkey paid and offered citizenship to thousands of mercenaries fighting alongside Tripoli-based militias against troops of eastern Libya-based commander Khalifa Haftar.

Turkish support for the GNA was pivotal in its success against the rebel opposition led by the Egypt-backed Haftar. Turkey supplied weapons, ammunition and drones while also organizing Syrian mercenaries and jihadists to fight against Haftar’s forces.

The Erdogan government also signed several agreements with Libya, including deals focused on military and defense cooperation as well as a maritime agreement that delineates the Turkey-Libya continental shelf and exclusive economic zone (EEZ).


On January 10, 2025, a Turkish navy frigate conducted drills off the coast of Libya.

Beyond ideological support, Erdogan openly acknowledged the strategic importance of Libya’s oil and gas resources to Turkey. During a joint news conference with former Libyan prime minister Fayez al-Sarraj in Ankara on June 4, 2020, Erdogan unveiled plans to expand cooperation, including exploration and drilling operations, to harness natural resources in Libyan territory.

Billions of dollars from Libyan treasury reserves are reportedly sitting in Turkish central bank accounts, earning no interest, while the Erdogan government transferred tons of gold from the Libyan central bank to the Turkish central bank. Additionally, smuggled Libyan oil is said to have made its way to the Turkish market.

Turkey also views its role in Libya as part of a broader strategy to assert its influence in the Mediterranean and North Africa while simultaneously countering regional rivals such as Egypt, France and the United Arab Emirates. President Erdogan considers himself a regional leader with the ability to intervene in conflicts and shape political outcomes across the Middle East and North Africa.

Over the last week, we've received a glimpse into just how much of your tax dollars the federal government is wasting on the most asinine garbage here in the United States and abroad. But wait, there's more. 

We're now spending millions to provide gender-affirming care to rodents. 

Congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who has been exposing the amount of money the government wastes on cruel animal experiments for quite some time, got right down to business on the subject on Friday during a House Oversight subcommittee hearing called ["Transgender Lab Rats and Poisoned Puppies: Oversight of Taxpayer Funded Animal Cruelty."](https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/subcommittee-on-cybersecurity-information-technology-and-government-innovation-hearing/)  What she discussed wasn't just disgusting — it sounded like something out of a horror movie. 

"Last year, the [White Coat Waste Project](https://blog.whitecoatwaste.org/) exposed more than $10 million in taxpayer funds that were spent creating transgender mice, rats and monkeys," Mace said, adding. "These DEI grants funded painful and deadly transgender experiments that forced lab animals to undergo invasive surgeries and hormone therapies at universities across the country."  

The Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration played a big role in this, naturally. Mace also said:  

> For example, the Biden-Harris Administration spent $2.5 million taxpayer dollars to study the fertility of transgender mice...$1.1 million dollars were spent to find out if female rats receiving testosterone therapies to mimic transgender men were more likely to overdose on a party drug commonly used in the LGBTQ community to induce drug-fueled 'chemsex.' Federal funds were also used to forcibly transition male monkeys to see if hormone therapy made them more susceptible to HIV.
>
> The Biden-Harris Administration was so eager to propagate their radical gender ideology across all facets of American society that they did not pause to consider that such experiments are not only cruel, but unnecessary. Monkeys cannot be infected with HIV. Yet this federally funded experiment forced them to take hormone-altering drugs to study a virus they cannot have. 

Essentially, we're cruelly experimenting with all this "gender-affirming care" stuff on animals to give doctors the okay to cruelly experiment on children, all in the name of "progress." It literally sounds like [something out of the Holocaust](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-medical-experiments).  

She went on to explain that this is a small part of a $20 billion plus a year issue that isn't just barbaric but wasteful. Mace said that "90 percent of novel drugs that are successful in animal tests fail in human clinical trials" due to biological differences. She also says that new technology is available that could easily replace this type of experimentation but federal bureaucracy blocks the use of these advancements that could literally be saving lives.

> Today’s scientific questions are so complex that we have well surpassed a time where it is useful or appropriate to rely on inhumane animal experiments to answer them. Recently developed technological tools can more accurately model human biology and identify solutions that are more useful for human patients. But it is often the federal bureaucracy that prevents these new technologies from being used.
>
> Instead of adequately investing in these innovative alternatives, the Federal government has continued to funnel taxpayer dollars towards cruel animal experiments.
>
> Today, most of the twenty-seven NIH institutes and centers conduct or support animal testing—as does the Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the Department of Defense, and countless agencies.

Mace cites information from [White Coat Waste](https://www.whitecoatwaste.org/), which is a wonderful organization. It describes itself as a "nonprofit, taxpayer watchdog uniting liberty-lovers and animal-lovers," and over the years, it's uncovered some of the most egregious ways the U.S. government is spending your money, from the fact that U.S. tax dollars were [funding the Wuhan lab](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/white-coat-waste-anthony-fauci-nih-ecohealth-alliance-lab?utm_campaign=later-linkinbio-whitecoatwaste&utm_content=later-26752336&utm_medium=social&utm_source=linkin.bio) that led to the COVID-19 pandemic to shining a light on — and shutting down — Anthony Fauci's cruel [experimentations on beagle puppies](https://blog.whitecoatwaste.org/2022/07/15/what-theyre-saying-media-and-congress-celebrate-wcws-beaglegate-victory/). In fact, Mace and White Coast Waste brought live Beagles who survived Fauci's house of horrors to the hearing to back up her point. 

Back in January, White Coat Waste published a [four-point plan](https://blog.whitecoatwaste.org/2025/01/13/trump-2-0-wcws-4-point-100-day-plan-to-save-20-billion-millions-of-animals/) laying out how the Donald Trump Administration and DOGE can easily end these cruel experiments, save millions of animals, and save billions of taxpayer dollars. 

During his first term, the Trump administration took big steps in this direction, and Trump himself even personally cut funding to some of these labs. With any luck, he'll continue down that path during this second term. As the organization points out, many of his closest political allies, including some of his own children, are on board and support this effort.

Katherine Long, a *Wall Street Journal* reporter who apparently [took down](https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/02/06/doge-staffer-resigns-after-past-racist-posts-discovered-i-was-racist-before-it-was-cool/) a 25-year-old member of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with an article on his offensive past comments, previously worked for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) — which the Trump administration has slashed considerably, angering elites in Washington, D.C.

“The USAID got hit hard and fast, and now their proxies are striking back at the Trump White House,” a source familiar with DOGE told Breitbart News. “It’s time to cut the head off the snake. We need separation of media and state.”

Vice President JD Vance weighed in on the controversy Friday morning, suggesting “stupid social media activity” should not “ruin a kid’s life.”

“The WSJ Editorial Board gets everything wrong about Trump,” a person close to the Trump transition, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of retribution, told Breitbart News. “Now, the WSJ is employing FEDS who worked for USAID to report on USAID. Conflict much?”

“We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever. So I say bring him back,” Vance wrote on X. “If he’s a bad dude or a terrible member of the team, fire him for that.”

President Donald Trump agreed with Vance’s assessment when asked several hours later. “I’m with the Vice President,” he told Fox’s Peter Doocy.

DOGE is currently purging USAID for waste, fraud, and abuse –freezing foreign aid and reportedly slashing its staff from over 10,000 employees to under 300. Its financial audit found the agency spent millions of taxpayer funds on frivolous and fringe projects, including [$1.5 million](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14344255/trump-millions-dei-foreign-aid-programs-funding.html) to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities,”[$2.5 million](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14344255/trump-millions-dei-foreign-aid-programs-funding.html) for electric vehicles for Vietnam, [$2 million](https://dailycaller.com/2024/09/19/feds-dump-millions-in-one-latin-american-country-to-fund-sex-changes-lgbt-activism/) for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala, and [$6 million](https://2017-2020.usaid.gov/egypt/press-releases/dec-16-2019-united-states-commits-6-million-bilateral-assistance-egypt) to fund tourism in Egypt.

Long, who displays “she/her” [pronouns](https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherine-long-6a7227118/details/experience/) on a LinkedIn profile, targeted DOGE after it began the audit of USAID. According to that LinkedIn profile, she previously [worked](https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherine-long-6a7227118/details/experience/) for USAID as an intern in 2016 after a similar stint at the State Department. In a recent interview with the PR firm Fearey, Long said her job at USAID was “managing USAID projects in Central Asia.”

“I came to the Seattle Times straight out of Columbia Journalism School’s investigative reporting master’s program,” she [said](https://fearey.agency/meet-the-media-katherine-long-2/). “Before matriculating at Columbia, I’d been working for the federal government, managing USAID projects in Central Asia.”

In Afghanistan, USAID spent hundreds of millions of dollars to [fund](https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2018/06/21/feds-u-s-taxpayer-funds-helping-irrigate-fertilize-afghan-opium-funding-taliban/) “irrigation canals, farming equipment, and even fertilizer used to support the unprecedented poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan,” benefiting the [Taliban](https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2015/11/02/afghanistan-usaid-stability-programs-increased-support-taliban/), Breitbart News previously reported.

DOGE has been successful in defunding taxpayer-funded media throughout the globe by freezing USAID’s foreign aid. Trump put a 90-day hold and subsequently [cut $268 million](https://rsf.org/en/usa-trump-s-foreign-aid-freeze-throws-journalism-around-world-chaos) from media outlets in more than 30 countries, according to a Reporters Without Borders review of the agency’s 2025 foreign aid budget.

USAID’s 2023 fact sheet, [taken offline](https://rsf.org/en/usa-trump-s-foreign-aid-freeze-throws-journalism-around-world-chaos) due to the hold, boasted that the agency supported 6,200 journalists, 707 news outlets, and 279 media-sector civil society organizations, the Columbia Journalism Review [reported](https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/usaid-and-the-media-in-a-time-of-monsters.php).

“USAID IS DRIVING THE RADICAL LEFT CRAZY, AND THERE IS NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT,”  President Donald Trump [posted](https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/113963085497636545) on Truth Social Friday. “THE WAY IN WHICH THE MONEY HAS BEEN SPENT, SO MUCH OF IT FRAUDULENTLY, IS TOTALLY UNEXPLAINABLE. THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!”

*Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on* [*“X”*](https://twitter.com/WendellHusebo?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) *@WendellHusebø or on* [*Truth Social*](https://truthsocial.com/@WendellHusebo) *@WendellHusebo.*

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department has formally told Congress that it plans to sell more than $7 billion in weapons to Israel, including thousands of bombs and missiles, just two days after President Donald Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.

The massive arms sale comes as a fragile ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas holds, even as Trump continues to tout his widely criticized proposal to move all Palestinians from Gaza and redevelop it as an international travel destination.

[**WATCH:** Displaced Gazans return to face shattered homeland and uncertain future](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/displaced-gazans-return-to-face-shattered-homeland-and-uncertain-future)

The sale is another step in Trump’s effort to bolster Israel’s weapons stocks. In late January, soon after he took office, he lifted the hold on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. The Biden administration had paused a shipment of the bombs over concerns about civilian casualties, particularly during an assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

Trump told reporters he released them to Israel “because they bought them.”

According to the State Department, two separate sales were sent to Congress on Friday. One is for $6.75 billion in an array of munitions, guidance kits and other related equipment. It includes 166 small-diameter bombs, 2,800 500-pound bombs, and thousands of guidance kits, fuses and other bomb components and support equipment. Those deliveries would begin this year.

The other arms package is for 3,000 Hellfire missiles and related equipment for an estimated cost of $660 million. Deliveries of the missiles are expected to begin in 2028 and their use will require additional training by the U.S. military.

Biden administration officials informally notified Congress about the sale last month. Officials at the time said some of the arms in the package could be sent from current U.S. stocks but the majority would take a year or several years to deliver.

The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee had raised concerns about the sale in January.

“We continue engagement with the administration on a number of questions and concerns,” a spokesman for Rep. Gregory Meeks told The Associated Press earlier this week. Its unclear if those issues had been resolved by the time the Trump administration provided formal notification Friday.

It is standard practice for the State Department to first notify the top four lawmakers on the foreign relations committees in the House and Senate if the price tag exceeds a certain amount before providing Congress with a formal notice. If Meeks or any of the other three lawmakers on the relevant committees were to object to a sale, traditionally the State Department would hold back on making a formal notice until the issues that member raised were resolved.

The announcement comes at a particularly sensitive time, but underscores Trump’s staunch support for Israel. He and Netanyahu held talks Tuesday at the White House, where the two leaders discussed the fragile ceasefire and hostage deal in the Israeli-Hamas conflict and shared concerns about Iran.

Allies have expressed opposition to Trump’s Gaza resettlement plan and expressed worries it could jeopardize the ceasefire deal.

But Trump insisted Friday that it was a simple “real estate transaction,” and that the U.S. is in “no rush to do anything.” He has suggested resettlement of Gaza’s residents could be permanent — something even top members of his own administration have refuted.

Hamas identified three more Israeli hostages it plans to free as part of the ceasefire agreement, a sign the deal was moving forward despite the ongoing calls by the U.S. and Israel to relocate Gaza’s population after the war.

The three men, captured by Hamas during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, are set to be freed Saturday, in the fifth exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel.

Israeli forces have withdrawn from most of Gaza, as specified by the ceasefire agreement, but remain in border areas.

*Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.*

For months, daring bands of thieves linked to South American gangs have been making off with piles of jewelry and cash from the homes of the biggest superstars in sports, targeting the likes of the NFL’s Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce.

Sophisticated pillagers have deployed drones and signal jamming devices, sometimes posing as delivery drivers or maintenance workers, to gain access to gated neighborhoods and thwart home security systems, according to warnings issued by the NFL and [NBA](https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/national-basketball-association/).

But in recent weeks, investigators across the U.S. have made a handful of arrests connected to at least one of the high-profile heists and discovered stolen sports memorabilia, jewelry and art stuffed into storage units in New Jersey.

A group of Chilean men stopped in January while driving in Ohio were charged Monday with stealing nearly $300,000 worth of designer luggage, watches and jewelry from Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow’s house. Photos showed one suspect wearing a sparkly necklace with Burrow’s jersey number that he had worn during interviews, according to a federal complaint unsealed Wednesday.

“These individuals seem to be the alleged tip of the iceberg,” said Kenneth Parker, the U.S. Attorney in southern Ohio, who believes the men are working with South American theft rings that for years have been ransacking opulent homes from coast to coast.

Some luxury watches and jewelry stolen from homes across the country - not just those belonging to athletes - ended up being sold at a pawnshop in Manhattan’s Diamond District and stashed away in nearby storage units, federal authorities said in court documents released Tuesday that accuse two men of fencing the items.

Whether the entire string of burglaries targeting athletes are connected to the same crews from South America or if those groups are working together isn’t clear. Federal authorities leading the investigations have been tight-lipped since the FBI warned in December that crime organizations were preying on professional athletes.

Investigators say international crime rings have looted high-end houses for years, but now they’re going after some of the biggest names in the NFL, [NBA](https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/national-basketball-association/) and NHL.

Thieves broke into the homes of Kansas City Chiefs teammates Mahomes and Kelce within days of each other in October around the time they played New Orleans and Kelce’s superstar girlfriend Taylor Swift watched the game from the stands.

Mahomes and Kelce on Sunday will try to lead the Chiefs to a record three straight Super Bowl titles.

Jewelry valued at about $30,000 was stolen from [NBA](https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/national-basketball-association/) All-Star Luka Doncic’s home in Dallas in December. Pittsburgh Penguins star Evgeni Malkin reported a home invasion in January that happened while his team was playing at home.

Law enforcement officials warned sports leagues last fall that thieves had been striking on game days when they knew the players would not be home, often smashing through rear windows.

Some of the groups scoped out their targets by posing as home delivery drivers or joggers in secluded neighborhoods.

Burrow’s home in Ohio, which sits on a gated street tucked along a wooded area, was broken into while he was in Dallas for a Monday Night Football game in December. The men charged in the invasion were found weeks later traveling with a Husky glass-breaking tool that one of them bought at [Home Depot](https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/home-depot/), an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit.

Players have been advised to not only beef up their home security but also avoid posting their whereabouts on social media.

The theft rings are focused on cash and items that can be resold on the black market, such as jewelry, watches and luxury bags, according to an [NBA](https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/national-basketball-association/) warning based on information from the FBI.

The two men indicted this week in New York City were accused of buying stolen watches, jewelry and other expensive items from a variety of burglary crews and reselling them at their pawnshop in Manhattan since 2020.

Court documents said the pair were tied to five separate burglary crews and linked one of the two suspects to the men accused of breaking into the residence of a “high-profile athlete in Ohio” on the same day that Burrow’s home was hit.

A judge on Friday denied bail for the pawnshop owners, saying it would be “ironic” to release them just before the Super Bowl.

“This is one Super Bowl Defendants will have to watch from the sidelines,” U.S. District Court Judge William Kuntz wrote in his decision. “They will not be players this weekend.”

Copyright © 2025 The Washington Times, LLC.

President Trump vows to [investigate](https://calmatters.org/commentary/2025/02/high-speed-rail-trump-train/) California’s bullet train boondoggle to nowhere in all that spare time he must have.

###### President Trump [said on Tuesday](https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/high-speed-rail-trump-20148959.php) that he would personally investigate the high-speed train sucking up billions of dollars.

“The train that’s being built between Los Angeles and San Francisco is the worst-managed project I think I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen some of the worst,” Trump told reporters, asserting that the project is “billions and billions” of dollars over budget.

The Perugia Public Prosecutor's Office will begin work on Monday on a complaint lodged by the DIS department that coordinates Italy's intelligence agencies against the Rome Public Prosecutor's Office headed by Francesco Lo Voi over the leaking of a confidential report, sources said on Saturday.
    The case regards the publication by daily newspaper Domani of information about Premier Giorgia Meloni's Chief of Staff Gaetano Caputi coming from a classified document by the Aisi intelligence agency.
    It is alleged that Lo Voi's office received the document and failed to take the necessary measures to prevent it from being leaked.
    Tension was already high between the government and Lo Voi's office after it put Meloni and some other ministers in the register of people being probed over the case of Osama Almasri Najim, a Libyan judicial police chief released by Italy last month days after being detained in Turin on an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant.
    The non-magistrate members of the judiciary's self-governing body, the CSM, nominated by the ruling centre-right coalition, meanwhile, have requested that transfer and disciplinary procedures be opened against Lo Voi over the leak.
    They said relations between Lo Voi and the intelligence agencies are now compromised.

The same CSM members had made a similar request in relation to the Almasri case.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA

## Introduction

The Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı (MIT), or National Intelligence Organization of Turkiye, stands as one of the most pivotal intelligence agencies in the Middle East. Known for its broad scope of operations and historical significance in shaping regional geopolitics, MIT has evolved from a Cold War-era institution into a modern, tech-driven intelligence agency. This article delves into MIT’s structure, symbolism, and key operations. The future trajectory offers an in-depth analysis of its role within Turkiye’s national security framework.

Images Sourced From: [Daily Sabah](https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/war-on-terror/turkish-intelligence-eliminates-top-pkk-operative-in-iraq?gallery_image=undefined#big), [MIT](https://www.mit.gov.tr/en/baskan.html),

## 1 Motto, Symbols, Patches and/or History

### 1.1 Motto

‘’*We firmly believe that, in the eyes of our nation, we are the shadow of the crescent and star in our flag that will fly in the skies forever. We are the prayers in silently murmuring lips of our mothers. We are the ones who never blink an eye so that our loved ones and the entire nation of 85 million people can sleep in peace. We are “the last fiery hearth ablaze” in our country that will never go out. We are the National Intelligence Organization.’’* \[[source](https://www.mit.gov.tr/en/hakkimizda.html)\]

### 1.2 Symbols / Patches


MIT’s emblem

Unlike military units, MIT personnel do not typically wear patches due to their covert nature. However, ceremonial uniforms and official insignia occasionally display the national flag alongside MIT’s emblem.

### 1.3 History

The origins of Turkish intelligence trace back to the early administrative structures of the Ottoman Empire in 1299, with the *divan-i hümayun kalemi* (Imperial Chancery) responsible for intelligence gathering on foreign powers and internal threats. Reforms under Sultan Abdulhamid II led to the creation of the Yıldız Organization (1880–1908), a precursor to modern intelligence. During World War I, the *Teşkilât-ı Mahsûsa* (Special Organization) played a crucial role in intelligence and special operations. Following the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk institutionalized intelligence operations with the creation of the *Millî Emniyet Hizmeti Riyâseti* (MAH) in 1926, focusing on domestic security. 

During World War II, intelligence activities expanded as Turkey navigated a delicate neutrality while countering espionage efforts. The Cold War years saw a significant expansion of intelligence capabilities, particularly after NATO accession in 1952, which provided new resources and training. In 1965, the MAH evolved into the National Intelligence Organization (*Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı* or MİT). It was focusing on both domestic and foreign intelligence. Throughout the Cold War, MİT conducted clandestine operations, notably in Cyprus, supporting Turkish Cypriot paramilitary groups during the conflict with Greece. These operations highlighted MİT’s growing regional role and strategic use of covert action. 

By the end of the Cold War, MİT adapted to new global dynamics, shifting its focus to emerging threats. The 1999 rendition of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan from Nairobi demonstrated MİT’s capabilities in transnational operations. The post-9/11 era brought further changes, as Turkey aligned with global counter-terrorism initiatives. While addressing regional instability and asymmetric threats, solidifying MİT’s pivotal role in both domestic and international security. \[[source](https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/turkish-intelligence-in-the-new-era-transformation-and-expansion-of-clandestine-operations-in-turkish-foreign-policy), [source](https://www.amazon.com/Spies-Sultan-Ottoman-Intelligence-Georgetown/dp/1647124417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1L8C0UZMD252L&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.nYpk-gq1D-6BUREJvCBSsTiQOoutUIsRKnV-oK3_kE7uNOp5WbKLtDKFyG66YuWxsriFnBLuL1EF4Vb5FO26vUpZxX6PxZkLaW2ZN9XcK34Yi3lxEke7oJ6bS1EbneaQ2sAW5Jy6I5MHfq8NBLv2k8tT2Ry61BO92xaqHqSWnqeK9LWX7gBBjk2Rpe99BuRacTDhHpIvoWHzW_kv7kAyQ--xCYnPOE23emJgRlO7YEo.6m2_Nj0rZixbIGvvXQ9hsG2PyvnwiueDGcTRvt23-C4&dib_tag=se&keywords=sultan%27s+spies&qid=1737305834&sprefix=sultan%27s+spie%2Caps%2C249&sr=8-1)\]


Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

## 2 Organisation

MIT operates directly under the Office of the President of Turkiye. Its director reports to the President, underscoring its strategic importance in national security and policy-making. \[[source](https://www.mit.gov.tr/en/sayfa_faaliyetler_9.html?utm)\]

### 2.1 Place in broader government structure

The organization coordinates closely with the National Security Council (MGK), ensuring alignment with Turkiye’s overall strategic objectives. Additionally, MIT works in tandem with the Turkish Armed Forces, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Ministry of Interior on various intelligence and counter-terrorism missions. As a government agency, MIT receives its funding through the national budget, approved by the Turkish Grand National Assembly. \[[source](https://www.mgk.gov.tr/en/index.php/national-security-council/about-the-national-security-council)\]

#### 2.1.1 MIT’s Counterterrorism Operations

MIT’s cross-border operations have significantly degraded the operational capabilities of groups like PKK/KCK, through the use of advanced UAV and A-UAV technology. *(The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its umbrella organization, the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), are Kurdish militant and political groups that have been engaged in a long-standing conflict with the Turkish state, advocating for Kurdish autonomy and rights)* These efforts highlight MIT’s pivotal role in maintaining national security and addressing transnational threats. \[[source](https://www.mit.gov.tr/en/duyuru_teror-ve-pkkkck-ile-mucadelede-proaktif-yaklasimimiz_28.html), [source](https://www.mfa.gov.tr/pkk.en.mfa), [source](https://www.crisisgroup.org/content/turkiyes-pkk-conflict-visual-explainer)\]

#### 2.1.2 MIT’s Cooperation with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)

Additionally, former MIT Director Hakan Fidann, in an interview on 20 December 2024, admitted that the cooperation with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a UN-designated terrorist group in Syria, was an intelligence-sharing effort aimed at combating ISIS. This admission highlighted violations of international laws. By law, Turkish intelligence can engage with terrorist groups for activities such as infiltration, intelligence gathering, and negotiation. However, the law strictly prohibits it from facilitating these groups’ operations or assisting in any terrorist activities.

Under President Erdogan’s administration, MIT transported arms and fighters to Syria, including jihadist groups. In 2014, the government abruptly halted investigations into these activities after dismissing the prosecutors and officials involved. Additionally, authorities further suppressed al-Qaeda-related inquiries in Turkey, raising significant concerns about the government’s policies and adherence to anti-terrorism laws.  In the early years of the Syrian civil war, MIT reportedly established a covert agreement with HTS, under which the group agreed not to conduct attacks on Turkish soil in exchange for logistical support, weapons, and funding.

Despite its official designation as a terrorist organization, Turkish authorities allowed HTS to operate within the country, raising funds, recruiting fighters, and procuring supplies. Turkish law enforcement agencies conducted multiple operations against HTS networks. But these actions were largely superficial, with many detained individuals released shortly after. Furthermore, Turkish intelligence allegedly shielded HTS from prosecution, even in high-profile cases such as the assassination of Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov in 2016, where links to the group were uncovered but not pursued. Reports suggest that MIT continued its cooperation with HTS leadership, including its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, using the group as a proxy to advance Turkish strategic interests in Syria. \[[source](https://www.mfa.gov.tr/interview-of-he-hakan-fidan--minister-of-foreign-affairs--france-24-english--20-december-2024.en.mfa), [source](https://nordicmonitor.com/2025/01/syrias-new-intelligence-chief-khattab-serves-as-liaison-to-turkeys-spy-agency-mit/), [source](https://nordicmonitor.com/2025/01/turkish-intelligence-operative-admits-arms-smuggling-to-jihadists-in-syria-reveals-ties-to-jolanis-hts/), [source](https://www.meforum.org/mef-online/new-syrian-spy-chief-has-long-history-with-turkish-intelligence-agency), [source](https://nordicmonitor.com/2025/01/the-secret-turkish-intelligence-deal-with-hayat-tahrir-al-sham-included-no-attacks-in-turkey/), [source](https://news.usni.org/2016/12/20/analysis-killing-russian-ambassador-will-ratchet-black-sea-tensions)\]

### 2.2 Financing

As a government agency, MIT receives its funding through the national budget, approved by the Turkish Grand National Assembly. Exact figures are classified, but it is known that MIT has seen significant budget increases in recent years. With main purpose to bolster its technological capabilities and overseas operations. According to press reports, MIT’s 2024 budget was an estimated $277.2 million USD, a 125.7% increase from its 2023 budget of $626.4 million USD. \[[source](https://nordicmonitor.com/2023/12/turkeys-intelligence-agency-mit-secures-a-whopping-126-percent-budget-increase-for-2024/?utm_source)\]

### 2.3 MIT’s Structure

The MİT is structured to leverage Türkiye’s advancements in high-technology products developed over the last decade. The organization is divided into specialised divisions focusing on key intelligence areas such as **counter-terrorism, foreign espionage, electronic intelligence (ELINT), and signal intelligence (SIGINT).** \[[source](https://www.insightturkey.com/articles/the-operational-capacity-of-turkish-intelligence-within-the-scope-of-use-of-high-technology-products)\]

MİT’s operational capacity has been significantly bolstered by the integration of armed and unarmed **Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs),** which are deployed for intelligence gathering and operational planning in Türkiye, Syria, and Iraq. These UAVs provide instant intelligence on terrorist targets and facilitate real-time decision-making for political leaders. \[[source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Organization?#Equipment)\]

As of 2014, MİT employed approximately 8,000 personnel. However, the current number is not publicly disclosed due to security reasons. It is understood that the organization has expanded over the years to address evolving security challenges

Another critical component of MİT’s structure is its technical intelligence division. This saw a major boost with the commissioning of **the Intelligence, Test, and Training ship, TCG Ufuk,** Türkiye’s first national intelligence ship. Since its operational deployment in January 2022, TCG Ufuk has enhanced MİT’s technical intelligence capabilities. Providing maritime surveillance and data collection support. MİT operates primarily from its headquarters in **Ankara,** known as “KALE (FORTRESS)”. With also additional regional offices across Türkiye and an international presence to support intelligence operations. While the exact number of personnel remains classified, it is estimated that MİT employs thousands of operatives across multiple divisions to address evolving security challenges.


The campus is called “FORTRESS”. This name wasn’t picked at random; certain specifications of the building, as well as cultural and symbolic elements, were taken into consideration when naming the campus. This facility is located in Bağlıca, Ankara and was officially opened on 6 January 2020. \[[source](https://www.mit.gov.tr/en/kale.html)\]

### 2.4 Key Figures

#### **İbrahim Kalın** (2023 – Current Director, previously National Security Advisor)

#### Background and Education

İbrahim Kalın, born in 1971 in Istanbul, is a historian and academic who has held several high-profile positions in Turkish government and academia. He earned his master’s degree from the International Islamic University Malaysia and a doctorate from George Washington University in 2002. He later became a professor at İbn Haldun University in 2020 and has lectured at prestigious institutions such as Georgetown, Bilkent, and İbn Haldun Universities.

#### Academic and Government Roles

Kalın founded and chaired the SETA Foundation in 2005 and has contributed extensively to literature in areas including Turkish foreign policy, politics, philosophy, and history. His works have been published internationally and translated into multiple languages.

In addition to his academic career, Kalın has held key government roles since 2009, serving as Chief Foreign Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister, Deputy Secretary General at the Presidential Office, and Presidential Spokesperson from 2014 until his appointment as Director of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) in June 2023. He is fluent in English, Arabic, Farsi, and French. \[[source](https://www.mit.gov.tr/en/baskan.html)\]

#### **Strategic Initiatives and Influence**

In January 2024 he launched the [National Intelligence Academy](https://greydynamics.com/turkiyes-new-national-intelligence-academy/). He said the academy’s mission aims to produce concepts in intelligence and create new literature.\[source, [source](https://greydynamics.com/turkiyes-new-national-intelligence-academy/)\]

Kalın seems to have as a priority on his agenda the Syrian government and its future direction following the collapse of the Assad regime. Meanwhile, along with a delegation, in December 2024 he arrived in Damascus and performed prayers at the historic Umayyad Mosque. Kalın is also scheduled to hold key meetings with HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani and interim Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir to discuss the future of Syria. \[[source](https://www.anews.com.tr/middle-east/2024/12/12/mit-chief-kalin-in-syrian-capital-damascus-for-critical-meetings-with-new-administration)\]


*Ibrahim Kalin \[[source](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qMoGw9JkWEVGoi73YGvXSxkItZJURmb9T-isLSgb1_g/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.x58biisg6yfd)\]*

#### **Hakan Fidan** (Former Director, 2010-2023, currently Minister of Foreign Affairs) 

#### **Background and Education**

Hakan Fidan is a graduate of the Army Forces Signal Corps and Army Forces Language School. He pursued his academic studies while serving in the Turkish Armed Forces. Earning an undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland and later completing his master’s and doctorate in International Relations at Bilkent University. Following his military service, he lectured at Bilkent and Hacettepe Universities. Fidan held several critical roles in foreign policy and security, including Director of TİKA. Furthermore, Deputy Undersecretary for Foreign Policy and Security, and Special Representative of both the Prime Minister and the President. He also served as the Director of the MİT. President Erdoğan appointed him as Turkey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs after the presidential elections on May 28, 2023.\[[source](https://www.mit.gov.tr/en/lider_hakan-fidan_44.html)\]

#### **Reforms and Controversies**

Following the failed coup attempt in 2016, critics blamed Fidan for his organization’s failure to anticipate the putsch. He restructured MİT, separating internal and external intelligence functions, and enhancing its operational efficiency in counterterrorism efforts in Syria and Iraq. Under his leadership, MİT expanded its humanitarian and technological intelligence capabilities, increasing its international influence and effectiveness in combating terrorism. \[[source](https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/erdogans-spymaster-keeper-secrets-post-coup-hanger), [source](https://medium.com/centre-for-international-and-defence-policy/who-is-behind-turkeys-failed-military-coup-b297cfed04a2), [source](https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/columns/hakan-fidan-the-chief-diplomat-of-turkiye)\]

#### **Influence on Foreign Policy**

Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan is transforming Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs by appointing more senior officials with backgrounds in the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and political circles. This shift is reshaping the ministry’s role, aligning it more with intelligence and security functions rather than traditional diplomacy. Currently, nearly half of the ministry’s general directorates are led by individuals with MIT backgrounds. This reflects a prioritization of an intelligence-driven approach.\[[source](https://www.institude.org/opinion/the-intelligence-communitys-growing-hold-on-turkeys-foreign-ministry)\]


*Hakan Fidan \[[source](https://www.mit.gov.tr/en/lider_hakan-fidan_44.html)\]*

### 2.5 Recruitment

MIT recruits through a rigorous process involving academic institutions, military academies, and specialised recruitment events. Recently, MIT has started targeting young talent by placing anonymous career posters at top universities. These posters feature QR codes leading to MIT’s career page, offering positions like intelligence specialist, engineer, language expert, and UAV operator. \[[source](https://nordicmonitor.com/2024/05/turkish-intelligence-recruits-at-universities-accessing-private-information-of-students/), [source](https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/turkish-intel-agency-enjoys-popularity-among-young-job-seekers/news)\]

According to unofficial sources, MIT has recruited operatives from diaspora communities in Europe using nongovernmental organisations to identify and vet candidates. These operatives have reportedly been placed in key foreign agencies dealing with Turkish and Muslim communities to strengthen recruitment channels. \[[source](https://nordicmonitor.com/2020/09/turkish-intelligence-runs-covert-recruitment-programs-in-diaspora-in-europe/)\]

## 3 Tactical-Operational Information – National Intelligence Academy

Since the 1950s, when Turkey’s strategic role became essential on NATO’s Eastern Flank, MİT has maintained strong relations with the CIA. However, MİT has struggled to establish an effective and stable network of contacts and collaborations with European intelligence services. In contrast, it has traditionally enjoyed good relations with Russian agencies and, after 1992, Azerbaijan, as well as intelligence services in Singapore and the broader Middle East. \[[source](https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2020/03/03/the-turkish-intelligence/)\]

Significant transformations in its training and operational methodologies, particularly with the 2024 establishment of the [National Intelligence Academy (NIA)](https://greydynamics.com/turkiyes-new-national-intelligence-academy/). Launched under the leadership of MİT President İbrahim Kalın, the NIA aims to generate scientific knowledge in intelligence and security. Through educational and research activities. It offers master’s and doctoral programs that are open to graduates from relevant undergraduate programs. Particularly, focusing on areas such as intelligence, security, strategy, regional studies, cybersecurity, cryptology, satellite space systems, artificial intelligence, and data analytics. NIA curriculum reflects a strategic blend of training methods influenced by Western intelligence practices. Including a shift towards integrating advanced technology in intelligence operations. \[[source](https://www.mit.gov.tr/en/akademi.html), [source](https://greydynamics.com/turkiyes-new-national-intelligence-academy/)\]

## 4 The Future

Under İbrahim Kalın’s leadership, MİT is poised to continue its focus on clandestine operations. Which are a hallmark of Turkey’s assertive foreign policy under President Erdoğan. Kalın, a long-time confidant of Erdoğan and former presidential spokesperson, brings strategic vision to MİT, emphasizing the importance of intelligence in shaping national security and foreign policy. In his address during MİT’s 97th anniversary, Kalın highlighted the agency’s role in navigating an era of great uncertainty, underscoring the need for strategic foresight and adaptability in intelligence operations. \[[source](https://www.mit.gov.tr/en/duyuru_milli-istihbarat-teskilati-baskani-sn-ibrahim-kalinin-mitin-97-kurulus-yil-donumu-konusmasi_25.html), [source](https://yetkinreport.com/en/2024/01/12/inside-president-erdogans-mit-speech-turkiyes-5-legged-security-doctrine/), [source](https://www.setav.org/en/opinion/codes-of-messages-on-97th-anniversary-of-mits-establishment)\]

## 5 Conclusion

MİT has evolved into a key player in the country’s national security and foreign policy framework, adapting to shifting geopolitical realities and emerging threats. Under the leadership of İbrahim Kalın, MİT continues to emphasize intelligence-driven strategies, leveraging cutting-edge technology and a growing presence in regional and international operations. The agency’s role in counterterrorism efforts, foreign espionage, and strategic diplomacy underscores its importance in safeguarding Turkey’s national interests. However, the increasing overlap between intelligence and diplomacy raises concerns about the future balance of power within Turkey’s institutional landscape. Also, its relationship with HTS has now positioned MIT in a delicate balancing act with the new Syrian intelligence team. As one of the most significant intelligence agencies in the region, MIT’s advanced operations, technological capabilities, and strategic focus place it at the forefront of efforts to address complex security challenges.


**New Delhi:**

Former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant authorised the controversial Hannibal Directive during the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023. In an interview with Israel's Channel 12 Gallant confirmed giving the order in certain areas. “I think that, tactically, in some places, it was given, and in other places, it was not given, and that is a problem,” he said.

This military protocol allows the use of force – even at the risk of killing hostages – to prevent captives from falling into enemy hands. The policy has been highly controversial and is believed to have been used unofficially in multiple conflicts. The directive prioritises preventing enemy leverage over safeguarding soldiers' lives.

Israel has accused Hamas of killing approximately 1,100 Israeli soldiers and civilians during the attack 16 months ago. But Gallant's admission points out the Israeli military's actions might have also killed some Israeli hostages and civilians.

During the attack, the Israeli army deployed helicopters, drones, and tanks on its territory, targeting Hamas fighters but also striking Israelis who were being taken captive. Reports from the [United Nations](https://www.un.org/unispal/document/coi-report-a-hrc-56-26-27may24/) indicate that Israeli attack helicopters fired on civilians at the Nova music festival, near the Re'im military base, leading to further casualties.

Gallant also revealed that he had pushed for a major attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon on October 11, 2023, just days after Hamas invaded from Gaza. He called the government's failure to act “Israel's greatest missed security opportunity.” He claimed Israeli forces had intelligence on a Hezbollah meeting, where they could have targeted top leaders, including Hassan Nasrallah and Iranian officials.

He argued that an early strike would have destroyed “90 per cent or more” of Hezbollah's missile stockpile. He also said that Israel's "beeper operation," which marked the later offensive against Hezbollah, was ready much earlier and could have been executed alongside the proposed strikes in October 2023.

The ex-defence minister accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet of delaying a potential ceasefire deal with Hamas. He claimed that a nearly identical agreement was on the table in April 2024, which could have secured the release of more hostages while minimising the number of Palestinian prisoners freed.

“I think that the Israeli government did not do everything it could have to return the hostages,” he said. Many of the 251 Israeli captives taken by Hamas were later killed by Israeli airstrikes and friendly fire.

The October 7 attack led to the resignation of Israel's top general, Herzi Halevi, in January. He cited a “terrible failure” in security and intelligence as the reason for stepping down. Since then, Israel's continuous military onslaught in Gaza has killed at least 47,000 Palestinians, with some estimates suggesting a toll exceeding 2 lakh.

On February 8, three Israeli hostages were released; in exchange, 183 Palestinian prisoners and detainees are to be released later today, according to Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades. Hamas accused Israel of violating the ceasefire by delaying humanitarian aid. 

Comments

So far, 21 Israeli and five Thai hostages have been freed, along with hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, in the first phase of the agreement.


The National Institutes of Health is putting a 15-percent ceiling on what research institutions can charge the government for some costs.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Feb. 7 [decreased](https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-068.html) the maximum indirect cost rate research institutions can charge the government to 15 percent. Indirect costs include utilities, facility, personnel, and service contracts.

The NIH predicted the change will save more than $4 billion a year.

In 2024, $9 billion of the $35 billion granted for research “was used for administrative overhead, what is known as ‘indirect costs,’” the agency said in a post on social media platform X on Feb. 7.

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“The average indirect cost rate reported by NIH has averaged between 27 percent and 28 percent over time. And many organizations are much higher—charging indirect rates of over 50 percent and in some cases over 60 percent,” the NIH stated in its announcement.

The White House said in a statement on Feb. 8 that the new NIH policy is in line with what research institutions receive from private foundations.

The agency said “many of the nation’s largest funders of research—such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—have a maximum indirect rate of 15 percent.”

Related Stories

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[](https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/state-department-approves-7-billion-plus-arms-sale-to-israel-notifies-congress-5806430?ea_src=author_manual&ea_med=related_stories)

Meanwhile, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced that the Department of Health and Human Services canceled 62 contracts worth a total of $182 million.

One of the terminated contracts was a $168,000 contract for an Anthony Fauci exhibit at the NIH Museum.

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“These contracts were entirely for administrative expenses – none touched any healthcare programs,” DOGE, the new cost-cutting agency headed by Elon Musk, [stated](https://x.com/doge/status/1887972340446683576?s=46) in a social media post on Feb. 7.

The NIH has not returned a request for comment.

The changes have raised concerns by some in academia.

Jeffrey Flier, a Harvard University professor, [wrote](https://x.com/jflier/status/1888028499484516363?s=46) on X that cutting NIH grant indirect funding would cause chaos and would harm biomedical research in hospitals, schools, and institutes around the country.

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Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) [called](https://x.com/pattymurray/status/1888044763590341117?s=46) the move illegal.

“Trump’s proposal is ILLEGAL & amounts to an indiscriminate funding cut for research centers of all sizes, NOT just Ivies,”she [said](https://www.murray.senate.gov/senator-murray-slams-indirect-cost-rate-for-nih-as-massive-indiscriminate-cut-setting-back-progress-on-lifesaving-research/) in a statement on X. “It will mean shuttering labs across the country, layoffs in red & blue states, & derailing lifesaving research on everything from cancer to opioid addiction.”

Some lawmakers welcomed the cuts.

“Eliminating excessive ‘indirect costs’ will save the American taxpayer tens of billions of dollars in overhead expenses,” Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) [wrote](https://x.com/repandyharrismd/status/1888296478893826379?s=46) on X.

Harris, who is also a physician, said the U.S. government pays significantly more than nonprofits. He also disputed claims that the cuts would eliminate research.

“The Trump administration did not cut funding for biomedical research,” Harris said. “Funding excessive ‘indirect costs’ is not the same as funding the research itself.”

Welcome to SpyWeek, our weekly newsletter, where we look at news from the intersection of intelligence, foreign policy, and military operations.


Acting FBI Director Brian “Drizz” Driscoll has become a hero to many in the Bureau for resisting DOJ demands, as this widely circulated meme attests.

**INTEL BUYOUTS**: **Elon Musk**’s government ”housecleaning” blitzkrieg began sweeping through the spy world last week, with the staffs of at least seven U.S. intelligence agencies receiving buyout offers from the Trump administration. [Politico](https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/05/musk-trump-intelligence-deferred-resignation-00202797) reported that full-time civilian workers at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence received similar or identical versions of the “[Fork in the Road](https://www.opm.gov/fork)” email that was sent to an estimated 2 million employees late last month. That email allowed employees who typed “Resign” in the subject line and hit send to leave and be paid through the end of September. The Trump administration has argued the buyouts are needed to slash a bloated federal workforce and could save roughly $100 billion annually. 

The CIA’s offer differs from the "deferred resignation” offer extended to other federal employees.

[CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cia-offers-buyouts-to-all-staffers/) reported that some employees at the spy agency will be offered resignation options and the [Voluntary Early Retirement Authority](https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/workforce-restructuring/voluntary-early-retirement-authority/), known as VERA, which allows agencies to temporarily lower age and service requirements in order to increase the number of employees who are eligible for retirement.  ([The Record](https://therecord.media/nsa-deferred-resignation-retirement-doge) reported that the NSA is also offering VERA to employees.) Critically, the CIA’s offer will not be available to all employees at the spy agency. That’s some consolation because it takes 24 to 30 months just to train a case officer in the basic skills of espionage tradecraft and learn how the agency works. “And in your first tour, you’re still learning the culture, how to get around, developing sources you can trust to tell you the truth,” senior former CIA operations official **James Lawler** told SpyTalk’s **Jonathan Broder**. “This all takes time. There’s no magic pill you take.” 

Some officers are watching what’s going on at the FBI and USAID (see below) and are wondering if that’s a preview of things to come at Langley. Another former senior CIA official said that the offers were Director **John Ratcliffe**’s way of “kowtowing” to Trump. "I suspect the people who take the buy-out will be the youngest, those with the fewest years of service,” the former official told Broder. “Eight months at full pay leaves them a lot of time to find another job. But I imagine some of the older officers also will leave.” Those who remain will do what the president orders because they’re professionals. “But this thinning of the ranks will cause setbacks,” the official said. “And I can assure you they're planning for the day they'll have to fix what got broken because of this purge. And that day will come." 

“Our adversaries could not have scripted things better, and they are no doubt celebrating the chaos, fear, and division permeating the agency right now,” **Holly Berkley Fletcher,** a senior CIA Africa analyst who resigned in December, told [The Atlantic](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/02/trump-intelligence-agency-buyouts/681589/). Indeed, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency trolled the CIA by giving it a [taste of its own medicine](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-spies-retaliation-against-cia-urge-americans-get-touch-2025-02-06/). On Thursday, the SVR posted an English-language video urging "true American patriots" who care about world peace to contact it via a secure communication channel. In 2023 and 2024, the CIA used the same tactic to recruit disgruntled Russian spies. 

> “As a former CIA officer, I am heartbroken,” Fletcher said. “As an American citizen, I am terrified.”


Holly Berkley Fletcher was an Africa analyst for the CIA for 19 years. (Medium)

**FBI CHAOS (CONT’D)**: The upheaval at the FBI continued for a third straight week as bureau leaders battled with top Justice Department officials seeking the names of agents who investigated the Jan. 6 riot. A top Justice Department official accused the bureau’s acting director, **Brian Driscoll**, and his deputy, **Robert Kissane,** of “insubordination” after they resisted his efforts to identify agents in Washington who had investigated the bedlam at the Capitol. [The Wall Street Journal](https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-fbi-firings-immigration-crime-ad7d6b44?mod=hp_lead_pos5) reported that Driscoll—affectionately known as “Drizz” inside the agency—said in an email to employees that the bureau had complied with a request from **Emil Bove**, the acting deputy attorney general and former Trump criminal defense attorney, by sending over a list of some 5,000 FBI personnel—but identified only by title, office, and role, not by name. ([The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/us/politics/fbi-director-brian-driscoll-trump-justice-department.html) reported that the list includes Driscoll himself, who took part in the arrest of a QAnon devotee two weeks after the riot.) 

Driscoll’s stand has made him into a folk hero for many of the FBI’s 13,000 rank-and-file special agents. The Times reported on a meme making the rounds that shows the long, curly-haired acting director glancing upward, *à* la Jesus, encircled by the words “What Would Drizz Do?” **James E. Dennehy**, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, also sent a [defiant email](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/us/politics/fbi-new-york-email-trump.html) to employees. “Today,” he wrote, “we find ourselves in the middle of a battle of our own, as good people are being walked out of the FBI and others are being targeted because they did their jobs in accordance with the law and FBI policy.” Dennehy praised Driscoll and Kissane as “warriors.”

All this bedlam—and **Kash Patel,** Trump’s FBI-trashing pick to run the bureau, hasn’t even been confirmed. (His vote is set for Feb. 13.) [The Wall Street Journal](https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-fbi-firings-immigration-crime-ad7d6b44?st=Koh9fv) reported that Patel “is expected to shrink the bureau’s counterintelligence and counterterrorism work, according to his aides.” In 2020, then-FBI Director **Chris Wray** [said](https://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/the-threat-posed-by-the-chinese-government-and-the-chinese-communist-party-to-the-economic-and-national-security-of-the-united-states#:~:text=The%20Chinese%20government) the bureau was “opening a new China-related counterintelligence case about every 10 hours.” In 2023, he [testified](https://americanmilitarynews.com/2023/12/video-terror-threats-are-blinking-red-lights-everywhere-fbi-director-says/#google_vignette) that he saw “blinking red lights everywhere” on the terrorism front. On Friday, The Washington Post [headlined](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/07/patel-fbi-russia-lopatonok/) that “Kash Patel was paid by Russian filmmaker with Kremlin ties, documents show.” It went on to say that “Patel received the money \[$25,000\] from Global Tree Pictures, a Los Angeles-based company run by **Igor Lopatonok**, a filmmaker whose previous projects include a pro-Russian influence campaign that received money from a fund created by Russian President Vladimir Putin.” Even that may not budge Senate Republicans under pressure from Trump.

**TULSI ADVANCES**: The Senate headed for a vote to confirm a Director of National Intelligence whose excuse-making for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led one Russian TV presenter to dub her “our girlfriend Tulsi.”  **Tulsi Gabbard**, Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence, cleared the Senate Intelligence Committee on a party-line vote with a big push from Sen. **Tom Cotton**, R-Ark., its new chairman.  According to the [Wall Street Journal](https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-cabinet-gabbard-rfk-confirmation-senate-df6b218a), Cotton “worked hand in hand with Gabbard” every step of the way, even helping her write an [op-ed](https://www.newsweek.com/lt-col-tulsi-gabbard-why-i-am-right-choice-lead-office-national-intelligence-opinion-2024952) in Newsweek to reassure Republicans who were not impressed by Gabbard’s performance at her confirmation hearing last week. 

The last holdout was Sen. **Todd Young**, R-Ind.,  who was troubled by the former Hawaii Democrat’s past support for **Edward Snowden**, the former CIA and NSA contractor behind the largest public release of classified information in U.S. intelligence history.  Young released a [letter](https://x.com/SenToddYoung/status/1886799486640386197/photo/1) in which the former congresswoman walked back her vow to “protect whistle-blowers” like Snowden, who fled first to Hong Kong and then Moscow and became a Russian citizen.  Gabbard also said that, as DNI, she wouldn’t make any recommendations on Snowden’s legal status to the president.

Across the pond, British security chiefs were still troubled by Gabbard as DNI. Hours after  Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Gabbard said the war could have easily been “easily avoided” if Biden and NATO had acknowledged Russia’s “legitimate security concerns.”  One source told [The Telegraph](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/04/tulsi-gabbard-british-intelligence-alarm-trump-spy-chief/) of London that “the main concerns are on Russia. She comes over as an apologist. One thing we need at the moment is a united front.” 

**BLOWN COVERS**: The White House ordered the CIA to send it a list of all employees who were hired by the spy agency over the last two years to comply with an executive order to shrink the federal workforce. And it did—via an unclassified email, which they might as well have sent directly to Beijing or Moscow. [The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/us/politics/cia-names-list.html) reports that the list included first names and first initials of the last name of the probationary hires, many of whom were hired specifically to focus on China. Sen. **Mark Warner**, D-Va., ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a [post on X](https://x.com/markwarner/status/1887226609708462423?s=46) that the email “put a direct target on their backs for China The list of names was handed over to the Office of Personnel Management, which has been taken over by Elon Musk and his young DOGE staff (see below). In 2015, China hacked into OPM and stole the personnel files of some 22 million federal  employees.

In other news, **Michael Ellis**, a fervid Trump loyalist, was named to be the CIA's second-highest official. Ellis was the general counsel of Rumble, a popular video platform for conservatives. Before that, he held senior legal and intelligence policy roles on Trump’s National Security Council during his first term and served as the top lawyer for former House Intelligence Committee chairman **Devin Nunes**. When Ellis was appointed senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council in 2020, [Just Security](https://www.justsecurity.org/69012/the-gravity-of-michael-ellis-promotion-to-senior-director-for-intelligence-at-the-white-house/) did a scathing rundown of Ellis’s dodgy work history.

**COUNTERINTELLIGENCE NIGHTMARE**: What could go wrong? Young men with little experience and no security clearances have access to some of the most sensitive systems in the U.S. government. [Wired](https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-government-young-engineers/) named six men between the ages of 19 and 24 who are part of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. A seventh Dogester, 25-year-old SpaceX and X employee **Marko Elez**, resigned after the Wall Street Journal asked the White House about his connection to @nullllptr, a social media account that advocated racism and eugenics. “Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool,” @nullllptr posted in July. On Friday, Vice President **JD Vance** said he thought Elez should be rehired. “We shouldn’t reward journalists who try to destroy people. Ever,” Vance [wrote on X](https://x.com/JDVance/status/1887900880143343633).  Trump agreed.


Marko Elez: “I was racist before it was cool.”

Marko Elez was at the center of an effort to gain access to the Treasury Department’s sensitive central payments system, the little-known Bureau of the Fiscal Service. One former security official described the service as “a comprehensive map to U.S. expenditures encompassing highly classified programs and purposes.“  Funding “for everything the U.S. government does from food stamps to paying \[intelligence\] assets \[overseas\] originates at Treasury,” the former security official told [The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/06/elon-musk-doge-access-personnel-data-opm-security/). “We have a whole bunch of classified relationships with U.S. businesses” under contract with U.S. intelligence agencies. The payment system “is a road map” to U.S. secrets coveted by foreign intelligence services.  A judge granted Elez and one other Dogester “read-only” access to the system on Thursday, the same day Elez resigned.  If foreign intelligence agencies aren’t targeting these youngsters for compromise and possible recruitment, we will eat our cloak and dagger.  

**NO COVER**: We’ve been watching the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development with some interest. The agency’s website was taken down and replaced with a [notice](https://www.usaid.gov/) that put all USAID direct hires on administrative leave globally, “with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership, and specially designated programs.”  Musk says the agency, which provides billions in aid for children, women’s health, clean water, and food for starving people, is a “criminal organization.” [The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/us/politics/usaid-job-cuts.html) says plans are in the works to cut the staff of 10,000 down to 290. 

Why the hatred for USAID? The Washington Post [reported](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/06/musk-doge-usaid/) that **Mike Benz,** a MAGA influencer and former State Department employee (with, ahem, [unusual views about his own Jewish religion](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/michael-benz-rising-voice-conservative-criticism-online-censorship-rcna119213)), played a critical role in shaping Musk’s views of the agency.“Your brain is being tricked when you see the phrase ‘USAID.’ It’s not an aid organization,” Benz told podcaster Joe Rogan on Dec. 3. “USAID is effectively a switch player to assist the Pentagon on the national security front, to assist the State Department on the national interest front, or to assist the intelligence community on a sort of clandestine operation front.” Musk picked up the ball and ran with it. 

It’s something of an open secret that USAID, which had missions in over 100 countries, has provided cover for CIA officers overseas. But foreign governments (and **[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.](https://x.com/EuromaidanPR/status/1886424151365226810)**) have long maintained that USAID  is secretly doing the CIA’s bidding. Bolivia expelled the agency in 2013 for allegedly conspiring against its government by allegedly "manipulating" social movements in the country. Russia expelled it a year earlier for "attempts to influence political processes through its grants." 

[Musk](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887322729562485137) and Benz are wondering if the agency tried to do the same thing here at home. because of the small role it played in Trump’s first impeachment. The CIA analyst who wrote the [whistleblower complaint](https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/read-the-whistleblower-complaint-regarding-president-trump-s-communications-with-ukrainian-president-volodymyr-zelensky/4b9e0ca5-3824-467f-b1a3-77f2d4ee16aa/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_4) that triggered the impeachment inquiry cited a [report](https://www.occrp.org/en/investigation/meet-the-florida-duo-helping-giuliani-investigate-for-trump-in-ukraine) on **Rudy Giuliani**’s shady dealings in Ukraine by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which counts USAID as one of its funders.  OCCRP has also reported on **Hunter Biden** and exposed Russian oligarchs, but that doesn’t count for much in MAGA world where correlations are causation and CIA + USAID = Deep State.

**NSA PAPER CUTS**: Exhibits at a National Security Agency museum honoring Black and women "Trailblazers in U.S. Cryptologic History” were literally papered over. **Larry Pfeiffer,** who spent two decades at the NSA and also ran the White House Situation Room, found brown paper covering the exhibits at the National Cryptologic Museum, which is located next to the massive eavesdropping agency in Fort Meade, Md. He posted a [photo on X](https://x.com/LarryPfeifferDC/status/1885907955398152244), calling it disgraceful.  “Covered with brown paper photos of Women in American Cryptology—members of the Hall of Honor like **Elisabeth Friedman** & **Ann Caracristi**—and People of Color in Cryptologic History honorees—like **Wash Wong** & **Ralph Adams**. All in response to President Trump’s anti-diversity order.” The museum later uncovered the plaques and said [on X](https://x.com/NatCryptoMuseum/status/1886135332787065343) that it had made a mistake.

**MISSING IN IRAN**: The FBI on Tuesday [released](https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorinfo/mohammad-baseri) “seeking information posters” for two Iranian intelligence officers who they believe were involved in the disappearance of retired FBI agent **Robert Levinson,** who disappeared on Iran’s Kish Island in 2007.  The FBI says the two Iranian officials identified in the posters—**Mohammad Baseri** and **Ahmad Khazai**—were senior officials in the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. Both men were previously [sanctioned](https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm1210) by the U.S. Treasury in 2020.  Levinson was on an [unauthorized mission](https://www.businessinsider.com/american-missing-nearly-7-years-in-iran-was-working-for-cia-on-unapproved-mission-2013-12) for the CIA to investigate the Iranian government when he disappeared. Intelligence officials told Levinson’s family that he died in Iranian custody.

**CHINESE FED SPYING**: Economists don’t usually figure in SpyWeek, but a former senior adviser to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors was [arrested and accused](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-senior-adviser-federal-reserve-indicted-charges-economic-espionage) of leaking inside information from the Fed to the Chinese government. **John Harold Rogers** worked in the Fed’s Division of International Finance of the Fed from 2010 until 2021 and allegedly shared confidential and valuable economic secrets with Chinese intelligence officers who posed as graduate students at a Chinese university.  The confidential Fed information he shared could “allow China to manipulate the U.S. market, in a manner similar to insider trading,” prosecutors said.  The 63-year-old economics Ph.D is also accused of receiving a $450,000 payment and lied about it to investigators.   After leaving the Fed, Rogers moved his family to Shanghai and began working as a professor at Fudan University. 

**KILL THE WATCHERS**:Trump’s newly installed Attorney General **Pam Bondi** announced the closure of two important law enforcement initiatives that cut close to President Trump. One is the effort to combat secret influence campaigns by China, Russia and other adversaries “that try to curry favor and sow chaos in American politics,” as [NBC News](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/bondi-ends-fbi-effort-combat-foreign-influence-us-politics-rcna191012) put it in breaking the story. The little-noticed order “disbands the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and pares back enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, despite years of warnings by U.S. intelligence agencies that foreign malign influence operations involving disinformation were a growing and dangerous threat,” NBC said. Bondi also ordered the immediate closure of the Department of Justice's Kleptocracy Initiative and its associated task force. Since its launch in 2010, the Kleptocracy Initiative has recovered billions in stolen assets,  from Nigerian dictator **Sani Abacha**'s $458 million to record-breaking recoveries in the 1MDB scandal. ([Project Brazen](https://whalehunting.projectbrazen.com/breaking-christmas-comes-early-for-kleptocrats-doj-shutters-anti-corruption-units/?ref=whale-hunting-newsletter&attribution_id=67a4c90165f133000183b950&attribution_type=post))


Bondi: Unbound (CNN)

**POCKET LITTER:** 

- Prime Minister **Benjamin Netanyahu** gifted President Trump a golden pager to commemorate Mossad’s exploding pager operation. The back-to-back operations last year blew up thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah operatives, killing 37 people and wounding more than 3,000. The golden pager given to Trump displayed text that read: “Press with both hands.” Trump reportedly described the Lebanon attack as a "great operation.” ([Times of Israel](https://www.timesofisrael.com/pms-office-confirms-netanyahu-gifted-trump-a-golden-pager-at-white-house-meeting/))
- If Tulsi Gabbard is confirmed, she will immediately be tasked with rooting out “weaponization” in U.S. intelligence. An [executive order](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-the-weaponization-of-the-federal-government/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top) Trump signed on his first day in office directed the Director of National Intelligence to identify instances over the past four years where members of the U.S. intelligence community initiated investigations, prosecutions, civil enforcement actions, and other related actions against “perceived political opponents.”
- **Brandon Russell**, the founder of Atomwaffen Division, a Florida-based neo-Nazi group, was convicted at trial of conspiring to attack Maryland’s power grid. Prosecutors say Russell is an “accelerationist” who seeks to speed up the collapse of society through chaos and violence. Russell faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison when he’s sentenced in June. ([DOJ](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/white-supremacist-leader-found-guilty-conspiring-destroy-regional-power-grid?utm_source=www.courtwatch.news&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=court-watch-112-you-re-about-to-lose-577-billion-dollars&_bhlid=b95f8b6fba4072bc052678c3ce08774e7372d79e))
- **Linwei Ding**, a Chinese national, is facing federal charges for allegedly stealing AI secrets from Google. ([CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/linwei-ding-chinese-national-google-allegedly-stealing-ai-secrets-new-charges/))
- A pair of US lawmakers is seeking to ban Chinese startup DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence chatbot on official devices. The lawmakers say the AI platform, like the popular video app TikTok, could be forced to share user data with the Chinese government.  ([CNN](https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/06/tech/deepseek-ai-us-ban-bill/index.html))

*Jeff Stein and Jonathan Broder contributed to this story.*

*Is there something we missed? Or something you would like to see more of? Send your tips, corrections, and thoughts to [SpyTalk@protonmail.com](https://www.spytalk.co/p/).*

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OAN Staff [Pearson Sharp](https://www.oann.com/tag/pearson-sharp)
1:33 PM – Saturday, February 8, 2024

Investigation from Elon Musk’s DOGE taskforce reveal that the USAID relief organization is actually riddled with corruption, spending billions each year pushing progressive causes, regime changes and Islamic terrorism around the world. One America’s Pearson Sharp has more.

<video autoplay="" controls="" loop="" poster="https://www.oann.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/SharpReport-feat.webp" src="https://d1cc0p6j4uj4n9.cloudfront.net/24593f58-a2c0-4e20-89f1-266bc8f3e064/mp4/c322a9b8-1555-44a6-8801-3ed6f37fcebd_Mp4_Avc_Aac_16x9_1280x720p_30Hz_3.5Mbps_qvbr.mp4"></video>

The Pentagon press office caused something of a kerfuffle last Friday when they announced the previously sacrosanct onsite work areas assigned to a few privileged outlets would be subject to an annual rotation. Under the new plan, the New York Times (print), NBC (television), National Public Radio (NPR), and Politico (online) would lose their respective slots to the New York Post, OANN, Breitbart News Network, and the Huffington Post.

Needless to say, the people being rotated out of that plum real estate were not happy; see [Gotta Love It: Pentagon Changes to Media Offices Cause Meltdowns on the Left – RedState](https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2025/02/01/pentagon-changes-to-media-spots-n2185084). Images of a media purge were called up by the hardcore left without explaining how the change of outlets with in-the-Pentagon workspaces changed their coverage.

After hearing the complaints for a week, the Pentagon has responded to that criticism.

A letter from John Ullyot, the acting assistant to the Secretary of Defense, dismissed complaints of being singled out ("Notwithstanding that most media outlets covering the Pentagon have no office space in the building."); and of television outlets being disadvantaged ("Notwithstanding that most television outlets covering the Pentagon have no office space either, and routinely bring their heavy equipment in and out of the building without problems."); and asking for an extension of the start date of the media rotation.

He doubled the number of rotations. The Washington Post (print), CNN (television), The Hill (online), and The War Zone (online) will all lose their spaces and be replaced by The Washington Examiner (print), Newsmax (television), The Free Press (online), and The Daily Caller (online).

CNN and NBC did get a promise of "shared secure storage in the Pentagon where they can leave their tripods and other large equipment."

The Pentagon Press Association was [devastated](https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/trump-administration-throwing-pentagon-reporters-workspaces-118596401).

> The association said in a statement Friday that it was “shocked and deeply disappointed” by the decision.
>
> “Instead of reconsidering its approach after good faith outreach this week from more than 20 news organizations, the Defense Department appears to be doubling down on an unreasonable policy toward news outlets that have covered the U.S. military for decades,” the association said.

After the scandal of numerous press organizations receiving millions of dollars in federal *baksheesh* in return for favorable coverage of the Biden administration ([The Media Is Lying to You About Their Government Funding](https://redstate.com/streiff/2025/02/08/the-media-is-lying-to-you-about-their-government-funding-n2185377 "The Media Is Lying to You About Their Government Funding")), there is a new administration in town that seems like it is genuinely interested in fair dealing and transparency. Our media don't seem either willing or able to grasp that fact.

[President Donald Trump](https://www.foxnews.com/category/person/donald-trump) decided Saturday to remove security clearances for several Democrats, including former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both of whom are vocal Trump critics, Fox News has learned. 

"Bad guy. Take away his passes," Trump told the New York Post of Blinken, Biden's Secretary of State. 

James and Bragg were involved in prosecuting Trump in New York last year and James' office [filed a lawsuit](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democratic-ags-19-states-sue-trump-admin-doge-access-sensitive-personal-data-treasury) on Friday on behalf of 18 other Democratic state attorneys general over the Department of Government Efficiency's access to the Treasury Department's payment system.

Former national security advisor Jake Sullivan, Biden’s Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, and attorneys Andrew Weissmann, Mark Zaid and [Norm Eisen](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/who-norm-eisen-anti-trump-attorney-repping-fbi-agents-suing-doj), also had their clearances revoked. 

[**‘JOE, YOU’RE FIRED': PRESIDENT TRUMP REVOKES BIDEN'S SECURITY CLEARANCES, INTEL BRIEFINGS**](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/joe-youre-fired-president-trump-revokes-bidens-security-clearances-intel-briefings) 


Security clearances have been revoked for Antony Blinken, Letitia James and Alvin Bragg. (Getty Images)

Eisen, an anti-Trump lawyer, also represents anonymous FBI agents suing the Department of Justice to block the public identification of agents who investigated the Jan. 6 riot.

He also worked with House Democrats on Trump’s first impeachment. 


Norm Eisen, an anti-Trump lawyer, also represents anonymous FBI agents suing the Department of Justice to block the public identification of agents who investigated the Jan. 6 riot. (Getty Images)

The move comes a day after Trump stripped his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, of his security clearance and his access to presidential daily briefs. 

"There is no need for [Joe Biden](https://www.foxnews.com/category/person/joe-biden) to continue receiving access to classified information," Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Friday night.

He added [the precedent](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-revokes-security-clearances-51-intel-officials-signed-discredited-hunter-biden-laptop-letter) was set by Biden himself.

[**TRUMP CONSIDERS SHUTTING DOWN FEMA AS KRISTI NOEM MEETS HURRICANE HELENE SURVIVORS**](https://www.foxnews.com/video/6368516784112)


President Trump removed former President Biden's security clearances on Friday. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

"He set this precedent in 2021, when he instructed the Intelligence Community (IC) to stop the 45th President of the United States (ME!) from accessing details on [National Security](https://www.foxnews.com/category/politics/executive/national-security), a courtesy provided to former Presidents," Trump wrote.

At the time, Biden claimed Trump was exhibiting "erratic behavior." 


Letitia James' office filed a lawsuit on Friday on behalf of 18 other Democratic state attorneys general over the Department of Government Efficiency's access to the Treasury Department's payment system. (AP Photo/Brittainy Newman, File)

Former presidents usually continue to receive intelligence briefings after leaving office. 

"The Hur Report revealed that Biden suffers from ‘poor memory’ and, even in his ‘prime,’ could not be trusted with sensitive information. I will always protect our National Security — JOE, YOU’RE FIRED. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday. 


"Bad guy. Take away his passes," Trump said of Blinken, Biden's secretary of state. (Reuters/Elizabeth Frantz/Pool/File Photo)

[**CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP**](https://www.foxnews.com/download)

The 2024 Hur Report followed an investigation into Biden's handling of classified documents. 

*Alexandra Koch contributed to this report.*

A lawyer serving as the executor of orphaned children’s estate has been arrested for allegedly stealing more than $540,000 from their funds.

Karen Kay Hogan, 67, was taken into custody and booked into the Kendall County Jail in Boerne, Texas, on the morning of January 30. She is accused of misappropriating funds intended [for six children who lost](https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2025/01/30/attorney-arrested-accused-of-stealing-540k-from-children-whose-parents-died-in-murder-suicide/) their parents in a murder-suicide in 2021.

On December 31, 2021, Jason Evans, 47, shot his wife, Emily Fulton Evans, before taking his own life [at their home](https://www.boernestar.com/article/1,county-couple-found-dead-in-home) on the 100 block of Ridge Place in Boerne. They left behind six children, including five daughters and one son, according to the Boerne Star.

In November 2022, Hogan was appointed as the temporary administrator of the Evans estate and later became the dependent administrator, as reported by KSAT.

In 2023, Hogan began transferring funds from savings accounts set up in the parents’ names, where she listed herself as the joint account owner, into her business account. From there, transfers were made to an unknown account.

According to the affidavit, between August 2023 and February 2024, Hogan misapplied $541,550 from the estate.

Hogan has surrendered her law license, as indicated by Texas State Bar records. She is facing felony charges of misapplication of fiduciary property of $300,000 or more, exploitation of children, and exploitation of a disabled individual.

**For the latest true crime and justice news, [subscribe to the ‘Crime Stories with Nancy Grace’ podcast](https://www.crimeonline.com/podcast/).**

[Join Nancy Grace for her new online video series designed to help you protect what you love most — your children.](https://www.crimestopshere.com/)

*Feature Photo via Marshall County Jail\]*

Have you noticed how leftists are losing their minds over Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to expose rampant waste and corruption? As Musk uncovers shocking levels of mismanagement and even actions aiding America’s enemies, critics have launched coordinated attacks on him, implying that he’s the one who is actually running the White House.

“No one voted for Elon Musk!” they say.

Time Magazine’s [latest issue](https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2025/02/07/after-time-mag-puts-president-elon-musk-on-cover-trump-has-an-epic-response-n4936794) has joined the fray, featuring Musk seated confidently at the Resolute Desk—a symbolic jab suggesting he's really the one in charge. The outrage is ironic, considering the same voices now wailing about Musk’s alleged control were silent while Joe Biden spent four years clearly not running the White House. 

Why does this matter? Well, we now have fresh allegations from Lindy Li, a former Democratic National Committee (DNC) insider, about who was running the White House for Joe Biden.

And it’s quite terrifying.

Once a proud fundraiser for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, Li has turned into an insider spilling the Democratic Party's most closely held secrets—and, boy, does she have stories. 

Her revelations pull back the curtain on what has been described as a chaotic and delusional 2024 campaign for the Democrats, which spectacularly collapsed under the weight of its own hubris. Li has revealed [intriguing insider details about how Joe Biden was ultimately ousted, and what Pelosi and Obama really think of Kamala](https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/12/03/democrat-strategist-reveals-what-obama-and-pelosi-really-think-of-kamala-harris-n4934788). Back in December, she revealed new dirt on Joe Biden’s mental decline. “The president has not been cognitively fit to assume the duties of the Oval Office for a number of years now,” [she told Fox News](https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/12/22/the-dominoes-are-falling-over-the-biden-mental-health-cover-up-n4935354). "And it breaks my heart because I know President Biden and I love the man, but he is in no shape or form able to carry out the duties that the Commander in Chief requires, and it's just devastating.”

But it’s her revelations about what happened in the White House in the aftermath of Biden’s devastating performance in his June debate on CNN with Trump that are truly jaw-dropping. 

***Related****: [Joe Biden’s Fake Job Numbers Scandal Just Got Worse](https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/02/07/joe-bidens-fake-job-numbers-scandal-just-got-worse-n4936786 "Joe Biden’s Fake Job Numbers Scandal Just Got Worse")*

According to Li, Joe Biden, already staggering from public scrutiny, effectively lost control of the White House after that fateful debate. The event reportedly prompted an audacious power shuffle at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue—one spearheaded by none other than Hunter Biden.  

Li alleges that, following Biden’s disastrous debate drubbing, Hunter essentially took over White House operations. Speaking with podcaster Shawn Ryan, she painted a picture of dysfunction at the highest levels of government: “After the \[CNN\] debate, Hunter basically commandeered the White House. He sat in on all of the White House top-level meetings. We had a former cocaine addict sitting in on the most sensitive meetings of the most consequential and most important government in world history. Does that sit right with you?"  

Ryan’s immediate reaction—“No”—reflected what many are surely thinking.

“Without security clearance mind you,” Li added. 

The idea that Hunter Biden, with no security clearance, was allegedly dictating the flow of information to his father is a much bigger deal than Elon Musk going after government waste, don’t you think?

“That's who was basically running the show. So Hunter basically battened down the hatches after the debate to make sure his father would only receive intel he pre-approved.”

The media's and the Democrats’ hypocrisy is glaring. They attack Elon Musk for exposing waste, accusing him of having too much power without having been elected, while their lack of scrutiny during the Biden presidency allowed for an unelected crack addict to run the country.

How much do you think the liberal media will report on this? Nothing at all is a safe bet. But we’re willing to talk about the stories that they won’t, and believe it or not, that still puts us at risk of being censored, suppressed, and demonetized. That’s why we need your help. If you support our work we can continue to bring you the truth. [Join PJ Media VIP](https://pjmedia.com/subscribe?tpcc=mm020825) and use the promo code SAVEAMERICA to get 50% off your VIP membership!

***EDITOR’S NOTE:*** *This story describes instances of sexual abuse that readers might find disturbing.*

(RNS) — The Rev. Richard Edwin Youngblood, the brother of a minister who has accused Bishop T.D. Jakes of sexual misconduct, has made his own accusation against Jakes, claiming the Texas megachurch leader climbed into bed with him on a church business trip.


*Bishop T.D. Jakes speaks during a New Year’s Eve service at The Potter’s House, Dec. 31, 2024, in Dallas. (Video screen grab)*

The claims were made in a legal filing responding to a [defamation lawsuit](https://ministrywatch.com/t-d-jakes-files-defamation-suit-after-medical-incident/) Jakes brought in November against Youngblood’s younger brother, Duane Youngblood, a Pennsylvania man who made allegations against Jakes in two 2024 interviews on the “Larry Reid Live” YouTube talk show.

Jakes’ suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, includes denials by Jakes’ legal team of Duane Youngblood’s accusations that Jakes tried to groom and sexually abuse him. The suit also describes the younger Youngblood as being a parolee after convictions for sexual assault and corruption of minors.

Duane Youngblood has sought a court’s dismissal of Jakes’ suit. In January, his lawyer, Tyrone A. Blackburn, filed a special motion to dismiss the suit, citing a Pennsylvania law that aims to limit lawsuits targeting public expression that is protected speech.

“This lawsuit is a textbook example of a powerful entity attempting to silence a survivor of alleged clergy abuse,” Blackburn told RNS in an email message. “The court must weigh not only the legal arguments but also the broader implications this case has for free speech, survivor advocacy, and institutional accountability.”

Richard Youngblood was among six people who signed sworn affidavits included in the January filing that testified that they had heard Duane Youngblood describe the alleged misconduct by Jakes.


*Larry Reid, left, interviews Duane Youngblood on the “Larry Reid Live” YouTube talk show on Nov. 3, 2024. (Video screen grab)*

Richard Youngblood, in addition to confirming his brother’s description, said that around the spring of 1986, when he was a young minister seeking a mentor, he heard Jakes preach at a Pennsylvania church. Youngblood offered to drive Jakes to his native West Virginia, where Jakes, then in his late 20s, was still the pastor of his first church.

Richard Youngblood eventually moved his family to West Virginia to work as an assistant and praise and worship leader in Jakes’ church. The younger minister said “things started to become weird” within a couple of years, with Jakes starting to discuss “uncomfortable things,” including oral sex. Richard Youngblood said he drove them on a trip, where Jakes rented a hotel room one night for them with two beds.

“That night, while I was laying in my bed, I felt Elder Jakes climb into my bed. He pressed his body against mine and asked, ‘Youngblood, do you feel that?’” reads the statement, signed in December 2024. “He was referencing his erection that he was pressing against my back side.”

Richard Youngblood said he got out of the bed and Jakes “started trying to kiss me.”

Jakes berated him when he learned Youngblood had described the alleged incident to an elder at Jakes’ church. He said Jakes called Richard Youngblood’s wife, informed her that her husband was a liar and said she was welcome in the church but her husband was not. Youngblood’s affidavit describes “mental and spiritual anguish” after the alleged encounters with Jakes.

> ***Access to MinistryWatch content is free.  However, we hope you will support our work with your prayers and financial gifts.  To make a donation, [click here](https://ministrywatch.com/donate-now/)*.**

Duane Youngblood’s affidavit describes as a teenager having a long conversation with Jakes at the private home where the elder minister was staying. “As I prepared to leave, he pulled me close and tried to kiss me,” said the affidavit. Youngblood said Jakes called him the next morning and “told me he wanted me to be the only person he had a sexual relationship with when he came to town.”

Duane Youngblood’s filings include a statement from a licensed professional counselor saying: “Recent events have further exacerbated Mr. Youngblood’s trauma,” citing a “message perceived as carrying a direct threat of harm, from Jermaine Jakes, the son of Bishop T.D. Jakes.”

The legal filings include an image of a Nov. 3 text message from Jermaine Jakes stating: “You might be in dangerous territory Duane… just b careful…” The filings also include a copy of an incident report stating that Duane Youngblood filed a complaint with a local police station later that month saying the text message was verbal harassment by the younger Jakes.

A member of Jakes’ legal team responded to the claims in a statement to RNS.

“Duane Youngblood’s latest filing, including the self-serving affidavit from his brother Richard, is replete with his continued baseless allegations, and is just more of the same from him and his attorneys,” said Dustin Pusch. “Our response, due on February 14, will be robust and thorough and demonstrate just how meritless Mr. Youngblood’s claims are.”

T.D. Jakes’ suit linked the accusations against him to his health and the court action was filed the day after he had an [unspecified medical incident](https://ministrywatch.com/bishop-td-jakes-receives-medical-care-after-slight-health-incident/) in front of the congregation attending the Nov. 24 service at The Potter’s House in Dallas. “Youngblood’s intentional and malicious lies have taken a substantial emotional and physical toll on Bishop Jakes,” the suit reads.

Jakes made his first in-person appearance at the church after the incident on New Year’s Eve.

Blackburn, Duane Youngblood’s lawyer, told RNS his client is seeking to protect himself as well as others who wish to highlight instances of abuse in religious circles.

“The motion to dismiss was filed to protect my client’s constitutional right to free speech and to challenge what we believe is a meritless lawsuit aimed at suppressing a critical public discourse,” he said. “This case is not only about Mr. Youngblood’s personal experiences but also about systemic issues of abuse within religious institutions that have remained unaddressed for too long.”

***TO OUR READERS****: Do you have a story idea, or do you want to give us feedback about this or any other story? Please email us:* [*info@ministrywatch.com*](https://ministrywatch.com/second-minister-accuses-t-d-jakes-of-sexual-misconduct/)

##### Related posts:

*Originally published on October 18, 2019*

*This is the first in a series of articles regarding American corruption in Ukraine...we expect another in the series to be published later today, with more to follow in the coming days.*

KYIV -- Now we know why the Democrats are so rabidly going after POTUS with a scam impeachment.

CD Media has been on the ground in Kyiv for some time now investigating corruption of the U.S. State Department in Ukraine, along with multiple Democratic Party operatives in-country, who have been involved in a massive money laundering operation of IMF aid funds, along with corrupt Ukrainian officials, including former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

What we have to say is truly shocking.

The theft totals in the billions of dollars.

In short, multiple intelligence sources have produced evidence which will soon be publicly announced that Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company that had Hunter Biden (Vice President Biden's son) on the board getting paid fifty thousand a month, paid the former President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko $100mm (that's one hundred million) to suppress the Ukrainian prosecutor's office's investigation into money laundering and kick backs to the Biden family, as well as other financial crimes. Then Vice President Joe Biden famously (in his own words) forced Ukraine to fire Viktor Shokin, the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Hunter Biden and the Burisma group of companies, threatening to withhold security and financial aid. Sound familiar to the current charges against President Trump? It's called projection.

Our sources allege FBI agents have taken bribes, some up to $5 million. The Embassy of the Untied States in Kyiv was neck deep into this corruption, involving corrupt FBI and CIA, where former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was alleged to be directing a Deep State disinformation operation against then presidential candidate Donald J. Trump, with the aid of the Clinton Campaign and corrupt Ukrainian officials.

Yovanovitch recently 'testified' in Adam Schiff's secret 'impeachment' proceedings.

In one instance two corrupt CIA agents showed up at the office of former Ukrainian Chief Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko and 'ordered' him to end the investigations into Biden and Burisma.

Our sources state the money laundering schemes involved American officials who were ostensibly tasked with battling corruption in Eastern Europe and Ukraine by the Obama administration. These figures were handing out millions of dollars in U.S. grants which mysteriously wound up disappearing or showing no evidence of achieving their intended purpose of fighting corruption.

[John Solomon of The Hill recently reported on a related connection with this scheme to the Soros organization.](http://us%20embassy%20pressed%20ukraine%20to%20drop%20probe%20of%20george%20soros%20group%20during%202016%20election/)

One of our sources confronted the FBI with evidence of Biden and State Department corruption in a meeting in Washington, D.C. two years ago but they refused to listen and literally 'ran out of the room'. The agents involved later become prominent figures in the corruption.

One source reported most of this information (with supporting evidence) to the Trump administration earlier this year in person during a meeting in the United States, which may have led to the firing of Yanavovich shortly after and the push to investigate the Biden family, which has now caused a full-fledged impeachment effort by the Democrats, thoroughly afraid of the evidence yet to be released of their candidate's complicity in a quid-pro-quo involving the Ukrainian government.

In follow-on reports to come shortly, we will detail how NGOs operating in Ukraine, in concert with the Democratic Party, and Obama-appointed officials in the U.S. government, completely corrupted and controlled the Ukrainian economy and IMF aid packages intended to help the people of Ukraine.

In short, the Obama administration used Ukraine to go after its political opposition, as well as to enrich themselves.

- **[Obama Military Officers Are Being Disloyal To Commander-In-Chief And Need To Leave (But That’s What Seditious Obama Minions Do)](https://creativedestructionmedia.com/opinion/2019/10/15/obama-military-officers-are-being-disloyal-to-commander-in-chief-and-need-to-leave-but-thats-what-seditious-obama-minions-do/)**
- **[The Hi-Tech Traditionalist: A Revolution In Reverse: The Uprising Of The American Elites Against The American People](https://tsarizm.com/opinion/2019/10/10/the-hi-tech-traditionalist-a-revolution-in-reverse-the-uprising-of-the-american-elites-against-the-american-people/)**

## Author


## L Todd Wood

L Todd Wood, a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, flew special operations helicopters supporting SEAL Team 6, Delta Force and others. After leaving the military, he pursued his other passion, finance, spending 18 years on Wall Street trading emerging market debt, and later, writing. The first of his many thrillers is "Currency." Todd has been a national security columnist for The Washington Times and contributed to One American News, Fox Business, Newsmax TV, Moscow Times, Novaya Vremya (Ukraine), the New York Post, National Review, the Jerusalem Post, Zero Hedge and others. He is also founder/publisher of CDM. For more information about L. Todd Wood, visit LToddWood.com.

by Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

The study authored by Dr. Jessica Rose, **[Reports Of Autopsies In VAERS And Associated Adverse Events Linked To Cause Of Death](https://publichealthpolicyjournal.com/reports-of-autopsies-in-vaers-and-associated-adverse-events-linked-to-cause-of-death/)**, was just published in *Science, Public Health Policy and the Law:*

> **Abstract**
>
> **Background:** Millions of individuals in the United States have reported adverse events (AEs) using the Vaccine Adverse Event Reports System (VAERS) since the roll-out of the COVID-19 injections in 2021.
>
> **Methods:** VAERS data was used to examine frequency of reporting of AEs linked to autopsy reports since the start of the COVID-19 injectable product (IP) roll-out. COVID-19 IP AE data from 2021-2023 were compared to Influenza vaccine AE data from 2018-2020. The total number of shots administered per product type was calculated and used to determine rates of AEs per million doses. Autopsy reports made in association with COVID-19 IPs were further examined in the context of fetal and child deaths. Geographic locations were mapped according to ratios of autopsies to deaths per state to visualize autopsy reporting rates.
>
> **Results:** The absolute number of autopsy reports in VAERS for 2021-2023 is 18 times higher (1,714% increase) than the average for 2018-2020. The reporting rate of autopsies (as a % of death reports) for COVID-19 IP decreased significantly (p = 0.03) by 77.6% when compared to Influenza vaccines in the same time frame. 69% (N=262) of all COVID-19 IP autopsy-linked reports were associated with cardiovascular AEs, with 11%, 12%, and 16% of these associated with myocarditis, cardiac arrest and pulmonary embolism (PE), respectively. 67% (N=14) of all Influenza autopsy-linked reports were associated with cardiovascular AEs, but only 7% were associated with myocarditis; no autopsy reports involved cardiac arrest or PE. with New York and Utah has the highest autopsy reporting rates at 10.1% and 9.8%.
>
> **Conclusions:** The large decrease in reporting rate of autopsy as a percentage of death reports, combined with the large increase in absolute counts of autopsy reports in the COVID-19 IP context indicates that there is an unexplained void in the data with regard to autopsy reports. This corresponds to known de-incentivization to perform autopsies during the COVID-19 era due to the alleged danger associated with SARS-CoV-2. A large percentage of autopsy-linked VAERS reports in the context of the COVID-19 IP are linked to myocarditis, cardiac arrest and PE, and suggests that the COVID-19 IPs are deterministic for death due to myocarditis, cardiac arrest, and PE. Confirmation of this theory can, and should have been obtained by way of autopsy.
>
> 

Concerningly, there was a **1,714% increase** in absolute counts of VAERS autopsy reports following COVID-19 injections compared to flu vaccines, but a **77.6% decrease in the rate of autopsy reporting per death.**

Death reports per million doses for COVID-19 injections were found to be **60 times higher** than those associated with influenza vaccines. The assumption that the increased number of VAERS reports is merely due to a higher number of COVID-19 doses administered is **statistically disproven**. Additionally, **24% of COVID-19 injection-related deaths in VAERS occurred within seven days of inoculation**.

Not surprisingly**, 69%** of COVID-19 injection-related autopsy reports involved cardiovascular adverse events (AEs). The leading causes of death were:

- **Pulmonary Embolism:** 16%
- **Cardiac Arrest:** 12%
- **Myocarditis:** 11%

Dr. Rose’s findings are similar to that of our study, **[A Systematic Review Of Autopsy Findings In Deaths After COVID-19 Vaccination](https://publichealthpolicyjournal.com/a-systematic-review-of-autopsy-findings-in-deaths-after-covid-19-vaccination/),** where **49%** of deaths were cardiovascular-related. Among the 240 deaths that we adjudicated as being significantly linked to COVID-19 vaccination, the primary causes of death include:

- **Sudden Cardiac Death**: 35%
- **Pulmonary Embolism:** 12.5%
- **Myocardial Infarction:** 12%
- **VITT:** 7.9%
- **Myocarditis:** 7.1%


Autopsies should be performed on ALL COVID-19 ‘vaccinated’ individuals that die unexpectedly. These investigations must specifically examine the presence of Spike protein and vaccine-derived mRNA in affected tissues, as outlined in our paper, **[Delayed Fatal Pulmonary Hemorrhage Following COVID-19 Vaccination: Case Report, Batch Analysis, And Proposed Autopsy Checklist](https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202402.1096/v1) (Note: This paper has been accepted for publication following successful peer review, and I will provide the final version as soon as it becomes available):**


**Nicolas Hulscher, MPH**

Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation

www.mcculloughfnd.org

Please consider following both the [McCullough Foundation](https://x.com/McCulloughFund) and [my personal account](https://x.com/NicHulscher) on *X* (formerly Twitter) for further content.

If ever you needed proof that X Community Notes is vastly superior to corporate “fact checks” as a way for real journalists to do real work countering “misinformation” rather than as a bludgeon to suppress dissident narratives, this is it.

Lying about being a Native American for DEI leg-ups, it turns out, isn’t the only dishonesty Elizabeth Warren peddles.


 This lie, however, is much more consequential in terms of policy impact:  “I don't take contributions from Big Pharma executives. I don't take any corporate PAC money,” Elizabeth Warren says in the Senate hallway when confronted over her smears of RFK Jr.

***Related:*** [***SHOCK Poll: A Quarter of Americans Say They Know Someone Personally Killed by COVID Jab***](https://pjmedia.com/benbartee/2023/11/05/shock-poll-a-quarter-of-americans-say-they-know-someone-personally-killed-by-covid-jab-n4923653)

But the contradictory proof is all right there in the X Community Notes window, just under the lying pharma tool, with links and links and links, rendering my job as a journalist exposing her blatant lies far easier: “Elizabeth Warren has in fact received donations from both Pharmaceutical companies and PAC organizations in the combined tune of millions of dollars.”

Warren, in fact, is the [second-biggest beneficiary of cash from pharma employees and/or PACs](https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=2020&ind=H04&recipdetail=M&sortorder=U) in the entire Congress, next to Bernie Sanders.

***Related:*** [***Brand-New NIH Union vs. Trump: The Funding Freeze Showdown***](https://pjmedia.com/benbartee/2025/02/01/brand-new-nih-union-vs-trump-the-funding-freeze-showdown-n4936593)

Via [TIME](https://time.com/5792563/elizabeth-warren-super-pac-support/), 2020 (emphasis added):

> *In an ironic twist, that now makes **Warren, who along with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has been the strongest opponent of super PACs in the 2020 campaign, the biggest beneficiary of such a group heading into Super Tuesday** — the most prominent reversal yet among the candidates on the issue of high-dollar donations. At one point, nearly every candidate decried the practice, before realizing it may be a necessity for survival.*
>
> *Under campaign finance laws, donors can give unlimited amounts to a super PAC as long as the groups do not directly coordinate with the candidates they are supporting. Since launching her campaign, **Warren has prided herself on her refusal to accept money from political action committees or federal lobbyists, and she has promised to disavow any super PAC that formed on her behalf**.*
>
> ***That pledge is still publicly available on her campaign website, but Warren has not distanced herself from Persist PAC. Instead, her rhetoric on the issue started to shift in the past month****, as her once-promising campaign underperformed its expectations in the first three states to vote. “**If all the candidates want to get rid of super PACs, count me in, I’ll lead the charge,” she told reporters** on Feb. 20 in Nevada when asked if she would disavow Persist PAC. **“But that’s how it has to be. It can’t be the case that a bunch of people keep them and only one or two don’t**.”*

**Editor’s note**: *As we’ve painstakingly documented here,* [*Google censorship of PJ Media is out of control*](https://pjmedia.com/benbartee/2024/04/02/can-you-guess-how-many-pj-media-articles-google-has-demonetized-n4927842)*. 
 This article is likely to be flagged as “misinformation” — or hatespeech, or whatever alleged violation of constantly-changing policy — and demonetized by Google. If you appreciate the independent journalism we offer, free of corporate slant or state censorship, consider lending financial support to our heavily censored operation.* 

***Get your monster 60% discount on your new VIP membership with promo code*** [***FIGHT***](https://pjmedia.com/subscribe?tpcc=bb020725)***.***

The Federal Reserve’s record of forecasting has frequently led it to respond too late to changes in economic and financial conditions. In the most recent FOMC meeting, the Federal Reserve changed its statement to support a pause in the current interest rate-cutting cycle. As noted by Forbes:

> *“The policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee agreed unanimously to hold the target federal funds rate at 4.25% to 4.5%, the U.S. central bank announced Wednesday afternoon following the conclusion of the FOMC’s two-day meeting. The pause breaks a three-meeting streak of cuts dating back to September, when the Fed rolled out its first rate cut since March 2020.*
>
> *The **FOMC announcement noted unemployment “has stabilized at a low level” and “inflation remains somewhat elevated,”** notably removing a reference from its prior rates decision of inflation making “progress” toward the 2% target.”*

As a reminder, the Federal Reserve has two official mandates: *full employment and price stability.* The Fed specifically addressed those two mandates in its announcement to pause rate cuts at the last meeting. Furthermore, those two mandates are crucial to economic stability and, ultimately, the financial system. Full employment and stable inflation should support stronger levels of economic activity, providing stability to the financial system through increased credit use with lower default rates.

However, the Fed’s record of forecasting future economic growth rates is abysmal. The table below tracks the average of the Fed’s economic forecast range from 2011 vs actual GDP. The obvious problem is that the risk of policy response errors increases when future growth estimates range far from reality *(typically during crisis events).*


### **Unexpected Factors**

The obvious problem for the Federal Reserve is that forecasting is always problematic due to unexpected events that can disrupt consumer activity. This is particularly the case today, more than in the past, given that consumption is nearly 70% of the U.S. economy. However, it is notable that since 2000, while household debt continues to increase dramatically, it is no longer fueling increases in economic activity. In other words, households are consuming more debt to sustain their standard of living rather than increasing it, as seen from 1980 to 2000.


This is a crucial point. The Fed depends on consumer confidence to drive economic activity, which it hopes to achieve through higher asset prices. However, despite higher asset prices, the bottom 90% of the economy struggles to increase consumption as their share of *“economic wealth”* has not materially increased. Such was a point we made in [***“Bullish Exuberance Returns:”***](https://realinvestmentadvice.com/resources/blog/bullish-exuberance-returns-as-trump-takes-office/)


This is why nominal economic growth continues to return toward its long-term 2% growth trend, which will likely fall below that level over the next few years. Given that debt diverts productive dollars into debt service, such deters stronger economic outcomes across income classes.


Given that economic growth is a function of economic production and consumption, the inability to expand economic prosperity suggests the Fed’s current forecasts are likely once again overstated. Such is particularly the case with their views on the strength of employment.


### **Forecasting Errors Lead To Policy Errors**

The critical component to expanding economic growth is employment. As we explained in ***[“Labor Market Impact On The Stock Market:”](https://realinvestmentadvice.com/resources/blog/labor-market-impact-on-the-stock-market/)***

> *“While \[recent\] headline figures seemed decent, the underlying data reveals clear warning signs that worker demand is slowing. Investors should pay attention because the link between employment and its impact on the economy and the market is undeniable. While often overlooked, as we will discuss, there is an undeniable link between economic activity and corporate earnings. **Employment is the driver of a consumption-based economy. Consumers must produce first before consuming, so employment is critical to corporate earnings and market valuations.**“*


The production cycle is crucial to both economic and inflation expectations. Without a strong employment market, increasing organic economic activity is challenged. While increases in Government spending can temporarily offset weakness in consumption, the sustainability of that support is challenged as it requires increasing levels of debt to generate the same level of economic activity in the future, as shown above.

Given that employment is the lynchpin of economic growth, the Fed’s current assessment of the labor market’s strength is a significant risk in its forecasting accuracy. Following the most recent FOMC meeting analysts were quick to jump on “*employment strength”* as the reason to delay further rate cuts.

> “*This is a new phase of the Fed’s easing cycle, **given the strong growth and resilient labor market data providing scope for a more patient approach amid elevated data and policy uncertainty.** The Fed’s easing cycle has not yet run its course, but the FOMC will want to see further progress in the inflation data to deliver the next rate cut highlighted by the fact they removed the reference on inflation making progress.” – Lindsay Rosner, Goldman Sachs*

However, as the history of Fed rate-cutting cycles shows, the Fed often “*reacts**“* to economic events that undermined their previous assessments of lagging economic data. In other words, the Fed is almost always *“too late”* in enacting policy changes.


### **The Real “Employment” Situation**

This will likely happen again, as the Fed’s assessment of the labor market’s strength is likely overly optimistic.

> *“We think the Fed is going to end up being on the wrong side of the forecast. Job gains are far less ‘strong’ than has been characterized in this statement. **All these job gains are in part-time employment and hiring rates have absolutely plummeted.** The backlog of continuing claims has been on a discernible upward path and the consumer surveys have revealed a substantial loss in labor market confidence.” – David Rosenberg, Rosenberg Research*

He is correct. The chart below shows the cumulative change to full-time and part-time labor over the last few years.


As noted above, employment is required to create consumption and increase economic activity. Crucially, *“full-time”* employment is required to create stronger economic growth rates, providing higher incomes, benefits, and household stability. Notably, peaks in full-time employment relative to the total number of employed civilians have correlated with weaker future economic outcomes and disinflationary impacts. *(The only exception was 2020, as mass employment terminations created a temporary bump in full-time employment.)*


The data supports that last statement. Weaker full-time employment as a percentage of the current employment level correlates to weaker personal consumption expenditures. If the *“demand”* for goods and services declines, so does inflation.


The current *“lagging”* economic data may support the Fed’s recent pause in rate cuts. However, its forecast of stable employment and inflation may be in error when future data revisions reveal a far weaker situation.


### **A Familiar Mistep By The Fed**

The tendency to rely on past data increases the risk of policy errors. Such can have significant consequences for financial markets, economic growth, and consumer confidence. While current economic data may appear healthy, consumers do not necessarily agree. Such is shown by consumer expectations of incomes over the next year. As ***[Michael Lebowitz](https://realinvestmentadvice.com/resources/blog/the-chart-that-should-worry-the-fed/)*** commented recently:

> *” While labor market data is generally good, there are signs the labor market is at a standstill. Continuing jobless claims are steadily rising at their highest level in over three years. The JOLTS hires rate is at ten-year lows. While the number of layoffs remains low, employers aren’t hiring either. Accordingly, the broad labor market data may seem good, but the chart below and other data should give the Fed pause so that consumers may start to spend less and save more. As if the chart below wasn’t concerning. It shows employment expectations are also plummeting. Similar changes in expectations have led to a higher unemployment rate previously.”*


The rise in part-time employment, slowing hiring rates, and increased continuing jobless claims indicate a weaker labor market. Historically, overestimating employment strength has led the Fed to delay necessary rate cuts. Once economic conditions deteriorate further, the Fed is forced to reverse course.

Another key issue for the Fed remains higher borrowing costs. As debt burdens rise and wage growth stagnates, consumers increasingly rely on credit to maintain their standard of living. The longer rates remain elevated, the more pressure is applied to disposable incomes. For the Fed, if consumer spending weakens, inflation will decline more sharply than the Fed anticipates. Such will pose risks to future financial and economic stability.

The implications of the Fed’s forecasting errors extend beyond employment and consumption. A delayed policy response can heighten market volatility, disrupt business investment decisions, and exacerbate economic downturns. As history has shown, the Fed often acts too late, reacting to economic deterioration rather than proactively preventing it. Given these risks, investors should remain cautious and prepared for potential shifts in monetary policy that could impact market trends.

Based on current data, the Fed’s decision to pause rate cuts may appear justified. However, future revisions may reveal a far weaker economic backdrop than anticipated. If past patterns persist, the central bank could adjust policies too late.

However, such remains the Fed’s ongoing challenge of accurately forecasting the future.


[Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://conservativefiringline.com/another-conspiracy-theory-comes-true/) [Twitter](https://twitter.com/share?url=https://wp.me/p2V34b-uFD&text=Another+%26%238216%3BConspiracy+Theory%26%238217%3B+Comes+True%20via%20@co_firing_line%20-) [Flipboard](https://share.flipboard.com/bookmarklet/popout?url=https://conservativefiringline.com/another-conspiracy-theory-comes-true/&title=Another+%26%238216%3BConspiracy+Theory%26%238217%3B+Comes+True)Remember when the leftist media screamed that the news about FBI agents being taken off pedophile cases in order to pursue J6ers was a conspiracy theory? Turns out it was true. 5,000 FBI agents were tasked with pursuing the folks that simply walked into the Capitol building that day instead of handling serious cases of pedophilia.

After thousands of ordinary people were arrested and charged with misdemeanors, put in prison in horrific conditions, with at least one of them committing suicide, it turns out the FBI really was sic’d on them by the Biden administration. The toll on children was horrific, as some of them even committed suicide.


### Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?

>  *Americans deserve to know why the FBI needed 5,000 employees working on the Capitol riot and what crimes went without investigations in order to hunt their fellow citizens…How many child rapists went without prosecution so the FBI could send armed agents to terrorize American grandmothers in their homes? How many criminals came across the southern border? How many of the cyber attacks we experienced during the Biden administration could have been prevented had the FBI focused on protecting our country?…**” [Mary Rooke](https://dailycaller.com/2025/02/06/rooke-trump-fbi-capitol-riot-investigation/) at The Daily Caller*

Good question, Mary. The whole thing stinks.

5,000 FBI personnel and a conspiracy theory that was true. But it’s the children that have suffered from this travesty of justice. We can only pray that the focus of the FBI will now move to protecting our people and our most vulnerable instead of political stupidity. Lives truly depend on it.

\*\*\*\*\*

**Related:**

- **[Stunner: FBI Used 5,000 AGENTS To Attack J6ers And Donald Trump! (Video)](https://conservativefiringline.com/stunner-fbi-used-5000-agents-to-attack-j6ers-and-donald-trump-video/)**
- **[Pardoned J6 Political Prisoner Claims He Has Evidence Capitol Police Incited Riots](https://conservativefiringline.com/pardoned-j6-political-prisoner-claims-he-has-evidence-capitol-police-incited-riots/)**
- **[The Democratic Party Abandoned the People and is Paying the Price. Is this the End?](https://conservativefiringline.com/the-democratic-party-abandoned-the-people-and-is-paying-the-price-is-this-the-end/)**
- **[Black Voter Disavows Democrats as Liars and Thieves (Video)](https://conservativefiringline.com/black-voter-disavows-democrats-as-liars-and-thieves-video/)**

**Make social media great again!** After years of government-sanctioned, taxpayer-subsidized censorship, free speech and a free press are coming back, much to the chagrin of freedom-hating totalitarian leftists everywhere. Progress has been made, but much more needs to be done.  Follow our NEW Facebook page **[here](https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61572797378900)** and help spread the word.  You can also check out our MeWe page **[here](https://mewe.com/join/hardcore_conservatives)**, follow us on **[Gab,](https://gab.com/groups/595)** **[Truth Social](https://truthsocial.com/@ljnewby),** **[Twitter](https://twitter.com/co_firing_line)**, and at the social media site set up by members of Team Trump, **[GETTR](https://gettr.com/user/jnewby)**.

Bookmark this site, sign up for our newsletter, and check back often.

While you’re at it, be sure to check out our friends at [Whatfinger News](https://www.whatfinger.com/), the Internet’s conservative front-page founded by ex-military](http://whatfinger.com/)And be sure to check out our friends at [Trending Views](https://trendingviews.co/):[](http://trendingviews.com/)

[Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://conservativefiringline.com/another-conspiracy-theory-comes-true/) [Twitter](https://twitter.com/share?url=https://wp.me/p2V34b-uFD&text=Another+%26%238216%3BConspiracy+Theory%26%238217%3B+Comes+True%20via%20@co_firing_line%20-) [Flipboard](https://share.flipboard.com/bookmarklet/popout?url=https://conservativefiringline.com/another-conspiracy-theory-comes-true/&title=Another+%26%238216%3BConspiracy+Theory%26%238217%3B+Comes+True)[](https://conservativefiringline.com/author/fhigbee/)

Faye Higbee is the columnist manager for Uncle Sam's Misguided Children. She has been writing at Conservative Firing Line since 2013 as well. She is also a published author.

President Trump wants all federal funding that goes to nongovernmental organizations to be reviewed and then halted if the dollars go to groups that “undermine the national interest.”

“The United States government has provided significant taxpayer dollars to \[NGOs\], many of which are engaged in actions that actively undermine the security, prosperity and safety of the American people. It is the policy of my administration to stop funding NGOs that undermine the national interest,” a memo put out by the White House Friday says.

The memo says agencies should “review” the funding and “align future funding” with the interests and goals of the United States and the Trump administration.

Roughly 1.5 million NGOs operate in the U.S., according to the State Department. NGOs have “generally very little restriction on the freedoms of expression and association … under U.S. law.”

The memo did not name which NGOs could be affected.

The memo comes as Mr. Trump and Elon Musk, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, have moved to halt funding to the U.S. Agency for International Development. All direct-hire personnel will be put on administrative leave starting late Friday, leaving the agency with fewer than 300 employees.

NEW YORK — A former aide to New York City Mayor [Eric Adams](https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/eric-adams/) plans to plead guilty to a conspiracy charge in a corruption case against [Adams](https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/eric-adams/), prosecutors said in a new court filing Friday.

Mohamed Bahi, who served as City Hall’s chief liaison to the Muslim community, was arrested in October as part of a sweeping investigation into [Adams](https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/eric-adams/) and his campaign fundraising that led to the mayor’s indictment on corruption charges in September.

[Adams](https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/eric-adams/) has pleaded not guilty to charges that he accepted bribes of free and discounted overseas vacations and illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals, including a Turkish diplomat.

Prosecutors on Friday told a federal judge that Bahi plans to plead guilty to a conspiracy count alleging that he conspired to commit wire fraud by collecting campaign contributions made under the name of someone other than the true contributor. A message seeking comment was sent to Bahi’s attorney.

In the indictment against [Adams](https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/eric-adams/), Bahi is referenced as “Adams Employee-1,” prosecutors noted. It was not immediately revealed when a plea hearing might be scheduled.

The development comes after [Adams](https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/eric-adams/) has cozied up to President Donald Trump, who has criticized the case against [Adams](https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/eric-adams/) and said he is open to giving the Democrat, who was a registered Republican in the 1990s, a pardon.

The revelation about Bahi comes less than a month after a Brooklyn real estate magnate, Erden Arkan, pleaded guilty to conspiracy, admitting that he worked with a Turkish government official to funnel illegal campaign contributions to [Adams](https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/eric-adams/).

“When I wrote the checks, I knew the [Eric Adams](https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/eric-adams/) campaign would use the checks to apply for public matching funds,” Arkan said during his plea.

The indictment against [Adams](https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/eric-adams/) accuses the mayor of using illegal contributions to fraudulently obtain public money under the city’s matching funds program, which provides a generous match for small-dollar donations.

The mayor has vowed to remain in office as he fights the charge “with every ounce of my strength and my spirit.”

A trial for [Adams](https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/eric-adams/) is set for April 21 while Arkan is scheduled to be sentenced in August.

Copyright © 2025 The Washington Times, LLC.


Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Justice Department on Friday agreed to keep the identities of the FBI officials involved in January 6 cases and Trump investigations hidden.

For now.

On Thursday, Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee, [ordered](https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/02/just-biden-judge-orders-pause-public-release-identities/) a pause on the release of the identities of the FBI employees involved in the witch hunts.

On Tuesday, two groups of FBI agents anonymously [filed a lawsuit](https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/02/showdown-fbi-officials-sue-block-justice-department-accessing/) to block the Justice Department from accessing their names.

The plaintiffs sought a temporary restraining order to prevent the Justice Department from identifying the names of the FBI employees.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued publicly naming the employees would put people in danger.

The FBI officials who worked on the J6 cases and Trump investigations were identified by a case management system.

NBC reporter Ken Dilanian said that the list does not include names of the agents, rather, the agents were identified by a number called a “unique employee identifier.”

“The Justice Department, of course, can match the numbers with names on the payroll. But by leaving the names off, the FBI ensure that for now there is not a master list floating around of the names of people who worked on January 6th,” he said.

Judge Cobb paused the release of the names until the hearing resumed Friday morning.

After a hearing on Friday morning, the DOJ agreed to keep the names hidden for now.

Plaintiff lawyers may seek an preliminary injunction.

The judge set a schedule for plaintiffs’ anticipated motions for a preliminary injunction.

CBS News [reported](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/justice-department-list-fbi-agents-jan-6-capitol-attack/):

> The Justice Department said the federal government would not publicly release the names of FBI agents who worked on the now-closed investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, according to a court order filed Friday.
>
> The Justice Department and a group of unnamed FBI agents reached an agreement in which the government said it would not disclose a list of the agents’ names that was compiled by the FBI and transmitted to the Justice Department on Tuesday unless there is two days’ notice given to the agents.
>
> The two sides agreed to the order following a hearing Thursday as part of two cases filed by anonymous FBI agents and the FBI Agents Association earlier this week that sought to preemptively stop the Justice Department from publicizing the list of agents.
>
> Natalie Bara, president of the FBI Agents Association, said the group welcomes the order, which allows them to return to court and challenge any planned disclosure of the agents’ and employees’ names.

As one of the most censored independent news outlets, we fight to bring you the truth the mainstream media won’t. Big Tech silences us, ad networks blacklist us—but our numbers grow because of supporters like you. Every dollar fuels the fight for free speech and honest reporting. Donate to The Gateway Pundit to help us keep exposing the lies and defending your right to know.

The secret order reportedly requires the tech giant to provide a backdoor to encrypted cloud data

The UK government has issued a *“technical capability notice”* to Apple, compelling the tech giant to create a backdoor to its encrypted iCloud service, the Washington Post [reported](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/07/apple-encryption-backdoor-uk/) on Friday. The move would enable UK law enforcement and security agencies to access encrypted data stored by Apple users worldwide, according to the newspaper.

The UK’s Investigatory Powers Act (IPA), referred to by critics as the *“Snoopers’ Charter,”* grants authorities the power to mandate that tech companies permit access to users’ data for investigative purposes. It also makes it a criminal offense to reveal that the government has made such a demand. The recent notice requires Apple to provide a means for decrypting user data. It is currently protected by end-to-end encryption, ensuring that only users can access their information.

Creating such backdoors could weaken overall security and set a dangerous precedent, according to Daniel Castro, vice-president of the US-based Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. In a [statement](https://itif.org/publications/2025/02/07/uk-anti-encryption-order-is-a-threat-to-digital-privacy-and-security-globally/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) on Friday, he has described the UK’s move as an *“unjustified over-reach that threatens the security and privacy of individuals and businesses around the world.”*

[](https://www.rt.com/news/598825-eu-expand-digital-surveillance-media/)

Last March, in a [submission](https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5804/cmpublic/InvestigatoryPowersAmendment/memo/IPAB10.htm?utm_source=chatgpt.com) to the a parliamentary committee, Apple expressed concern that the IPA could be used to force companies to *“break encryption by inserting backdoors into their software products.”* Apple asserted that it *“would never build a backdoor”* and would rather withdraw *“critical safety features”* from the UK market affecting the security of British users’ data.

Ross McKenzie, a data protection partner at law firm Addleshaw Goddard, told the Guardian that the UK order could lead to a clash with the EU, potentially affecting agreements that allow the free flow of personal data between the UK and Europe.

UK security officials argue that encryption can hinder efforts to combat crime and terrorism. *“Maintaining proportionate, lawful access to such communications in the face of ever-more prevalent encryption is sometimes our only means of detecting and understanding these threats,”* Ken McCallum, head of the UK’s domestic intelligence agency MI5, [stated](https://www.mi5.gov.uk/director-general-ken-mccallum-gives-latest-threat-update?utm_source=chatgpt.com) last October. He believes that *“privacy and exceptional lawful access can coexist if absolutist positions are avoided.”*

The UK Home Office has declined to confirm or deny the existence of the notice, stating, *“We do not comment on operational matters,”* according to The Guardian.

[](https://www.rt.com/usa/542165-american-diplomats-hacked-pegasus/)

Apple has long defended the encryption of its operating systems, notably challenging the FBI in court in 2016 over a demand for a *“backdoor”* to access the iPhone of a suspect in the San Bernardino, California, terrorist attack. In legal filings, Apple argued that the US government was requesting something it did not possess and that creating such a tool would be *“too dangerous.”*

The FBI eventually unlocked the phone using an Israeli spy tool, though it reportedly found nothing of value. Later [revelations](https://www.iri.org/news/the-pegasus-spyware-scandal-highlights-the-threats-activists-and-journalists-face/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) showed that other Israeli spyware, called Pegasus, had been used to hack tens of thousands of iPhones worldwide, targeting journalists, dissidents, and even heads of state.


## The lawsuit claims the social media companies use addictive techniques, similar to those used in slot machines and those "exploited by the cigarette industry" to intentionally hook young people to their platforms

NBC Universal, Inc.

San Diego County leaders are filing a lawsuit that claims social media companies knowingly designed addictive features and ignored warnings of their harmful effects on youth mental health. NBC 7’s Audra Stafford reports. 

San Diego County leaders on Thursday announced legal action against the technology companies behind several of the country's most popular social media apps for what they say are intentionally addictive practices harming California's youth.

The [lawsuit](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_8L9HvbC33A78G2t8ZuCSS8eUosi7Jon/view) against Facebook, Instagram, Snap, TikTok, Youtube and their parent companies claims the social media apps caused an addiction crisis among California youth by deliberately designing addictive features like endless scrolling and autoplay.

"Communities across the nation are battling an unprecedented mental health crisis among their children, including serious disruption of their education, fueled by Defendants’ creation and promotion of addictive and dangerous social media platforms. California’s youth, and specifically San Diego County’s youth, are now addicted to Defendants’ platforms in large numbers," the complaint said.

The lawsuit claims the social media companies use addictive techniques, similar to those used in slot machines and those "exploited by the cigarette industry" to intentionally hook young people to their platforms. It also alleges the companies did this despite knowing youth were particularly vulnerable to the addictive effects of their methods.

A recent study from the [Pew Research Center](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/24/teens-and-social-media-key-findings-from-pew-research-center-surveys/) found nearly half of teenagers are online almost constantly. Girls are more likely to use Instagram and TikTok while Youtube is more popular with boys, but the numbers are close. Most teens report using YouTube and TikTok daily and admit it would be difficult for them to give up social media, the data showed.

Concerns have been growing about the effects of social media platforms on youth mental health.

In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory calling attention to the issue, saying more research is needed but that there are “ample indicators that social media can also have a profound risk of harm.”

### Local

[](https://www.nbcsandiego.com/community/nbc-7-telemundo-20-are-supporting-our-schools-help-make-an-impact-on-the-education-of-san-diego-county-students/3737104/)

[](https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/mayor-gloria-lets-controversial-shelter-proposal-die-on-the-kettner-and-vine/3748978/)

San Diego County's lawsuit seeks financial damages to fund youth mental health services. It also demands stronger protections for kids and transparency mandates that require social media companies to disclose how their algorithms impact young users.

San Diego County has sued big tech companies for what it calls the detrimental effects of social media on children and young people, joining a growing nationwide chorus of calls to restrict it.

A [lawsuit filed last week](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_8L9HvbC33A78G2t8ZuCSS8eUosi7Jon/view) accuses the parent companies of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat of knowingly designing addictive platforms that harm young people’s mental health in order to maximize views and advertising profits, in the process creating a public health and safety crisis and posing a public nuisance.

“The data is clear — social media is designed to be addictive, and it’s harming our kids,” said Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer. “Tech giants know exactly what they’re doing — exploiting young people for profit while refusing to take responsibility.”

Lawson-Remer first put forward the proposal to explore legal action last year. The Board of Supervisors ultimately approved it on a 3-2 vote along party lines [in August](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/08/28/san-diego-county-takes-stand-against-social-media-companies/).

The move comes amid a decline in the mental health of teens and young adults over the last decade, and a rise in the use of social media. A 2023 Gallup [survey](https://www.apa.org/monitor/2024/04/teen-social-use-mental-health) found U.S. teens spend on average about five hours on it each day.

That same year, Rady Children’s Hospital reported a 30% jump in children experiencing mental-health crises. Young people age 10 to 24 in San Diego County are now twice as likely as any other age group to visit emergency rooms for anxiety, depression or suicidal thoughts, according to county public health data.

The suit alleges that suicidal thoughts and self-harm have skyrocketed since 2010, when social media became nearly universal among teens.

Tara Djordjevic, a senior at University City High School, said she’s seen these impacts firsthand.

“I’ve seen my friends, who are otherwise very high-achieving, goal-chasing students, spiral into anxiety and depression because of the pressure that these platforms create,” said Djordjevic, who also co-chairs San Diego Unified’s Student Wellness Education & Resources Committee.

Like similar lawsuits the county has pursued against [gun](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/05/03/rebranded-ghost-gun-machine-is-being-sold-illegally-in-california-says-county-lawsuit/) and [opioid](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/07/12/san-diego-using-opioid-settlement-money-to-help-break-cycle-of-overdose/) manufacturers, Lawson-Remer suggests monetary damages could help fund both county education campaigns and behavioral-health treatment.

Although hundreds of similar lawsuits against social media platforms are pending nationwide, she said San Diego County’s focuses not only on financial penalties but on demanding change, with court-ordered safeguards.

The suit asks the court to require social media apps to stop using “manipulative” engagement features like infinite scroll, autoplay and algorithm-driven rabbit holes that it says exploit young users. It also asks for financial penalties for companies that don’t implement these safeguards.

Originally Published: February 7, 2025 at 11:28 AM PST

Lawmakers in Montana have introduced a new bill to completely ban Covid mRNA “vaccines,” citing the “enormous numbers of deaths, disabilities, and serious adverse events” caused by the injections.

The legislation, proposed in the Montana House of Representatives, highlights multiple issues with the “vaccines,” such as a lack of evidence proving they are safe for widespread public use.

Additionally, the lawmakers suggest that mRNA injections are responsible for a surge in [cancers](https://slaynews.com/news/breast-cancer-surges-1000-among-covid-vaxxed-americans/), [infertility](https://slaynews.com/news/saudi-scientists-warn-covid-vaccines-destroying-male-fertility/), and [excess deaths](https://slaynews.com/news/norway-sounds-alarm-scientists-link-covid-vaccines-global-death-surge/).

Further, they argue that the shots are contaminated with [cancer-causing](https://slaynews.com/news/moderna-admits-covid-mrna-shots-cause-cancer/) [DNA fragments](https://slaynews.com/news/top-molecular-scientist-confirms-dna-contamination-covid-vaccines-integrates-human-cells/) and warn that the side effects can be passed on to unvaccinated people through “[shedding](https://slaynews.com/news/scientists-sound-alarm-unvaxxed-develop-covid-vaccine-side-effects/).”

The lack of transparency regarding the “vaccines” means citizens have been denied their rights to informed consent, the lawmakers note.

Therefore, the “vaccines” must be banned, they assert.

“To my knowledge, Montana is the first state to draft a bill banning mRNA. The first hearing is tomorrow. Support HB371!” Dr. Mary Talley Bowden said.

Montana House Bill 371 [states](https://legiscan.com/MT/text/HB371/2025):

> WHEREAS, the mRNA vaccines have caused enormous numbers of deaths, disabilities, and serious adverse events; and
>
> WHEREAS, no long-term studies have been completed regarding fertility, teratogenicity, mutagenicity, or oncogenicity; and
>
> WHEREAS, recipients are not given informed consent; and
>
> WHEREAS, the mRNA vaccines may integrate into the human genome and be passed onto the next generation; and
>
> WHEREAS, the mRNA vaccines are contaminated with DNA, metallic particles, and other unknown nanoparticles; and
>
> WHEREAS, the mRNA vaccines may shed to others and cause side effects or harm.

The Independent Medical Alliance (IMA) is calling on lawmakers in the state to pass the bill.

In a [post on X](https://twitter.com/Honest_Medicine/status/1887621242045247836) sharing a statement regarding the legislation, the IMA wrote.

“Montana is taking a stand!

“HB 371 would ban gene-based mRNA vaccines.

“These are NOT traditional vaccines—Thousands of studies show serious risks from mRNA shots like blood clots, autoimmune disease, and rising all-cause mortality.”

The full statement from the Independent Medical Alliance reads:

> Independent Medical Alliance (IMA) strongly urges passage of Montana HB 371 to end the use of so-called gene-based vaccines.
>
> The IMA (formerly the Frontline Covid Critical Care Alliance – FLCCC) consists of tens of thousands of doctors and other healthcare professionals for whom the government’s heavy-handed COVID-19 response was a wake-up call.
>
> IMA Action has been prominent nationally in advocating for the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to HHS Secretary.
>
> “The Covid-19 pandemic and our government’s response to it has been a complete failure, from the mandates, masks, lockdowns and finally introduction of the mRNA gene therapy,” said [Dr. Kat Lindley](https://imahealth.org/experts/katarina-lindley/), Director of the IMA’s International Fellowship Program.
>
> “This new mRNA product is not a vaccine as they would like us to call it, but instead, a gene therapy that is causing significant health damage to US citizens.”
>
> **HB 371 would ban the use of genetic mRNA-based vaccines in the State of Montana. It will be heard by the House Judiciary Committee on Friday morning, February 7th.**  
>
> IMA Senior Fellow [Dr. Brooke Miller](https://imahealth.org/experts/brooke-miller/) recently spoke in support of banning mRNA technology on humans in [Montana HB 527](https://imahealth.org/dr-brooke-miller-supports-montana-hb-527/).
>
> “These gene therapy ‘vaccines’ alter the genetic material of cells, leading to permanent changes in the genetic makeup of the cell organism,” continued Dr. Lindley.
>
> “**Thousands of peer-reviewed studies have shown serious adverse events to mRNA use, including myocarditis, blood clots, autoimmune disorders, severe immunosuppression, neurodegenerative disorders like dementia, Parkinson’s and prion disease.** 
>
> “We have also seen an increase in cancers from primaries to aggressive reactivation of cancers that were considered cured. We have seen miscarriages and abnormal vaginal bleeding in females who have received this product. There is a significant increase in all-cause mortality across the world that correlates with the role out of this genetic product.”

Dr. Robert Malone, a leading scientist who pioneered mRNA technology, is calling on the people of Montana to show their support for the legislation.

“The bill to ban the administration of all gene-based vaccines to humans in the state of Montana is about to come up for a vote,” Malone said in a [post on X](https://twitter.com/RWMaloneMD/status/1887606239397343646).

“Please contact Rep. Greg Kmetz at [Greg.Kmetz@legmt.gov](https://slaynews.com/news/new-bill-demands-ban-covid-vaccines-due-enormous-numbers-deaths/) to let him know that you or your organization, support or endorse HB 371.”

Dr. Bowden noted that several states are now moving to ban mRNA “vaccines.”

“Bills are being drafted In Montana, Idaho, Iowa, Texas, Tennessee, and South Carolina to ban mRNA injections,” Bowden said.

McCullough Foundation epidemiologist Nicolas Hulscher commented:

“Many U.S. states are actively considering and drafting legislation to BAN the dangerous COVID-19 mRNA injections.

“A critical mass will soon be reached, forcing the federal government to follow suit.”

Meanwhile, a freshman Idaho lawmaker wants to ban most COVID-19 shots for the next decade.

The bill from Sen. Brandon Shippy (R-New Plymouth) would place a moratorium on “human gene therapy products” until July 2035, Idaho Statesman [reports](https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article299331544.html).

The bill defines those as products that include nucleic acids, “genetically modified microorganisms” and other “engineered site-specific nucleases.”

It seeks to ban most forms of gene therapy, specifically mRNA vaccines, Shippy told the Idaho Statesman.

The move as suspicious about the true intention of the “vaccines” continues to mount.

As Slay News [reported](https://slaynews.com/news/moderna-ceo-admits-covid-vaccines-developed-2019-knew-pandemic-coming/), a video has emerged of Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel boasting to fellow World Economic Forum (WEF) members that his company developed Covid mRNA “vaccines” in 2019 because they knew there was “going to be a pandemic.”

Bancel gloated to WEF globalists that he told other executives at Moderna that their advanced knowledge of the Covid pandemic would ensure that they would “make a billion dollars next year” when the coronavirus emerged.

The pharmaceutical head made the admission during a WEF [panel discussion](https://rumble.com/v6f4e3y-moderna-ceo-admits-covid-vaccines-were-developed-in-2019-because-he-knew-pa.html) where he was asked about “vaccine development.”

“I remember walking after Davos into the office of my manufacturing and I say, ‘I will make a billion dollars next year,’ Bancel told WEF members.

“And they look at me a bit funny and say ‘What?’

“And I say, ‘Yeah, we will make a billion dollars next year – there’s going to be a pandemic.’”

**WATCH:**

**[READ MORE – Norway Sounds Alarm as Scientists Link Covid ‘Vaccines’ to Global Death Surge](https://slaynews.com/news/norway-sounds-alarm-scientists-link-covid-vaccines-global-death-surge/)**

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is riddled with almost unprecedented levels of corruption, and should be shut down, President Donald Trump has said.

In one of the first executive orders after his inauguration, Trump suspended all US foreign aid, pending a three-month review, amid a wider push to cut government spending.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio subsequently halted a number of projects assigned to USAID, Washington’s main agency for administering funding to political projects abroad.

Elon Musk, leading the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which is evaluating federal agencies’ spending, has branded USAID a *“criminal organization.”*

*“USAID is driving the radical left crazy, and there is nothing they can do about it because the way in which the money has been spent, so much of it fraudulently, is totally unexplainable,”* Trump wrote on his media site Truth Social on Friday.

[](https://www.rt.com/news/612345-trump-media-contracts-termination/)

*“The corruption is at levels rarely seen before. Close it down!”* he said.

The day before, the US president claimed that the agency had funneled billions of taxpayer dollars into media companies to foster positive media coverage of Democrats.

USAID stole billions of dollars, *“much of it going to the fake news media as a ‘payoff’ for creating good stories about the Democrats. The left-wing ‘rag,’ known as ‘Politico,’ seems to have received $8,000,000,”* Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday.

The decision reportedly followed findings by Musk's team that millions of taxpayer dollars were being spent on Politico Pro subscriptions. Subsequently, the White House directed the General Services Administration to terminate all media contracts funded by USAID, Axios wrote on Thursday, citing an internal email the outlet obtained as saying.

[](https://www.rt.com/news/612360-hungary-orban-ngo-crackdown/)

Politico has denied receiving direct funding from the government, explaining that their premium subscriptions service was being used by some US agencies.

According to Reuters, the administration plans to retain fewer than 300 of USAID's over 10,000 employees. This significant reduction has prompted a lawsuit from a major government workers' union, challenging the legality of the cuts. The American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association sued Trump, Rubio, as well as the Treasury and State departments, branding the crackdown on USAID *“unconstitutional and illegal.”*

Slowly, the unprecedented payrolls fabrication of the Biden administration, which we spent much of the past 4 years exposing to our readers, is starting to unravel.

Earlier today, the BLS confirmed what we previewed last night (see "*[Tomorrow's Jobs Report Will Finally Capture The Surge In Illegal Aliens, Lead To Another Big Negative Payrolls Revision](https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/tomorrows-jobs-report-will-finally-capture-surge-illegal-aliens-lead-another-negative)*"), and admitted what we had been saying for much of the past 3 years - **that most of the job gains in the past few years, and especially 2024, were a mirage,** and following the dramatic August 2024 preliminary data revision which vaporized 818K jobs (which had never existed in the first place)...

[](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/historical%20payrolls%20revisions_4.jpg?itok=BnmLcV1Q)

... today we finally saw the details behind this near-record revision.

As part of its annual revision to both the Establishment and Household survey, today the BLS said that the "seasonally adjusted total nonfarm employment level for March 2024 was revised downward by 589,000. On a not seasonally adjusted basis, the **total nonfarm employment level for March 2024 was revised downward by 598,000, or -0.4 percent**. Not seasonally adjusted, the absolute average benchmark revision over the past 10 years is 0.1 percent." As a result, the over-the-year change in payrolls for March 2024 was **revised from +2,900,000 to +2,346,000.**

[](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/seasonal%20adjustments.jpg?itok=BD7jpUBh)

Another, perhaps easier way of showing just how dramatic this negative revision to the jobs data series is the following chart showing the monthly change in payrolls pre and post revision. One can immediately see just how much uglier it is, not only because the average increase in monthly payrolls drops for all three prior years (2022 from 441K to 380K, 2023 from 231K to 217K, 2024 from 186K to 166K), but because all of a sudden, those two lonely sub-100K prints in August and October (which only emerged as sub-100K following monthly revisions) were not that lonely and we now learn that **June and July were also sub-100K prints.**

[](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Pre%20Post%20Jan%202025%20revision%20payrolls.jpg?itok=rj7CwT7y)

In short, just as we have been warning since early-2024, the wheels of the US jobs market were falling off in mid 2024, and by the Trump came on board, the jobs market has become one giant Potemkin village on the verge of collapse.

Another highlight from today's data revision, this time impacting the Household Survey is that the massive gap between the Household and Establishment survey which we have noted on multiple occasions in the past, closed nearly by half when the BLS revised the number of employed workers higher by 2.2 million, to 163.9 million from 161.7 million, largely as a result of the BLS admitting that there are millions of illegal workers in the US, a topic which until the election was especially sensitive politically but no longer is. That said, there is still another 2 million jobs to go to close the gap, but we are confident that shouldn't be much of a problem.

[](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/household%20survey%20gap2025-02-07_13-35-03.jpg?itok=p8-Ko6Hl)

And the reason why it won't be a problem is simple: while it won't get much discussion today, the biggest reason behind today's solid increase in the number of employed workers is the same one we have been pounding the table on since 2023. It's all foreign workers, and - as we explained recently - it is mostly all illegal aliens.

That's right, the BLS reported that in January, **over a million, *or 1,045,000 to be precise,* foreign-born workers found a job** (and as [Standard Chartered explained lst June](https://x.com/zerohedge/status/1799608998561231342), this is largely illegal or "undocumented" aliens) compared to **only 8,000 native-born workers!**

[](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/native%20born%20jan.jpg?itok=g3Qmd9Oo)

This means that while we just hit another month of record foreign-born (largely illegal alien) workers, at 31.774 million, the number of native-born workers remains unchanged over the past six years, still below levels last hit in 2019, just before the covid crisis.

[](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/record%20foreign%20bodn%20native%20born.jpg?itok=osmhkeaa)

This also means that since July 2018, the US labor force has added 4.6 million foreign-born workers, while the number of native-born workers has declined by nearly 700K.

[](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/change%20in%20employemnt%20since%20july%202019.jpg?itok=IsRZzaY_)

And while this (not really) shocking increase in foreign workers, which really is just the latest in a long series of monthly reports confirming that the only job growth in the US in the past 6 years has been for foreigners, is clearly the result of Biden's policies, we would recommend that president Trump do something to urgently if not immediately address this critical topic... a topic [which one year ago we correctly predicted](https://x.com/zerohedge/status/1746929670308671524) would win Trump the 2024 election - and which if left as is, will promptly lead to the transformation of the current euphoria in Trump's presidency, with disappointment.

## NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST

### ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX

Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.

Ukraine has long stopped being a democracy and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky just made sure to keep it that way for another 90 days by signing a decree to extend martial law and continue general mobilization effort.

The measures in force so far were due to expire on Feb. 7. Parliament voted to extend the provisions on Jan. 15. Ukraine was supposed to have a new vote long ago, but due to the war, Zelensky argued that it was not possible.

Ukraine declared a nationwide state of general mobilization on Feb. 24, 2022, and has since extended it several times. Due to staffing problems in the army, a bill on tightening mobilization rules came into force on May 18, 2024.

Martial law and conscription come despite the majority of Ukrainians saying they want to end the war and are willing to accept territorial losses in order to do so, according to the independent Gallup Polling agency.

In recent months, mobilization efforts have increasingly involved the use of violence and forced conscription, leading men to attempt to leave the country, often at the risk of their lives. 

Zelensky, who fears losing power if the war ends, has an incentive to keep the conflict going. However, support for Zelensky has rapidly declined among the Ukrainian population.

Almost every week, reports are coming in about forced conscription in Ukraine being carried out using increasingly brutal means. Hungarian channel M1-Hirado recently ran a special compiling some of the latest footage of Ukrainians being beaten and shoved into vans in forced mobilization operations.


As Remix News [has previously reported](https://rmx.news/article/mass-desertions-from-ukrainian-army-critical-problem-on-the-frontlines/), desertion rates at the frontline are high, with many Ukrainians fleeing before they ever even enter combat.

To make up for shortfalls, authorities from the so-called Territorial Recruitment and Social Support Center (TCK) are using increasingly aggressive methods to meet monthly draft quotas. After morning briefings, officers split into teams and search various locations around the city – cafes, restaurants, and even nightclubs – for men eligible for military service.

America’s foreign aid agency, USAID, has given nearly $800 million to a group that has pushed censorship and suppressed “heteronormativity” across the globe, according to documents reviewed by The Federalist. 

The [Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening](https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/521943638_201909_990_2021021717708989.pdf) (CEPPS) [took in](https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/521943638_202009_990_2021090318814339.pdf) [$799.7 million](https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/521943638_201709_990_2018092815743601.pdf) in [funding](https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/521943638_201809_990_2019101116743019.pdf) from [2015](https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/521943638_201609_990_2017102314874736.pdf) to [2021](https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/521943638_202209_990_2023110321860451.pdf), per IRS tax [documents](https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/521943638_202109_990_2022082220288920.pdf). [According](https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/consortium-for-elections-and-political-process-strengthening/) to InfluenceWatch, “The organization is solely funded by the [U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)](https://www.influencewatch.org/government-agency/u-s-agency-for-international-development/).”

As President Donald Trump pushes to “[wind down](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-confirms-he-is-winding-down-usaid-2025-02-04/)” USAID — which has apparently become a massive “[scam on U.S. taxpayers](https://thefederalist.com/2025/02/05/defunding-usaid-isnt-about-reducing-the-deficit-its-about-shutting-down-left-wing-propaganda/)” — government funding disclosures have brought to light the often frivolous, and in this case nefarious, use of public tax dollars. As The Federalist previously reported, the federal government has been bankrolling America’s legacy media outlets for years with tens of millions of dollars in [lucrative contracts](https://thefederalist.com/2025/02/06/follow-the-money-feds-gave-millions-to-left-wing-media-outlets-including-politico-the-new-york-times/). 

CEPPS — whose website is [no longer public](https://cepps.org/) —  [claims](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150838/https://cepps.org/about-us/our-story/) to be a “nonpartisan” group focused on global “democratic development,” according to an archived webpage. But its website suggests that, while corporate media have been pushing [propaganda](https://thefederalist.com/2024/12/30/the-top-10-hoaxes-the-propaganda-press-peddled-in-2024/) domestically, CEPPS has been advancing censorship — and radical gender ideology — throughout the rest of the world.

## The Money Trail

CEPPS was [funded](https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/consortium-for-elections-and-political-process-strengthening/) by USAID’s “Global Elections and Political Transitions” award from 2016 to 2020, according to InfluenceWatch. After that award was [discontinued](https://web.archive.org/web/20241204034818/https://cepps.org/story/beyond-the-ballot-january-2022/) in 2022, USAID gave the group a “Democratic Elections and Political Processes award” for another five years. 

CEPPS’s online IRS documents only show the group’s funding up until 2021, so The Federalist analyzed the group’s funding based on that publicly available information. The group received more than [$94.1 million](https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/521943638_201609_990_2017102314874736.pdf) in 2015 — eventually reaching nearly [$160.8](https://apps.irs.gov/pub/epostcard/cor/521943638_202209_990_2023110321860451.pdf) million in 2021, for a total of $799,699,782 in federal funding over seven years. Interestingly, in these documents, the group does not report the salaries of top officials.


CEPPS annual funding from 2015 to 2021. IRS 990 tax forms

CEPPS divided the federal funding between its three member groups — the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), the International Republican Institute (IRI), and the National Democratic Institute (NDI). The group has worked with “[partners](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150838/https://cepps.org/about-us/our-story/)” in 140 countries and has observed elections in 40 countries. 

## Pushing to Censor Disapproved Speech

CEPPS launched a “[Countering Disinformation](https://web.archive.org/web/20220703061348/https://cepps.org/story/cepps-countering-disinformation-guide-launch/) Guide” in April 2021 “with funding from USAID” for use by “practitioners, donors, political leaders, and civil society organizations around the world, to highlight the work being done to counter disinformation.” 

Jerry Lavery, then-technical director of CEPPS (and now [regional coordinator](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jerrylavery/) for Southern and East Africa at the USAID Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance), said in an online launch [event](https://web.archive.org/web/20220703061348/https://cepps.org/story/cepps-countering-disinformation-guide-launch/) that IFES, IRI, and NDI “contributed” to the speech control project. He said USAID’s “Global Elections and Political Transitions Award” “funded this important activity,” which would “update over time.”

“CEPPS developed the guide as a living project designed to empower partners around the world to learn from each other the best ways to counter disinformation, no matter who they are — governments, donors, implementers, candidates, civil society, media, or elections management bodies,” Lavery said. “Disinformation challenges to democracy require that we work together as a community to share our experiences, and to hold governments, social media platforms, and political leaders accountable. …”

<video controls="" src="https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Lavery.mov" id="html-player-0"></video>

Jerry Lavery, a CEPPS/USAID official, opens the group’s disinformation tool launch session. CEPPS | Wayback Machine

Lavery introduced David Black, a [senior official](https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-black-drg/?originalSubdomain=be) at USAID, during the video. Black said that “the guide will be an important tool for those who are working to counter these negative impacts of disinformation.” He said, “For a while now,” USAID and CEPPS have been working to silence speech deemed “disinformation” — using an “evidence base” of which programs are effective, “programming in the field to counter disinformation,” and a “disinformation primer for USAID staff and others.” 

<video controls="" src="https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Black-1.mov" id="html-player-1"></video>

USAID official David Black spoke during the launch of CEPPS’ disinformation platform. CEPPS | Wayback Machine

Black said CEPPS’s guide will be “very useful to USAID staff,” as well as “other donors, aid organizations, partner governments, civil society organizations, and others.” 

<video controls="" src="https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Black-2.mov" id="html-player-2"></video>

The “countering disinformation” platform is [no longer public](https://counteringdisinformation.org/), but an [archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20250111063010/https://counteringdisinformation.org/) webpage says the platform featured nine main categories. These included “[legal and regulatory responses](https://web.archive.org/web/20241213122300/https://counteringdisinformation.org/node/2704/)” to “inhibit political actors from using disinformation,” “[platform specific engagement](https://web.archive.org/web/20241213122300/https://counteringdisinformation.org/node/2722/)” to leverage “social media policies and enforcement actions,” and the “[gender dimensions of disinformation](https://web.archive.org/web/20241006134215/https://counteringdisinformation.org/node/13/)” that provide a framework for silencing “gendered disinformation” that promotes “heteronormativity.”

The platform listed “legal and regulatory responses” to disapproved speech. It suggested countries could “[criminalize](https://web.archive.org/web/20241213122300/https://counteringdisinformation.org/node/2704/) the dissemination of fake news or disinformation,” though it cautioned doing so, citing the “potential for democratically damaging downstream results.”

The “countering disinformation” platform gave more favorable treatment to approaches that infringed on speech in less direct ways. When “party members or supporters share [bad information](https://web.archive.org/web/20241213122300/https://counteringdisinformation.org/node/2704/),” it said, one response could be to force “parties and candidates to issue corrections.” It [referenced](https://counteringdisinformation.org/topics/legal/5-measures-promote-democratic-information-during-campaigning-and-elections) South Africa — a current human rights [nightmare](https://thefederalist.com/tag/south-africa/) — as an example of a country where “the Election Commission can compel parties and candidates to correct electoral disinformation.” It also [said](https://web.archive.org/web/20241213122300/https://counteringdisinformation.org/node/2704/) countries could “hold platforms liable for all content and require removal of content,” [pointing](https://web.archive.org/web/20240919051305/https://www.counteringdisinformation.org/topics/legal/2-measures-restrict-online-content-and-behaviors#PlatformsLiable) to online content laws in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.

CEPPS’s Countering Disinformation Guide [included](https://web.archive.org/web/20220703061348/https://cepps.org/story/cepps-countering-disinformation-guide-launch/) a “global [database](https://web.archive.org/web/20241213122300/https://counteringdisinformation.org/interventions) of organizations, projects, and donors working on and supporting these efforts” to suppress disapproved speech. It featured a [menu](https://web.archive.org/web/20241213122300/https://counteringdisinformation.org/interventions) with groups explicitly focused on censorship, like [NewsGuard](https://thefederalist.com/2023/11/15/meet-newsguard-the-government-backed-censorship-tool-billed-as-an-arbiter-of-truth/) and the [Global Disinformation Index](https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/28/meet-the-partisans-who-wove-the-censorship-complexs-vast-and-tangled-web/) — which attempted to defund conservative outlets, including [The Federalist](https://thefederalist.com/2024/12/18/mike-johnsons-omnibus-resuscitates-state-department-group-that-censored-the-federalist/). The Federalist, The Daily Wire, and the state of Texas [sued](https://nclalegal.org/case/the-daily-wire-the-federalist-state-of-texas-v-department-of-state-et-al/) the State Department, which was funding the GDI, for First Amendment violations. 

CEPP’s platform included a GDI [prof](https://web.archive.org/web/20240919035522/https://counteringdisinformation.org/index.php/interventions/global-disinformation-index)[i](https://web.archive.org/web/20240919035522/https://counteringdisinformation.org/index.php/interventions/global-disinformation-index)[le](https://web.archive.org/web/20240919035522/https://counteringdisinformation.org/index.php/interventions/global-disinformation-index) (last updated in February 2021) that glowingly portrays GDI’s “aims to disrupt, defund and down-rank disinformation sites.”

## ‘Gender Transformative and Intersectional’ Strategy

While CEPPS was pushing to silence unapproved speech, it was advancing an “inclusive development approach” — one “that is [gender transformative and intersectional](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150948/https://cepps.org/what-we-do/inclusion/),” according to an archived webpage.

The group planned to “remove systemic inequities and discriminatory norms” worldwide. To do so, it would “dismantle systems of discrimination” and “use political organizing and collective action” to “influence political processes and outcomes.” CEPPS [aimed](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150948/https://cepps.org/what-we-do/inclusion/) to “challenge heteronormative values and assumptions” and “create an enabling environment supportive of the full inclusion and participation of LGBTQI+ people.”

CEPPS highlighted its “Global Pride” work, including “[Trans Queens Of The Night](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150956/https://cepps.org/story/pride-guatemala/)” in Guatemala and “LGBTI rights” groups in [Burma](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150944/https://cepps.org/story/ifes-pride/), [Lebanon](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150942/https://cepps.org/story/cepps-global-pride-month-partner-spotlight-helem/), [Serbia](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150942/https://cepps.org/story/pride-da-se-zna/), and [Haiti](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150956/https://cepps.org/story/kouraj/). The group [celebrated](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150948/https://cepps.org/what-we-do/inclusion/) “Global Pride Month” in [2021](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150938/https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=7f8d0d61671687ce51e5adb74&id=6a02ed113d), [2022](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150942/https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=7f8d0d61671687ce51e5adb74&id=8dad0ba4cb), and [2023](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150940/https://mailchi.mp/cepps/pride-2023) in joint statements with USAID — one of which [promoted](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150938/https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=7f8d0d61671687ce51e5adb74&id=6a02ed113d) CEPPS’s censorship platform.


A document by USAID and CEPPS outlined “[Effective Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender,](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150939/https://cepps.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/LGBTQI-Guidance-Note.pdf) [Queer, and Intersex+ (LGBTQI+) Democracy and Governance Programming](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150939/https://cepps.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/LGBTQI-Guidance-Note.pdf).” It defined gender as the “socially constructed characteristics and related roles, rights, responsibilities, entitlements, and obligations associated with men and women.” 

While defining “intersectionality,” the groups adopted the [Marxist framework](https://modernagejournal.com/the-weaponization-of-oppression/238427/) that “racism, sexism, and homophobia” work together to “create systems of oppression that reflects the intersection of multiple forms of discrimination.”

Part of CEPPS’s work includes mitigating what it has deemed “[online violence](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150815/https://cepps.org/online-violence/)” — not just to women, but, again, to “gender-diverse individuals.” It takes issue with “gendered commentary” and “harassment.”

“Perpetrators of online violence against women and technology-facilitated gender-based violence (GBV) exacerbate existing harmful gender norms and inequalities, enforce heteronormativity, increase social intolerance, and deepen existing societal cleavages,” the archived webpage [reads](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150815/https://cepps.org/online-violence/). 

CEPPS [suggested](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150815/https://cepps.org/online-violence/) guides on “[the gender dimensions of disinformation](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150829/https://counteringdisinformation.org/node/13/),” “[men, power, and politics](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150829/https://www.ndi.org/sites/default/files/Men%2C%20Power%20and%20Politics%20Program%20Guidance%2011_20_2020%206.pdf),” and “[addressing online misogyny and gendered disinformation](https://web.archive.org/web/20240131150831/https://www.ndi.org/publications/addressing-online-misogyny-and-gendered-disinformation-how-guide).”

Billionaire Elon Musk, heading up Trump’s efforts in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), [responded](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887534216453263617) to an X post that used CEPPS as an example of how USAID shuttles money to different actors.

“Exactly,” Musk wrote. “The money laundering is done through several intermediaries.”

A small Philadelphia corner grocery store is the scene of yet another example of squandered taxpayer money. In this case, “nearly $2 million” in food benefits meant for the hungry went to one person.

Store owner Jenny Espinal Tejada, 34, was sentenced this week to 18 months in prison. She must pay more than $1.8 million in restitution and forfeit “the proceeds of her offenses, for defrauding the U.S. government,” according to a press release from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania’s U.S. Attorney’s Office. Espinal Tejada “pleaded guilty in October to one count of wire fraud and one count of defrauding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program” (SNAP).

Here is how she did it, according to the attorney’s office:

“Espinal Tejada admitted that she used her small corner grocery store in Philadelphia to redeem SNAP benefits, even though she knew the store had not been approved to participate in SNAP as a merchant,” the press release reads.

According to the attorney’s office, Espinal Tejada “gained access to the program by misappropriating” identification numbers that “had been assigned” to stores participating in SNAP legitimately. She used these misappropriated numbers “to work around the rules of SNAP” and “abused the program by trading benefits for cash in her store.”

It is [illegal](https://www.thefederalcriminalattorneys.com/food-stamp-fraud#:~:text=Unlawful%20Acquisition,manner%20that%20is%20not%20authorized.) to buy or sell SNAP benefits or to exchange them for anything other than eligible food items.

“Espinal Tejada sought to profit illicitly from the SNAP program, diverting nearly $2 million of the USDA’s money,” U.S. Attorney Romero said in the statement. “On behalf of the folks who rely on these resources every day — and the taxpayers who fund the programs — we and our partners will continue to prosecute abuses like this and ensure that those who commit them are held appropriately accountable.”

This was nearly $2 million at just one store. Investigators should keep looking because we know SNAP fraud is rampant.

In Buffalo, New York this week, a woman named Carmella Miller was sentenced to five years of probation, 200 hours of community service, and ordered to pay back more than $6,000 in restitution after being convicted of grand larceny and welfare fraud. Investigators said she hid information about her income and fraudulently collected SNAP. As a local NBC affiliate [reported](https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/crime/buffalo-woman-sentenced-fraudulently-collecting-snap/71-e90b098f-d504-40a7-bc8c-91e549e7f690), officials said that for “nearly four years,” Miller “collected a total of $6,406 in public assistance benefits that she was not entitled to receive.”

In Minnesota, a Shakopee woman was charged with theft for “fraudulently collect\[ing\] more than $60,000 in public benefits while incarcerated,” [according](https://www.fox9.com/news/shakopee-woman-fraudulently-collected-benefits-prison) to a local Fox affiliate. This included $2,619 in SNAP, as well as “General Assistance … in the form of cash benefits and Medical Assistance.”  

A [report](https://www.mlri.org/2024/12/23/congresss-last-minute-compromise-to-avoid-a-shutdown-eliminated-its-previous-agreement-to-replace-food-benefits-stolen-from-low-income-families/) from the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute describes another sort of SNAP fraud: “organized card-skimming schemes,” in which a SNAP cardholder swipes to pay for their food, and the magnetic stripe is [skimmed](https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/scams-and-safety/common-frauds-and-scams/skimming) for data.  

“In December 2022, Congress directed states to replace most stolen SNAP with federal funds,” according to a December release from the Institute. “Since then, the Massachusetts SNAP agency, the Department of Transitional Assistance …, has issued approximately $10 million federal dollars to replace stolen SNAP for about 21,000 households.”

When someone steals your wallet, no one gives you replacement cash. But under former President Joe Biden, [starting](https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/replacement-snap-benefits-consolidated-appropriations-act-2023) in 2022, SNAP recipients were able to fill out a form and get replacement dollars on their card — as if there is a never-ending stash of cash somewhere. According to the [USDA](https://www.mlri.org/2024/12/23/congresss-last-minute-compromise-to-avoid-a-shutdown-eliminated-its-previous-agreement-to-replace-food-benefits-stolen-from-low-income-families/), “\[c\]ongressional authority to replace stolen benefits expired on Dec. 20, 2024.”

As my colleague Tristan Justice recently [reported](https://thefederalist.com/2025/02/05/watchdog-report-federal-funding-of-the-desserts-and-sodas-driving-americas-obesity-epidemic-needs-to-end-now/), SNAP has also been nutritionally misused. A recent report from the Foundation for Government Accountability noted — citing the latest USDA data from 2016 — that America spent “nearly twice as much on sweetened beverages than fruit with candy, sugary drinks, and desserts exceeding purchases of fruits and vegetables by more than $400 million.”

Between [SNAP](https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/recipient/eligibility), free school [breakfast](https://www.fns.usda.gov/sbp/school-breakfast-program) and [lunch](https://www.fns.usda.gov/nslp), the Supplemental Nutrition [Program](https://www.fns.usda.gov/wic) for Women, Infants, and Children, senior [food](https://www.usa.gov/senior-food-programs) assistance, [food](https://www.usda.gov/about-food/nutrition-research-and-programs/food-distribution) banks, [emergency](https://www.fns.usda.gov/tefap/emergency-food-assistance-program) food assistance, soup kitchens, church potlucks, and the kindness of neighbors, no one should go [hungry](https://www.fns.usda.gov/programs) in America.

The good people of the United States don’t want anyone to starve, but people who are starving don’t live on candy or trade away their food credit. SNAP needs an audit.

The Department of Defense is like no other part of the federal government. For one thing, it's actually constitutionally justified. For another, it is the wall that protects America (yes, walls really do work) against foreign threats; as a famous movie quote has it, "In this world, there are walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns." The Department of Defense is responsible for recruiting, training, and equipping those men. To that end, the mission of those men (and women) is this, above and beyond anything else: to close with and destroy the enemy through fire, maneuver, and shock effect. Their purpose is to ensure and protect the liberty and property of the people of the United States of America. Anything that promotes that mission is good. Anything that impedes it is bad.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth gets that, having been a warfighter himself. But he also — correctly — understands that this essential purpose doesn't excuse the Department of Defense from fiscal responsibility, or from accounting for the taxpayer dollars they receive. To that end, Secretary Hegseth has committed to the Pentagon passing a [clean fiscal audit within four years](https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5132332-pete-hegseth-defense-department-clean-audit/).

> Defense Secretary [Pete Hegseth](https://thehill.com/people/pete-hegseth/) on Friday committed to getting the Pentagon to pass a clean audit within four years after the [Defense Department](https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5106718-pete-hegseth-pentagon-priorities-post-confirmation/) failed several in a row.
>
> During a town hall with defense staffers, Hegseth said that he will ensure the Pentagon “at a bare minimum” passes a clean audit by the end of the current administration.
>
> “The American taxpayers deserve that,” he continued. “They deserve to know where their $850 billion dollars go, how it’s spent, and make sure it’s spent wisely.”

This is correct. The most essential federal activity, and there can be little doubt that the armed forces are among, if not *the* single most essential federal activity, must still account to the taxpayers for where every dollar has gone.

> The Pentagon [failed its seventh audit in November,](https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4992913-pentagon-fails-7th-audit-in-a-row-but-says-progress-made/) though officials claimed at the time they made strides toward the goal of a clean audit in 2028. Around half of the agencies passed and half failed in the audit.
>
> The Pentagon has not passed a clean audit since it became legally obligated to in 2018, even as the budget has soared and is approaching a trillion dollars.
>
> The Marines have been an exception, with the military branch [announcing this week](https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5126577-marine-corps-passes-audit/) a clean audit for its $49 billion in financial assets.

Good for the Marines — but (and I say this as an old Army type) much as we kid each other, the Marines have always had a reputation for keeping their web-footed fowl arranged in a linear fashion.

Nearly a trillion dollars of taxpayer money is being spent by the Pentagon every year. Every dollar must be accounted for, not just to ensure that it's all spent, but spent properly; nothing on gender theory or DEI nonsense, all on training, equipment, logistics, and all of the activities and materials the armed forces need to find bad guys, anywhere in the world, and permanently revoke their birth certificates. We can have accountability and readiness; we must have accountability and readiness.

The early January launch of Chinese startup DeepSeek’s Artificial Intelligence models, which rival, if not outright eclipse, the capabilities of all current industry leaders at a negligible fraction of the cost, has been [widely hailed](https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/what-is-deepseek-why-is-it-disrupting-ai-sector-2025-01-27/) by Western news outlets as a revolutionary disruption of the U.S.-dominated tech world order. Hundreds of billions have been [shaved off](https://www.investopedia.com/stock-market-winners-and-losers-of-deepseek-ai-upheaval-nvda-meta-now-8783765) American AI giant Nvidia’s stock price. Silicon Valley is [frenziedly imploring](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250129-with-china-s-deepseek-us-tech-fears-red-threat) Donald Trump to take decisive action and regain Washington’s “strategic advantage” in the sphere.

The Trump administration can only be a receptive audience to such entreaties. In fact, the loudest and most determined pleading to beat Beijing in the global battle for AI supremacy will be emanating from individuals and organizations in intimate proximity to the President, up to and including members of his new cabinet. While unacknowledged in the mainstream, Trump is, one way or another, surrounded by people with extensive financial, ideological and political interests in AI products and applications to a marked degree.

For example, [Trump’s confirmed](https://apnews.com/article/cia-director-ratcliffe-trump-cabinet-national-intelligence-a73ceaef42086d46a728979189a9826b) CIA director, John Ratcliffe, has for years sat on the board of and consulted for multiple [AI firms](https://theintercept.com/2025/01/23/cia-nominee-john-ratcliffe-ai/) with Pentagon contracts extending to billions. This includes [Arctop](https://arctop.com/), which uses Artificial Intelligence to “interpret brain signals to seamlessly translate thoughts into speech and digital actions” and [currently has](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/arctop-secures-1-25m-afwerx-contract-to-enhance-air-force-training-through-cognition-adaptive-simulations-302256313.html) a $1.25 million contract with the U.S. Air Force to monitor the brain activity of cadets in training.

Moreover, from 2021-2022, Ratcliffe consulted for [Shield AI](https://shield.ai/). In the second year of his employment, the [company received](https://shield.ai/shield-ai-joins-air-forces-950-million-jadc2-effort/) a $950 million Air Force contract to use Artificial Intelligence to pilot unmanned drones. The CIA has secretly [long-exploited](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx8MT1hmHmc) such tech to run its targeted assassination programs the world over. Shield AI isn’t the only company to which Ratcliffe is linked offering these services, and his [nomination disclosure](https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/qfc-jratcliffe-011525.pdf) to the Senate links him to half a dozen companies inextricably tied to the Military Industrial Complex.

In that document, the CIA chief declares “none” of his business dealings could represent any conflict of interest with his new role or even “appear” to. Ratcliffe’s unconvincing denials are particularly difficult to reconcile with Trump [announcing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ALS0gLzCCA) on January 23—the second day of his second term in office—a $500 billion AI initiative, [Stargate](https://openai.com/index/announcing-the-stargate-project/). Under its auspices, 20 large AI data centers will be constructed in the U.S. by 2029, managed by a consortium of major private Artificial Intelligence firms and financial institutions.

[Forbes branded](https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2025/01/30/the-stargate-project-trump-touts-500-billion-bid-for-ai-dominance/) the move “monumental,” aimed at reinforcing Washington’s “position as the undisputed global leader” in AI. However, DeepSeek’s launch, which saw the app [almost instantly](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/deepseek-app-holds-top-global-spot-in-downloads-led-by-india/articleshow/117835222.cms?from=mdr) catapulted to the world’s top-rated, most-downloaded free app, [demonstrated](https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/big-tech-faces-heat-chinas-deepseek-sows-doubts-billion-dollar-spending-2025-01-27/) AI primacy can be achieved without vast computing power or mammoth public or private investment. Its ChatGPT killer took two months and under $6 million to build. Even the mainstream media [acknowledged](https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/other/trump-s-500-billion-ai-project-faces-a-new-threat-from-deepseek/ar-AA1y4IkY) that DeepSeek threatened Stargate’s future before the project even took root.

It is indeed no coincidence then that DeepSeek has [been subject](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/27/deepseek-cyberattack-ai) to relentless cyberattacks since launch. Chinese state media has [referred to](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3296765/cyberattack-deepseek-including-brute-force-assault-started-us-chinese-state-media) this blitzkrieg – which shows no sign of slowing, [only escalating](https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202501/1327697.shtml) – as a “massive brute-force” strike originating from “US IP addresses.” Given Ratcliffe’s background and new CIA position, Trump [significantly loosening](https://news.yahoo.com/frustrated-with-cia-trump-administration-turned-to-pentagon-for-shadow-war-with-iran-205152958.html) restrictions on Agency cyberattacks during his first term, and his administration’s dark handshake with AI giants, one wonders how many of those IP addresses are based in Langley, Virginia.

## ‘Best Behavior’

One of the Artificial Intelligence firms set to deliver Stargate is OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT. Its CEO Sam Altman has long been [fawned over](https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/artificial-the-openai-story-21587cbd) in the Western media as a key leader of the AI boom, a [September 2023](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/sam-altman-artificial-intelligence-openai-profile.html) New York Magazine profile comparing him to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atom bomb. At the White House press conference kickstarting Stargate, he [stood beaming](https://abcnews.go.com/US/openais-sam-altman-warned-america-trump-now-partnering/story?id=118145337) next to Trump before delivering an address of his own. He boldly declared: “This will be the most important project of this era…We wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr. President, and I’m thrilled that we get to.”

Such effusive praise is in stark contrast to 2016 when Altman spent much of the year [comparing Trump](https://blog.samaltman.com/trump) to Adolf Hitler and [imploring](https://blog.samaltman.com/the-2016-election) U.S. citizens to vote for Hillary Clinton. Subsequently, he donated sizable sums to Democratic party causes and candidates, including [$200,000](https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/openai-ceo-sam-altman-donated-200000-biden-campaign) to Joe Biden. Eerily, his sudden political volte-face coincided with a prominent appearance at a [July 2024](https://aiforgood.itu.int/ai-and-the-social-contract-how-sam-altman-envisions-tomorrows-world/) AI for Good conference. There, Altman made a number of deeply [disquieting comments](https://x.com/TFTC21/status/1882571514891080030), chief among them:

> Over a long period of time…I \[expect\] there will be some change required to the social contract, given how powerful we expect \[Artificial Intelligence\] to be. I’m not a believer that there won’t be any jobs, I think we always find new things to do. But I do think the whole structure of society itself will be up for some degree of debate and reconfiguration.”

Altman’s forecast sparked [widespread concern](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/28/musk-altman-feud-china-ai-broligarchs-deepseek) he and fellow AI innovators were seeking to harness the unprecedented power of their patented technology for malign, world-changing ends. Yet, his dire projection pales compared to the routine utterances of Larry Ellison, chief of Oracle, the other major tech firm at Stargate’s forefront. While little-known, the company is one of the world’s biggest and most profitable tech players, reaping untold billions from contracts with U.S. government agencies over decades, the CIA being its most profitable customer.

Oracle’s foray into AI is a [relatively new](https://www.oracle.com/corporate/acquisitions/federos/) development, but Ellison – the world’s fourth-richest man, [per Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/lawrence-j-ellison/) – has grand, dystopian plans for the technology and no compunction whatsoever about broadcasting these designs publicly. At a [September 2024](https://www.businessinsider.com/larry-ellison-ai-surveillance-keep-citizens-on-their-best-behavior-2024-9) investor meeting, he bragged that artificial intelligence could be used to perpetually monitor every conceivable public and private surveillance system, from CCTV to vehicle dashboard cameras. Ellison also foresaw AI-powered drones replacing police cars in high-speed chases – “very simple in the age of autonomous drones”:

“We’re going to have supervision…at all times, and if there’s a problem, AI will report that problem and report it to the appropriate person. Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.”

## ‘Technically Simple’

At the January 23 White House Stargate presser, Ellison [laid out](https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/trumps-ai-deal-fueling-early-cancer-detection-oracles-larry-ellison) an entirely novel use for AI – its application to healthcare, in the form of rapid-response mRNA vaccines for grave ailments, particularly cancer. He ominously dubbed Oracle’s research and development in this field “one of the most exciting things we’re working on.” Ellison claimed Artificial Intelligence analysis of simple blood test results could produce “early detection” of major afflictions, then prescribe appropriate vaccines accordingly:

> Once we gene-sequence that cancer tumor, you can then vaccinate the person, design a vaccine for every individual person to vaccinate them against that cancer…You can make that vaccine, that mRNA vaccine, you can make that robotically again using AI in about 48 hours…Imagine early cancer detection, the development of a cancer vaccine for your particular cancer aimed at you…This is the promise of AI and the promise of the future.”

MRNA vaccines remain [highly controversial](https://www.science.org/content/article/further-evidence-offered-claim-genes-pandemic-coronavirus-can-integrate-human-dna) within the scientific community and are [authorized purely](https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-and-authorizes-updated-mrna-covid-19-vaccines-better-protect-against-currently) for “emergency use” in the U.S. and elsewhere. This is without factoring in Oracle’s long-running ties to the CIA, an organization that has previously employed bogus vaccination campaigns for spying operations and [regime change](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/04/usaid-latin-americans-cuba-rebellion-hiv-workshops) efforts. Indeed, the company’s [very name](https://gizmodo.com/larry-ellisons-oracle-started-as-a-cia-project-1636592238) is drawn from an Agency project that Ellison worked on as a contractor in the 1970s.

As Oracle sells its products and services to businesses and governments rather than regular citizens, its operations typically fly under the mainstream radar. Yet, the company’s tendrils extend unseen and unknown into every conceivable sphere of public, political, and even daily life, with countless consumer-facing businesses, government entities, and educational facilities relying on the firm’s database software.


Hillary Clinton Larry Ellison greet each other during an event at a charter school in San Carlos, Calif. Sept. 20, 1997. Paul Sakuma | AP

Ellison is not only intensely relaxed about Oracle collating such swaths of sensitive private data, he considers this trove his firm’s unique selling point. In 2004, [Ellison boasted](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54148474):

> The Oracle database is used to keep track of basically everything. The information about your banks, your checking balance, your savings balance, is stored in an Oracle database. Your airline reservation is stored in an Oracle database. What books you bought on Amazon is stored in an Oracle database. Your profile on Yahoo! is stored in an Oracle database…Privacy is already gone.”

Since Oracle’s birth, Ellison has been a firm believer in governments maintaining voluminous data on their citizens. The 9/11 attacks afforded him the opportunity to shill this proposal publically. In [January 2002](https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/31/opinion/IHT-a-single-national-security-database.html), he authored an op-ed for The New York Times calling for the introduction of a “single national security database” in the U.S. This centralized system would combine “biometrics, thumb prints, hand prints \[and\] iris scans”:

> The single greatest step we Americans could take to make life tougher for terrorists would be to ensure that all the information in myriad government databases was copied into a single, comprehensive national security database…Creating such a database is technically simple. All we have to do is copy information from the hundreds of separate law enforcement databases into a single database. A national security database could be built in a few months.”

Two months after 9/11, [Oracle recruited](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/random-access-markets-the-free-market-of-information) CIA high-ranker David Carney, after 32 years of service at the Agency, to pitch this proposal to governments worldwide. Carney remarked that the attacks “made business a bit easier” – previously, “you pretty much had to hype the threat and the problem” to engage public and private sector clients. After the Twin Towers collapsed however, “they clamor for it!” To this day, Oracle [actively seeks](https://blogs.oracle.com/jobsatoracle/post/growing-with-intelligence-from-cia-to-oracle) to headhunt CIA veterans and DC insiders to its ranks for lobbying purposes.

Already, Oracle hoards vast amounts of information on private citizens within the U.S. and beyond without their express knowledge. Adding personal health data to this bloated corpus would provide a welter of hitherto uncharted opportunities for surveillance and social control to a largely unaccountable, opaque organization with a [sordid history](https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/oracle-s-coziness-with-government-goes-back-to-2820370.php) of corruption and effective bribery to further its business interests. Exacerbating matters further, cybersecurity experts have long [argued](https://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/30/us-oracle-nsa-idUSBREA0T05U20140130/) that Oracle’s databases aren’t at all secure and easily compromised by state and non-state actors.

MintPress staff writer Alan Macleod, who has reported on Ellison extensively, comments with some unease at how Ellison “keeps finding new ways to make the world a substantially worse place.” He brands AI-powered vaccines “just the latest in a long line of bad ideas” the oligarch has sought to push upon the world for his own personal profit and the public’s detriment:

> Considering the mess that AI has created in the world of image creation or search engines, why anyone would think the technology is ready to be used in life and death situations is beyond me. Ellison’s incredibly close ties to both the CIA and the Israeli government are just one more reason he should not be trusted with our most sensitive health data.”

## ‘Analytical Tools’

Strikingly, Oracle’s diversification into AI came after the first Trump administration employed its services for [Operation Warp Speed](https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-21-319), the “public-private partnership” that created and delivered COVID-19 vaccines to the U.S. population. From the outset, OWS was replete with an alarming [surveillance component](https://unlimitedhangout.com/2020/10/reports/google-oracle-to-monitor-americans-who-get-warp-speeds-covid-19-vaccine-for-up-to-two-years/). As the Operation’s chief and Big Pharma journeyman Moncef Slaoui [stated](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-captain-of-operation-warp-speed-11602278486), vaccine recipients would be surveilled via “incredibly precise” tracking systems. The ostensible purpose was to ensure they got both vaccine doses and monitor potential “adverse health effects.”

As former MintPress staffer and independent journalist Whitney Webb notes, this is where Oracle came in. She suggests the company’s involvement in the project—“celebrated by futurists” as ushering in a new era in which “internal surveillance will be combined with external surveillance”—has precipitated “an unprecedented era of authoritarianism.” Webb further adds that the combination of AI infrastructure with biotech represents an expansion of the U.S. global surveillance state “into the final frontier: the human body.”

Oracle didn’t once publicly discuss its role in OWS. How much the firm reaped in federal contracts for their work on the project, and the details of these deals, [never emerged](https://unlimitedhangout.com/2020/10/reports/google-oracle-to-monitor-americans-who-get-warp-speeds-covid-19-vaccine-for-up-to-two-years/) via open source records either. Meanwhile, Slaoui’s explanations of what COVID-19 vaccination tracking entailed were opaque and variable, although, in October 2020, [he referred](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/opinion/sway-kara-swisher-moncef-slaoui.html?showTranscript=1) to a “very active pharmacovigilance surveillance system.” Similar language featured in a contemporary U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [document](https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/strategy-for-distributing-covid-19-vaccine.pdf):

> The long-term safety of these vaccines will be carefully assessed using pharmacovigilance surveillance…The key objective of pharmacovigilance is to determine each vaccine’s performance in real-life scenarios, to study efficacy, and to discover any infrequent and rare side effects not identified in clinical trials. OWS will also use pharmacovigilance analytics, which serves as one of the instruments for the continuous monitoring of pharmacovigilance data. Robust analytical tools will be used to leverage large amounts of data.”

What became of this tranche and how it was “leveraged” has never been revealed. Oracle’s role in OWS has been almost completely forgotten today, as has that of notorious [Palantir](https://fedscoop.com/cdc-expands-tiberius-use-again/), founded by hardcore Trump supporter Peter Thiel. The company, like Oracle, has [expanded](https://unlimitedhangout.com/2025/01/investigative-reports/the-cdc-palantir-and-the-ai-healthcare-revolution/) its operations into AI considerably in recent years – and likewise stands to profit handsomely from Trump’s re-election. Thiel’s [close associate](https://web.archive.org/web/20210416140330/https://www.sens.org/about-us/leadership/executive-team/) Jim O’Neill, a [longstanding advocate](https://kellyjoturner.medium.com/the-future-of-health-and-human-services-in-the-united-states-the-role-of-jim-oneill-51f5ba9eec8a) of healthcare deregulation, [is tapped](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/26/trump-picks-jim-oneill-for-no-2-spot-at-hhs-00191827) to serve as deputy HHS secretary under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Palantir’s spying and security products, which in many cases purport to provide predictive capabilities to prevent crimes before they happen, have long been [controversial](https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predictive-policing-tool-new-orleans-nopd). This consternation has only ratcheted in recent years as the company [forcefully infiltrates](https://www.bmj.com/content/386/bmj.q1712) public health services across the Western world, [explicitly applying](https://unlimitedhangout.com/2025/01/investigative-reports/the-cdc-palantir-and-the-ai-healthcare-revolution/) its “pre-crime” model to medical emergencies. With O’Neill in such an influential post, it seems all but inevitable any and all barriers to Palantir’s penetration of public health will be demolished. Whitney Webb concludes:

> The push for experimental biotech combined with deregulation offers the surveillance state a major opportunity to expand its scope, as well as the types of data it mines. Surveilling the internal and external landscape of Americans is manifesting in other ways. Trump admin nominees and appointments seek to end efficacy testing for mRNA vaccine products and replace those with ;biosurveillance’, where products like digital wearables will be used to track how untested products impact the human body. This data will be sent both to drug companies and HHS contractors that are also intelligence community mass surveillance providers like Palantir.”

## ‘Perilous Times’

As MacLeod observed, Oracle’s AI ambitions are all the more disturbing given the firm’s intimate relationship with the military, security and intelligence structures not only of the U.S. but other belligerent, imperial powers – foremost among them, Israel. As MintPress has [previously documented](https://www.mintpressnews.com/pro-israel-oracle-larry-ellison-control-uk-sensitive-national-security-data/283555/), Oracle’s top brass are unabashed about their commitment to supporting the Zionist entity and Israeli Occupation Forces. In [August 2021](https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3912017,00.html), at the opening of a new Oracle data center in Jerusalem, the company’s Israel-born CEO Safra Catz declared:

> Our commitment to Israel is second to none…\[if our employees\] don’t agree with our mission to support the state of Israel, then maybe we aren’t the right company for them. Larry \[Ellison\] and I are publicly committed to Israel and devote personal time to the country, and no one should be surprised by that.”

Ellison has personally financed Israeli occupation for years. In 2007, [he pledged](https://www.haaretz.com/2007-08-10/ty-article/oracles-larry-ellison-visits-israel/0000017f-e68e-df5f-a17f-ffdefdf00000) half a million dollars to support illegal settlement expansion. Seven years later, [Ellison gifted](https://www.timesofisrael.com/hollywood-gala-raises-a-record-33-million-for-idf/) $10 million to the Friends of the IDF (FIDF). Then, in 2017, he gave a further $16.6 million, the largest [single donation](https://variety.com/2017/biz/vpage/friends-israel-defense-forces-gala-raises-record-breaking-53-8-million-1202606799/) the organization has ever received, to bankroll the construction of a new training facility for Tel Aviv’s infantry units. At a concomitant fundraising gala, [Ellison gushed](https://www.timesofisrael.com/record-53-8-million-raised-for-idf-soldiers-at-beverly-hills-gala/):

> For 2,000 years, we were a stateless people, but now we have a country we can call our own. Through all of the perilous times since Israel’s founding, we have called on the brave men and women of the IDF to defend our home…I thank FIDF for allowing us to celebrate and support these soldiers year after year. We should do all we can to show these heroic soldiers that they are not alone.”

Ellison also counts Benjamin Netanyahu as a uniquely close personal friend. In [September 2021](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2021-09-16/ty-article/.highlight/larry-ellison-netanyahu-trial-witness-offers-ex-pm-seat-on-oracle-board/0000017f-dbd9-d3a5-af7f-fbff9ae80000), with the longtime Israeli leader out of power and investigations into his industrial-scale corruption in high office kicking into full gear, the Oracle chief flew Netanyahu to his private Hawaiian island, offering him a seat on his company’s board, with an annual salary of $450,000. This followed Netanyahu [urging Ellison](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2021-08-30/ty-article/.premium/netanyahu-met-with-key-trial-witness-while-vacationing-on-his-private-island/0000017f-f6df-d5bd-a17f-f6ffdcfb0000) to purchase the opposition newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth and transform it into a pro-Likud propaganda megaphone.

[Prior investigations](https://www.mintpressnews.com/trumps-pro-israel-dream-team-patel-nomination-caps-hawkish-cabinet/288783/) by MintPress have detailed how Trump’s administration holds the ignominious distinction of being the most pro-Israeli in U.S. history. Every key post is filled with fanatical adherents to the Zionist cause. Now, that same government seeks to regain “strategic advantage” over China in Artificial Intelligence, with the assistance of OpenAI and Oracle, a CIA-adjacent data harvester led by a brazen financier of Tel Aviv’s worst, genocidal excesses with a worrying history in the field of healthcare. What could possibly go wrong?

Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News

***Kit Klarenberg** is an investigative journalist and MintPress News contributor exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. His work has previously appeared in The Cradle, Declassified UK, and Grayzone. Follow him on Twitter [@KitKlarenberg](https://twitter.com/KitKlarenberg/).*

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**FIRST ON FOX -** [President Donald Trump](https://www.foxnews.com/category/person/donald-trump)'s lawsuit against CBS News was expanded following the release of the unedited transcript and raw footage of its "60 Minutes" interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

According to a late-Friday filing from Trump's legal team reviewed by [Fox News Digital,](https://www.foxnews.com/media) the lawsuit is adding CBS News' parent company Paramount Global as a defendant, citing how the "60 Minutes" election special was platformed on its Paramount+ streaming service. Additionally, the lawsuit is adding Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, as a plaintiff. 

"Representative Jackson is a consumer of broadcast and digital news media content in this State, District, and Division, including the broadcast and digital news media content from Defendants at issue in this action, and he has thus been injured by Defendants’ conduct alleged herein," the amended complaint states. 

Trump's attorneys amended its lawsuit to include multiple excerpts from the unedited transcript in hopes of bolstering their case that CBS News withheld unflattering exchanges in order to help the Democratic nominee. 

"Once Defendants finally released the unedited version of the Interview, it became apparent that they had engaged in gross broadcast distortion cover-up and manipulated not only Harris’s Reply about Prime Minister Netanyahu, but the Interview in its entirety," the filing states.

[**CBS STAFFERS UPSET OVER ‘60 MINUTES’ DRAMA, ADMIT KAMALA HARRIS INTERVIEW EDITS WERE AN ‘UNFORCED ERROR’**](https://www.foxnews.com/media/cbs-staffers-upset-over-60-minutes-drama-admit-kamala-harris-interview-edits-were-unforced-error)

For example, in one of the exchanges highlighted from the unedited transcript, "60 Minutes" correspondent Bill Whitaker pressed Harris on how the number of border crossings had "quadrupled" in the first three years of the Biden administration. Harris provided another "word salad answer," Trump's attorneys argued.

"There are a variety of factors that relate to what we have seen globally, and what we are not immune from at our own border in terms of what we have seen in terms of the surge of immigration and irregular migration," Harris told Whitaker. "And there are solutions at hand, but we’ve got to have leaders who are solution-oriented, which we've been and are, and I am going forward, instead of leaders who want to make it a problem they can run on."

Trump's attorneys also have filed a FOIA request to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to obtain all records pertaining to his lawsuit against CBS News, including from Biden-era FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel. 

Neither CBS News nor Paramount Global immediately responded to Fox News Digital's request for comment. 


President Trump's legal team expanded its lawsuit against CBS News after the release of the unedited transcript of the "60 Minutes" Kamala Harris interview.  (AP Photo; Reuters Photo; Screenshots/CBS News)

On Wednesday, the FCC released the raw transcript and footage handed over by CBS News, which showed CBS News had aired only the first half of Harris' response to Whitaker's question about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not "listening" to the Biden administration in a preview clip that aired on "Face the Nation," but aired only the second half of her response during the primetime special. 

"But it seems that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not listening," Whitaker said in the October 2024 interview. "The Wall Street Journal said that he— that your administration has repeatedly been blindsided by Netanyahu, and in fact, he has rebuffed just about all of your administration's entreaties."

"Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region. And we're not going to stop doing that. We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end," Harris responded.

Trump's FCC chair [Brendan Carr](https://www.foxnews.com/video/6365385236112) ordered CBS News to hand over the unedited transcript as part of its investigation into whether the network violated the FCC's "news distortion" policy after a complaint was filed.

[**FCC CHAIR CALLS CBS NEWS' CONDUCT ‘HARD TO EXPLAIN’ FOLLOWING RELEASE OF KAMALA HARRIS INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT**](https://www.foxnews.com/media/fcc-chair-calls-cbs-news-conduct-hard-explain-following-release-kamala-harris-interview-transcript)

In the preview clip that aired on "Face the Nation," Harris was asked why it seemed like Netanyahu wasn’t listening to the U.S. 

"Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of, many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region," Harris responded in the "Face the Nation" clip. 

Harris was mocked by conservatives for offering a lengthy "word salad" to Whitaker. But when that same question aired the following night in the primetime election special, [a shorter, more focused answer](https://www.foxnews.com/media/cbs-60-minutes-airs-two-different-answers-from-vp-harris-same-question) from the vice president followed.

"We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end," Harris said in the primetime special. 


Trump's lawsuit accused CBS News of election interference by aiding then-Vice President Kamala Harris by not airing unflattering portions of her sit-down with "60 News" correspondent Bill Whitaker. (Screenshots/CBS News)

Critics accused CBS News of editing [Harris' "word salad" answer](https://www.foxnews.com/media/harris-word-salad-answer-israel-alliance-confounds-social-media-users-someone-please-interpret) to shield the vice president from further backlash, and there were calls for the network to release the full transcript after it only shared transcripts of what had aired. CBS News refused to release the raw transcript at the time.

Carr said it's "hard to explain" CBS News' conduct. 

"On the one hand, CBS immediately released the unredacted transcript of a recent interview with Vice President Vance. Yet for months they refused to release the one with Vice President Harris," Carr told Fox News Digital. 

Carr referred to CBS News [releasing the transcript](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jd-vance-transcript-face-the-nation-01-26-2025/) of "Face the Nation" anchor Margaret Brennan's interview with Vice President JD Vance last month.

"The FCC has now opened up a proceeding and is seeking public comment on the News Distortion complaint. Transparency here is important. The FCC’s review will continue, and we look forward to the public’s feedback," Carr added. 

[**‘60 MINUTES’ PRODUCER DEFIANT AS CBS PARENT COMPANY MULLS SETTLING TRUMP LAWSUIT: ‘I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE’**](https://www.foxnews.com/media/60-minutes-producer-defiant-cbs-parent-company-mulls-settling-trump-lawsuit-i-not-apologize)


Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr said CBS News' conduct is "hard to explain" following the release of the raw transcript and footage of the network's "60 Minutes" interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

In October, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS News alleging election interference over its handling of the "60 Minutes" interview, accusing the network of aiding his Democratic rival through deceptive editing just days before the election. 

"To paper over Kamala’s ‘word salad’ weakness, CBS used its national platform on 60 Minutes to cross the line from the exercise of judgment in reporting to deceitful, deceptive manipulation of news," the lawsuit stated.

[**CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP**](https://www.foxnews.com/apps-products?pid=AppArticleLink) 

Trump attorneys argued the edits were done in an effort to "attempt to tip the scales in favor of the Democratic Party as the heated 2024 Presidential Election — which President Trump is leading — approaches its conclusion."

"CBS’ partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference through malicious, deceptive, and substantial news distortion calculated to confuse, deceive, and mislead the public," the lawsuit read. 

CBS parent company Paramount Global is reportedly considering settling the suit ahead of a planned merger with Skydance Media in hopes of preventing potential retribution by Trump's FCC, which has the authority to halt the multibillion-dollar transaction. Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, is reportedly in favor of settling with the president. 

Joseph A. Wulfsohn is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to joseph.wulfsohn@fox.com and on Twitter: @JosephWulfsohn.

Britain has reportedly ordered Apple to create a back door to encrypted data. This could force a company that has long promoted itself as a [privacy leader](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/01/apple-builds-on-privacy-commitment-by-unveiling-new-efforts-on-data-privacy-day/) in the tech space to allow broad access to user data from across the globe, leaving iPhone, iPad and Mac users wondering what that means for them.

It's not uncommon for governments to ask tech companies for specific user data to assist criminal cases. But an [undisclosed order](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/02/07/apple-encryption-backdoor-uk/) issued last month goes a step further by requiring the tech giant to give the British government blanket access to view encrypted materials uploaded to the cloud, the Washington Post said Friday, citing unnamed sources.

This includes data that typically only users can unlock ‒ including messages, photos and notes ‒ from the U.S. and other countries. It's a sweeping demand with no known precedent among major democracies.

Apple and other tech companies have [long argued with governments over user privacy](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/02/25/apple-files-motion-denying-fbi-request/80939820/) protections. It’s not yet clear what sort of access the U.K. government has to user data or how other countries will respond.  

The real worry is that if the U.K. is allowed to spy on Apple customers, U.S. adversaries may also be granted similar access, according to [Matthew Green](https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/matthew-green/), a member of the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute and expert on applied cryptography and cryptographic engineering.  

**Need a break?** [Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.](https://puzzles.usatoday.com/)

“Potentially, that makes things very hard for Apple, and it makes things very hard for everybody in U.S., (where) we no longer can trust our phones,” Green said. 

![People walk past an Apple store in London, Britain, January 13, 2025.]()

## Is American data at risk? 

Apple has long presented itself as an advocate for user privacy. The company in 2016 successfully fought against the U.S. government's request for help [cracking into a shooter's encrypted iPhone.](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/02/16/apple-san-bernardino-iphone-magistrate-order/80478844/)  

The Post said Apple can appeal the British order, but the company would need to comply during the appeal. Unnamed sources told the newspaper that Apple will likely stop offering encrypted storage in the U.K.

“It's hard to know what the specific impact might be,” [John Villasenor](https://samueli.ucla.edu/people/john-villasenor/), co-faculty director of the University of California, Los Angeles’ Institute for Technology, Law and Policy, told USA TODAY. “But more broadly, this underscores for everyone in the U.S. ‒ not just iPhone users ‒ that the convenience of cloud storage comes at a potentially very significant cost in loss of control over who might get access to that data.” 

Experts told USA TODAY that so far, there aren’t indications that the U.K. has been able to tap into the encrypted data. Andrew Crocker, surveillance litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, called on Apple to resist the order. 

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.


## What happens next? 

Britain’s order is a “slippery slope” that could lead to other countries demanding the same sort of access to U.S. encrypted storage services, according to Villasenor.  

“It’s a very concerning assertion of extraterritorial power,” he said in an emailed statement. “What other countries might also demand that access?” 

One concern is China, which is among the biggest countries to do business with App**l**e.

“There’s a lot of complicated interactions between China and the United States in terms of spying and hacking,” Green said. 

He pointed to the recent [Salt Typhoon](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/10/25/hacking-attacks-on-critical-infrastructure-more-common/75792143007/) as an example, a Chinese hacking and spying campaign that infiltrated U.S. telecoms companies. The hack put data from government officials, soldiers and certain civilian employees at risk, according to Green. 

“I used to say, ‘Oh, the average American is not the target.’ But the truth is, there are a lot of people who actually are the target,” Green said.  

Government agencies have argued greater access to user data grants law enforcement the ability to better protect the public. [David Shapiro](https://www.jjay.cuny.edu/faculty/david-m-shapiro), a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former FBI special agent and assistant legal adviser, said there's an argument for privacy protections to be limited when data is stored on an outside server.  

“It’s hard to come up with a reason why (government agencies) shouldn’t have access to such things,” he said. “The data are not yours. That artifact is on somebody else’s property, a server.” 

But backdoor access could put more users at risk of hacking, identity theft and fraud, according to Crocker.  

"There’s just no magic solution that only allows this to be accessed by ‘good guys,” he said. “If you build this for one purpose, for one country, no matter what country that is, all governments around the world are going to demand it. And that includes countries we don’t trust.” 

Green said it’s unlikely the U.S. government will be able to ask for the same sweeping demands seen in Britain. The Post said the British government's order was made possible by the U.K. Investigatory Powers Act of 2016.

"There is no law in the United States equivalent to the law the U.K. is relying on,” Crocker said. “I don’t think there is any legal mechanism for American law enforcement or intelligence agencies to demand that Apple build a back door for Americans’ encrypted backups.” 

**Meet the surprise new Apple app:**[Everything to know about 'Apple Invites'](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2025/02/04/apple-invites-iphone-mobile-app/78218326007/)

## Should I enable Advanced Data Protection on my iPhone? 

The British government's order is meant to bypass Apple’s [Advanced Data Protection](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2022/12/08/apple-icloud-security-encryption/10852975002/), an opt-in service introduced in 2022 that puts end-to-end encryption on data stored in the cloud and blocks even Apple from unlocking such data.  

Despite news of the British government’s order, Green said it’s an extra layer of protection worth turning on.

“I’m a fan of it,” he said. “You might have a problem if you forget your password, you might not be able to get your data back, so that could be a limitation. But I think it’s a good thing. Especially if you have anything really valuable on your phone that you don’t want anyone ever to get.”


Israeli troops were ordered to shoot and kill captive Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023, Israel’s then defence minister admitted this week.

The order to carry out Israel’s so-called [Hannibal Directive](https://electronicintifada.net/tags/hannibal-directive) was issued “tactically” and “in various places” next to Gaza, Yoav Gallant told Israel’s Channel 12 on Thursday. “In other places it was not given, and that is a problem,” he continued.

Questioning Gallant, journalist Amit Segal clarified for viewers that “the Hannibal Directive says to shoot to kill when there is a vehicle containing an Israeli hostage” – a characterization Gallant did not contest.

Gallant was speaking in his [first interview](https://www.timesofisrael.com/gallant-israels-greatest-missed-opportunity-was-not-attacking-hezbollah-in-oct-2023/) with Israeli television since being fired in November.

You can watch a subtitled clip in the video above or [the full interview in Hebrew on the Channel 12 website](https://www.mako.co.il/news-n12_magazine/2025_q1/Article-f0dc39bc717d491027.ht).

## First public admission

Contrary to Gallant’s statement that the Hannibal Directive was unevenly applied in different areas, Israeli newspaper *Yediot Ahronot* [reported in January 2024](https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-killed-hundreds-its-own-people-7-october/49216) that at midday on 7 October, an unambiguous order was given from the high command of the Israeli military to invoke the Hannibal Directive across the entire region.

The order came “even if this means the endangerment or harming of the lives of civilians in the region, including the captives themselves,” Israeli journalists Ronen Bergman and Yoav Zitun reported.

In July, Israeli newspaper *Haaretz* [reported](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-07-07/ty-article-magazine/.premium/idf-ordered-hannibal-directive-on-october-7-to-prevent-hamas-taking-soldiers-captive/00000190-89a2-d776-a3b1-fdbe45520000) that the order “not a single vehicle can return to Gaza” was issued to the Gaza Division of the Israeli military at 11:22 am that day.

But Gallant’s new statement is highly significant, as the first public admission by a contemporary Israeli minister that their troops were ordered to fire on their own people on 7 October.

A military doctrine first issued in secret by Israeli generals in the 1980s, the Hannibal Directive is Israel’s [national murder-sucide pact](https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-national-murder-suicide-pact/46006).

Initially it stated that, when issued, Israeli troops could fire on other Israeli troops who had just been captured by Palestinian or other Arab resistance fighters.

## Unprecedented

But on 7 October 2023, in an unprecedented military offensive, Palestinian fighters recaptured land next to the Gaza Strip, which had first been lost to the Israelis in 1948.

Roughly 250 Israeli soldiers and civilians were captured by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups, in what they called Operation Al Aqsa Flood.

Israel’s response was to reactivate and unleash the Hannibal doctrine, extending it to Israeli civilians, as well as soldiers.

Fire from Israeli helicopters, drones, tanks and even ground troops was deliberately unleashed, in a failed attempt to prevent Palestinian fighters from taking live Israeli captives who would then be later exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.

Roughly 1,100 Israelis were killed. It is still unclear exactly how many of these were killed by Israelis and how many by Palestinians. One year on, [an investigation by The Electronic Intifada](https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-killed-hundreds-its-own-people-7-october/49216) found that at least “hundreds” were killed by Israel.

Official figures, [published for the first time](https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/01/31/how-the-israeli-air-force-caught-completely-off-guard-by-hamas/) last month, revealed that the Israeli Air Force fired 11,000 shells, dropped more than 500 heavy one-ton bombs and launched 180 missiles “during the fighting” on 7 October.

An independent United Nations inquiry last year criticized Israeli authorities for barring them access to the country.

“Israeli officials not only refused to cooperate with the commission’s investigation but also reportedly barred medical professionals and others from being in contact” with them, the [inquiry’s report stated](https://www.un.org/unispal/document/coi-attacks-7october2023-report-10jun24/).

*With translation by David Sheen.*

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**ISTANBUL** 

Israeli Tel Aviv University received $615 million in grants from the US in 2023, according to its Form 990 filing, a document required for tax-exempt organizations.

While it is unclear how much of this funding came from USAID or US taxpayers, reports indicate that $462 million was spent on salaries and employee benefits.

Data from previous years shows the university received $581 million in 2022 and $613 million in 2021. A report by DataRepublican for the same year revealed that $379.3 million of the university’s funding came from US taxpayers.

Similar figures were reported for 2020, $566 million, and 2019, $467 million, though the exact portion of US government aid remains unclear.

For most years, it has been unclear how much of these revenues were direct US government aid.

The funding has sparked criticism, with social media users questioning why US taxpayer dollars are supporting an Israeli institution while American students struggle with significant student loan debt.

The university has also faced scrutiny over its past affiliation with the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute, which has been accused of unethical practices involving Palestinian corpses.

Tel Aviv University has yet to respond to Anadolu’s request for comment.

On Jan. 20, the White House announced a freeze on USAID’s budget, citing concerns over misaligned priorities.

President Donald Trump suspended development assistance for 90 days to evaluate its alignment with his "America First" policy, a move that has sparked concern among global aid organizations.

A White House statement asserted that USAID’s initiatives “do not align with American interests” and, in some cases, “destabilize world peace.”

[Anadolu Agency website contains only a portion of the news stories offered to subscribers in the AA News Broadcasting System (HAS), and in summarized form. **Please contact us for subscription options.**](https://www.aa.com.tr/en/p/subscription/1001)

In an unexpected move Friday, the Trump administration [issued](https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1i/k1ijuz7xw4) a series of amendments to the UNICEF executive board that would have effectively rooted out transgender ideology and so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion programs from the United Nations’ children’s agency. 

Though the amendments failed to pass, they demonstrated that even at the U.N., the Trump administration intends to fight on all fronts. They also represented a sea change; only a few weeks ago when Joe Biden was still president of the United States, U.S. diplomats took the opposite position to the one they now take on behalf of the Trump administration.

The U.S. representative told the board, “These country program documents contain terms and concepts that promote immoral discrimination and advance harmful gender ideology in defiance of biological reality, both of which conflict with U.S. policies.” 

“The United States objects to any UNICEF efforts to advance such programming in countries,” he added.

“It is U.S. policy to recognize two sexes, male and female, and not to promote gender ideology,” the representative said. “It is particularly disturbing that this language is being used in UNICEF programming documents. Children should be protected from this dangerous ideology and its possible results.”

The U.S. representative explained that DEI programs violated United States federal law prohibiting discrimination of any kind. “Diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs violate the text and spirit of our laws by replacing hard work, merit, and equality with a divisive and dangerous preferential hierarchy.” Quoting U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, he added, “We must eliminate our focus on political and cultural causes that are divisive at home and deeply unpopular abroad.”

Given the quick turnaround under the new U.S. administration and lack of diplomatic preparation, the U.S. had only the support of Nigeria and Oman. Twenty-one countries voted against the U.S. amendments. The remaining countries abstained or did not cast a vote. 

When the amendments failed, the U.S. diplomat called for a vote against approving all the UNICEF country programs that had been discussed. “The United States cannot agree to country program documents that contain terms and concepts that conflict with U.S. policies as set out in President Trump’s recent executive orders, especially when those concepts endanger the very mission of the organization.”

European countries reacted in shock and lashed out against U.S. diplomats. Germany, speaking on behalf of several EU countries, along with the United Kingdom, Canada, and most other Western countries, called on UNICEF to ignore the U.S. government’s requests and continue promoting transgender ideology and DEI. Switzerland said this was the first time the UNICEF board did not approve country programs unanimously. Norway, speaking on behalf of Nordic countries, criticized the U.S. for introducing the amendments because they contained “terms and concepts that are not defined and not previously used in U.N. language, such as ‘gender ideology’ and ‘biological reality.’”

What is shocking and satisfying to conservative observers of the multilateral negotiations is how rapidly the Trump administration acted at what is an obscure meeting. While UNICEF is one of the major U.N. agencies and the U.S. is the agency’s No. 1 funder, such executive board meetings usually go unobserved and unremarked upon.

That Trump acted so rapidly underscores how prepared his transition team has been. This was no less than a highly surgical strike, which portends an aggressive administration at the United Nations. The new administration clearly has a detailed playbook and people who know how to use it. 

The United Nations is moving into its annual commission season, including the Commission on the Status of Women starting in a few weeks. It will be interesting to see what the Trump administration does at what will be one of the most heated negotiations of the year. 

With President Trump going after the “foreign assistance” doled out by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), announcing a review of its mission preparatory to its reform and/or elimination, I’d like to propose another State Department candidate for extinction: the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL).

DRL was founded in 1977, part of Jimmy Carter’s “human rights” agenda in foreign policy.  Carter stumbled on the idea of making promotion of “human rights” a central and practically independent element of American foreign policy.  DRL has pushed that perspective for five decades.

The question is, what are “human rights”?

The answer is, it depends.

Unlike the American constitutional system, in which a Bill of Rights is codified and its general parameters clear, the content of the “international human rights” world is whatever politicians and activists at any given moment want to push.  Most international “human rights law” is the product of real or imagined “consensus” forged by “experts.”  The European Court of Human Rights, for example, subscribes to a version of “living constitutionalism,” claiming that our understanding of human rights “evolves.”  Whatever is perfectly legitimate today may be utterly forbidden tomorrow.

Take abortion.  There’s no treaty anywhere signed by countries that says “abortion is a human right.”  No.  It’s been a 30-year “evolution.”  Hillary Clinton went to Beijing in 1995 and announced at a Conference on Women that “women’s rights are human rights.”  To white liberal American women, “women’s rights” includes abortion.  So if you are promoting “women’s rights,” you have to be promoting abortion.  And when you talk about improving “women’s health,” that *obviously* means governments must legalize abortion and promote “sex education” that advances it.  And if you question whether it’s as “obvious” as its proponents claim it is, well, “you’re against human rights!”

And nobody wants to be against “human rights.”  Whatever that means.

Well, I am.  For three reasons:

First, much of what passes as “human rights” is not explicitly spelled out.  It’s “consensus” based on what interested parties want to promote.  I am willing to defend human rights that have been explicitly codified, textually articulated, and consciously ratified in binding agreements.  A lot of what passes for “human rights” — especially in Democrat administrations — meets none of those tests.  Principles mostly made up as you go along are neither principles nor good practice.

Second, I do not know why Western countries feel the need to bind themselves by international “human rights” agreements.  The dictators of the world have flowery human rights declarations that are meaningless dead letters.  The old Soviet Constitution guaranteed a multitude of “human rights,” none of which existed in practice.  I trust the United States and our fellow Western democracies to abide by human and civil rights guarantees in their own national constitutions.  I do not know what the added layer of “international agreements” achieves.  Those that protect human rights do so without them; those that don’t won’t with them.

Third is the farce of “international review.”  Almost every country in the world performs a dog-and-pony act before the U.N. Human Rights Council every five years called a “Universal Periodic Review.”  It’s supposed to provide for global input in how countries honor human rights.

Italy and Iran are on the current cycle.  Does anybody think Italy’s human rights record is blemished?  Does anybody doubt Iran’s is?  Yet it’s unlikely anything will really change after both Rome and Tehran engage in this act of Maoist self-criticism before the likes of China, Cuba, Sudan, Qatar, and Vietnam, all current Human Rights Council members.

Globalists claim we should be happy to defend ourselves and receive criticism from whomever and wherever.  Frankly, self-respecting Western countries should be insulted to have to justify their human rights records before that motley crew.

And, sooner or later, all this agitation for “human rights” funnels through the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.

Not only that, but DRL then writes annual congressionally mandated reports on every country in the world as to how it observes “human rights.”  In the Biden administration, that came to include “reproductive rights” and gender ideology.  Issues that are hotly debated even within the United States are pushed by the United States on other countries, our own form of ideological colonialism.

Should the United States take account of basic human rights?  Yes.  But a separate, self-standing DRL means that a particular version of “human rights” gets pushed over and against the total constellation of American interests in relations with another country.  Within the foreign policymaking process, DRL will hold up approval of policy recommendations, prolong decision-making, and dilute American responses to advance its particular reading of how another country should observe “human rights.”

There’s nothing that DRL does that cannot be done by officers embedded in specific State Department geographic bureaus that are the primary stakeholders in managing American relations with individual countries.  The continuation of DRL means simply that certain readings of “human rights” perdure, in and out of different administrations.  DRL becomes a hive, where a liberal “human rights” agenda can get embedded and magnified, at least capable of gumming up the foreign policy of an administration that does not share those priorities.

Doubt it?  State Department officers serve in specializations called “cones”: political, economic, consular, management, public diplomacy.  In the last Congress, ex-senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.) pushed to create a sixth “human rights” cone and demand that such officers be put into every bureau and every embassy just to oversee the “human rights agenda.”  That would have established a permanent sinecure for leftist “human rights” activism.  Cardin did not succeed, but the problem persists as long as a separate DRL exists to push that agenda.

It’s time to put DRL out of business.


*Image via [Picryl](https://picryl.com/media/the-white-house-washington-dc-1).*

After decades of failure in its efforts to conserve American culture and rein in the federal bureaucracy, the GOP under President Donald Trump has finally struck at the heart of the progressive advocacy cabal by reviewing government funding of non-government organizations (NGOs) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) oversight into the latter this week revealed deep financial links between the federal government and left-wing journalism outlets that repeatedly push narratives supporting Democrats and progressive causes while demonizing Republicans and their objectives.

It further found hundreds of millions of dollars going to seemingly ridiculous projects such as an Iraqi version of Sesame Street and a diversity, equity, and inclusion [(DEI)-themed musical](https://x.com/bennyjohnson/status/1886517089411735874) in Ireland. While such projects may seem absurd, they play a critical role in shaping social narratives globally and manufacturing support for progressive reforms.

NGOs, meanwhile, are often charity-activism hybrids that ostensibly work on projects to help the disadvantaged, but are notorious for overspending on management salaries and employee perks. In what critics have described as “money laundering” of taxpayer dollars to left-wing advocates, USAID often distributes taxpayer money to NGOs that support liberal causes, some of which the government would not be able to advance directly, either due to legal constraints or political ones. Funding for online censorship advocacy, for instance, was prevalent among the DOGE revelations about USAID.

“A non-governmental organization, an NGO, that relies on government funding is by definition, not an NGO,” wrote Pershing Square [CEO Bill Ackman](https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1887659616169042182). “Rather, it is a subterfuge for the then leadership/controlling party of the government to effect change that it desires without the disclosures and approvals required if it attempted the change directly.”

The end product is a streamlined system in which taxpayer funds enter USAID, which then distributes them to media outlets (often through expensive mass subscriptions) that shape left-wing narratives, and to NGOs that advance them on the ground. 

President Trump on Friday [ordered executive agencies](https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/trump-orders-review-all-government-funding-ngos) to review all funding of NGOs in a sweeping memo, asserting that "\[t\]he United States Government has provided significant taxpayer dollars to Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs), many of which are engaged in actions that actively undermine the security, prosperity, and safety of the American people. It is the policy of my Administration to stop funding NGOs that undermine the national interest."

The initial DOGE review of USAID sparked frantic reactions from Democrats, many of whom demonstrated outside of the USAID headquarters in Washington, D.C., and vowed to challenge the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has since assumed the post of acting USAID director and the organization appears poised for integration into his department.

“USAID IS DRIVING THE RADICAL LEFT CRAZY, AND THERE IS NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT BECAUSE THE WAY IN WHICH THE MONEY HAS BEEN SPENT, SO MUCH OF IT FRAUDULENTLY, IS TOTALLY UNEXPLAINABLE. THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!” [Trump posted](https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/113963085497636545) on Friday.

Curiously, the international world has been relatively silent and world leaders have generally not objected to the disruption of USAID funding to their nations.

“The people inflamed at closing USAID seem to be the NGOs and private sector grantees with a vested interest in USAID operations,” [posted Foundation for Freedom Online founder Mike Benz](https://x.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1887641463585911128). “The people very weirdly not inflamed at closing USAID are the leaders of countries those NGOs and private sector grantees are paid supposedly to help.”

**Mass media manipulation**

USAID alone was a major financier of international media, much of which espoused support for left-wing causes or reportedly favorably on them. A [Wikileaks breakdown of USAID funding](https://x.com/wikileaks/status/1887501752213409919) further found that 6,200 journalists received funding, as did 707 media outlets and 279 media NGOs.

“6,000 journalists and 700 newsrooms received USAID money? It's a wonder all of them parrot the same news,” wrote former “Fox and Friends” host [Clayton Morris](https://x.com/ClaytonMorris/status/1887518443777179649).

Among the most high-profile of DOGE finds was millions that went to Politico, a formerly moderate news outlet that has moved demonstrably to the left in recent years. The outlet itself [put out a statement](https://x.com/politico/status/1887625968728015055) highlighting that it received the funds through paid government subscriptions to Politico Pro, insisting that the transactions had been legitimate. The revelation also came amid the company missing a pay period for the first time in its history, which the company attributed to a technical error.

Many appeared skeptical of Politico’s explanation, however. Convicted fraudster-turned-forensic accountant [Sam Antar](https://x.com/SamAntar/status/1887304220887355432), for instance, wrote in response to the issue that “\[t\]he basis of money laundering is to channel cash through supposedly ‘legitimate’ transactions (e.g. subscriptions).”

The subscriptions issue comes at a bad time for Politico as former editors and reporters have scrutinized the outlet for blocking negative stories about the Biden administration. The public, meanwhile, has highlighted its past reporting calling the Hunter Biden laptop Russian disinformation and its leaking of the Dobbs decision that sparked protests outside the homes of Supreme Court justices.

Abroad, roughly nine in ten Ukrainian news outlets received USAID funding. Another pro-Ukrainian media influencing operation, [NAFO](https://x.com/daily_romania/status/1887883017550430435), appears to have received financial support. NAFO is an online pro-Ukrainian movement of trolls that ostensibly works to counter Russian narratives and features users with profile pictures of the late meme dog Cheems. Its members refer to one another as “fellas.”

**Social engineering**

Outside of the Western world, many progressive social causes do not enjoy broad public support. Some of USAID’s funding has gone toward changing that as a means of providing a cultural foothold for U.S. influence, especially through LGBT-related causes. The DEI musical in Colombia presents one of the more outlandish examples, but such efforts are pervasive and spread across the ocean, as far as Serbia and the Balkans.

“So George Soros has the Open Society, foundations and organizations, and he's not only active here in the United States, but in other countries,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton on the “John Solomon Reports” podcast. “And conservatives in these other countries are disturbed about his advocacy for left-wing values, and he's often been able to partner with the State Department, USAID, to advance these values.”

“And we've exposed how government money was sent either to \[or\] in partnership with Soros, operations directly, or groups he supports in countries like Macedonia, Albania,” he went on. “It doesn't take a lot of money to sway policy in a country like Albania or Macedonia. And of course, they're able to leverage the money, any of these left-wing groups. It's not just Soros, it's the whole, it's the whole transnational left.”

“They leverage USA ID money to lend credibility and political power to their advocacy for the radical left in these various countries,” Fitton asserted. “So they get the rubber stamp of approval and the tacit support of the US government through USAID moneys.”

“The rabbit is out of the hat!” posted Hungarian Prime Minister [Viktor Orban](https://x.com/PM_ViktorOrban/status/1887502473704694024). “We had to endure for years that the ultra-progressive, self-proclaimed human rights champions of the mainstream media demonized Patriotic political forces for years. They did it because they were paid to do so by USAID and the previous, left-wing US administration.”

**Vehicles of regime change**

USAID and its funding of NGOs has long faced accusations of working to undermine foreign regimes and foster regime change through paid or manipulated opposition. In a very recent example, the Georgian government blamed demonstrations in Tbilisi on foreign-backed organizers. Though derided as Russian propaganda at the time, USAID did, in fact, fund NGOs for the Georgian elections.

“USAID spent, through political NGOs, USD 41,7 million on Georgian elections,” posted [Georgian Parliament President Shalva Papuashvili](https://x.com/shpapuashvili/status/1886660527209742561). “In terms of US/Georgia population ratio, this would amount to USD 3,78 billion foreign money injected in US elections. These numbers are even more grotesque if compared with GDP ratio as well.”

The Georgian Dream party won 54% of the vote in that country’s recent elections, though now-former President Salome Zourabichvili, a French-born politician and former French ambassador to Georgia, refused to accept the results and called for protests, which speedily materialized.

Prior to the elections, the Georgian Dream government pushed through a foreign agents law comparable to the U.S.’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), alleging that foreign-funded NGOs were working to undermine Georgian society. It further passed a bill restricting advocacy for LGBT causes that led to similar protests. After the election, demonstrators rocked the streets of the capital, with [footage of rioters igniting firecrackers](https://x.com/ricwe123/status/1862408858372563320) and hurling them toward the parliament building going viral.

Amid the protests, Georgian authorities [raided the offices of several NGOs](https://x.com/stillgray/status/1864656371775357033) and found stockpiles of firecrackers and incendiary devices. Following the raids, the protests became demonstrably more subdued. The government further declared that [roughly 30%](https://x.com/RT_com/status/1864852264814338546) of those arrested were foreign-born.

Russian President Vladimir Putin previously blamed the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine on Western-backed NGOs, alleging a similar operation to the failed Georgian protests. While details of that accusation remain unclear, DOGE did find that roughly [nine in ten Ukrainian news outlets](https://x.com/WorldHallOfFun/status/1887877420960874921) received some measure of USAID funding.

USAID didn’t just send aid to Brazil—it funded censorship, backed left-wing activists, and helped rig the 2022 election against Bolsonaro. Ex-State Department official Mike Benz exposed how the agency ran a “holy war on censorship,” targeting Bolsonaro supporters and suppressing their content online. Millions flowed to NGOs pushing leftist narratives, including the Felipe Neto Institute, which received U.S. funding while Bolsonaro allies were deplatformed. USAID also bankrolled Amazon-based activist groups, financed media campaigns designed to manipulate public opinion, and funneled money into Brazilian organizations that pushed for stricter internet regulations. This wasn’t aid—it was election interference disguised as democracy promotion. USAID used American tax dollars to decide Brazil’s future, and it likely did similar things in many other countries—all with American taxpayer money.

Disgraced ex-FBI official Peter Strzok's wife Melissa Hodgman has left her top enforcement job at the SEC, pressured out in Dec. Hodgman, a Hillary supporter, never recused herself from SEC probes of Trump Media & Technology. Strzok ran FBI's Russiagate op against Trump

I still can’t figure out if I’m shocked or not at this story. But apparently, over $1.3 billion in taxpayer dollars from the Biden administration has been funneled to groups linked to or directly sponsoring terrorism.

Federal watchdog reports and other documents reveal that Biden’s aid programs have supported a network of terrorism across the Muslim world, largely by undoing crucial policies that the Trump administration put in place, [according](https://dailycaller.com/2025/02/04/biden-admin-terrorist-1-3-billion-trump-foreign-aid/) to The Daily Caller.

National security experts told the outlet that the Trump administration must do something about this.

“We should not be putting money into any country or areas where a terrorist group remains in control,” Bill Roggio, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Daily Caller.  

Roggio said that “aid, like money, is fungible.”

> “It winds up propping up these groups,” the counterterrorism analyst told the DCNF. “It allows them to use … whatever money they have to invest into their terrorist activities.”
>
> The State Department told the DCNF last week that “national security is and will remain a top priority” after President Donald Trump announced he is reevaluating foreign aid programs.
>
> “The review period is a measure put in place for us to align our ongoing work with the America First agenda,” the department said. “The results of the in-depth review will be communicated transparently.”
>
> \[…\]
>
> Trump also placed dozens of senior officials on leave from the United States Agency for International Development, one of the entities responsible for funding to Afghanistan that the Taliban stole on Biden’s watch. The Trump administration closed down USAID’s headquarters Monday and may try to dissolve the agency altogether.
>
> The largest share of Biden-era dollars linked to terrorism went to Palestinian organizations, Congressional Research Service records show.

The Biden administration allocated over $1 billion in taxpayer money to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which purports to assist Palestinian civilians but has been linked to terrorism, particularly against Israel. 

***Related:*** *[Bombshell Report Links USAID to Trump's Impeachment](https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/02/06/heres-how-usaid-was-behind-trumps-impeachment-n4936726 "Bombshell Report Links USAID to Trump's Impeachment")*

Although Biden reversed a Trump-era ban on funding in 2021, the ban was reinstated in 2023 after evidence emerged that UNRWA workers were involved in Hamas’s October 7 attacks. Intelligence reports later revealed that over 1,000 UNRWA employees had connections to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, with some involved in the massacre. On top of that, UNRWA schools have been criticized for promoting curricula that glorify terrorism and martyrdom.

> The curriculum comes from the Palestinian Authority (PA), a governing body in the West Bank that the Biden administration considered more friendly to American interests than Hamas. The PA also made a profit from Biden’s presidency despite its program that pays Palestinians and their families as a reward for acts of terror against Jews.
>
> Trump and Congress passed a law in 2018 blocking economic support funds for the PA due to its program. Trump later paused all remaining funding for the PA before Biden took office and resumed it.
>
> The Biden administration in part revived the economic support fund that Trump’s law restricts. The State Department claimed in documents from 2021 that “most” of the money did not “directly benefit the PA” in violation of the law. However, officials sent $265 million straight to the PA for its “security forces and justice sector institutions” throughout Biden’s presidency, according to the Congressional Research Service.
>
> Under Biden, the PA agreed to pay more than $97 million to reward the perpetrators of the Oct. 7 attacks, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Remember Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan that resulted in the death of 13 U.S. servicemembers, the country falling under Taliban control, and leaving millions of dollars of U.S. military equipment behind? Well, it gets worse. Would you believe that the Biden administration actually sent taxpayer money into the hands of the Taliban after it regained control of Afghanistan in August 2021? 

The U.S. government’s Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has exposed the growing security concerns as Biden’s administration persisted in funneling funds to “humanitarian” programs aimed at improving Afghan women’s rights, economic conditions, and other causes. Meanwhile, the brutal Islamic regime took full advantage of the financial aid, further cementing its control over a nation now under its oppressive rule.

According to the report, “the recorded amount that UNRWA, the Palestinian Authority, and the Taliban raked in under Biden is an estimated $1,386,900,000.”

**Mario Nawfal** @MarioNawfal [2025-02-06](https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1887507902782439570)

🚨🇬🇧🇺🇸 BBC UNHAPPY ABOUT US GOVERNMENT FUNDING CUT

The BBC, through its international charity arm BBC Media Action, has expressed its dissatisfaction with a recent decision by the US government to pause funding.

The impact of this pause, which affected approximately 8% of their income for the fiscal year 2023-24, left them quite baffled.

Meanwhile, US citizens are baffled themselves:

Wait — we were paying for the BBC?

Source: BBC


This is only the tip of the iceberg, there would be dozens more departments that are doing the same shit

Anonymous ID:8hNzVrAd Thu 06 Feb 2025 01:56:53 [No.](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#496655586)[496655586](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#q496655586) [Report](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#)

[\>>496654194](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#496654194)
all roads lead to the Clinton Foundation

Anonymous ID:4C/zFxs9 Thu 06 Feb 2025 02:00:50 [No.](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#496655744)[496655744](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#q496655744) [Report](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#)

[\>>496655586](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#496655586)
Bill & Malinda Gate foundation too

Anonymous ID:vxRLhM83 Thu 06 Feb 2025 02:13:47 [No.](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#496656355)[496656355](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#q496656355) [Report](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#)

[\>>496655744](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#496655744)
B & M Gates Foundation funds:
WEF
BBC
Reuters
The Lancet
WestEd (source of 'Gamers are Dead')
New Venture Fund (Parent of Sixteen Thirty)

Sixteen Thirty Fund is one of the largest pro-Democrat dark money groups
Major player in 2018 midterms, even more-so in 2020 cycle
$~60 mil funding pro-Biden super PACs, inc. seven-figure donations
$300,000 to Lincoln Project in 2020
Donors are never disclosed

Anonymous ID:4C/zFxs9 Thu 06 Feb 2025 02:15:30 [No.](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#496656431)[496656431](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#q496656431) [Report](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#)

[\>>496656355](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#496656355)
\>Donors are never disclosed
How is this legal?
Also dont forget Open Society foundation

Anonymous ID:fBQteWVG Thu 06 Feb 2025 02:32:16 [No.](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#496657193)[496657193](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#q496657193) [Report](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#)

[\>>496654194](https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/496654194/#496654194)

You guys are forgetting about the big ones:

National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
National Democratic Institute (NDI)
International Republican Institute (IRI)
Tides Foundation
Atlantic Council <

## Alarming Rate Of Black-On-White Homicides Flagged By Watchdog’s Comprehensive Database


Police Lights | Image by ANDRANIK HAKOBYAN/Shutterstock

The watchdog group National Conservative has launched a comprehensive project to track interracial homicides in the United States, compiling a growing database with over 2,600 confirmed incidents from 2023 and 2024.

The initiative, which began in December 2023, aims to provide a detailed account of such crimes, categorizing them by the race of both the perpetrators and victims.

The database is intended to offer valuable insights into the patterns and frequency of interracial killings, making it a resource for public analysis.

Each entry includes specific details about the incident, such as images and case summaries. This effort has sparked attention online, with users engaging in discussions about the data and its implications for understanding crime in the U.S.

National Conservative regularly updates the database as new cases are confirmed, ensuring the information remains current. In addition to its public-facing database, the project seeks to create a searchable tool that allows users to access and examine the data easily.

While the project has generated both support and criticism, it represents a significant attempt to document and analyze a sensitive issue in American society.

National Conservative’s initiative is expected to grow as it adds more records and expands its research into the coming years. For those interested, the database is accessible on their website, providing a detailed look at the complex dynamics of interracial homicide.

Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy roasted former secretary of state Hillary Clinton for blaming him for the recent plane crashes in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia, accusing her of “lashing out because DOGE is uncovering your family’s obscene grifting via USAID.”

Duffy, who was [sworn in](https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/sean-duffy-sworn-secretary-us-department-transportation-and-takes-immediate-action) as leader of the Department of Transportation (DOT) last week, immediately got to work in his new role in the Trump administration and announced Wednesday that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will be helping to “upgrade our aviation system”:

Failed 2016 presidential candidate Clinton jumped in, claiming that DOGE staffers “have no relevant experience” and that “most of them aren’t old enough to rent a car”:

“And you’re going to let them mess with airline safety that’s already deteriorated on your watch?” she asked in an X post.

Some particularly young members of the DOGE team, headed by X owner Elon Musk, have already become [targets](https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2025/02/05/dead-or-alive-boston-u-employee-threatens-elon-musks-doge-staffers/) of a hateful harassment campaign by far-left activists, Breitbart News reported.

Duffy, a former Republican congressman from Wisconsin, shot back at the ex-first lady’s post, arguing that “experienced” bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. “are the reason our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling”:

“You need to sit this one out,” he added.

Clinton retorted by bringing up the January 29 [helicopter-plane collision](https://www.breitbart.com/pre-viral/2025/01/29/report-plane-crash-ronald-reagan-airport-washington/) that took the lives of 67 people near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and the January 31 air ambulance crash onto a busy Philadelphia street that [ended seven lives](https://apnews.com/article/philadelphia-plane-crash-medical-transport-8617dab53471190832dd73db149489fa): 

“US airlines had gone 16 years without fatal crashes. Then MAGA fired the FAA chief, gutted the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, and threatened air traffic controllers with layoffs,” she wrote.

“Now there have been two fatal crashes. Hope your unvetted 22-year-olds fix things fast,” Clinton snarkily remarked.

That is when Duffy’s full X fire unleashed, calling out the Clinton family’s “grifting”:

“I know you’re lashing out because DOGE is uncovering your family’s obscene grifting via USAID, but I won’t let you lie and distort facts,” Duffy wrote. “The FAA administrator announced he resigned over a month before Trump took office, and the air traffic controllers were always exempt from Trump’s civil service buyouts.”

Former DOT Sec. Pete Buttigieg also made the [incorrect claim](https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/02/03/former-dot-sec-pete-buttigieg-goes-on-emotional-lie-filled-rant-on-trumps-faa-standards/) that air traffic controllers were offered resignation packages along with other federal workers earlier this week, even after the U.S. Office for Personnel management [said](https://apnews.com/article/jet-helicopter-crash-air-traffic-controllers-caee8a1e14eb5d156725581d41e6a809) they were exempt. Duffy continued:

> The previous administration shamelessly used USDOT as a slush fund for the Green New Scam, throwing away money and resources on wasteful environmental and social justice projects rather than updating our nation’s antiquated air traffic control systems and other critical infrastructure.

“I’m returning this department to its mission of safety by using innovative technology in transportation and infrastructure. Your team had its chance and failed,” he wrote. “We’re moving on without you because the American people want us to make America’s transportation system great again.”

He concluded by shooting back at Clinton’s jab about the young DOGE staffers, writing, “And yes, we’re bringing the 22-year-olds with us.”

Duffy’s last reply received over 80,000 likes, compared to Clinton’s 27,000 despite having 30 million followers.

Several reports now indicate that **ATF has access to and utilizes facial recognition technology to identify gun owners.** In fact, two Government Accountability Office reports confirm that ATF does have access to various facial recognition systems including Clearview AI, Vigilant Solutions, and other systems owned by other federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial law enforcement agencies.

The Government Accountability Office described the Clearview AI database as:

> “A web-based facial recognition service using 30+ billion facial images sourced from publicly available websites, including news media, mugshot, and social media websites, among others.”

[A 2021 GAO](https://www.gao.gov/assets/D21518.pdf) report found that ATF did not have sufficient accountability mechanisms “to track what non-federal systems with facial recognition technology are used by employees.”


According to testimony given to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, ATF:

> **“Initially used these services without requiring their staff to take training on topics such as how the technology works, what photos are appropriate to use, and how to interpret the results.”**

GAO scolded federal agencies, stating that they “must consider the potential impact of its use on civil rights and civil liberties because the potential for error and the potential to misidentify someone **could lead to the arrest and prosecution of an innocent person.”**

GAO was also concerned that government use of facial recognition technology can have “a chilling effect on an individual’s exercise of their First Amendment rights.”

**Similarly, ATF’s use of Facial Recognition Technology could have a chilling effect on the People’s exercise of their Second Amendment rights.**

According to GAO, ATF is reported to have conducted at least 549 facial recognition searches on gun owners between October 2019 and March 2022.

GAO indicates “as of April 2023, ATF… reported that they had halted their use of such services.”

**However, the most recent reports suggest otherwise.**

On July 21, 2024, Senator Ron Johnson released a report detailing the attempted assassination of President Trump in Butler, PA. In the [report](https://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/services/files/4E6577F1-8AD2-4CB9-9FC7-5896C27A9647), it is revealed that:

> “Photos… were sent to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) for facial recognition… The ATF was apparently requesting the photos… for facial recognition purposes. It is unclear… why ATF would be the agency responsible for conducting facial recognition.”

We agree. It is unclear why ATF, the agency tasked with enforcing federal alcohol, tobacco, and firearms laws, should have access to a facial recognition system in the first place.

### **New Jersey Police Used Clearview AI to Identify Gun Owners**

In New Jersey (a state with a firearm purchaser database, handgun registration, and universal registration checks) the government utilized Clearview AI to identify whether suspects owned guns prior to arrest.

 In an interview, Attorney General Grewal said that:

> “The Clearview app was used to get the name of the individual… we wanted to find out, does this person have firearms?”

Ultimately, the Attorney General ordered all New Jersey police to cease using the software because it was “racist and inaccurate.”

### **ATF Could Use Facial Recognition Software in Conjunction with National Gun Registry**

In recent years, ATF has admitted to Congress that it possesses **nearly one billion gun and gun owner records.** [A 2022 report](https://forms.gunowners.org/form/atf-s-illegal-gun-registry) by Gun Owners of America details that this registry is both digital and searchable.

By ATF’s own admission this registry is “not searchable by name” because “ATF is the only agency that pays Adobe” to disable search functionality of ATF’s PDF gun registry.

However, ATF could simply re-enable the functionality to search its digital registry by name.

Additionally, Senate appropriators are already advocating for “Law Enforcement Advanced Analytics” funding “to implement software using advanced analytics to correlate open source, commercial, and native agency data.”

**Translation: the gun control lobby wants to fund facial recognition technology for agencies like ATF, to monitor law-abiding citizens.**

Apparently, ATF is “increasingly relying on the analysis of huge volumes of information, including open-source information” during its enforcement of gun control on the American people.

It seems as if ATF is preparing to use Clearview AI in conjunction with its illegal gun registry to identify gun owners and what firearms they own—just like the New Jersey police have already done.

And clearly, there are questions remaining as to the extent of ATF’s facial recognition technology usage.

With anti-gun politicians in Congress attempting to pass legislation that removes restrictions on ATF, like the [AIM Act](https://beyer.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=5759), the stage is set for ATF to have a registry of guns and gun owners, with their facial data as well.

Gun Owners of America will fight this overreach tooth and nail in both Congress and in the courts. ATF can never be allowed to maintain a registry of guns, or gun owners. As the saying goes, registration always precedes confiscation.

**In light of the firestorm over tens of millions of dollars going from the US government to various media outlets** in the form of subscriptions, particularly *Politico*, President Trump has directed the General Services Administration to terminate "every single media contract" expensed by the agency, according to an email obtained by *Axios*.

[*Photo via*](https://assets.zerohedge.com/s3fs-public/inline-images/GjIfcfZWYAAt6iP.jpg?itok=udqjiCN4) *[@bennyjohnson](https://x.com/bennyjohnson/status/1887605772252766406)*

"GSA team, please do two things," the email begins.

- **Pull all contracts for Politico, BBC, E&E (Politico sub) and Bloomberg**
- Pull all media contracts for just GSA - **cancel every single media contract today for GSA only.**

The move comes after internet sleuths discovered **tens of millions of dollars going towards *Politico Pro* subscriptions**, with particular focus on one $8 million allocation.

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the executive branch would **cancel their contract with *Politico*...**

...and today we find that **it goes much further than just the rag that laundered the deep state's '51 intel officials' Hunter Biden laptop propaganda**. For example, the *NY Times* was also cut off.

[**Politico responded on Thursday**](https://www.zerohedge.com/political/politico-ny-times-propped-millions-dollars-us-government), claiming that they have "never received any government funding — no subsidies, no grants, no handouts. Not one dime, ever, in 18 years."

No, just tens of millions in *Politico Pro* subscriptions from the government. Like Hunter Biden received $200,000 for a painting of his excrement, which was totally not influence peddling.

## **Deep Cuts To USAID**

Meanwhile, **the White House is also planning to cut USAID's staff from roughly 10,000 employees to just 294 - a 97% reduction**, after Elon Musk's DOGE team revealed that the international aid organization has essentially been funding woke pet projects and anti-American activities.

On Tuesday, the administration **put a stop on all USAID work and placed all employees on leave, with thousands of overseas workers to be recalled within 30 days**.

According to [*Reuters*](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-keeping-only-294-usaid-staff-out-over-10000-globally-2025-02-06/), Secretary of State Marco Rubio - who was placed in charge of USAID earlier this week, said that the Trump administration was identifying and designating critical programs that would be exempted from the stop work order and deep cuts.

[](https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/id5155702-GettyImages-1247907146-1200x800_1.jpg?itok=P_jGmhAq)

According to the report, **over 2/3 of USAID's workers are located outside the United States**. As of 2023, the 'aid' organization managed more than $40 billion in projects. USAID's website informed people that as of midnight on Friday, February 7, "all USAID direct hire personnel will be placed on administrative leave globally, with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and specially designated programs."

## NEVER MISS THE NEWS THAT MATTERS MOST

### ZEROHEDGE DIRECTLY TO YOUR INBOX

Receive a daily recap featuring a curated list of must-read stories.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly sidelined his intelligence chiefs in the Gaza ceasefire negotiations, replacing them with a key political ally, Ron Dermer. The shake-up came when Netanyahu arrived in Washington to meet with President Donald Trump, the [first foreign leader](https://www.bbc.com/news/live/clyn05y9x2xt) to do so since Trump returned to office. Rather than relying on intelligence officials to steer the negotiations, Netanyahu is prioritizing direct American intervention to secure terms favorable to Israel.

Until this week, the ceasefire talks had been led by Shin Bet director Ronen Bar and Mossad director David Barnea. But upon his arrival in Washington, Netanyahu made the surprise decision to remove them from their roles and hand the process to Dermer, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. and one of his closest confidants.

Dermer’s appointment to replace Bar and Barnea marks a deliberate shift in Israel’s approach. Bar and Barnea had each leveraged their connections in Doha and Cairo to facilitate indirect talks with Hamas. But Netanyahu’s decision to replace them with Dermer—an American-born Israeli who renounced his U.S. citizenship to enter Israeli politics—suggests a pivot away from regional mediators like Qatar and Egypt and toward Washington as the primary broker of the next phase of the ceasefire deal.

Despite being relatively unknown outside diplomatic circles, Dermer has been one of Netanyahu’s most trusted confidants for years, holding significant sway over U.S. policy toward Israel. His ties to American politics made him indispensable to Netanyahu, so much so that the Israeli leader once [floated](https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-sees-ambassador-to-us-mossad-chief-as-possible-successors-report/) Dermer as his potential successor in 2019. However, his Miami Beach upbringing has made him [unpopular](https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-840682) among some Israelis, who view him as an outsider.

By installing Dermer to head the ceasefire negotiations, Netanyahu is signaling that he hopes to shift the process away from the Arab world’s involvement and place it firmly in the hands of the United States, where Israel can exert its substantial influence.

A product of America who grew up attending a Jewish Day School with the notorious Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Dermer holds considerable weight in negotiating deals with Washington. His brother David Dermer [held public office](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article1953141.html) as Mayor of Miami Beach while he pursued an Israel-centric political career instead.

Dermer’s political career traces back to his time as a protégé of [Frank Luntz](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/26/world/middleeast/israels-outspoken-envoy-is-wise-to-us-ways.html), the University of Pennsylvania professor and Republican pollster best known for shaping political messaging. Luntz, a longtime strategist for conservative causes, is perhaps most infamous for his authorship of the 112-page Luntz Report, officially titled “[The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary](https://www.the-independent.com/voices/comment/israelgaza-conflict-the-secret-report-that-helps-israelis-to-hide-facts-9630765.html).”

Marked “not for distribution or publication,” the document is a meticulous propaganda manual that instructs Israeli officials and journalists on crafting messaging that resonates with American audiences. The guide offers talking points to frame Israel’s actions in a way that appeals to U.S. public opinion.

In 2005, Ron Dermer formally renounced his American citizenship to take a position as Israel’s economic attaché in Washington. Two years later, he was appointed Minister of Economic Affairs under then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, marking his entry into Israel’s cabinet and his first official collaboration with Benjamin Netanyahu.

By 2010, Dermer had made his name in Washington. Politico [dubbed](https://www.politico.com/story/2010/11/dermer-is-key-mideast-go-between-045466) him the “key Mideast go-between,” and former Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman [described](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article1953141.html) him as someone whose “life epitomizes the relationship between Israel and America.”

From 2013 to 2021, Dermer served as Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, a role that made him one of Netanyahu’s most trusted emissaries in Washington. The Jerusalem Post once [described](https://www.jpost.com/magazine/netanyahus-man-in-dc-453702) him as “the closest thing to actually having the prime minister in Washington,” a nod to his access and influence in U.S. political circles.

Dermer played a central role in securing long-term American military aid to Israel. In 2007, he helped negotiate a 10-year memorandum of understanding on U.S. assistance. Nearly a decade later, in 2016, he successfully brokered another agreement—despite deep tensions between Netanyahu and the Obama administration over the Iran Nuclear Deal. That deal saw President Obama commit to a $38 billion military aid package to Israel, the largest such agreement in U.S. history.

When Trump took office in 2017, Dermer acted quickly to cement U.S. policy in Israel’s favor. He played a central role in securing Washington’s recognition of occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, orchestrating the Abraham Accords, and advancing the so-called “Deal of the Century”—a plan that sought to extinguish Palestinian statehood. The U.S. recognition of Israel’s claim over the Golan Heights was, at least in part, his handiwork.

Dermer’s influence extended beyond policy. In the final weeks of Trump’s first term, Dermer reportedly [convinced](https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-israel-jonathan-pollard-benjamin-netanyahu-united-states-c3d2e46029b23e7bdaa5bda6ec878247) the president to pardon Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. intelligence analyst convicted of spying for Israel. His reach into American conservative circles was cemented when he appeared on media platforms like [Jordan Peterson’s podcast](https://israelinstitute.nz/2022/09/background-to-the-abraham-accords/) in 2022, where he was given a friendly platform free of scrutiny.

Throughout the 15-month-long Gaza war, Dermer remained a liaison between Netanyahu’s government and the Biden administration. In November 2024, just six days after Trump’s election victory, he made a [quiet visit](https://www.reuters.com/world/israels-strategic-affairs-minister-meet-blinken-gaza-deadline-nears-2024-11-11/) to Mar-a-Lago. Now, with Netanyahu appointing him as Israel’s chief negotiator in the ceasefire talks, Dermer is positioned as the Israeli leader’s most effective conduit to Washington—tasked not just with managing negotiations but with ensuring that the U.S. continues to back Israel even more aggressively and unconditionally than before.

Feature photo | President Donald Trump talks with U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council Chairman Tom Bernstein, center and Israel Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer on Capitol Hill in Washington, April 25, 2017, during the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s National Days of Remembrance ceremony. Pablo Martinez Monsivais | AP

***Robert Inlakesh i**s a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47*

**Republish our stories!** MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

*Football star Tom Brady and rap legend Snoop Dogg will appear in a big-money Superbowl ad denouncing hatred. The ad is paid for by the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, a group staffed by Israel lobbyists that attempts to equate opposition to Israel’s destruction of Gaza with anti-Jewish racism. The group was founded by billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, Robert Kraft, who is one of the pro-Israel Lobby’s most generous benefactors. Kraft has used his power to attempt to crush the nationwide Palestine solidarity movement on campus and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.*

As they tune in to watch the Philadelphia Eagles take on the Kansas City Chiefs this weekend, hundreds of millions of Americans will also be served up something they are not expecting: pro-Israel propaganda. Hall of Fame quarterback Tom Brady and rap star Snoop Dogg are set to appear in a big-money [advertisement](https://x.com/VanFromNY/status/1886595163398586794) for the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS) that will air twice during the Superbowl.

The ad features Brady and Snoop hurling insults at each other before both conclude that hatred and intolerance in America have become “so bad \[that\] we have to do a commercial about it.”

The FCAS was founded in 2019 by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft to counter the growing wave of anti-Israel, pro-Palestine sentiment across America. Kraft (net worth [$11.8 billion](https://www.forbes.com/profile/robert-kraft/)) has sunk hundreds of millions of dollars into the foundation and dozens of pro-Israel lobby groups and politicians.

Thus, although it is titled “No Reason to Hate,” and its message is not explicit, it is clear that “hatred,” in this context, means opposition to the State of Israel’s treatment of its neighbors.

The ad, which has already been released on social media, has garnered a mixed response, to say the least. Many commenters [suggest](https://x.com/VanFromNY/status/1886595163398586794) that this is the latest and [most embarrassing](https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/snoop-dogg-everywhere-olympics-cooking-151502981.html) thing Snoop Dogg has ever done for money.

## Deep Pockets

Superbowl commercials do not come cheap. Fortunately, the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism has backers with seemingly limitless funds. The FCAS was founded, in their [own words](https://www.fcas.org/about/), “To stand up to Jewish hate and all hate by inspiring Americans to become active allies in the fight.” The FCAS has received hundreds of millions of dollars since 2019, including two $100 million donations from Kraft and the Norman R. Rales and Ruth Rales Foundation.

However, upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the FCAS is simply another pro-Israel group using the language of anti-racism to crush grassroots opposition to Israeli actions abroad. Firstly, many of its key figures are former Israeli officials or lobbyists. For example, the organization’s Director of Partnerships and Strategy, [Clara Schwartz](https://eradicatehatesummit.org/participant/clara-schwartz/), previously served as a secretary to multiple Israeli Ambassadors to the United States. Meanwhile, [Maya Buki Dabby](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mayabukidabby/details/experience/), FCAS’ Chief Philanthropy Officer, is the former director of AIPAC, the principal Israel lobbying institution in the United States.

The FCAS asserts that antisemitic incidents have skyrocketed in recent years. The basis for this claim, however, is data from the Anti-Defamation League, who specifically [include](https://www.mintpressnews.com/adl-data-rise-anti-semitism-doesnt-add-up/286268/) peaceful pro-Palestine protests as examples of anti-Jewish hatred, meaning that any expression of sympathy or solidarity with Palestine and its people could be counted.

The ADL’s CEO, Johnathan Greenblatt, has not only alleged that anti-Zionism is inherently antisemitic but even stated that “anti-Zionism is genocide.” Explaining his position, he insisted that “Every Jewish person is a Zionist…it is fundamental to our existence.” This will likely be news to the large plurality of American Jews under 40, who, [polls show](https://www.jewishelectorateinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/JEI-Survey-Analysis-071321.pdf), consider Israel to be a racist Apartheid state.

On its [website](https://www.fcas.org/command-center/), the FCAS takes a similar position to Greenblatt, listing anti-Zionism in the same bracket as Holocaust denial or support, seemingly equating the two.

## Krafty Character

Kraft, who made his money in the manufacturing and packaging business, was one of the key figures in suppressing the recent wave of pro-Palestine protests across American universities. The epicenter of the movement was Columbia University in New York. The billionaire is one of the institution’s most important benefactors, [donating](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/22/robert-kraft-pulls-support-columbia-00153739) millions of dollars, including $3 million to fund the Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life. This gives him considerable leverage over the university’s board.

In April 2024, Kraft publicly announced he was cutting Columbia off from his lavish funding over its failure to suppress the protests effectively enough. “I am deeply saddened at the virulent hate that continues to grow on campus and throughout our country,” he [said](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/22/robert-kraft-pulls-support-columbia-00153739) in a statement, claiming that Columbia was not protecting its Jewish students. Soon after, university authorities called for the police to destroy the demonstrations. Hundreds of students were arrested, and some were [suspended](https://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/4/headlines/three_students_sue_columbia_after_their_suspension_for_palestinian_rights_activism) and face [deportation](https://www.instagram.com/naz_hashem/p/DFf3FyQvuTm/?img_index=1).

“Israel does not have a more loyal friend than Robert Kraft,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once [said](https://www.timesofisrael.com/patriots-owner-kraft-pledges-20-million-to-battle-anti-semitism-bds/?__cf_chl_rt_tk=bF7ADwkHBTa5gDTK_SZmP3qWhF0ZSX8klCfdT9e2d7c-1707915677-0.0-4541) of his close associate. Netanyahu is right; the Jewish State is a primary driving force behind Kraft’s politics. The 83-year-old plutocrat married his wife in Israel in 1962 and has made over 100 visits to the country since, including many meetings with successive prime ministers.

He is also one of the principal sources of money for the notorious Israel lobby in the United States. In 2022, for instance, he gave $1 million to AIPAC’s super PAC. Indeed, it sometimes seems that there is barely a pro-Israel group he has not underwritten. Other organizations he has made sizable [donations](https://mapliberation.org/plain/entities/KraftFamilyPhilanthropies.html) to include the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), StandWithUs and the Israel Project.

But the most significant way in which Kraft inserts pro-Israel policy into American life is through donating to Israel-friendly politicians standing against progressives and other advocates for justice for Palestine. In 2021, for example, he funded Congresswoman Shontel Brown’s campaign against Nina Turner. At the time, Brown was a relatively little-known but strongly [pro-Israel](https://jewishinsider.com/2021/05/nina-turner-and-shontel-brown-diverge-on-israel-gaza-conflict/) candidate standing against a democratic socialist, the national co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 election campaign, and an [outspoken](https://jewishinsider.com/2021/05/nina-turner-and-shontel-brown-diverge-on-israel-gaza-conflict/) critic of Israeli government policy.

Vast amounts of pro-Israel money [flowed](https://www.mintpressnews.com/blood-money-top-ten-politicians-taking-most-israel-money-israel-lobby/286491/) into Brown’s campaign, helping her to defeat Turner. In her acceptance speech, Brown [praised](https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/israel-lobby-helps-shontel-brown-defeat-nina-turner) Israel and later [thanked](https://jewishinsider.com/2022/01/shontel-brown-good-won-over-evil-in-ohio-special-election-race/) the Jewish community for “help\[ing\] me get over the finish line.” Other pro-Israel Democrats Kraft has [funded](https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/american-billionaire-robert-kraft-gifts-1m-pro-israel-super-pac) include David Cicilline, Juan Vargas, Ted Deutch, Jake Auchincloss and Ritchie Torres.

In addition, his own organization, Touchdown in Israel, regularly organizes publicity trips to Israel for NFL stars, hoping they will become advocates of the Jewish State.

## Tom Brady: Supporting Genocide

One of the players that Kraft has personally [taken](https://www.timesofisrael.com/our-trip-created-a-stronger-bond-kraft-shares-memories-of-tom-brady-in-israel/) to Israel is his own star quarterback, Tom Brady. The two traveled there in 2006, meeting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and visiting an IDF military base. Brady was even baptized in the Jordan River.

The trip clearly made a deep impression on Brady, who remains an outspoken supporter of Israel to this day. He was vociferous in his condemnation of the October 7, 2023 attack; “There should be no gray area about condemning Hamas’ terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens. No human deserves this,” he [wrote](https://nypost.com/2023/10/12/tom-brady-condemns-hamas-terrorist-attacks-on-israel/), adding, “The devastation in Israel is tragic and unacceptable. The murder and violence against innocent people by Hamas is terrorism.”


Tom Brady and Robert Kraft (left) at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in 2006.

He also [promoted](https://www.sportskeeda.com/nfl/news-tom-brady-takes-firm-stand-sexual-violence-israel-palestine-conflict-sheryl-sandberg-s-powerful-message?utm_source=www.sportskeeda.com&utm_medium=native&utm_campaign=sharearticle) highly questionable assertions of mass sexual violations carried out against Israeli women by Hamas. “All of us must loudly condemn sexual violence wherever it occurs,” he [stated](https://www.essentiallysports.com/nfl-legends-news-israel-palestine-conflict-tom-brady-condemns-sexual-violence-as-war-crimes-against-women-worsen/). He has not, however, said anything about the [well](https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-raping-palestinians-legitimate-israeli-military-practice)–[documented](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-sexual-abuse-palestinian-prisoners-rcna165811) [cases](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/9/everything-is-legitimate-israeli-leaders-defend-soldiers-accused-of-rape) of mass sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners by Israeli forces.

Today, he is the face of the FCAS campaign. “The Foundation to Combat Antisemitism is doing incredible work, and I’m honored to stand with them in the fight against hate,” he [said](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-foundation-to-combat-antisemitism-partners-with-tom-brady-and-snoop-dogg-to-deliver-strong-message-against-hate-in-new-super-bowl-campaign-302366047.html). “This Super Bowl, football is on my mind, but so is something even bigger – building a world where hate has no place. The No Reason to Hate campaign isn’t just a message; it’s a movement. I’m proud to be a part of it, and I hope you’ll join us,” he added.

## Targeting Black Communities

The inclusion of Snoop Dogg is part of an FCAS attempt to target Black communities specifically. The ad is part of a broader campaign that includes partnering with historically Black colleges to, in FCAS’ [own words](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-foundation-to-combat-antisemitism-partners-with-tom-brady-and-snoop-dogg-to-deliver-strong-message-against-hate-in-new-super-bowl-campaign-302366047.html), “develop social change initiatives and continuously improve the Black-Jewish alliance.” This partnership includes bringing together the United Negro College Fund and pro-Israel college group Hillel International together for a “unity summit” on February 7, which will bring “Black and Jewish college students together under one roof with the shared mission of combatting hate.” The event will feature panels from notable Black sports stars and a keynote speech from Kraft himself.

Israel and its advocates are losing the Black community. A 2024 [poll](https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/israels-war-gaza-partisan-racial-and-generational-views-us-role) found that African-American support for Israel’s genocide is greatly lower than that of the rest of the country. Only 10% of Black respondents said that Israel’s military actions since October 7, 2023, were justified. In comparison, a plurality of white Americans (33%) said they supported Israel’s attack on Gaza. Black Americans are also much more likely to support Washington exerting diplomatic pressure and restricting military aid to Israel than the population at large.

The reasons for this are manifold. But many Black leaders, as well as movements such as Black Lives Matter, have [allied](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/06/us/african-americans-palestinian.html) themselves with the Palestinian cause, seeing parallels and connections between the oppression of Palestinians abroad and the treatment of Black Americans at home. As such, Israel has a serious PR crisis in the Black community. Hence, the attempts to reach them through sports and music.


Robert Kraft and rapper Meek Mill attend an event at Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland on April 18, 2023. Beata Zawrzel | AP

This is not the first time the FCAS has attempted to target African-Americans. Last year, the organization [debuted](https://www.mintpressnews.com/super-bowl-propaganda-patriots-robert-kraft-ties-israel-explained/286807/) another Superbowl commercial featuring Clarence B. Jones, the former advisor to Martin Luther King, who drafted his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. The ad’s message was that there was a growing wave of racist intolerance across the United States and that we must all come together to oppose anti-Semitism. It ends by instructing viewers to visit the website StandUpToJewishHate.com.

The pro-Israel lobby has long understood that it has a serious problem with the Black community. Emails released by WikiLeaks [revealed](https://www.mintpressnews.com/israel-files-wikileaks-docs-hollywood-producers-working-with-israel/281987/) top entertainment executives bemoaning their inability to convince Black Americans to support Zionism and discussing tactics to achieve this end.

The lobby found a powerful ally in hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, the co-founder of Def Jam Records. Simmons suggested that what was needed to improve Israel’s image was “Simple messaging from non Jews specifically from Muslims promoting peace and Israel’s right to exist… We have resources and the desire to win rather than lose the hearts of young Muslims and Jews.”

Simmons’ emails reveal the existence of a vast and well-funded psychological operation targeting the Black community. As he put it,

> We have hundreds of collaboration programs between imams, rabbis and their congregations. We have many respected imams who would join former Chief Rabbi \[Yona\] Metzger, Rabbi \[Marc\] Schneier and non-Jews in promoting the Saudi peace plan.”

Through this campaign, we will be helping Israel,” he concluded.

## Propaganda Wars

Israel may have been able to flatten Gaza, but it has failed to win the global war of public perception. A Morning Consult [poll](https://time.com/6559293/morning-consult-israel-global-opinion/) last year found that the country’s favorability dropped in 42 of the 43 nations polled. Even wealthy, developed nations like Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom view Tel Aviv negatively.

In the United States, support for Israel is also dropping, particularly among young people and people of color. Its supporters are acutely aware that their colonial project would collapse without support from the U.S. government. This was a prime cause of the TikTok ban last month; the platform was not sufficiently censorious of pro-Palestine voices for Washington’s taste. It is also the reason for the massive propaganda operation being launched on the American public by the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism and other groups, who are trying to persuade the country that opposition to genocide is akin to support for Hitler. That message seems like a tough sell. But anything might be possible when you have Robert Kraft’s billions behind you.

Feature photo | Illustration by MintPress News

***[Alan MacLeod](https://twitter.com/AlanRMacLeod)** is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: [Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting](https://www.routledge.com/Bad-News-from-Venezuela-Twenty-years-of-fake-news-and-misreporting/Macleod/p/book/9781138489233) and [Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent](https://www.routledge.com/Propaganda-in-the-Information-Age-Still-Manufacturing-Consent-1st-Edition/MacLeod/p/book/9781138366404?fbclid=IwAR2xQQWJd98C25wapG4ynmlEnGvL5wxG_mp5RwpBwtwPDxInjNZ1Oo7KD-E), as well as [a](https://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/65/56) [number](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306396818823639#articleShareContainer) [of](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/blar.12940) [academic](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2018.00064/full) [articles](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0896920518820934). He has also contributed to [FAIR.org](https://fair.org/author/alan-macleod/), [The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/profile/alan-macleod), [Salon](https://www.salon.com/writer/alan-macleod), [The Grayzone](https://thegrayzone.com/author/alan-macleod/), [Jacobin Magazine](https://jacobinmag.com/author/alan-macleod), and [Common Dreams](https://www.commondreams.org/author/alan-macleod).*

**Republish our stories!** MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

Two private security firms registered in the U.S. have been contracted to oversee operations in the Netzarim Corridor, a checkpoint separating northern and southern Gaza. The Guardian [identified](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/30/us-private-armed-contractors-gaza-checkpoint) one of them, UG Solutions, as actively recruiting nearly 100 former U.S. special forces soldiers to carry out vehicle inspections on Gazan refugees returning to their homes in northern Gaza. Founded in 2023, the North Carolina-based company has maintained an intentionally low profile, with little public information available about its leadership or history.

Even more opaque is Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), a logistics and strategic planning firm supposedly headquartered in Wyoming. Its [website](https://www.team-srs.com/#about-u) lacks any identifiable personnel, past projects, or concrete details about its work. An [investigation](https://thegrayzone.com/2025/01/24/gaza-checkpoint-contractor-wealth-management-firm/) would later reveal that the company is, in fact, a front for a generational wealth management firm.

This marks the first time in decades that U.S. private security firms have operated inside Gaza in any official capacity. Yet, according to [Axios](https://www.axios.com/2025/01/23/us-private-security-contractors-will-operate-key-gaza-checkpoint?utm_campaign=editorial&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter), more private contractors may soon be headed to occupied Palestine. In early January, before the signing of the Gaza-Israel ceasefire and prisoner-exchange agreement, reports surfaced that the United Arab Emirates had been quietly hosting [secret negotiations](https://thecradle.co/articles/uae-holds-secret-talks-on-post-war-gaza-government-with-israel-us-report) on a post-war governance plan for Gaza. Among the proposals under consideration was the deployment of private security contractors as a “peacekeeping force” inside the territory—an idea that while not officially adopted, shows that regional actors are willing to consider privatized solutions to one of the most politically charged conflicts in modern history.

Israel’s outsourcing of military duties to foreign private companies is not new. In December of 2023, Spain’s El Mundo published an investigative report featuring an interview with a Spanish mercenary serving in the Israeli army. His account provided compelling evidence that Tel Aviv had been operating a small, privatized force in Gaza, offering foreign combatants approximately [$4,300 per week](https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israels-use-of-thousands-of-foreign-mercenaries-in-attacks-on-gaza-sparks-debate/3092187) to take part in the war.

On July 15, 2024, Prince took the stage at a Heritage Foundation event in Wisconsin, where he delivered a startling [admission](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q60J0oJnCnk). “I provided the Israelis a fully-funded, donated ability to flood Gaza with sea water \[sic\].” Prince’s enthusiasm for Tel Aviv’s war extended well beyond logistics. In the debut episode of his podcast, “Off-Leash,” he seized the opportunity to pitch his supposedly ultra-secure [smartphone](https://open.spotify.com/episode/3yQd7oRd5cjAxWk2NVLA4Q) to Israeli audiences. Prince has also used “Off-Leash” to [advocate](https://theintercept.com/2024/02/10/erik-prince-off-leash-imperialism-colonialism/) for the recolonization of Africa and Latin America, declaring, “It’s time for us to just put the imperial hat back on, to say, we’re going to govern those countries.”

Last May, a private WhatsApp group run by Erik Prince, named after his podcast, was [revealed](https://newrepublic.com/article/182008/erik-prince-secret-global-group-chat-off-leash?utm_campaign=SF_TNR&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social) to include some 400 members—among them right-wing media figures, current and former government officials, and private mercenaries. Within the chat, Prince’s business partner at Unplugged, Michael Yudelson, suggested using chemical munitions indiscriminately to destroy Hamas’s tunnel network in Gaza. “I would burn all those bastards, and have everything above ground, everything left of Gaza, collapse into this fiery hell pit and burn!”

Prince launched his podcast Off-Leash two months after October 7, 2023, with Gaza quickly becoming one of its dominant themes—both in his public discussions and within his private Off-Leash WhatsApp group. Notably, the chat’s most represented foreign nationality was Israeli, followed by Emirati and British.

This comes as little surprise given Prince’s well-documented business ties to Israel. In 2017, Haaretz [reported](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-12-06/ty-article/revealed-erik-prince-had-business-ties-with-netanyahus-disgraced-chief-of-staff/0000017f-f754-d460-afff-ff76cb520000) that he had maintained a close relationship with Ari Harow, the disgraced former chief of staff to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. More recently, in December 2023, The Times of London [revealed](https://www.thetimes.com/article/israel-hamas-war-tunnel-network-gaza-6qkjt3csw?region=global) that Prince had been actively attempting to sell the Israeli military technology designed to flood Gaza’s tunnel network.

Prince’s involvement in Gaza’s post-war security extends beyond mere speculation. In May 2024, following Israel’s takeover of the Rafah Crossing between Egypt and Gaza, Israeli media began discussing the use of private military contractors to control the border. The Times of Israel [reported](https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/report-rafah-op-focused-on-transferring-control-of-crossing-from-hamas-to-private-us-firm/) that negotiations were underway with an unnamed firm specializing in securing strategic sites across Africa and the Middle East. The report’s author claimed that both Israel and the United States were prepared to assist the company. Days later, Al-Mayadeen [identified](https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/mercenaries-in-yemen:-nationalities-numbers-horrors) the firm as Prince’s Reflex Responses (R2).

By October, [discussions](https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-10-22/ty-article-opinion/.premium/netanyahu-is-selling-gaza-to-private-militias/00000192-b563-dcbd-ab92-b5fb6c5a000) had evolved into a broader proposal for post-war governance in Gaza. Israeli officials toyed with the idea of hiring a private military force to control the territory, with Global Delivery Company (GDC)—a U.S.-Israeli security and logistics firm led by Moti Kahana—emerging as the leading candidate. According to Israeli media, GDC presented Tel Aviv with a proposal to “neutralize” Hamas rule in Gaza.

Kahana has also publicly [claimed](https://newrepublic.com/article/182008/erik-prince-secret-global-group-chat-off-leash?utm_campaign=SF_TNR&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social) involvement in Prince’s efforts to transfer tunnel-flooding technology to Israel. He maintains, however, that Prince offered the equipment for the operation as a donation rather than seeking to profit from the deal. Notably, among GDC’s former employees and a member of Prince’s Off Leash WhatsApp group is Stuart Seldowitz, a former Obama-era National Security Council official who gained notoriety last year for a widely publicized [Islamophobic tirade](https://www.washingtonbabylondc.com/p/a-sampling-of-the-dramatis-personae) on a New York hot dog vendor.

Israel has also [explored](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/22/israel-mulls-using-private-security-contractors-to-deliver-aid-to-gaza) the use of private security firms to manage the delivery of humanitarian aid brought into Gaza from other countries—discussions that coincided with a vote in the Israeli Knesset to ban the operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). That ban has now taken full effect. Meanwhile, the U.S. has withheld funding from the agency since 2024 following unsubstantiated Israeli allegations that UNRWA staff were working with Hamas. President Biden quickly [codified](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-118publ47/pdf/PLAW-118publ47.pdf) the Israeli decision into U.S. law, prohibiting American funding to the agency until at least March 2025.

For Prince, the possibility of returning to U.S. military contracting has never faded. Despite his ousting from mainstream defense work after the 2007 [Nisour Square massacre](https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/23/us/blackwater-verdict.html)—in which Blackwater operatives killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad—he has remained persistent in seeking new opportunities. The Trump administration, in its final weeks, issued pardons for the Blackwater operatives convicted in the massacre, reportedly at the [request](https://www.mediaite.com/tv/pete-hegseth-hails-trump-as-courageous-for-taking-his-advice-on-pardoning-blackwater-guards-jailed-for-ira-massacre/) of Trump’s incoming Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.

While there is no direct indication that Prince will secure a foothold in Gaza, the larger pattern is clear. Israel and the U.S. are increasingly turning to private military forces to operate in the region. The implications are uncertain, but the involvement of mercenaries raises the risk of entanglements that could ultimately draw the U.S. military into yet another prolonged conflict in the Middle East.

Feature photo | Palestinians walk in the destruction caused by the Israeli air and ground offensive in Jabaliya, Gaza Strip, Feb. 6, 2025. Abdel Kareem Hana | AP

***Robert Inlakesh** is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe.’ Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47*

**Republish our stories!** MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

## Albanian Organized Crime: A Growing Threat in Europe

The rapid expansion of Albanian organized crime groups across Europe, particularly in the United Kingdom, has become a significant concern for law enforcement agencies and governments alike. These criminal networks, known for their violent methods, sophisticated operations, and adaptability, are deeply involved in drug trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering, and cybercrime, among other illicit activities. Despite ongoing efforts to combat these groups, their international connections, use of technology, and ability to infiltrate legitimate businesses continue to pose a persistent threat.

**Albanian Organized Crime Groups and Figures:**

Several notorious Albanian criminal organizations operate across Europe. While some operate primarily within Albania, others have established transnational networks. It's important to note that the structure is fluid, with alliances shifting and new groups emerging. Information on specific groups and individuals is often limited due to ongoing investigations, but some names have surfaced in media reports and court cases.

- **Rudaj Organization:** While its base of operations was primarily in the New York City area, the Rudaj Organization, led by Alex Rudaj, exemplified the international reach of Albanian organized crime, highlighting their connections beyond Europe.
- **"Banda e Lushnjës" (The Lushnja Band):** This group, known for its violent tactics, has been linked to drug trafficking and other serious crimes. Alfred Shkurti (aka Aldo Bare) was a prominent figure within this group.
- **"Banda e Lul Berishes":** This clan, reportedly based in Durrës, Albania, has been associated with drug and arms trafficking.
- **Other Groups:** Numerous other groups operate, some with regional focuses, such as those based in Elbasan, Durrës, or other cities. The names of these groups sometimes change, reflecting internal power struggles and evolving alliances. It's crucial to understand that the landscape of Albanian organized crime is dynamic.

**Albanian Organized Crime in the UK:**

Albanian criminal networks have established a significant presence in the United Kingdom, particularly in the drug trade. They are known for their control of cocaine and cannabis supply chains, often using direct routes from South America and Albania. Their involvement in human trafficking, particularly for sexual exploitation and forced labor, is also a major concern.

- **Specific Groups:** While names like the Hellbanianz, Krasniqi Clan, Leka Gang, Duka Family, and Hoxha Group have been mentioned in connection with Albanian organized crime in the UK, it's important to note that these may refer to loose affiliations rather than rigidly structured organizations. The fluidity of these networks makes them difficult to track.
- **Methods:** Albanian groups often use legitimate businesses, such as car washes, construction companies, restaurants, and nightclubs, as fronts for their criminal activities. This allows them to launder money, recruit members, and facilitate their operations. They are also known for their use of social media to recruit members and intimidate rivals.
- **Key Figures:** Identifying specific key figures is challenging due to the secretive nature of these organizations. While some individuals have been arrested and convicted, the leadership often remains obscured. Information shared in the media should be treated with caution, as it may be incomplete or based on unverified sources.

**Recent Developments and Challenges:**

Law enforcement agencies in the UK and across Europe are increasingly focusing on Albanian organized crime. Recent operations have targeted drug trafficking networks, resulting in arrests and seizures of drugs and assets. However, several challenges remain:

- **Sophistication and Adaptability:** Albanian groups are known for their adaptability and their use of technology, including encrypted communication, to evade detection.
- **International Connections:** Their transnational networks make it difficult for national law enforcement agencies to effectively combat them. International cooperation is essential.
- **Corruption:** Corruption in some countries facilitates the operations of these criminal networks. Addressing corruption is crucial to disrupting their activities.
- **Cybercrime:** Albanian organized crime groups are increasingly involved in cybercrime, including online fraud, hacking, and ransomware attacks. This presents a new challenge for law enforcement.

**Government Responses:**

Governments are implementing various strategies to combat Albanian organized crime, including:

- **Increased international cooperation:** Joint operations between law enforcement agencies in different countries are essential to disrupt transnational networks.
- **Strengthening border controls:** Efforts are being made to improve border security to prevent the movement of drugs, weapons, and human trafficking victims.
- **Targeting money laundering:** Financial intelligence units are working to track and seize the assets of organized crime groups.
- **Addressing corruption:** Efforts are being made to strengthen anti-corruption measures and hold corrupt officials accountable.

**Conclusion:**

Albanian organized crime poses a significant and evolving threat to Europe. Their involvement in various illicit activities undermines the rule of law, fuels violence, and causes immense social harm. A concerted, multinational effort is essential to effectively combat these criminal networks. This includes strengthening international cooperation, addressing corruption, enhancing law enforcement capabilities, and focusing on the evolving nature of their criminal activities, including their increasing use of technology and cybercrime. Furthermore, addressing the socio-economic factors that contribute to organized crime is crucial for long-term solutions.

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In the shadowy corners of America’s fringe movements, one name has been circulating among investigators, intelligence analysts, and those with a taste for the bizarre: the Zizian Cult. A name that evokes both intrigue and dread, it has been linked to a string of violent incidents, from the 2022 samurai sword attack in Vallejo, California, to the killing of a Border Patrol agent in Vermont in early 2024. But as with many so-called extremist organizations, one must ask: Is the Zizian Cult an organic development, or is it something far more insidious—an intelligence operation designed to serve undisclosed agendas?

**A Manufactured Narrative?**

The Zizian Cult’s ideological roots seem to stem from an extreme interpretation of rationalist philosophy, particularly the concept of “timeless decision theory.” At first glance, this might appear to be a natural evolution of radicalized thought within rationalist and animal rights circles. However, the level of coordination, media attention, and the rapid succession of violent incidents raise an unsettling question: Who benefits from this narrative?

Similar past cases suggest that fringe groups, especially those with sudden violent outbursts, often have intelligence fingerprints all over them. Consider the FBI’s involvement in radical environmental and animal rights movements throughout the 1990s and 2000s, where agent provocateurs played a key role in steering movements toward illegal activities—leading to high-profile arrests and public condemnation. Likewise, COINTELPRO, the infamous FBI counterintelligence program, sought to disrupt and discredit political organizations from the Black Panthers to socialist student groups.

**Echoes of Past Intelligence Tactics**

Examining the Zizian Cult’s rapid rise to infamy, several patterns emerge that bear striking resemblance to intelligence operations:

1. **Media Amplification:** Despite its relatively niche ideological stance, the Zizian Cult has received disproportionate media coverage. Historically, intelligence agencies have leveraged media to frame groups as national security threats to justify surveillance and suppression. The portrayal of the cult as a “death cult” mirrors the fearmongering used against movements like the Weather Underground in the 1970s.
2. **Suspiciously Convenient Violence:** The group’s connection to multiple violent deaths across the country follows a pattern often seen in controlled radical movements. In past operations, assets were groomed and manipulated into carrying out high-profile acts of violence to create moral panic. Is it possible that some Zizian members were nudged—if not outright coerced—into these actions?
3. **Lack of Clear Structure:** Despite alleged coordination across state lines, no clear leadership structure has emerged beyond the enigmatic “Ziz” (Jack LaSota). Intelligence operations often use shadowy, loosely structured organizations to make infiltration and control easier, as seen with cases like the CIA’s manipulation of radical student movements during the Cold War.

**What’s the Endgame?**

If the Zizian Cult is, in fact, an intelligence operation, then its purpose remains an open question. It could serve multiple strategic aims:

- **Surveillance Justification:** A manufactured domestic extremist threat provides justification for increased surveillance powers and further crackdowns on online ideological communities.
- **Psychological Operations:** The existence of an alleged rationalist “death cult” could be used to discredit broader rationalist and transhumanist movements, steering them away from becoming politically influential.
- **Targeted Disruptions:** If intelligence agencies identify specific individuals within fringe movements as threats to national security, embedding them in a controlled environment like the Zizian Cult might be a method of containment and neutralization.

**Final Thoughts: An Open Investigation**

While the mainstream narrative paints the Zizian Cult as a dangerous extremist group, history teaches us that such stories often have layers beneath the surface. Whether the cult is a naturally occurring phenomenon or an intelligence-engineered operation, one thing is certain: the truth, as always, is far murkier than what we’re being told.

For those willing to dig deeper, the case of the Zizian Cult demands scrutiny, skepticism, and, most of all, an awareness of the intelligence community’s long history of manipulating fringe movements for its own ends.

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Then-Democrat Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris appeared stumped when asked to explain how she would pay for her economic policies aside from taxes in a portion of the unedited CBS News interview that occurred only after the cameras stopped rolling.

During the [interview](https://thefederalist.com/2025/02/06/new-video-shows-cbs-deceptively-edited-kamala-harris-interview-during-2024-campaign/) that aired to the public, Whitaker noted how the Nonpartisan Committee for Responsible Federal Budget estimated that Harris’ economic plan “would add $3 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade.”

“How are you going to pay for that?” he asked.

Eventually, Harris responded by [suggesting](https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/Transcript-Transcribed-Unedited-Interview-Footage-6-of-14.pdf) that “the richest among us, who can afford it” should “pay their fair share in taxes,” in order to pay for her policies.

“My perspective is everybody needs to pay their fair share,” she added, before invoking firefighters and teachers to try and justify disproportionately stealing money from people who make more.

At the [end of the full interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEu8hSGDKJA), an off-screen cameraman asked host Bill Whitaker to ask Harris a question so that the team could get an over-the-shoulder shot.

“We were talking about how you were gonna pay for it, and I truly do mean it — your plans are logical, make logical sense,” Whitaker said, following up on an earlier question. “The way Washington works is not logical. So how are you going to convince a divided Congress that what you say — your plans — are something that they should all agree to and provide to the American people when they’ve shown no inclination to do that up to this point?”

“Is that what you needed?” Harris asked, seemingly referencing the over-the-shoulder shot. The crew member affirmed that it was before asking for “30 seconds of silent space for room time.”

“Cameras are off,” a crew member said following the silence in a [longer version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIxA8MF5r5Y) of the video. Whitaker immediately jumped in to ask Harris for an actual answer to his question.

“How will you?” Whitaker pressed, laughing.

“It’s gonna be taxes, it’s gonna be literally, the economists. I mean there, from each, the spectrum,” Harris said, stumbling through her answer before Whitaker cut her off.

“But I hear what you’re saying about the economists, this is true. But Congress is not the economists,” Whitaker responded before the clip ended.

While Harris had previously suggested taxes would be raised, her off-screen answer showed her crumbling under pressure. She had no real explanation about how anything she promised would be accomplished except through “taxes.” While it’s unclear what happened after the filming stopped, surely Harris’ response was just proof that she had no real way to get her agenda through.

As The Federalist’s Breccan Thies [reported](https://thefederalist.com/2025/02/06/new-video-shows-cbs-deceptively-edited-kamala-harris-interview-during-2024-campaign/), “The release of the full [transcript](https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/Transcript-Transcribed-Unedited-Interview-Footage-6-of-14.pdf) and [video](https://x.com/Breaking911/status/1887238049026679198) interview comes after Trump [sued](https://nypost.com/2024/10/31/us-news/trump-sues-cbs-news-for-10b-alleging-deceptive-doctoring-of-harris-60-minutes-interview/) CBS for ‘deceptive doctoring’ of the video, which many said at the time was done essentially as a contribution to the Harris campaign.” A complaint was also filed with the FCC by the right-leaning law firm, Center for American Rights.

The FBI had thousands of employees aggressively [investigating](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-agents-detail-j6-role-exhaustive-questionnaire-employees-were-instructed-fill-out) the happenings in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but it seems to have given up on finding out who planted two pipe bombs, one outside of the Democratic National Committee and the other outside the Republican National Committee.

It has multiple videos of the would-be bomber, has identified the style of shoe worn (Nike Air Max Speed Turf sneakers), and the path the suspect walked through the city. But the FBI has made no arrest and appears to have given up on promising leads.

That is according to a [report](https://cha.house.gov/_cache/files/f/e/fe4f4a06-d98a-4437-8891-792c5d406213/F503CD6C839F28CEB7D4216055E45035.joint-pipe-bomb-report-cn-bd-cn-mj-db-bd-db-bd-ch-bd-db-db-bd-db-bd

In a time of growing distrust in institutions and blatant political double standards, the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence (DNI) has exposed the festering rot in America’s political and intelligence establishment.

Gabbard is a decorated combat veteran and former congresswoman. Once hailed as a [rising star](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/06/what-does-tulsi-gabbard-believe) in the Democrat party, she has since been relentlessly smeared—from being labeled a “[Russian asset](https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/18/politics/hillary-clinton-tulsi-gabbard/index.html)” to even being placed on a [terrorist watchlist](https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/22/politics/tulsi-gabbard-government-watch-list-travel-connections/index.html) during the Biden-Harris administration. These attacks aren’t just absurd; they expose how deeply politicized the intelligence community has become.

As DNI, Gabbard would oversee 18 intelligence agencies with a $70 billion budget. Her pending Senate confirmation—where Republicans hold the majority—reignited the predictable chorus of partisan attacks. But the real issue isn’t her qualifications, it’s that Washington fears what her leadership represents: independence, accountability, and a return to intelligence gathering as a national security mission—not a political weapon.

**The Clinton Smear and the Politics of Personal Destruction**

The “Russian asset” lie leveled against Gabbard is as transparent as it is baseless. The smear originated with none other than Hillary Clinton, who insidiously suggested in 2019 that Gabbard was being “groomed” by Russia to sabotage the 2020 election. Clinton—a political figure infamous for conspiracy theories and deflection—provided no evidence because there was none.

The sheer recklessness of Clinton’s smear should have made it a political joke—yet much of the chattering political class and legacy media ran with it. CNN, *The New York Times*, and others breathlessly analyzed Clinton’s remark, amplifying it with vague speculation and partisan spin. The same media that demands proof of election fraud or censorship claims had no problem laundering an evidence-free accusation from a former presidential candidate with a track record of deception.

Gabbard did not stay silent. She fired back, calling Clinton “[the queen of warmongers](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/10/19/20922122/hillary-clinton-tulsi-gabbard-queen-warmongers-russia-2020-election)” and exposing the smear for what it was: a desperate attempt to destroy an independent voice that refused to fall in line with the Democrat party’s regime-change mantra.

This tried-and-true tactic of the political class and their media acolytes is as dirty as it is effective. Once told, a lie creates a self-perpetuating cycle—a narrative endlessly repeated and amplified, inflicting lasting damage despite never being legitimate in the first place.

The smear took on a life of its own, metastasizing into a media-approved slander that is still repeated today by Democrat operatives, former intelligence officials, internet trolls, and corporate media lackeys.

This phenomenon is how the politics of personal destruction works. The accusation doesn’t need to be true—it just needs to be repeated. The Clinton machine, aided by its intelligence community allies, set the narrative, and the press dutifully carried it forward, tarnishing Gabbard’s name without substantively addressing the facts.

**The Syria Smear and the Intelligence Community’s Role**

One of the most persistent falsehoods about Gabbard—parroted by both the media and former intelligence officials—is that she was an “apologist” for the Russian-backed Syrian regime. Balderdash.

This smear conveniently ignores that Gabbard’s stance on Syria was rooted in longstanding military skepticism of regime-change wars. As a combat veteran, she saw firsthand the catastrophic failures of U.S. interventions in Iraq and Libya and refused to support another reckless war in Syria.

A [*RealClearInvestigations* report](https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2025/01/29/the_record_shows_tulsi_gabbard_was_not_an_apologist_for_russia-backed_syria_1088012.html) methodically debunks this smear, showing that her critics selectively framed her 2017 fact-finding trip to Syria as an endorsement of Bashar al-Assad while ignoring the broader context.

Gabbard met with Syrian officials, including Assad, to gather firsthand intelligence—just as numerous U.S. diplomats and leaders have done with foreign adversaries. Yet the same intelligence community figures who cheered John Kerry’s diplomacy with Iran or Obama’s engagement with Cuba framed Gabbard’s visit as treasonous.

The accusation that she was sympathetic to Assad is not only false, it is laughably hypocritical. While Gabbard was vilified for engaging in dialogue, the Obama-Biden administration was funneling [weapons](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd75e8gdy9jo) to so-called “[moderate rebels](https://www.vice.com/en/article/centcom-admits-us-trained-syrian-rebels-gave-a-bunch-of-supplies-to-al-qaeda-affiliate/)” in Syria—many of whom [had direct ties](https://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf) to terrorist organizations, including [al-Qaeda affiliates](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/11882195/US-trained-Division-30-rebels-betrayed-US-and-hand-weapons-over-to-al-Qaedas-affiliate-in-Syria.html?msockid=1f7ac2d3c97767c902efd302c8c06622&ICID=continue_without_subscribing_reg_first).

The fact that former intelligence officials helped push the false Assad-Russia smear while staying silent on these actual policies exposes their selective outrage for what it is: partisan opportunism.

**The Hunter Biden Laptop and the Intelligence Community’s Role**

If there were any lingering doubts about the intelligence community’s descent into partisan activism, the Hunter Biden laptop debacle erased them. In October 2020, just weeks before the presidential election, 51 former intelligence officials [signed a letter](https://nypost.com/2022/03/18/intelligence-experts-refuse-to-apologize-for-smearing-hunter-biden-story/) dismissing the laptop story as Russian disinformation. This action was an orchestrated political maneuver squarely meant to tip the scales in the United States presidential election.

The laptop was real. The contents were damning. And yet, the people who once claimed to be neutral guardians of national security helped bury a story that could have influenced voters. Some of the signatories were still on the CIA payroll—as [contractors](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/cia-admits-some-signatories-of-hunter-biden-laptop-letter-were-paid-contractors/ar-BB1oVNjs)—when they affixed their names to this political stunt. 

The consequences of this deception were profound. Major news outlets and Big Tech platforms didn’t just report on the intelligence community’s false claims—[they weaponized them](https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2024-06-25%20The%20Intelligence%20Community%2051%20-%20How%20CIA%20Contractors%20Colluded%20with%20the%20Biden%20Campaign%20to%20Mislead%20American%20Voters.pdf) to stifle legitimate journalism. In doing so, they influenced the course of a presidential election while the exact media figures who spent years decrying “foreign election interference” disregarded the interference from within our own institutions—and from within their own newsrooms. 

Regrettably, this episode was no anomaly—it was part of a broader pattern of intelligence officials manipulating political narratives. From the Steele dossier to the Mueller probe to the laptop cover-up, the intelligence establishment has repeatedly placed partisan interests above its duty to the American people.

**Addressing the Real Issue: Unconstitutional Surveillance, Not Edward Snowden**

The decision to discuss Edward Snowden at Gabbard’s senate confirmation hearing conflates her legitimate concerns over unconstitutional surveillance with an endorsement of Snowden’s actions.

Let’s be clear—Snowden broke the law. He knowingly disclosed classified information and fled the country. That is not in dispute, and Gabbard has never suggested otherwise. Yet her opponents deliberately blur the line between her condemnation of [illegal government surveillance](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-broke-privacy-rules-thousands-of-times-per-year-audit-finds/2013/08/15/3310e554-05ca-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html) and endorsement of Snowden’s methods.

At her confirmation hearing, senators didn’t seem interested in debating the real issue—why American citizens were subjected to unconstitutional government surveillance. Instead, they fixated on Snowden, seemingly to sidestep the uncomfortable truth.

Even *[The New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/us/politics/tulsi-gabbard-senate-hearing-takeaways.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare)* acknowledged that while none of the senators defended the NSA’s illegal bulk collection of Americans’ phone records—because they couldn’t—they were far more eager to defend mass surveillance of foreign communications under Section 702. That shift wasn’t just an attempt to change the subject but a discernible move to avoid confronting the intelligence community’s growing credibility problem. Years of overreach, political interference, and surveillance abuses have badly damaged public trust.

**The Real Problem: A Politicized Intelligence Apparatus**

And here’s the rub: The intelligence community has repeatedly abused its authority, weaponizing surveillance against American citizens—often beyond the bounds of the law.

Tulsi Gabbard dared to question the abuse and that’s precisely why the establishment fears her.

That’s why they oppose her.

Not because she’s unqualified.

Not because she’s extreme.

But because she threatens the status quo.

**The Leadership We Need**

Tulsi Gabbard has been relentlessly attacked not because she is unqualified but because she is independent—independent of her former party, the perpetual war machine, and the entrenched political class.

But let’s be clear: The intelligence community’s failures don’t rest with the rank-and-file patriots who serve this country with honor. The problem is at the top—with leaders who have politicized intelligence, weaponized investigations, and eroded public trust to serve their agendas.

Confirming Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence is imperative. We need a leader who will restore integrity, demand accountability, and put national security ahead of politics. This is a rare opportunity to refocus our intelligence agencies on their mission: protecting the United States, not advancing partisan interests.

The attacks on Gabbard aren’t just about her. They expose an intelligence bureaucracy hijacked by political operatives, a leadership class that abandoned its principles long ago, and a system that fears accountability more than it fears failure.

America deserves better. The dedicated men and women of our intelligence agencies deserve better. And Tulsi Gabbard—who has endured smears, slander, and political warfare for daring to stand her ground—deserves far better. The country cannot afford another rubber-stamp bureaucrat willing to look the other way. It needs a leader who will demand accountability, restore credibility, and ensure intelligence serves its true purpose: safeguarding national security, not advancing partisan agendas.

It’s time to demand better.

Let her lead—and let accountability begin.

***Charlton Allen is an attorney and former chief executive officer and chief judicial officer of the North Carolina Industrial Commission. He is the founder of the Madison Center for Law & Liberty, Inc., editor of [The American Salient](https://www.americansalient.com/), and the host of the [Modern Federalist](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-modern-federalist-podcast/id1723399797) podcast.***


*Image: Gage Skidmore, [CC BY-SA 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode.en), via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tulsi_Gabbard_\(52276972542\).jpg), unaltered.*

CNN  — 

The FBI has provided the Justice Department with names of employees who worked on January 6-related cases after a new demand from the acting deputy attorney general, capping a weeklong back-and-forth between bureau leadership – who had sought to protect agent and staff identities – and the department.

The FBI complied by providing the names through a classified system to protect employees from being publicly identified, acting Director Brian Driscoll told employees in an email Thursday.

“I want to be clear that as of now we do not have information indicating the Department of Justice intends to disseminate these lists publicly, and they are fully aware of the risks we believe are inherent in doing so,” Driscoll wrote in the email.

“We will let you know immediately if we learn the Department’s intentions regarding these lists changes,” he said.

The Justice Department’s Thursday demand comes after the bureau earlier this week [withheld the names of thousands of employees](https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/04/politics/fbi-employees-tuesday/index.html) and instead relayed information based only on employee ID numbers, according to an email obtained by CNN.

Over the past several days, FBI and Justice Department leadership have gone back-and-forth over how to protect the information gathered as part of a review of January 6-related investigations, including the one into President Donald Trump. On Tuesday, the FBI handed over information on more than 5,000 employees, including employee ID numbers, job titles and their role in the January 6 investigations – but not their names.

In memos, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said that the information was not gathered to retaliate against agents who worked on the investigations, writing that “the only individuals who should be concerned about the process initiated by my January 31, 2025, memo are those who acted with corrupt or partisan intent, who blatantly defied orders from Department leadership, or who exercised discretion in weaponizing the FBI.”

Bove on Wednesday [accused FBI leadership of “insubordination”](https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/05/politics/fbi-january-6-justice-department/index.html) by refusing to identify a “core team” of bureau employees who worked on the investigations. While he did not rule out that some could face consequences — including termination or other penalties — it marked the first time the department indicated the agents would not be fired en masse.

Still, several FBI employees, along with the agency’s union, sued the Justice Department to cover their collection of information, and asked a judge to make sure their names are not released outside of DOJ. In the lawsuits, the employees said they feared for their safety should their identities be made public.

Driscoll said in his email Thursday that FBI leadership “reiterated once again our concerns for the safety of our personnel, and the risks posed to you and your families should these lists become public.”

The Justice Department pushed back on those concerns during a court hearing earlier in the day. DOJ attorney Jeremy Simon told a judge that “there has not been an official disclosure outside the department,” while also acknowledging that other government officials could have gotten access to the list through “unofficial” means.

The FBI was not pleased. There were mentions of the agency in documents connected to an upcoming forensics conference that it deemed disparaging. So in the weeks before President Donald Trump took office and issued an [executive order](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/restoring-freedom-of-speech-and-ending-federal-censorship/) barring censorship by federal government employees, the FBI set out to do just that.

In mid-December, according to documents obtained by The Intercept, Ted Hunt, a senior policy adviser to the FBI crime lab, approached the president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences — the nation’s premiere umbrella organization for scientists, academics, and attorneys practicing, researching, and litigating forensic science issues — with complaints and a demand.

According to the documents, Hunt argued that the AAFS should excise certain references to the FBI from two workshops scheduled for the organization’s annual conference, to be held later this month in Baltimore. One of the apparently offensive presentations was titled, “Taking on the FBI.”

In an email memo addressed to the AAFS Board of Directors, the chair of the conference workshops wrote that Hunt also complained about one of the workshop presenters, a former DNA analyst turned defense expert named Tiffany Roy who [regularly challenges](https://theintercept.com/2023/08/18/gedmatch-dna-police-forensic-genetic-genealogy/) the work of front-line DNA practitioners working in government labs across the country, including at the FBI. According to the memo, Hunt told AAFS representatives, including its board president, that the agency was upset that Roy would be given any platform at the conference.

If the AAFS failed to take action, sources told The Intercept, Hunt told the Academy brass that the FBI, whose forensics leaders and front-line practitioners regularly attend the gathering, would boycott the organization’s famed annual meeting.

Hunt did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, the FBI said that the agency “did not make any threats nor consequences” and that it “did not seek to censure any speaker nor have them deplatformed.”

The FBI said that it merely “brought to the attention” of the AAFS material mentioning the FBI that “seemingly violated AAFS’s own bylaws.” Specifically, the agency pointed to a section of the Academy’s [Code of Ethics and Conduct](https://www.aafs.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/AAFS%20Bylaws-April2021.pdf) that states that no member or affiliate of the Academy “shall issue public statements that appear to represent the position of the Academy” without first obtaining permission from the AAFS board.

It is hard to see, however, how that section could apply to conference materials. The Academy routinely issues disclaimers about the content of conference presentations as not necessarily representing the Academy itself. Moreover, the FBI statement elided the first section of the Code of Ethics and Conduct, which says that every member of the Academy “shall refrain from exercising professional or personal conduct adverse to the best interests and objectives of the Academy,” including to “improve the practice, elevate the standards, and advance the cause of the forensic sciences.”

The workshops at issue had been fully vetted by the Academy as part of its rigorous conference-program acceptance process, and the relevant details already [published](https://www.aafs.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/2025Workshops_11.12.pdf) online. But documents obtained by The Intercept reveal that the AAFS Board of Directors — made up of influential members of the forensic science and legal communities — agreed that their organization should ask the presenters to scrub the offending references to the FBI and that if the presenters failed to do so, that their workshops should be canceled.

At least two members of the Academy leadership went so far as to suggest that the organization should apologize to the FBI for offending it. One opined that he didn’t think Roy, a full member of the Academy, should be allowed to present at all.

News of the incident spread quickly among AAFS’s large but tight-knit community. Some suggested parallels to Trump’s promises of retribution for his, and his administration’s, perceived enemies. The incident has also raised concerns that the Academy, whose [vision and mission](https://www.aafs.org/about-us#:~:text=Mission,its%20application%20to%20the%20law.) are to “promote justice for all” and to “elevate the standards and advance the cause of forensic sciences,” would seemingly abandon its critical focus in favor of a position of fealty to the FBI.

The AAFS’s current president, psychiatrist Christopher Thompson, did not respond to The Intercept’s repeated requests for comment.

Within the world of forensic science, the FBI’s laboratory has enjoyed an elevated status as a premiere facility — even though it has simultaneously endured criticism, as [past practices](https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/9704a/01new2b.htm) in some forensic disciplines have been pilloried in the criminal legal system. In short, the FBI lab is not immune to the [issues that have long plagued](https://theintercept.com/2019/05/05/forensic-evidence-aafs-junk-science/) forensic science writ large. To date, false or misleading forensic evidence has been implicated in [nearly 30 percent](https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/detaillist.aspx?View=%7bfaf6eddb-5a68-4f8f-8a52-2c61f5bf9ea7%7d&SortField=F_x002f_MFE&SortDir=Asc&FilterField1=F%5Fx002f%5FMFE&FilterValue1=8%5FF%2FMFE) of the nation’s wrongful convictions.

Many consider standard forensic practices — like [fingerprint](https://theintercept.com/2019/11/29/fingerprint-examination-proficiency-test-forensic-science/) examinations, ballistics and toolmarks comparisons, or blood pattern analysis — to be foolproof. But these practices were developed by law enforcement agencies for law enforcement, and not by scientists first subjecting them to standard, rigorous testing processes designed to ensure they stand on a solid scientific foundation.

That was the dirty little open secret of forensics in the criminal legal system until 2009, when a groundbreaking [report](https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/228091.pdf) from the National Academy of Sciences laid it bare: With the exception of standard DNA analysis, the report read, “no forensic method has been rigorously shown to have the capacity to consistently, and with a high degree of certainty, demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific individual or source.”

These criticisms were reiterated, even more bluntly, in a [2016 report](https://theintercept.com/2016/09/07/white-house-report-concludes-that-bite-mark-analysis-is-junk-science/) from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, or PCAST, which concluded that so-called pattern-matching practices — where an analyst examines a piece of evidence, say a bloody fingerprint found at a crime scene, and tries to match it to a sample from a suspect — were lacking sufficient scientific foundation. “Without appropriate estimates of accuracy, an examiner’s statement that two samples are similar — or even distinguishable — is scientifically meaningless: It has no probative value and considerable potential for prejudicial impact.”

These and other brutal assessments of long-standing forensic practices hit the community hard. Some practitioners [took the findings to heart](https://theintercept.com/2016/03/25/in-las-vegas-embattled-forensics-experts-respond-to-scandals-and-flawed-convictions/) and quickly set themselves on a path to shore up the foundation of their disciplines. Still others [dug in or pushed back](https://theintercept.com/2019/05/05/forensic-evidence-aafs-junk-science/) — including in the Department of Justice. Shortly after the PCAST report was released, Loretta Lynch, who served as attorney general during Obama’s second term as president, [publicly dismissed](https://lawreview.syr.edu/justice-department-rejects-forensic-science-recommendations-critics-disapprove/) the concerns raised and recommendations outlined in the report.

A former front-line prosecutor in Kansas City, Missouri, Hunt served on the [National Commission on Forensic Science](https://www.justice.gov/archives/ncfs), where [he voted against](https://www.motherjones.com/criminal-justice/2017/08/sessions-new-forensic-science-adviser-has-a-history-of-opposing-pro-science-reforms/) even modest reforms, like reining in language that analysts use in their reports and court testimony to ensure they aren’t overstating the science or the significance of their findings. After assuming office in 2017, the first Trump administration essentially shuttered the NCFS, and instead Hunt was installed as the head of its quasi-successor, the vaguely named “forensic science working group.”

Hunt has remained inside the Justice Department since then. While he occasionally [defended](https://theintercept.com/2021/08/08/forensic-science-reform-justice-department/) the forensics status quo quite staunchly during Trump’s first presidency, during Biden’s term in office he seemed to maintain a much lower profile — at least until the administration’s waning days, when he approached AAFS leadership about squelching negative mention of the FBI in conference materials.

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There are two workshops that have apparently offended the oddly sensitive FBI. One, known as Workshop 19, is titled “Unmasking the Evidence: How Defense Experts Prevented Wrongful Convictions.” According to the workshop description, the point of the four-hour session is to “highlight the challenges faced by legal professionals who may lack the scientific background needed to assess forensic evidence accurately” and to highlight the “critical role that defense experts play in preventing wrongful convictions” by scrutinizing the work of the prosecution’s forensic experts.

Within that workshop was a scheduled 45-minute talk titled “Taking on the FBI.” Among the “educational objectives” outlined by the workshop organizers was to explore “the impact of prestigious institutions like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on perceptions of evidence credibility.”

The second offending presentation, involving [forensic document examination](https://www.aafs.org/careers-questioned-documents#:~:text=Questioned%20document%20examination%2C%20also%20referred,mediums%2C%20and%20office%20machine%20products.) and known as Workshop 25, was titled “Death of an ‘Expert’ Witness: Discrediting Document Examiners Who Violate Acknowledged Standards or Binding Laboratory Policies or Who Express Handwriting Opinions With Low Levels of Certitude.” This workshop included an hourlong talk about how the work of a particular document examiner was discredited in a California civil case (the examiner at issue was not an FBI lab employee), along with a separate 20-minute talk titled “How the FBI Has Failed to Enforce Its Own Explicit Standards Applicable to Handwriting Comparison and Improperly Restricts the Use of Blind Verification in Handwriting Cases,” to be delivered by D. Michael Risinger, a veteran law school professor and expert in evidentiary matters.

According to an email memo to the AAFS board by Kevin Kulbacki, a document examiner and the chair of the Academy’s conference workshop committee, the FBI contacted the Academy after the workshop program was published to complain about “the content of these workshops and mentions explicitly of the FBI that were not made by FBI staff.” Kulbacki wrote that on December 16, 2024, he and other members of AAFS leadership took a 30-minute call with Hunt to hear the agency’s concerns.

Regarding the mentions of the FBI in Workshop 19, Kulbacki opined that they aren’t even disparaging of the FBI. “It is common sense that prestigious organizations like the FBI affect perceptions of evidence credibility,” he wrote. “This isn’t controversial, and it takes one look at past discredited methodologies and [case failures](https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/legacy/special/s0601/exec.pdf) to see this.” The mentions of the FBI in the workshop “are valid criticism that the Academy should welcome as promoting justice for all and integrity through forensic science, even if potentially uncomfortable conversations arise. This is how we, as a field, get better by acknowledging and addressing issues.”

Where Workshop 25 was concerned, Kulbacki acknowledged that the references to a particular document examiner and to the failures of the FBI’s questioned documents unit “are certainly more antagonistic,” and he suggested that perhaps the Academy should ask the workshop organizers to remove the examiner’s name and to retitle Risinger’s talk to omit direct reference to the FBI in favor of the more anodyne “How an organization has failed” to enforce its own handwriting comparison standards.

> “The point is that the FBI’s primary concerns are not with the content of the Workshops but with one of the people associated with one of the Workshops.”

However, Kulbacki was also clear that “99% of the specific complaints raised by the FBI” were about Tiffany Roy, one of the organizers of and presenters in Workshop 19. Kulbacki recalled that Hunt complained about something Roy said during the 2024 AAFS conference in Denver — the gist of which was that real forensic science reform would begin once the old guard, so wedded to past ways of doing things, had passed on. Hunt also took issue with comments she’d posted on LinkedIn regarding the questionable testimony of an FBI DNA analyst in a case where she was serving as a defense expert. (The prosecution ultimately decided against having the FBI’s expert testify in court.)

Kulbacki also noted that the “FBI voiced displeasure at Mrs. Roy’s efforts to hold the FBI” to the standards detailed in a new report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology regarding DNA analysis that seek to mitigate the impact of human biases. Roy was a member of the [working group](https://www.nist.gov/programs-projects/expert-working-group-human-factors-forensic-dna-interpretation) that developed and authored the “Forensic DNA Interpretation and Human Factors” [report](https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2024/NIST.IR.8503.pdf).

The FBI’s specific grievances about Roy were unwarranted, Kulbacki opined. “The point is that the FBI’s primary concerns are not with the content of the Workshops but with one of the people associated with one of the Workshops,” he wrote. “***That is not and should not be grounds for a threat by AAFS of content removal simply because they don’t like someone affiliated with the workshop.”*** (Emphasis in original.)

> “This needs to be a far more nuanced decision than giving the FBI their wish carte blanche.”

Kulbacki wrote that workshop vetting is designed as a blind process to keep such biases out of the mix. “By ensuring that reviewers are unaware of the authors’ backgrounds, blind reviews focus solely on the quality, relevance, and rigor of the content, leading to fairer and more objective evaluations.” Both workshops at issue went through this process, Kulbacki wrote. “I am not here to tell you, the Board of Directors, how you should act” on Hunt’s complaints, he wrote but said that he would be “remiss if I, as the Workshop Chair … did not firmly voice that this needs to be a far more nuanced decision than giving the FBI their wish carte blanche.”

On December 17, the AAFS board voted unanimously (with one member absent) to ask the organizers of the two workshops to censor their presentations or face cancellation. Two members of the board also suggested an apology to the FBI might be in order. “This will go a long way in mending fences,” one board member suggested in an email. Kulbacki’s memo — with all its context regarding Hunt’s complaints — was sent to the board in the wake of their vote. It is unclear whether the full board knew all the details before casting their votes, and minutes from the meeting are brief and spare. Still, it appears Kulbacki’s memo did not give the members any pause about carrying out their plan.

In a statement to The Intercept, the FBI denied that it acted to censor or deplatform anyone and said “there was no discussion” of the Human Factors report.

Kulbacki declined to comment. But sources have confirmed for The Intercept that at least one other Academy member on the call with Hunt verified the details of the conversation memorialized in Kulbacki’s email.

The situation infuriates Andrew Sulner, an attorney and document examiner who is one of the organizers of Workshop 25. He first caught wind that something peculiar was going on when he received an email from the Academy’s executive director a day after the board vote, letting him know that Christopher Thompson, the organization’s president, wanted to have a “short conversation” with him.

Sulner said Thompson told him that Hunt wanted mention of the FBI removed from Risinger’s presentation to “avoid having a title memorialized in print and online that disparages the FBI,” he recalled. Thompson also suggested that removing mention of the agency “would maintain ‘congeniality,’ but I informed him that congeniality has nothing to do with such a request,” Sulner said. Risinger’s presentation was solely about the questioned documents unit of the FBI lab “and not some other crime lab, and that’s why the FBI should be mentioned in the title,” Sulner said he told Thompson.

> “They’re operating as a trade union for prosecutors and law enforcement.”

Sulner said he was appalled to see the organization “buckle under pressure from the FBI — but that’s what they do, and that’s the problem. They’re operating as a trade union for prosecutors and law enforcement,” he said, and less like the scientific organization they’re supposed to be. “It is unacceptable and violates the long-standing educational mission of the Academy, which is to improve forensic sciences by promoting good practices and exposing bad practices, period.”

Sulner and his co-organizer, who is also on the AAFS board, agreed to several small changes to their workshop language, but Risinger refused to remove the FBI from the title of his talk and instead opted to pull his presentation from the workshop. For his part, Risinger said that the incident underscores the main point of his presentation — and the underlying paper on the same topic that he intends to publish this year. Risinger said he’ll be using “the history of this development, that would not allow me to have the ‘FBI’ in the title, in the article that I’m writing as more evidence of the extreme nature of the cultural problem at the FBI laboratory.”

> “You’ve got censorship on the one hand and an unwarranted revenge campaign on the other.”

Sulner also takes issue with the complaints Hunt made about Roy. He said that he sees the effort to muzzle Roy as vindictive. “I see the requests to excise references to the FBI and to silence Tiffany Roy as raising two separate issues, both very troubling,” he said. “You’ve got censorship on the one hand and an unwarranted revenge campaign on the other.”

In response to the AAFS vote in favor of Hunt’s complaints, Roy and her fellow workshop organizer, also a former DNA analyst, [removed](https://www.aafs.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/2025%20Final%20Program_1.28.25.pdf) the portion of the workshop titled “Taking on the FBI,” which her co-organizer was slated to present, and tweaked the workshop objectives to remove mention of the FBI.

Still, after learning about Hunt’s personal complaints about her, Roy penned a lengthy email of her own to the AAFS board accusing them, in part, of disparate treatment.

In the run-up to the 2024 conference, Roy had approached Academy leadership with technical concerns she had regarding a particular workshop. Specifically, she alleged that the workshop presenters would be providing inaccurate instruction on an emerging field of DNA analysis, but her concerns were summarily dismissed. In contrast, she noted the board appeared to jump through hoops to address Hunt’s concerns — without ever reaching out to her or her co-presenter. And she noted the irony in their actions regarding the decision to excise the “FBI” from the educational objective in Workshop 19 that references exploring the impact of institutions like the agency’s lab on the perceived credibility of forensic evidence. “You all are putting on a MASTERCLASS on exploring the impacts of prestigious institutions like the FBI and I cannot WAIT to present this series of events during our workshop,” she wrote.

In response to Roy’s email, the AAFS board has offered her 10 minutes to speak during one of its scheduled meetings during the Baltimore conference.

For Roy, the incident also points to another serious flaw in the way forensic sciences are deployed in the criminal legal system: Control over forensics and crime labs is largely left in the hands of law enforcement agencies — like the FBI — with little to no independence, which hinders efforts to ensure fidelity to science comes first. One of the as-yet unfulfilled recommendations of the 2009 NAS report was that labs should exist as independent government entities out from under the thumb of police or prosecutor oversight.

“The actions of the FBI in their effort to silence me as an advocate for oversight underscore the dangers of governmental control of the forensic sciences,” she wrote in an email to The Intercept. “Only when science is independent and objective can it serve truth or justice. Science beholden to an adversarial entity is a pawn in a game with no winners.”

Fresh Mark, Inc., was [founded](https://www.freshmark.com/) in 1920 and has become a nationwide processor of processed meats under several brand names, including Superior Brand Meats and Sugardale, according to the DOJ press release.

The company primarily produces hotdogs, bacon, sausage, and deli meats and is headquartered and operates in Ohio with facilities in Massillon, Canton and Salem, Ohio. Fresh Mark had its own Human Resources Department that was in charge of hiring staff for the company.

## Filled Out Employment Paperwork to Prove Eligibility to Work in the U.S.

Each applicant who wanted to work for Fresh Mark filled out an application and other government-issued forms, including an I-9 form, providing their address, social security number, and date of birth to prove their eligibility to work in the U.S., according to the [indictment](https://dailymuck.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Munoz-Solis-Indictment.pdf). Along with the paperwork, the employment hopefuls had to provide two forms of ID: a driver’s license, a state identification card, or a social security card.

Munoz-Solis was the manager of the HR department at Fresh Mark’s Salem location, according to the indictment. Several co-conspirators who were not authorized to work in the U.S. were E-Verified in the system and approved for employment.

Between 2013 and 2018, HSI conducted an investigation and found several Fresh Mark employees using stolen identities to become employed with the company, according to the DOJ press release. Munoz Solis’ co-conspirators obtained the identities of American citizens, including social security cards, birthdays, addresses and driver’s licenses, and used them to apply for jobs at Fresh Mark.


Several Fresh Mark employees used stolen identities to apply for employment. An HR manager for the company, Yelwin Omar Munoz-Solis, assisted these employees in filling out tax paperwork.

Starting as far back as Feb. 21, 2011, Munoz-Solis interviewed the employees, helped them fill out the I-9 form, and certified that the information on the form was correct despite knowing it was fraudulent, according to the indictment. Numerous American Citizens’ identities were used to successfully apply for jobs at Fresh Mark between 2011 and 2017.


The feds alleged in their case that Munoz-Solis was complicit in the stolen identity fraud, according to an indictment obtained by *The Daily Muck*.

On June 19, 2018, HSI went to the processing facilities at Fresh Mark’s Massillon, Canton and Salem locations with a search warrant, according to the DOJ press release. They detained 146 people working and living in the United States without having legal status.

## Federal Charges

Out of those 146 people, 30 of the workers were charged with varying degrees of federal immigration violations, according to the DOJ press release. Fresh Mark has been ordered to pay a fine of $3,719,997 and will have to complete compliance reporting requirements for two years. The money Fresh Mark is ordered to pay will be given to the federal Crime Victims Fund.

Munoz-Solis pleaded guilty to three of the seventeen counts in the indictment and was issued time served for two of the counts and one year of probation for the third count, according to the [judgment](https://dailymuck.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Munoz-Solis-Judgment.pdf) documents.

An explosive new study conducted within the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) own laboratory has revealed excessively high levels of DNA contamination in Pfizer’s mRNA Covid-19 vaccine.

Tests conducted at the FDA’s White Oak Campus in Maryland found that residual DNA levels **exceeded regulatory safety limits by 6 to 470 times.**

The study was undertaken by student researchers under the supervision of FDA scientists. The vaccine vials were sourced from BEI Resources, a trusted supplier affiliated with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), previously headed by Anthony Fauci.

Recently [published](https://jhss.scholasticahq.com/article/127890-a-rapid-detection-method-of-replication-competent-plasmid-dna-from-covid-19-mrna-vaccines-for-quality-control) in the *Journal of High School Science*, the peer-reviewed study challenges years of dismissals by regulatory authorities, who had previously labelled concerns about excessive DNA contamination as baseless.

The FDA is expected to comment on the findings this week. However, the agency has yet to issue a public alert, recall the affected batches, or explain how vials exceeding safety standards were allowed to reach the market.

### The Methods

The student researchers employed two primary analytical methods:

- **NanoDrop Analysis** – This technique uses UV spectrometry to measure the combined levels of DNA and RNA in the vaccine. While it provides an initial assessment, it tends to overestimate DNA concentrations due to interference from RNA, even when RNA-removal kits are utilised.
- **Qubit Analysis** – For more precise measurements, the researchers relied on the Qubit system, which quantifies double-stranded DNA using fluorometric dye.

Both methods confirmed the presence of DNA contamination far above permissible thresholds. These findings align with earlier reports from independent laboratories in the [United States](https://osf.io/preprints/osf/b9t7m), [Canada](https://osf.io/preprints/osf/mjc97), [Australia](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/sb20elb520v6a1saxg9lj/240909-D-Speicher-Report.pdf?rlkey=dutcvd85gh80ebfs2ucdmorba&e=2&st=0jpsw84f&dl=0), [Germany](https://www.mdpi.com/2409-9279/7/3/41), and [France](https://hal.science/hal-04778576v1).

### Expert Reaction

Kevin McKernan, a former director of the Human Genome Project, described the findings as a “bombshell,” criticising the FDA for its lack of transparency.

“These findings are significant not just for what they reveal but for what they suggest has been concealed from public scrutiny. Why has the FDA kept these data under wraps?” McKernan questioned.


CSO and Founder of Medicinal Genomics

While commending the students’ work, he also noted limitations in the study’s methods, which may have underestimated contamination levels.

“The Qubit analysis can under-detect DNA by up to 70% when enzymes are used during sample preparation,” McKernan explained. “Additionally, the Plasmid Prep kit used in the study does not efficiently capture small DNA fragments, further contributing to underestimation.”

In addition to genome integration, McKernan highlighted another potential cancer-causing mechanism of DNA contamination in the vaccines.

He explained that plasmid DNA fragments entering the cell’s cytoplasm with the help of lipid nanoparticles could [overstimulate](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31852718/) the **cGAS-STING pathway**, a crucial component of the innate immune response.

“Chronic activation of the cGAS-STING pathway could paradoxically fuel cancer growth,” McKernan warned. “Repeated exposure to foreign DNA through COVID-19 boosters may amplify this risk over time, creating conditions conducive to cancer development.”

Adding to the controversy, traces of the SV40 promoter were detected among the DNA fragments. While the authors concluded that these fragments were “non-replication-competent” meaning they cannot replicate in humans, McKernan disagreed.

“To assert that the DNA fragments are non-functional, they would need to transfect mammalian cells and perform sequencing, which wasn’t done here,” McKernan stated.

“Moreover, the methods used in this study don’t effectively capture the full length of DNA fragments. A more rigorous sequencing analysis could reveal SV40 fragments several thousand base pairs long, which would likely be functional,” he added.

### Regulatory Oversight under Scrutiny

Nikolai Petrovsky, a Professor of Immunology and director of Vaxine Pty Ltd, described the findings as a “smoking gun.”

“It clearly shows the FDA was aware of these data. Given that these studies were conducted in their own labs under the supervision of their own scientists, it would be hard to argue they were unaware,” he said.

Nikolai Petrovsky, Professor of Immunology and Infectious Disease at the Australian Respiratory and Sleep Medicine Institute in Adelaide

Prof Petrovsky praised the quality of work carried out by the students at the FDA labs.

“The irony is striking,” he remarked. “These students performed essential work that the regulators failed to do. It’s not overly complicated—we shouldn’t have had to rely on students to conduct tests that were the regulators’ responsibility in the first place.”

The Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), which has consistently defended the safety of the mRNA vaccines, [released](https://blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/tga-releases-data-on-residual-dna?utm_source=publication-search) its own batch testing results, claiming they met regulatory standards. However, Prof Petrovsky criticised the TGA’s testing methods.

“The TGA’s method was not fit for purpose,” he argued. “It didn’t assess all the DNA in the vials. It only looked for a small fragment, which would severely underestimate the total amount of DNA detected.”

### Implications for Manufacturers and Regulators

Now that DNA contamination of the mRNA vaccines has been verified in the laboratory of an official agency and published in a peer-reviewed journal, it becomes difficult to ignore.

It also places vaccine manufacturers and regulators in a precarious position.

Addressing the contamination issue would likely require revising manufacturing processes to remove residual DNA, which Prof Petrovsky explained would be impractical.

“The only practical solution is for regulators to require manufacturers to demonstrate that the plasmid DNA levels in the vaccines are safe,” Prof Petrovsky stated.

“Otherwise, efforts to remove the residual DNA would result in an entirely new vaccine, requiring new trials and effectively restarting the process with an untested product.”

Now the onus is on regulators to provide clarity and take decisive action to restore confidence in their oversight. Anything less risks deepening the scepticism of the public. 

Both the US and Australian drug regulators have been approached for comment.

Republished from the author’s [Substack](https://blog.maryannedemasi.com/p/exclusive-fda-lab-uncovers-excess)

- 

Maryanne Demasi, 2023 Brownstone Fellow, is an investigative medical reporter with a PhD in rheumatology, who writes for online media and top tiered medical journals. For over a decade, she produced TV documentaries for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and has worked as a speechwriter and political advisor for the South Australian Science Minister.

[View all posts](https://brownstone.org/author/maryanne-demasi/ "View all posts")

*1*

Washington D.C. – Politico, a leading left-leaning political journalism outlet, has encountered a significant financial hiccup as it failed to pay its employees for the most recent pay period, leading to widespread confusion and concern among its staff.

This payroll disruption comes in the wake of revelations that Politico has been receiving substantial funding from the U.S. government, raising questions about the financial interdependence of media and state.

Employees of Politico received several communications from the company indicating that there was a “technical error” responsible for the delay in salary disbursement. Despite these assurances, the exact cause of the payroll issue remains unclear, with no direct connections established to the recent pause in USAID funding or broader government spending freezes.

The situation escalated when social media posts and online discussions began highlighting Politico’s financial relationship with the U.S. government. Documents revealed that from 2024, under the Biden administration, Politico received approximately $9.6 million in funding over just over a year. This funding was distributed across various branches of the organization, though the exact purposes of these funds have not been publicly detailed by Politico or the government agencies involved.

Political analysts and media watchdogs have been quick to comment on the implications of such funding. “The revelation of government funding to media outlets like Politico raises serious questions about editorial independence and the potential for conflicts of interest,” said media critic David Smith. “While there’s no direct evidence linking the USAID pause to this crisis, it’s a stark reminder of how governmental financial support can influence, or at least be perceived to influence, journalism.”

The timing of these payroll issues is particularly sensitive as it coincides with broader discussions about government funding for media. Posts on X (formerly Twitter) have expressed skepticism and concern, with some users suggesting that the inability to pay employees might be a consequence of government funding cuts, although no official confirmation or denial has been issued by Politico on this matter.

A purchase order highlighted today by Elon Musk showed the FDA paid politico $517,000 for 37 Politico subscriptions.

“This is odd,” Elon Musk said of the apparently exorbitant government payment.


Politico has not responded to requests for comment on how this funding was utilized or whether it played any role in the current financial difficulties. The company, traditionally known for its centrist coverage of American politics and policy, has maintained that its journalism remains unbiased and independent despite these financial ties.


Industry experts are now calling for greater transparency in how media organizations, especially those with significant influence like Politico, handle government funding. “We need to ensure that the public can trust that newsrooms are not swayed by where their money comes from,” stated Lisa Grant, a journalism ethics professor at Georgetown University.

As Politico works to resolve its payroll issues and clarify its financial relationships, the incident serves as a catalyst for a broader debate on media funding, independence, and the integrity of political journalism in the United States.


##### [Breaking Local News Report](https://www.shorenewsnetwork.com/author/admin/ "Author Breaking Local News Report")

Shore News Network is the Jersey Shore's #1 Independently Local News Source. Multiple sources and writers contributed to this report.

Isobel Coleman, the Deputy Administrator for Policy and Programming at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has long been a prominent figure in international development, celebrated for her work on gender equality, food security, and economic growth. Yet, as USAID faces unprecedented scrutiny and upheaval, Coleman’s tenure has come under intense scrutiny, raising questions about her role in an agency now embroiled in allegations of corruption and political interference.

In early 2025, President Donald Trump, with the backing of Elon Musk and his newly established Department of Government Efficiency, initiated efforts to dismantle USAID, citing inefficiency and systemic corruption as primary justifications. This move sparked fierce opposition from Democratic lawmakers, who argued that the dissolution of USAID would undermine U.S. foreign policy and humanitarian efforts globally. Amid this political firestorm, Coleman, who has publicly championed USAID’s mission, finds herself at the center of a maelstrom of controversy.

### Corruption Scandals and Questionable Oversight

The allegations of corruption within USAID are not new, but recent developments have brought them into sharp focus. In late 2024, Mahmoud Al Hafyan, a Syrian national, was indicted for diverting over $9 million in U.S.-funded humanitarian aid to armed groups, including the Al-Nusrah Front, a designated terrorist organization. This scandal exposed glaring vulnerabilities in USAID’s oversight mechanisms, raising questions about how such a significant diversion of funds could occur under Coleman’s watch.

Further compounding the agency’s troubles, a 2023 investigation revealed procurement fraud and conflicts of interest within a USAID-funded NGO operating in Africa. Senior leadership within the NGO was found to have failed to disclose allegations of bribery and intentionally narrowed internal investigations to avoid accountability. These revelations have cast a long shadow over USAID’s credibility and called into question the effectiveness of its anti-corruption measures.

Coleman, who has publicly emphasized USAID’s commitment to combating corruption—most notably through the launch of the agency’s first Anti-Corruption Policy in December 2022—now faces criticism that her efforts were more symbolic than substantive. Critics argue that the persistent issues within USAID suggest a systemic failure of leadership, with Coleman’s policies failing to address the root causes of corruption or implement meaningful safeguards.

### Ties to Influential Networks: A Conflict of Interest?

Coleman’s extensive ties to powerful political and philanthropic networks have further fueled skepticism about her role at USAID. As a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a think tank often accused of promoting a globalist agenda, Coleman’s policy decisions have been scrutinized for potentially prioritizing elite interests over the needs of vulnerable communities. Her involvement with the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) has also drawn criticism, particularly given the controversies surrounding the Clinton Foundation and allegations of “pay-to-play” dynamics during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State.

Coleman’s participation in CGI events, including discussions on commitments aimed at empowering women and girls, has been lauded by supporters as evidence of her dedication to gender equality. However, skeptics argue that her alignment with the Clinton network raises questions about potential ulterior motives. Is her advocacy for women and girls driven by a genuine commitment to their empowerment, or is it a means of advancing the political and financial ambitions of one of the most powerful families in American politics?

### The Dismantling of USAID

The dismantling of USAID adds another layer of complexity to the unfolding drama. Tthe Department of Government Efficiency reportedly gained access to sensitive government payment systems, prompting concerns about data security and the true motivations behind the agency’s dissolution. Critics have speculated that Musk’s involvement may be less about improving efficiency and more about consolidating control over U.S. foreign aid programs, potentially redirecting resources to align with his own interests or those of the Trump administration.

Coleman’s role in this context is particularly fraught. As a career diplomat and development expert, she has positioned herself as a defender of USAID’s mission. Yet, her inability to prevent the agency’s unraveling—coupled with the corruption scandals that have plagued her tenure—has led some to question whether she is a dedicated public servant or a willing participant in a broader political agenda.

### A Legacy Under Scrutiny

As USAID undergoes this turbulent period, the role of Isobel Coleman remains a focal point for those questioning the interplay between political influence and humanitarian aid. Her impressive resume and commitment to global development are undeniable, but the controversies surrounding her tenure—from corruption scandals to her ties to powerful networks—have cast a long shadow over her legacy.

The dismantling of USAID, spearheaded by Trump and Musk, marks a pivotal moment in U.S. foreign policy. For Coleman, it represents both a personal and professional reckoning. Was she a steadfast advocate for humanitarian principles, or was her work at USAID influenced by the agendas of powerful political and financial elites? As the debate over the future of U.S. foreign assistance programs continues, the answers to these questions will shape not only Coleman’s legacy but also the integrity of America’s role on the global stage.

In the end, the story of Isobel Coleman is one of ambition, influence, and the complex realities of international development. Her tenure at USAID will be remembered as a chapter in the ongoing corruption and often murky realities of politics and power.

Noam Chomsky, the renowned political dissident and intellectual, has long been a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy, and his scathing commentary on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is no exception. Through his extensive writings and speeches, Chomsky has painted a picture of USAID not as a benevolent force for global development, but as a tool of American imperialism, cloaked in the language of humanitarianism. For those in the intelligence community, Chomsky’s insights offer a provocative lens through which to examine the agency’s true motives and operations.

### USAID and the CIA: A Blurred Line

One of Chomsky’s most damning critiques is the blurred line between USAID and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He notes, “Parts of the nominally Government-controlled areas are actually run by the CIA, and no one seems sure where the CIA ends and the civilian aid program, USAID, begins.” This observation raises unsettling questions about the extent to which USAID operates as a front for covert intelligence operations. If true, it suggests that the agency’s humanitarian efforts may be secondary to its role in advancing U.S. geopolitical interests, often through undemocratic means.

### Economic Exploitation and the “Taiwan of the Caribbean”

Chomsky’s analysis of USAID’s role in Haiti is particularly illuminating. He describes how USAID, under the guise of development, implemented programs to turn Haiti into the “Taiwan of the Caribbean.” This strategy, rooted in the principle of comparative advantage, forced Haiti to import food and other commodities from the United States while its people toiled in U.S.-owned assembly plants under deplorable conditions. The result was not economic prosperity for Haitians, but rather the enrichment of American investors and the Haitian elite, coupled with a devastating decline in local wages and agricultural self-sufficiency.

Chomsky highlights how USAID and the World Bank, under the Reagan administration, explicitly sought to dismantle Haitian agriculture, pushing the country toward a model of exploitative assembly plants. This deliberate destruction of local food systems left Haiti dependent on foreign imports, a dependency that only deepened under subsequent administrations. The consequences of these policies were catastrophic, contributing to widespread poverty and political instability, which in turn justified further U.S. intervention.

### Democracy Promotion or Regime Change?

USAID’s involvement in “democracy promotion” has also come under Chomsky’s scrutiny. He points to the agency’s role in facilitating military coups and undermining democratically elected governments, often under the banner of supporting freedom and democracy. In Nicaragua, for example, USAID funneled millions of dollars through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to overthrow the democratically elected Sandinista government. Similarly, in Honduras, USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) provided funding to organizations that opposed President Manuel Zelaya and supported the 2009 military coup.

Chomsky quotes Allen Weinstein, one of the founders of NED, who candidly admitted, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” This admission underscores the extent to which USAID’s “democracy promotion” initiatives are often indistinguishable from covert regime change operations. By funding opposition groups and maintaining a “low profile,” USAID effectively acts as an arm of U.S. foreign policy, advancing American interests under the guise of humanitarian aid.

### The Militarization of Aid

Chomsky also sheds light on USAID’s role in militarizing police forces and supporting counterinsurgency operations in client states. In the Philippines, for instance, USAID and the CIA trained police under the public safety program for “eventual para-military and counterinsurgency operations.” This militarization of civilian institutions not only undermines local governance but also perpetuates cycles of violence and repression, often in service of maintaining U.S. influence.

### A Legacy of Exploitation

Chomsky’s critiques reveal a pattern of exploitation and manipulation that belies USAID’s humanitarian rhetoric. Whether through the destruction of local economies, the facilitation of coups, or the militarization of aid, the agency has consistently served as an instrument of U.S. empire. As Chomsky succinctly puts it, USAID’s mission is not to promote genuine development or democracy, but to impose “consent without consent” on vulnerable nations, ensuring their compliance with American interests.

For those in the intelligence community, Chomsky’s analysis serves as a stark reminder of the complexities and contradictions inherent in U.S. foreign aid. While USAID may present itself as a force for good, its actions often tell a different story—one of exploitation, coercion, and control. As the agency continues to operate in some of the world’s most vulnerable regions, it is imperative to question whose interests it truly serves.

In the end, Chomsky’s work challenges us to look beyond the veneer of humanitarianism and confront the uncomfortable realities of U.S. foreign policy. For USAID, this means reckoning with a legacy that is as much about empire as it is about aid. For the rest of us, it means demanding accountability and transparency from an agency that wields immense power, often with little oversight or scrutiny.

Recent news has once again shined a spotlight on the financial entanglement between the U.S. government and mainstream media organizations, with a focus on Politico and its receipt of over $8 million in taxpayer funds. Drawing upon public records, expert testimony, intelligence methodologies, and academic research, this analysis explores the broader implications of state-sponsored journalism, its impact on media bias, and the potential erosion of public trust. The study also examines historical precedents, international comparisons, and the role of corporate ownership in shaping media narratives. Recommendations for transparency, oversight, and policy reform are proposed to safeguard press independence and democratic integrity.

In a democracy, the press serves as an essential check on government power, often referred to as the "Fourth Estate." However, recent revelations concerning federal funding of major media outlets, particularly Politico, raise concerns regarding the integrity and independence of news organizations. This study aims to assess the scope of government financing in media, evaluate its consequences, and propose investigative pathways to ensure transparency. By examining the financial ties between the U.S. government and media entities, this paper seeks to illuminate the potential risks to press freedom and public trust, while offering actionable solutions to mitigate these risks.

**The Endemic Child Abuse Scandals in International Aid Operations and the Demand for Accountability**

International relief organizations, including the United Nations (UN), the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), have repeatedly been implicated in child abuse scandals across multiple regions, including Haiti, Central African Republic (CAR), Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Sudan, Liberia, Syria, and East Africa. These atrocities, often committed by peacekeepers, relief workers, and NGO employees, reveal systemic issues of impunity, power imbalances, and a blatant lack of effective safeguarding mechanisms. This white paper examines documented cases, identifies failures in oversight, and issues a call to action for comprehensive reforms to hold perpetrators and complicit institutions accountable.

**The Scandal That Will Not Die**

Having witnessed firsthand the devastation wrought by these abuses, I write this not as an impartial observer but as an outraged advocate for justice. The humanitarian sector—ostensibly designed to protect the world’s most vulnerable—has instead harbored and enabled predators who have exploited children with impunity. The facts are indisputable; the question is whether citizens have the will to confront them.

**Documented Abuse Cases: A Pattern of Neglect and Complicity**

**Haiti: The UN’s Shame**

Haiti stands as one of the most egregious examples of child sexual exploitation within the aid sector. Following the 2010 earthquake, UN peacekeepers and staff engaged in rampant sexual abuse. A 2019 investigation by the Associated Press uncovered a child sex ring operated by Sri Lankan peacekeepers between 2004 and 2007, victimizing minors with impunity. NGOs funded by USAID and other donors have also faced accusations, though accountability remains elusive.

**Central African Republic (CAR): The Forgotten Victims**

A 2015 report exposed cases of UN peacekeepers sexually exploiting children as young as nine, offering food or money in exchange. French and African peacekeepers alike were implicated, yet justice for the victims remains an afterthought in international discourse.

**Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): The Persistent Crisis**

Despite decades of reports detailing child exploitation by UN peacekeepers, little has changed. A 2004 investigation first laid bare the problem, yet cases continue to surface, underscoring the failure of so-called "reforms." Aid workers from various organizations, including those funded by USAID and FCDO, have also faced allegations of abuse.

**South Sudan: The Cycle Continues**

Reports of sexual exploitation by both UN personnel and NGO workers persist in South Sudan. A 2018 investigation by The New Humanitarian confirmed that aid workers, including those from USAID-funded organizations, engaged in the sexual exploitation of vulnerable women and girls.

**Liberia: A Scandalous Precedent**

During the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), peacekeepers routinely engaged in sexual exploitation, including abuse of minors. A 2005 UN report detailed the scale of the problem, but perpetrators largely escaped punishment. NGOs in Liberia have faced similar allegations, though direct links to FCDO and USAID programs remain murky.

**Syria and Neighboring Refugee Camps: No Safe Haven**

Syrian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey have become breeding grounds for exploitation. Reports by Save the Children and UNHCR (2018) detailed widespread sexual abuse targeting women and children. While no direct connection to FCDO or USAID programs has been firmly established, the systemic failures in oversight implicate all stakeholders in the humanitarian response.

**East Africa (Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia): Refugee Camps and the Perpetuation of Abuse**

Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps in Kenya, as well as sites in Somalia, have seen rampant sexual exploitation by aid workers. A 2002 UNHCR report exposed similar abuses in West Africa, yet over two decades later, the same failures persist.

**The Systemic Failures: Why Accountability Has Been Elusive**

1. **Institutional Impunity:** Peacekeepers and aid workers operate under legal loopholes that shield them from prosecution. UN personnel often fall under diplomatic immunity, while NGOs function under fragmented accountability structures.
2. **Power Imbalances:** Vulnerable populations, particularly displaced children, lack the means to report abuse without fear of reprisal or loss of aid.
3. **Inadequate Oversight:** Investigations, when conducted, are often internal and lack transparency. Perpetrators are frequently reassigned rather than prosecuted.
4. **Failure of Donor Agencies:** FCDO, USAID, and other donor entities fund these operations without enforcing stringent safeguarding mechanisms.
5. **Victim Silencing:** Survivors face intimidation and threats, dissuading them from seeking justice.

**Call to Action: Concrete Steps Toward Justice**

1. **Independent Oversight and Investigations**

- Establish an independent international tribunal to handle cases of sexual exploitation by aid workers and peacekeepers.
- **Elimination of Legal Immunities**
- Amend international legal frameworks to ensure that peacekeepers and aid workers can be prosecuted in the jurisdictions where abuses occur.
- **Mandatory Safeguarding and Vetting Procedures**
- Aid organizations must implement robust background checks and continuous monitoring of field staff.
- **Whistleblower Protections and Victim Support**
- Establish confidential reporting mechanisms and provide psychological and legal support to survivors.
- **Funding Accountability**
- Donor governments (e.g., FCDO, USAID) must impose strict conditions linking funding to demonstrable safeguarding compliance.
- **Transparency in Prosecutions**
- Publicly disclose the outcomes of abuse investigations and prosecute offenders with the same vigor as war crimes.

- Settlement would improperly carve up Infowars assets, judge said
- Jones owes $1.3 billion in families' defamation lawsuits
- Connecticut and Texas families agreed to 75/25 split of assets
- Jones is bankrupt, but his company's bankruptcy ended last year

NEW YORK, Feb 5 (Reuters) - A U.S. bankruptcy judge on Wednesday blocked a settlement between families who have sued Alex Jones over his false claims about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, saying their attempt to divide the bankrupt conspiracy theorist's assets exceeded his court’s authority.

The decision complicates a proposed sale of Jones' Infowars platform, and could spur divisions between families who sued Jones and won nearly [$1.3 billion](https://archive.is/o/Q5Tsz/https://www.reuters.com/legal/appeals-court-upholds-nearly-13-billion-sandy-hook-verdict-against-alex-jones-2024-12-06/) in Connecticut court cases and those who won [$50 million](https://archive.is/o/Q5Tsz/https://www.reuters.com/legal/alex-jones-loses-bid-slash-50-million-sandy-hook-defamation-verdict-2022-11-22/) in Texas courts. The two groups of families had proposed a [settlement](https://archive.is/o/Q5Tsz/https://www.reuters.com/legal/sandy-hook-families-reach-settlement-over-alex-jones-bankruptcy-2025-01-13/) that would guarantee the Texas families a 25% share of Jones' future payments made to the Sandy Hook families, with the Connecticut families taking 75%.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez rejected the settlement at a hearing in Houston, saying the families were asking him to also divide up the assets of Infowars' parent company Free Speech Systems, despite the fact that the company had been [dismissed](https://archive.is/o/Q5Tsz/https://www.reuters.com/legal/alex-jones-bankruptcy-liquidation-approved-court-2024-06-14/) from bankruptcy last year.

"I can't do that," Lopez said. “That case is closed."

Courts in Connecticut and Texas, where some of the families filed their lawsuits, have ruled Jones defamed the families by making repeated false claims that the [school shooting](https://archive.is/o/Q5Tsz/https://www.reuters.com/world/us/ten-years-after-sandy-hook-shooting-connecticut-town-spends-day-reflection-2022-12-14/), which killed 20 students and six staff members in Newton, Connecticut, was staged as part of a government plot to take guns away from Americans.

The legal judgments drove Jones and Free Speech Systems [into bankruptcy](https://archive.is/o/Q5Tsz/https://www.reuters.com/world/us/alex-jones-files-bankruptcy-following-sandy-hook-verdict-court-filing-2022-12-02/) in 2022, and Lopez has appointed a bankruptcy trustee to sell Jones’ assets.

Lopez has allowed Free Speech Systems and Infowars to be sold in Jones' ongoing personal bankruptcy. But he said he preferred a “pure sale” of the company’s equity, which is owned by Jones, rather than allowing Infowars’ assets to be broken up and sold separately.

The bankruptcy trustee, Christopher Murray, had previously sought to sell Infowars to the parody news site [the Onion](https://archive.is/o/Q5Tsz/https://www.reuters.com/world/us/parody-website-onion-buys-alex-jones-infowars-out-bankruptcy-court-documents-2024-11-14/), through a bid that was backed by the Connecticut families. Lopez [shot down](https://archive.is/o/Q5Tsz/https://www.reuters.com/legal/onions-purchase-alex-jones-infowars-stopped-by-us-judge-2024-12-11/) that sale in January, saying that Murray "left money on the table" in order to win the Sandy Hook families’ support.

“We’re not doing that anymore, I don’t trust the process,” Lopez said. “Go sell the equity.”

The families’ attorneys had said the agreement would [smooth the way](https://archive.is/o/Q5Tsz/https://www.reuters.com/legal/sandy-hook-families-reach-settlement-over-alex-jones-bankruptcy-2025-01-13/) for a sale of Jones’ assets, including Infowars, after their previous disagreements over how to pursue Jones’ assets. In the past, the Texas-based families focused on taking more cash from Jones, while the Connecticut-based families prioritized the shutdown of Jones' Infowars company.

Chris Mattei, an attorney for the Connecticut families, said they remain determined to "enforce every penny of judgments against Alex Jones."

An alarming paper trail has revealed that American taxpayers have been handing millions of dollars over to “news” outlets Politico and the New York Times to push leftist, anti-Trump propaganda.

The tax dollars have been secretly funneled into the outlets via U.S. federal government agencies.

The funding was exposed after staffers at Politico revealed on Tuesday that their paychecks hadn’t been received.

Politico told employees their paychecks were delayed due to a “technical error” which supposedly caused a “payroll issue.”

However, the “payroll issue” emerged shortly after President Donald Trump’s administration put a freeze on the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) funding.

The freeze came after investigations by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) uncovered [major corruption](https://slaynews.com/news/usaid-used-tax-dollars-fund-covid-bioweapon-development-china/) at USAID.

The timing led to many questioning whether Politico was being propped by tax dollars from USAID.

The suggestion that the Politico paycheck delay and the USAID freeze were connected prompted internet sleuths to look into the “news” outlet’s sources of funding.

According to the government spending tracker website [USASPENDING.gov](https://www.usaspending.gov/search), *Politico* received up to $27 million (and by some counts $32 million) from various U.S. agencies during the Biden years.

Notably, Politico laundered the anti-Trump “51 intel officials” propaganda regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 election.

The paper trail also uncovered another shocking and blatant attempt to misuse taxpayer funds.

Listed under a “disaster emergency fund,” over half a million dollars was paid from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to Politico for 37 “Politico pro subscriptions”

Elon Musk highlighted the huge payment, remarking that it was “odd.”

Zerohendge [noted](https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/1887150997136367679) that *Politico* was sold to German media giant Axel Springer (which also owns Business Insider) for [$1 billion in 2021](https://www.zerohedge.com/political/german-media-giant-buys-politico-1-billion-latest-blockbuster-deal).

As such, American taxpayer dollars have been flowing to the German media giant to prop up its U.S. propaganda efforts.

In addition, the NY Times received $3.1 million in taxpayer funds, while the UK’s BBC received $3.2 million.

All three of these outlets are known purveyors of anti-Trump propaganda.

Slay News, meanwhile, has never taken a single dime from the government or any other outside source.

To remain self-funded and independent, Slay News relies on advertisements and donations from loyal readers.

If you want to support independent media, join the fight by [donating to Slay News](https://slaynews.com/support-us/) today.

**[READ MORE – USAID Used Tax Dollars to Fund Covid Bioweapon Development in China](https://slaynews.com/news/usaid-used-tax-dollars-fund-covid-bioweapon-development-china/)**

U.S. government funding to the NYT sparks controversy amid political scrutiny and cuts by the Trump administration.


\-Reuters

## Two top Russian colonels plunge from high windows with one killed and the other left fighting for life as spate of mysterious deaths involving Putin officials continues

Published: 06:37 EST, 5 February 2025 | Updated: 06:43 EST, 5 February 2025

A top Russian colonel has died after mysteriously plunging 50ft from a window, while another was seriously injured from a similar fall in the latest spate of suspicious deaths involving Kremlin officials.

Colonel Alexey Zubkov - an employee for the Russian Investigative Committee - is fighting for his life after he plummeted 40ft from a bathroom window, according to Telegram channel VChK-OGPU.

Miraculously, Col. Zubkov was 'conscious' after his fall and 'briskly answered questions' but was unable to explain the reasons for his plunge. 

He is the head of the forensic investigations department specialising in the study of digital information, with access to detailed information about secret investigations.

Col. Zubkov's fall came soon after a Russian anti-monopoly service official Artur Pryakhin, 56, who had previously been a police colonel, was found dead after he fell from a fifth floor window in Petrozavodsk.

Authorities were reportedly looking into his death, but official media outlets rushed out reports that he died by 'suicide' before an investigation had concluded.

Pryakhin now joins a long string of unexplained deaths of leading Russian figures under mysterious circumstances.

In 2022, Ravil Maganov, chairman of Lukoil, [Russia](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/russia-ukraine-conflict/index.html)'s second-largest oil company, died when he fell from a sixth floor window at [Moscow](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/moscow/index.html)'s elite Central Clinical Hospital, also known as the Kremlin Clinic.

Colonel Alexey Zubkov - an employee for the Russian Investigative Committee - is fighting for his life after he plummeted 40ft from a bathroom window

Zubkov's fall comes shortly after leading Russian official Artur Pryakhin died after falling from a fifth floor window

Pryakhin now joins a long string of unexplained deaths of leading Russian figures under mysterious circumstances during Putin's rule

On the same morning, Putin - who had earlier decorated Maganov, 67, with a top honour - swept into the hospital to pay his final respects to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, who had died the same week.

In 2023, leading war official Marina Yankina, 58, head of the financial support department of the Russian Defence Ministry's Western Military District, was found dead after falling 160ft from a 16th-floor window in St. Petersburg.

The circumstances surrounding her death remain unclear.

Former oil company vice president Mikhail Rogachev also died after falling from his tenth-floor apartment in Moscow in October 2024.

He had been a senior executive at Yukos, an oil company dismembered by Putin and his cronies.

He was found at the entrance to his building by an employee of Russia 's SVR foreign intelligence agency and with injuries characteristic of a plunge, local media said. 

Pryakhin died after falling from a fifth floor window

TV channels reported that he lived on the tenth floor and that it was a suicide, claiming he had cancer and left a note - but those reports were vehemently denied by his close friends and relatives.

Those close to Rogachev insisted there were no signs that he was suicidal and he was in a 'good mood' shortly before his death.

Rogachev had a long and successful career in some of post-Soviet Russia's leading companies. 

In 2007, he became a deputy general director of Vladimir Potanin's Norilsk Nickel, with Potanin now Russia's wealthiest man who has also been sanctioned by Britain as part of Putin's 'inner circle'.

- Companies

Feb 5 (Reuters) - Representatives of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency have been working at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where they have gotten access to key payment and contracting systems, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The representatives have been on site at the agency's offices this week, and are looking at the systems' technology as well as the spending that flows through them, with a focus on pinpointing what they consider fraud or waste, the report added.

DOGE representatives are also examining the agency's organizational design and how it is staffed, according to the people, WSJ said.

Musk, who chairs the newly-created DOGE, in a post on social media platform X referencing the WSJ story said, without providing evidence, that "this is where the big money fraud is happening."

The world's richest man and an ally of President Donald Trump, Musk, has been tasked by Trump to identify fraud and waste in the government.

CMS oversees Medicare, the health coverage program for older and disabled Americans, and Medicaid, for lower-income enrollees, which provide insurance for over 140 million U.S. citizens.

The CMS regularly deals with improper payments that represent fraud or abuse but might also be due to a state, contractor, or provider missing an administrative step.

CMS did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comments.

When asked about the WSJ report and whether the DOGE had accessed CMS' payment and contracting systems, representatives for the White House did not address specifics but defended Musk and the DOGE's actions overall, saying they were fulfilling Trump's commitment to make the federal government more accountable.

One of the systems accessed by the DOGE representatives is the CMS Acquisition Lifecycle Management system, which includes information about contracts, the newspaper reported.

WSJ also reported, citing one of the people familiar with the DOGE's work at CMS, that Musk's allies have not been given access to databases that include identifiable personal health information of Medicare or Medicaid enrollees.

The DOGE's access is "read-only," meaning that its affiliates cannot make changes to the systems, according to the report.

The U.S. Treasury said on Tuesday that Musk's team has been granted "read-only access" to its payment system codes but denied that this cut off any government payments, including those of Social Security or Medicare.

Reporting by Sriparna Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona

- Suggested Topics:
- [United States](https://archive.is/o/HxG5B/https://www.reuters.com/world/us/)
- [Donald Trump](https://archive.is/o/HxG5B/https://www.reuters.com/world/trump/)

Representatives of billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have arrived at federal health care agencies, alarming some government workers with requests for access to sensitive records, according to five people with knowledge of the matter.

In recent days, officials affiliated with DOGE have visited the offices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private interactions. DOGE officials have also sought access to payment and contracting systems across the Department of Health and Human Services, which control hundreds of billions of dollars in annual payments to health-care providers, and they appear to have gained access to at least some of those systems, the people said.

The Wall Street Journal earlier [reported](https://archive.is/o/PQTT1/https://www.wsj.com/politics/elon-musk-doge-medicare-medicaid-fraud-e697b162) that DOGE aides had been granted access to the CMS grant-management system.

Appearing to confirm his interest in the agencies, Musk [posted](https://archive.is/o/PQTT1/https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887184902543577590) on X Wednesday afternoon that Medicare was “where the big money fraud is happening,” without offering evidence or specifics.

“CMS has two senior Agency veterans — one focused on policy and one focused on operations — who are leading the collaboration with DOGE,” Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesperson, wrote in an email. “We are taking a thoughtful approach to see where there may be opportunities for more effective and efficient use of resources in line with meeting the goals of President Trump.”

A spokesperson for DOGE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The contact with the health care agencies comes as emissaries of Musk’s DOGE fan out across the federal government in what they say is a pursuit of waste and fraud in U.S. payments. The federal health department spends nearly $2 trillion per year, mostly on health insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, making it a top target for lawmakers and watchdogs who say the programs are rife with [abuse](https://archive.is/o/PQTT1/https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/02/09/medicare-alleged-fraud-catheters/). Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, his former partner in the DOGE effort, have publicly mused about cracking down on HHS spending as part of DOGE’s broader goal to cut at least $1 trillion in federal spending.

Bipartisan efforts to crack down on Medicare spending in the past have frequently faced political backlash, with health-care providers and patient groups warning about the effect on delivering care and other services.

Over the weekend, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent [granted](https://archive.is/o/PQTT1/https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/01/elon-musk-treasury-payments-system/) a DOGE associate access to a critical payments system responsible for disbursing trillions of dollars in payments annually. Bessent later said that access had been granted on a “read only” basis and that the DOGE associate had been made a Treasury official. Musk affiliates have also been placed in leading roles at the Office of Personnel Management and other key agencies.

These efforts have caused alarm among some parts of the civil service, who fear Musk’s team is going around traditional safeguards. Musk and his allies, including President [Donald Trump](https://archive.is/o/PQTT1/https://www.washingtonpost.com/donald-trump/), have defended the push as necessary to root out waste.

“Nonpartisan experts have long believed that more than 10 percent of Medicare and Medicaid spending is improper. It’s essential to identify and root out these improper payments in order to direct more funding to patients care for seniors and vulnerable populations,” said Avik Roy, founder of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a think tank that promotes free markets.

The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan watchdog, has concluded that Medicare and Medicaid represent more than 40 percent of improper payments across the federal government. “Both Medicare and Medicaid are susceptible to payment errors — over $100 billion worth in 2023,” the GAO wrote in [April 2024](https://archive.is/o/PQTT1/https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-107487).

DOGE officials have asked for access to federal systems such as the Unified Financial Management System and the Healthcare Integrated General Ledger Accounting System, said the people with knowledge of DOGE’s requests.

The HIGLAS system, which is tightly controlled, contains sensitive financial information about all of the hospitals, physicians and other organizations that have financial relationships with program such as Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act — a vast database that touches nearly every corner of American health care.

Current and former federal officials said that federal personnel who access those systems are required to undergo specialized training to comply with privacy protections under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. It was not immediately clear if DOGE officials have undergone that training.

DOGE has also requested that CDC provide lists of employees who have less than a year of service and those who have two-year probationary periods, said the people familiar with DOGE’s requests.

Musk’s team also prepared to engage with the Labor Department. Senior department leaders told staffers who handle sensitive data that they would begin working with DOGE in the coming weeks, beginning with an in-office meeting Wednesday, according to a Labor Department staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. DOGE assignments would override the team’s normal duties, the staffer said.

But senior leadership moved Wednesday’s meeting from in-person to virtual after labor unions, including the AFL-CIO, announced a protest DOGE outside the Labor Department.

The agency manages massive amounts of sensitive data related to unemployment claims, health insurance plans, disability insurance, workplace health and safety investigations, wage theft and child labor. It also enforces 25 whistleblower laws, protecting workers from retaliation for reporting violations in various industries including food safety, airlines and nuclear energy.

It remained unclear Wednesday which parts of the Labor Department and its data DOGE officials intended to access.

Elon Musk’s team at the Department of Government Efficiency has been on-site at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to mine key systems for examples of what they consider fraud or waste, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The DOGE representatives have gained access to payment and contracting systems, according to the person, who asked not to be named discussing internal matters. They have also been working to cancel DEI contracts at CMS and more broadly across the [Department of Health and Human Services](https://archive.is/o/l8Tc4/https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/6929261Z:AU), the person said, including with organizations like Deloitte.

Elon Musk’s team of government efficiency enforcers have been tearing through US agencies, including the Treasury Department and the US Agency for International Development. The group, run by the world’s richest person and President Donald Trump’s largest donor, says it’s trying to cut costs and staffing levels across the US government.

But the group’s actions are stirring up controversy among staffers, some of whom have tried to block DOGE representatives from accessing information, as well as lawsuits from unions that accuse agencies of illegally letting their members’ information be shared with DOGE. On Tuesday, USAID said most of its 10,000 employees will be placed on administrative leave starting Friday.

The White House confirmed Monday that Musk is what’s known as an SGE, or special government employee. An SGE is an officer or employee in the executive branch of the federal government who typically serves for a limited period of time.

Deloitte, the White House and DOGE didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The Wall Street Journal was first to report the news about CMS.

In late January, Trump fired at least a [dozen inspectors general](https://archive.is/o/l8Tc4/https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-26/trump-defends-dismissal-of-dozen-federal-inspectors-general) in the federal government, including one for HHS, whose job it was to police fraud in Medicare. CMS is responsible for overseeing Medicare, the government health insurance program for elderly and disabled Americans, as well as the Medicaid program for lower-income patients. CMS had outlays of approximately $15 trillion last year, about 22% of the federal total, according to a [financial report](https://archive.is/o/l8Tc4/https://www.cms.gov/files/document/cms-financial-report-fiscal-year-2024.pdf "CMS financial report").

This must be hurtful for Sam Stein of The Bulwark and MSNBC to hear. Reports are that Elon Musk's DOGE team are now at the National Institutes of Health. We know there's plenty of corruption to dig up there. 

That sounds like why Joe Biden gave Anthony Fauci a preemptive pardon for the past ten years.

#### Recommended

[](https://twitchy.com/eric-v/2025/02/06/did-usaid-and-politico-try-to-deep-six-our-pizza-chef-andrew-gruel-says-they-did-n2407917 "The New Pizzagate: Did USAID and Politico Try to Deep Six Our Pizza? Chef Andrew Gruel Says They Did")

If there's fraud or misappropriation of funds, you know NIH is where it's happening. What was USAID doing awarding cash to the University of California, which passed it on to EcoHealth Alliance, which passed it on to the Wuhan Institute of Virology? How did that advance America's interests?

\*\*\*

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#### Trending on Twitchy Videos

USAID funneled money to BLM. They paid 27 million dollars to the Tides Center. The Tides Center funnels money directly to BLM.

Sean Penn Lots of money behind this one.

**Daily Dirt** @DailyDirtNews [2025-02-06](https://x.com/DailyDirtNews/status/1887380636497027489)

Celebrities getting paid more from USAID than from Hollywood to shill for Ukraine and Zelensky.


[Exclusive](https://loomered.com/category/exclusive/)[General News](https://loomered.com/category/general-news/)



[](https://loomered.com/author/charles-downs/ "Charles Downs")

Author: [Charles Downs](https://loomered.com/author/charles-downs/)



February 5, 2025



2 min.read



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#### **United States Senator Elizabeth Warren claimed on Tuesday that she did not take any contributions from big pharma executives. Warren made these claims after leaving RFK JR’s United States Senate Finance Committee vote, which RFK Jr won by a margin of 14 to 13. RFK JR’s nomination now heads to the Senate floor for a final confirmation vote, which will take place either late Friday, Saturday or possibly early Monday. Warren’s comments to Loomer Unleashed will hurt the Senate Democrats’ credibility in blocking RFK JR on the floor, as Warren has taken $5.2 million from big pharma since 2020. Worse, Warren has even accepted donations from the Sackler family, who have been sued for their role in the opioid crisis. Sadly, Senate Democrats have resorted to distorting the truth in an attempt to obstruct President Trump’s nominees.**

As she left the Senate Finance Committee’s RFK JR vote, Loomer Unleashed asked Senator Warren, “Is your acceptance of $5.2 million from the Big Pharma industry since 2020 the reason why you don’t want RFK JR suing Big Pharma?”

Senator Warren responded with, “I don’t take contributions from big Pharma executives, I don’t take any corporate PAC money, and you and your allies already know that.”


Media outlets across America stood in amazement and captured Senator Warren’s exchange with Loomer Unleashed’s Charles Downs. The exchange between Downs and Warren has received millions of views and has been shared on numerous accounts.

The X account Defiant L’s shared a video showing Downs and Warren’s exchange which resulted in community notes which read, “Senator Elizabeth Warren has in fact received millions of dollars in donations from PAC organizations.”

The community notes sighted the Washington Post, Time, and Politico.

It is also important to note that FEC records show that members of the Sackler family have been donating to Warren since 2012.


Before she died, Beverly Sackler donated to Elizabeth for MA INC, a political campaign committee tied to Elizabeth Warren. The New York Times obituary for Beverly Sackler read, “Ms. Sackler was the matriarch of the company whose drug OxyContin has been blamed for the opioid epidemic.”


Last month, Texas AG Ken Paxton announced he secured $7.4 billion from the Sackler family for their role in the opioid crisis. Part of Paxton’s statement reads, “Purdue, under the Sacklers’ leadership, invented, manufactured, and aggressively marketed opioid products for decades, fueling waves of addiction and overdose deaths across the country. The settlement ends the Sacklers’ control of Purdue and their ability to sell opioids in the United States. Further, it will deliver funding directly to communities across the country over the next 15 years to support opioid addiction treatment, prevention, and recovery programs. The $7.4 billion settlement in principle, the nation’s largest settlement to date with individuals responsible for contributing to the opioid crisis, comes after the United States Supreme Court overturned a prior multistate settlement with the Sacklers and Purdue in June 2024.”


Elizabeth Warren’s lie about not accepting contributions from big pharma executives is getting worse by the day. It would be inexcusable if any Senate Republican joined Senator Warren in voting against RFK Jr.’s confirmation on the Senate floor.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has launched an investigation into a Soros-backed radio station following reports that it revealed the live locations of undercover Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. The controversial broadcast, which aired sensitive details about law enforcement operations, has raised alarms over safety concerns and potential privacy breaches. The FCC's probe aims to determine whether the station violated any regulations or endangered public safety by disclosing such classified information. 

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, sent the radio station a formal letter of inquiry as part of its probe into whether it violated the terms of its FCC license, which mandates operation in the "public interest." The Enforcement Bureau’s inquiry highlights that the ICE agents were working in an area known for violent gang activity when their locations were disclosed. The station could face severe penalties, including the possible revocation of its broadcasting license if found in violation.

Carr said that ICE and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agent’s “safety is paramount,” promising that the FCC would hold broadcasters from the radio station backed by left-wing billionaire George Soros accountable. 

Earlier this week, [I reported](https://townhall.com/tipsheet/preview/2651586?p=1738786502) that Soros-backed radio station, KCBS Radio Weekend News on KCBS 740 AM in San Jose, disclosed the locations of unmarked ICE vehicles, detailing where ICE agents were carrying out deportation operations. Host Bret Burkhart gave specific information regarding the cars, potentially compromising their cover and putting the federal agents at risk.  

#### Recommended

“The county response network said agents in San Jose were in unmarked vehicles, including a black \[omitted\], a gray \[omitted\], and a white \[omitted\]. ICE agents were also reported outside a residence on South \[omitted\] roads, and officers were reportedly at the target on \[omitted\],” Burkhart said during the January 26 show. 

The investigation follows growing concerns about Soro’s increasing control over U.S. media. Last year, he purchased over 200 Audacy radio stations across 40 media markets. 

#### Recommended

#### Trending on Townhall Videos

The intersections between Bill Gates, through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) form an intricate web of partnerships in global health, agriculture, education, and digital finance. While these collaborations have been publicly framed as philanthropic endeavors aimed at alleviating poverty and disease, a closer examination reveals intelligence and geopolitical undercurrents that shape the global development landscape.

*A Pattern of Strategic Collaboration*\*

**Health Diplomacy and Biopolitical Control**

One of the most prominent areas of Gates-USAID collaboration is global health. The Gates Foundation has played a pivotal role in shaping USAID’s health policies, particularly in infectious disease control.

- **PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief)**: Established in 2003, this program saw deep involvement from the Gates Foundation, which pledged $200 million in 2015 to bolster its efforts. While ostensibly aimed at controlling HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, PEPFAR has served as a vehicle for gathering epidemiological data and expanding U.S. soft power.
- **COVID-19 and COVAX**: The 2021 pandemic response showcased a tightly interwoven collaboration. Gates, through his foundation, committed $1.75 billion to global vaccine initiatives, including COVAX, which was backed by USAID. The foundation's influence in vaccine development and distribution strategies positioned it as a de facto global health authority, raising concerns over a monopolization of biomedical governance.
- **Malaria Eradication Programs**: The Gates Foundation’s deep investments in anti-malaria initiatives, particularly in Zambia and Senegal, have dovetailed with USAID’s infrastructure-driven approach. While these initiatives are framed as humanitarian efforts, the control of disease mapping and vaccine deployment raises questions about data collection mechanisms that could serve intelligence functions.

**Agricultural Expansion: Food Security or Resource Control?**

Agricultural programs present another frontier where USAID and Gates' interests intersect.

- **Feed the Future Initiative**: Launched in 2010, this program has sought to increase agricultural productivity in developing nations. The Gates Foundation’s contribution, particularly in the development of genetically modified (GM) crops, has sparked concerns over the consolidation of agribusiness power in the hands of Western interests.
- **Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)**: Co-founded by the Gates Foundation in 2006, AGRA has received backing from USAID. While ostensibly promoting sustainability, AGRA has been criticized for undermining traditional farming methods and reinforcing economic dependency on Western agribusiness corporations.

**Digital Finance and Cyber Influence**

Bill Gates has long championed digital financial inclusion, and USAID has provided the perfect governmental conduit to advance this agenda.

- **Mobile Money Platforms**: The proliferation of mobile banking in Africa, particularly through M-Pesa in Kenya and similar initiatives in India, has Gates’ fingerprints all over it. USAID’s role in providing policy frameworks and funding further reinforces the notion that these initiatives extend beyond financial inclusion and into the realm of financial surveillance and economic control.
- **The Role of Digital ID Systems**: The Gates Foundation has been a key proponent of digital identification systems, which have been rolled out in tandem with USAID-backed programs. These systems, while ostensibly designed for social and financial inclusion, open avenues for data tracking and behavioral analysis.

**Policy Advocacy and Intelligence Influence**

The Gates Foundation has not merely partnered with USAID in implementation but has played an active role in influencing U.S. policy.

- **Congressional Testimony and Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA)**: Gates’ testimony before the Senate in 2020 calling for expanded global health funding aligned with USAID’s strategic priorities. GHSA, an initiative designed to strengthen epidemic preparedness, has been supported by both entities, further solidifying the bridge between philanthropic influence and government policy.
- **The United Nations and Soft Power Projections**: Events such as the 2019 UN General Assembly discussion between Bill Gates and USAID Administrator Samantha Power highlight the ways in which these actors shape global development narratives, often blurring the line between genuine humanitarian efforts and strategic geopolitical positioning.

**The Hidden Hand of Intelligence Operations**

While much of this collaboration can be framed as humanitarian, intelligence scholars recognize the historical precedent of aid agencies serving as fronts for intelligence gathering and influence operations. The CIA’s historical use of NGOs and aid organizations as operational fronts offers a compelling backdrop to analyze Gates-USAID cooperation.

- **Data Harvesting via Global Health Initiatives**: The extensive collection of biometric and epidemiological data through vaccination programs raises questions about how this information is leveraged beyond public health.
- **Economic Influence Through Development Programs**: The focus on digital finance and agricultural restructuring in strategically significant regions hints at long-term economic and political conditioning rather than purely altruistic motives.

**A Nexus of Philanthropy and Power**

While the Gates Foundation and USAID have undeniably contributed to global development, their partnership is not without geopolitical and intelligence implications. The alignment of their initiatives with broader U.S. strategic interests suggests that these efforts serve as more than mere philanthropy. Whether through health diplomacy, agricultural intervention, or digital finance, the Gates-USAID nexus exemplifies the intersection of aid and influence—an intersection where benevolence and power projection are two sides of the same coin.

**Bill Gates Gets Around**

- **Bill Gates Defends USAID Against Elon Musk's Criticism**: Bill Gates recently defended the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) against Elon Musk's criticism, emphasizing its crucial role in global health and nutrition efforts. Gates highlighted the importance of USAID's work and expressed concern over potential cuts to the agency.
- **Bill Gates' Meeting with President Trump**: Gates met with President Trump to advocate for the continuation of foreign aid disbursements from USAID. He emphasized the value of USAID's operations and its impact on global health and nutrition.
- **Global Health Innovations at CES 2025**: The Gates Foundation showcased several groundbreaking healthcare innovations at CES 2025, highlighting their potential to transform global health and save lives. These innovations include novel vaccines, low-cost diagnostics, and creative solutions to support mothers during pregnancy.
- **Integrated Development: Accelerating Global Health Solutions**: The Gates Foundation is working to break down barriers in product development and regulatory approval to advance global health innovation. This initiative aims to accelerate the development and implementation of health solutions in developing countries.
- **USAID's Role in Agricultural Development**: USAID has been involved in various agricultural development programs, including the Feed the Future Initiative and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). These programs aim to increase agricultural productivity and promote sustainability in developing nations.
- **Digital Finance Initiatives in Developing Countries**: The Gates Foundation has championed digital financial inclusion, with USAID providing policy frameworks and funding to support mobile money platforms and digital identification systems. These initiatives aim to promote financial inclusion and economic control in developing regions.

**Parallel Operations**

Here's how some of the intelligence operations mentioned could be tied to USAID programs, drawing parallels in their objectives and methods:

1. **Operation Mockingbird and COVID-19 and COVAX**:

- **Operation Mockingbird** involved the CIA using media outlets to influence public opinion and disseminate propaganda.
- **COVID-19 and COVAX** saw the Gates Foundation and USAID playing significant roles in vaccine distribution and public health messaging. The influence exerted by these organizations over global health policies and vaccine strategies can be seen as analogous to media influence in shaping public perceptions and behavior during the pandemic.

1. **Operation Cyclone and Malaria Eradication Programs**:

- **Operation Cyclone** involved the CIA funding and arming Afghan mujahideen fighters to counter Soviet influence.
- **Malaria Eradication Programs** saw the Gates Foundation and USAID investing heavily in disease control in Africa. These programs can be seen as extending U.S. influence in strategically important regions, similar to the geopolitical objectives of Operation Cyclone.

1. **Operation Ajax and Feed the Future Initiative**:

- **Operation Ajax** was a CIA-led coup in Iran to overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh and protect Western oil interests.
- **Feed the Future Initiative** aims to increase agricultural productivity in developing nations, often involving significant investment and influence over local agricultural practices. The control over local food production and economic dependencies echoes the strategic objectives of Operation Ajax in securing resources and influence.

1. **Operation Condor and Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA)**:

- **Operation Condor** involved coordinated efforts by South American dictatorships, with CIA support, to suppress political opposition.
- **AGRA** has faced criticism for promoting Western agribusiness interests and undermining traditional farming methods. The alignment of AGRA’s objectives with Western economic interests can be compared to the suppression of local opposition and promotion of Western-friendly regimes during Operation Condor.

1. **Operation Neptune Spear and Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA)**:

- **Operation Neptune Spear** was the CIA operation that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.
- **GHSA** aims to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to infectious disease threats. The strategic importance of global health security and the targeting of specific health threats can be seen as parallel to the targeted elimination of key threats in intelligence operations like Neptune Spear.

1. **Operation CHAOS and Digital Finance Initiatives**:

- **Operation CHAOS** involved the CIA spying on American citizens and activists.
- **Digital Finance Initiatives** promote financial inclusion and digital identification systems in developing countries. The extensive data collection and potential for surveillance through these digital systems can be compared to the intelligence-gathering objectives of Operation CHAOS.

1. **Operation Paperclip and Agricultural Development**:

- **Operation Paperclip** involved recruiting German scientists to work on U.S. military and space projects.
- **Agricultural Development** programs, such as those under the Feed the Future Initiative, often involve introducing advanced agricultural technologies and practices. The transfer of expertise and technology in these programs can be seen as parallel to the recruitment of scientific expertise in Operation Paperclip.

SaidIt uses a slightly-customized version of [Markdown](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax) for formatting. See below for some basics.

| *you type:* | *you see:* |
|

**Abdullah Bozkurt/Stockholm**

Tracking both the domestic and international travels of the head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı, MIT) is surprisingly easier than one might expect, despite the clandestine nature of the agency’s work and the heavy veil of secrecy surrounding its covert operations.

The agency’s leadership made a misguided decision to continue using a compromised shell company that owns the very aircraft in question. They mistakenly believed that merely changing the shell company’s name, altering the plane’s registration details and blocking flight data from public tracking sites would be sufficient to obscure its airborne movements.

They were mistaken. Not only are the aircraft’s international flights easily traceable, but its domestic routes can also be tracked with precision using specific coordinates, flight paths, call signs, speed and altitude data.

The aircraft, a Bombardier Challenger, is primarily used for the travels of MIT chief İbrahim Kalın, a longtime confidant of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. On occasion, it has also been deployed to support covert intelligence operations abroad.


Several photographers captured images of Turkey’s spy plane at various airports around the world, with these photos subsequently uploaded to the planespotters.com website.

The aircraft originally bore the tail number TC-KLE and was registered to a shell company operated by MIT in Ankara.

TC-KLE was exposed in March 2018 when MIT used the aircraft to abduct six Turkish citizens affiliated with a group critical of the Erdogan government in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. The operation sparked widespread protests in Kosovo, unsettled the country’s leadership and led to the indictment and conviction of several senior Kosovar officials who had unlawfully aided and abetted the abduction.

In January 2019 MIT rebranded the shell company that owned the aircraft, changing its name from Birleşik İnşaat Turizm Ticaret ve Sanayi A.Ş. to its current name, Mavi Başkent İnşaat Turizm Ticaret ve Sanayi A.Ş. (Mavi Başkent). The agency later altered the aircraft’s registration, replacing its original tail number, TC-KLE, with TC-BRY.

Several prominent flight tracking websites, including flightradar24.com and airnavradar.com, were also instructed to withhold flight details, further obscuring the aircraft’s movements.

*The November 2023 trade registry records for Mavi Başkent, the shell company operating the Bombardier jet for Turkey’s intelligence agency, reveal details about the company’s ownership, business scope and operations:*

However, this did not effectively address the core issue of transmitting Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast (ADS-B) signals. These signals can easily be intercepted by third-party receivers, some of which do not filter out data on blocked aircraft, leaving the plane’s movements traceable.

Even if MIT manages to block ADS-B signals and employs encryption to obscure flight data, it remains possible for amateurs to track the plane using ground-based receivers, satellite tracking or data shared by aviation enthusiasts, including plane spotters and airport photographers.

An investigation by Nordic Monitor revealed that the MIT aircraft was photographed multiple times by spotters at various airports, capturing images as it landed and took off.

As a result, crucial details such as the flight route, the airports it landed at and the specific dates and times remain accessible. This also includes the travel itinerary of MIT chief Kalın, even though the nature of his missions and visits was kept from the public.

Of course, a foreign state with significant resources and advanced capabilities would have far greater ease in tracking the plane than amateurs relying on publicly available data, putting Turkish intelligence in a vulnerable position. It represents a major intelligence failure and scandalous oversight that MIT continued to use the exposed company and the same aircraft for its operations.


On January 16, 2025 Turkish intelligence chief İbrahim Kalın’s plane visited Damascus. Despite efforts to block tracking data, the plane’s flight path remains easily traceable, revealing the aircraft’s movements.

Since assuming the role of head of the intelligence agency in June 2023, one of Kalın’s most frequent destinations has been Doha, Qatar, a small Gulf nation closely aligned with the Erdogan government. The rulers of both Turkey and Qatar share a similar Islamist ideology and provide support to the Muslim Brotherhood and various jihadist groups across the Middle East and North Africa.

Turkey provides the muscle, diplomatic influence and logistical support for such groups, while the hydrocarbon-rich Qatar bankrolls their operations.

Qatar also serves as a sanctuary for a substantial portion of President Erdogan’s wealth, with the Gulf nation’s financial system being used to launder illicit money earned through bribes and kickbacks. Many of Qatar’s foreign investments in Turkey have, in fact, been funneled from Erdogan’s secret wealth.

In addition to flights to Doha, most of Kalın’s overseas travels in 2023 and 2024 have been concentrated in the Caucasus, with Baku emerging as the top destination. Other key locations included Libya, Morocco, Malaysia, Iraq, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.


The flight path of the Turkish intelligence plane from December 8, 2024.

Kalın’s first overseas flight took him to Baku on July 8, 2023, just a month after his appointment as MIT chief by Erdogan. Turkey provides critical intelligence to Azerbaijan, a close ally, particularly in its ongoing conflict with Armenia. On August 4, 2023 Kalın traveled to Libya, a country where Turkish intelligence and military forces have long conducted extensive operations to support Islamist factions aligned with the Erdogan government.

The plane entered Russian territory multiple times, notably on September 4 and December 6, 2023, with the most recent entry on October 24, 2024. It also stayed in Washington, D.C., for three days between March 3 and 6, 2024. In addition the aircraft visited several European cities, including Helsinki on November 30, 2023, London on July 18, 2024, Munich on February 15, 2024 and the small Norwegian city of Bodø on July 19, 2024.

The most recent registration records, filed on November 17, 2023, indicate that the Mavi Başkent company is still owned by a foundation called MİPVAK (Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı Personeli Sosyal ve Güvenlik ve Dayanışma Vakfı), an organization established by the government to support MIT agents.


İbrahim Kalın, Turkey’s intelligence chief who had previously served as presidential spokesman and chief aide to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

According to Turkey’s General Directorate of Civil Aviation, a division of the Ministry of Transportation, Mavi Başkent holds general aviation license number TR-GH-59, which was originally assigned to its predecessor, Birleşik.

The company’s public representative is Okan Doğan, a MIT employee who handles Mavi Başkent’s official affairs. MIT agents İhsan Sezer Gökgöz and Necati Baykal are listed as members of the board of directors, reporting under him.

The company’s listed address is a small office in Çankaya: Meşrutiyet Mahallesi, Meşrutiyet Cad. Menderes İş Hanı Apt. No: 9/5.

The scope of business activities outlined in the trade registry declaration is exceptionally broad, encompassing sectors such as construction, oil trade, tourism, advertising, arms, industrial goods and insurance as well as real estate, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and the purchase of vehicles, aircraft and ships. The company is authorized to operate both within Turkey and internationally.

Turkey, a NATO member and a candidate for European Union membership, has evolved into a highly authoritarian state under the repressive Islamist regime of President Erdogan and his far-right allies. The intelligence agency has been reshaped into a central tool for maintaining Erdogan’s power, carrying out clandestine operations such as false flag actions, influence campaigns, wealth redistribution, asset seizures, sham trials and even murders and kidnappings.

Back in October, CBS was caught running a heavily edited version of at least one of then-Vice President Kamala Harris' answers in her "60 Minutes" interview with host Bill Whitaker and refused calls to release a full, unedited video of that interview so we could see what else might have been edited. At that time the network refused, claiming "freedom of the press" or something. Then Donald Trump sued them for $10 billion, and the network announced that they'd finally comply with an FCC request for the footage and transcript that had been sent in October.

CBS has now complied, and the FCC has published both the unedited video and the transcript - both of which are embedded in this article for your viewing/reading pleasure. 

For a refresher on the controversy, here's a video showing Harris' actual word salad answer about Israel - which was shown as part of a teaser for the interview - and what actually aired.

**Rapid Response 47** @RapidResponse47 [2025-02-05](https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/1887151291895267553)

USAID has been completely unaccountable for decades, run by bureaucrats with agendas who believed they answered to nobody.

Here are a few more of the ridiculous projects on which they spent YOUR money:

— $7.9 million to teach Sri Lankan journalists how to avoid “binary-gendered language”

— $20 million for a new Sesame Street show in Iraq

— $4.5+ million to “combat disinformation” in Kazakhstan

— $1.5 million for “art for inclusion of people with disabilities”

— $2 million for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala

— $6 million to “transform digital spaces to reflect feminist democratic principles”

— $2.1 million to help the BBC “value the diversity of Libyan society”

— $10 million worth of USAID-funded meals, which went to an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group

— $25 million for Deloitte to promote “green transportation” in the country of Georgia

— $6 million for tourism in Egypt

— $2.5 million to promote “inclusion” in Vietnam

— $16.8 million for a SEPARATE “inclusion” group in Vietnam

— ~$5 million to EcoHealth Alliance, one of the key NGOs funding bat virus research at the Wuhan lab

— $20 million for a group related to a key player in the Russiagate impeachment hoax

— $1.1 million to an Armenian “LGBT group”

— $1.2 million to help the African Methodist Episcopal Church Service and Development Agency in Washington, D.C., build “a state-of-the-art 440 seat auditorium”

— $1.3 million to Arab and Jewish photographers

— $1.5 million to promote “LGBT advocacy” in Jamaica

— $1.5 million to “rebuild” the Cuban media ecosystem

— $2 million to promote “LGBT equality through entrepreneurship” in Latin America

— $500K to solve sectarian violence in Israel (just ten days before the Hamas October 7 attack)

— $2.3 million for “artisanal and small scale gold mining” in the Amazon

— $3.9 million for “LGBT causes” in the western Balkans

— $5.5 million for LGBT activism in Uganda

— $6 million for advancing LGBT issues in “priority countries around the world”

— $6.3 million for men who have sex with men in South Africa

— $8.3 million for “USAID Education: Equity and Inclusion”

— USAID’s “climate strategy” outlined a $150 billion “whole-of-agency” approach to building an “equitable world with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.”

For decades, USAID bureaucrats believed they were accountable to no one — but that era is over.

President Trump is STOPPING the waste, fraud, and abuse.

   

Former President Donald J. Trump’s tenure in the White House was defined by his unapologetic battle against what he and his supporters refer to as the “Deep State.” This entrenched network of career bureaucrats, intelligence operatives, and unelected policymakers has long exerted disproportionate influence over government affairs, often working counter to the will of duly elected officials.

The Trump administration’s strategy to neutralize this influence involved aggressive personnel reclassification, strategic executive orders, and an overhaul of key government functions through technology and political appointments. For instance, Trump signed an executive order to reclassify thousands of federal employees into a new category called “Schedule Policy/Career,” which stripped them of civil service protections and made them easier to fire. This move was aimed at removing employees who were seen as resistant to his agenda.

Additionally, Trump’s administration implemented a federal employee buyout program, offering an eight-month payout to those who chose to leave their jobs. This was part of a broader effort to downsize the federal workforce and replace career officials with political appointees. Critics argued that this would politicize the civil service and undermine the non-partisan nature of federal agencies.

In terms of technology, the Trump administration launched the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, to curb government excess and improve efficiency. This department was tasked with implementing new technologies and streamlining government operations.

The broader implications of these actions are significant for the future of governance in America. While many in the intelligence community and federal bureaucracy decried these efforts as undue politicization, others recognized them as a necessary correction to an administrative state that had grown beyond constitutional accountability. The Trump administration’s approach to dismantling the Deep State has sparked a debate about the balance between political control and the independence of career civil servants.

**Executive Orders and Reclassification**

A cornerstone of Trump’s strategy was the issuance of Executive Order 13839, titled “Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce.” Signed on January 20, 2025, this order sought to reclassify key federal employees into a new category known as “Schedule Policy/Career,” stripping them of traditional civil service protections. This reclassification transformed thousands of federal employees into at-will workers, reducing bureaucratic resistance to the administration’s policies and ensuring alignment between the executive branch and the officials executing its directives.

For example, the Senior Executive Service (SES) and the Senior Foreign Service (SFS), which include many career officials with substantial influence over policy implementation, were also affected by these reclassification efforts. By shifting key positions within these groups to politically controlled appointments, Trump sought to diminish the entrenched power structures within the federal government.

Additionally, the Trump administration targeted the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which had been criticized for wasteful spending and lack of accountability. The administration froze billions of dollars in humanitarian assistance and placed hundreds of USAID staff on administrative leave as it considered shuttering the agency’s operations entirely. This move was part of a broader effort to curb unnecessary federal spending and reduce the influence of entrenched bureaucrats.

The recent scandal involving Politico further highlighted the issues within USAID. Allegations surfaced that Politico had received substantial funds from USAID, leading to claims of biased reporting and misuse of taxpayer money. While the actual amount received was relatively small, the controversy underscored the need for greater oversight and accountability within federal agencies.

**Key Players and Implementation**

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM), under the leadership of Director Dale Cabaniss, played a pivotal role in implementing these changes. The directive required federal agencies to identify and reclassify positions deemed to have policy influence. These reforms, while decried by entrenched bureaucrats, were heralded by proponents as a necessary measure to return policy-making power to the elected administration rather than unelected functionaries with ideological agendas.

Several key individuals played roles in the power struggle between the Trump administration and the Deep State:

**James Comey** – Former FBI Director, fired by Trump amid claims of political bias.

**Andrew McCabe** – Former Deputy FBI Director involved in the Russia investigation.

**Peter Strzok** – FBI agent whose controversial texts were cited as evidence of bias.

**Lisa Page** – FBI lawyer linked to Strzok, scrutinized for her communications.

**Christopher Wray** – Trump-appointed FBI Director, often criticized by both sides.

**Rod Rosenstein** – Former Deputy Attorney General who appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

**William Barr** – Former Attorney General who played a role in managing the Russia investigation fallout.

**Victoria Nuland** – Former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, known for her strong stance on Ukraine and controversial comments about the European Union.

**Eric Ciaramella** – Alleged whistleblower whose complaint led to Trump's first impeachment, previously involved in Biden-Ukraine affairs.

**Alexander Vindman** – National Security Council official who testified against Trump during the impeachment inquiry, later ran for Congress.

These individuals were at the center of significant controversies and power struggles during the Trump administration, reflecting the intense political battles of the era.

**Political Appointments and Technological Alignment**

A particularly innovative aspect of Trump’s strategy was the reclassification of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) across federal agencies as political appointees. This decision ensured that key technological infrastructure would no longer be susceptible to the inertia or resistance of career bureaucrats. For instance, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a memo in February 2025, led by acting director Charles Ezell, which instructed federal agencies to stop using a merit-based process to hire CIOs as nonpartisan civil servants and instead broaden the search to potentially include outsiders loyal to Trump. This move was partly in response to difficulties with hiring qualified CIOs, as Ezell noted that the number of qualified CIOs in the career federal workforce was “miniscule compared to the deep supply of talent” outside the government career ranks.

By reclassifying CIOs as political appointees, IT operations and cybersecurity measures could align with the administration’s priorities, enabling streamlined governance and improved accountability. For example, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by tech mogul Elon Musk, gained access to various federal agencies' IT systems, causing significant upheaval. This reclassification allowed the Trump administration to exert more control over federal IT systems, ensuring that CIOs would be on the front lines of articulating and implementing policies both within government and before the general public.

**The Role of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)**

Elon Musk, serving as head of the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), played a crucial role in modernizing federal IT systems. Musk’s leadership introduced private-sector efficiency to an often sluggish bureaucracy, reducing redundancies and enhancing the administration’s ability to monitor and direct agency operations. While critics raised concerns about the concentration of executive influence over digital infrastructure, supporters viewed these changes as an essential counterweight to Deep State subterfuge.

**Resignations of Senior Career Diplomats**

Trump’s decisive actions forced a reckoning within the career diplomatic corps. Faced with the choice of executing the administration’s policies or resigning, numerous senior officials chose the latter. Ambassador John Sullivan’s resignation, for example, was widely publicized as an act of defiance against Trump’s handling of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. While establishment voices lamented such departures as losses of institutional knowledge, others saw them as the necessary purging of individuals unwilling to serve an elected government’s lawful directives.

**The Deep State’s Countermeasures**

The "Deep State" opposition to former President Donald Trump's administration is far from the baseless conspiracy theory it is often dismissed as. Indeed, the intelligence and law enforcement agencies, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), appeared to employ a range of institutional mechanisms to challenge Trump's authority. One glaring example is the Russia investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Allegations of collusion with Russia dominated headlines, creating an atmosphere of continuous scrutiny for the Trump administration despite the eventual lack of conclusive evidence. The constant barrage of leaks and reports seemed less about uncovering the truth and more about perpetuating a narrative that questioned the legitimacy of Trump's presidency.

The Mueller investigation ensnared high-profile figures such as Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone, leading to multiple indictments and convictions. The investigation also underscored the role of Russian interference in the 2016 election, further complicating an already contentious political landscape. Financial exchanges and Wall Street were closely monitored for signs of misconduct, often painting a picture of a presidency under siege from within.

Moreover, the manner in which the Steele dossier was handled raises significant questions about the integrity of those at the helm of the intelligence community. The dossier, a compilation of unverified and salacious claims about Trump’s ties to Russia, was leaked to the media and used to justify surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The subsequent surveillance of Trump campaign aide Carter Page was riddled with procedural errors and omissions, as revealed by the Inspector General’s report on the FISA process. Such actions bring into question whether the leadership within the intelligence community was more focused on resisting Trump’s administration than on adhering to principles of transparency and accountability.

The Deep State’s countermeasures weren’t confined to the Russia investigation. Numerous leaks from anonymous sources within the government aimed to damage Trump’s reputation. Major news organizations like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN frequently published these leaks, contributing to an environment of distrust and controversy. These actions were often justified as whistleblowing, but they invariably tilted public opinion against the administration.

Beyond investigations and leaks, there were overt efforts to block Trump’s policy initiatives through bureaucratic resistance and legal challenges. The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Office of the Special Counsel were frequent adversaries, engaging in public disputes and legal battles that furthered the perception of a fragmented administration. The impeachment proceedings initiated by the House of Representatives over the Ukraine scandal and the January 6 Capitol riot provided further ammunition for those looking to delegitimize Trump’s presidency.

Even as Trump’s administration navigated these turbulent waters, it remained resilient, leveraging executive orders and direct appeals to the public to advance its agenda. The MAGA movement and Trump’s base of loyal supporters viewed the Deep State’s actions as validation of their belief in a corrupt, entrenched political establishment. This dynamic, marked by skepticism and resistance, continues to influence American politics today.

**Financial and Media Narratives**

Financial and media institutions played a pivotal role in shaping public perception of Trump’s efforts. The 2008 financial crisis, for instance, was consistently framed as a failure of deregulation, reinforcing calls for greater bureaucratic oversight. However, Trump’s economic policies challenged this narrative by advocating for reduced red tape and a more business-friendly regulatory environment. Similarly, coverage of the January 6 Capitol riot and the 2020 election aftermath highlighted the persistent influence of entrenched media and governmental elites in defining political discourse.

Key media outlets influencing these narratives included:

**The Wall Street Journal** – Frequently used as a business and policy barometer.

**The New York Times** – A major outlet reporting extensively on Trump’s policies.

**CNN** – Known for its critical stance on Trump.

**Fox News** – A network that often plays at being supportive of Trump’s administration in a manner appearing to be "controlled opposition".

**The Washington Post** – Another major news outlet scrutinizing Trump’s policies and actions.

The financial backing of these media outlets often came from government contracts and grants, raising questions about their impartiality. For example, USAID has been known to fund various media organizations to promote democratic values and counter disinformation. This financial support can create a conflict of interest, as these outlets may feel pressured to align their reporting with the interests of their benefactors.

This situation is reminiscent of Operation Mockingbird, a covert CIA program from the Cold War era that aimed to influence media organizations for propaganda purposes. Journalists were recruited to disseminate CIA-approved narratives, blurring the lines between independent journalism and government propaganda. While the specifics of Operation Mockingbird remain murky, the idea of news organizations working closely with intelligence agencies continues to be a source of concern for many.

In the case of Trump’s administration, the financial and media narratives were often intertwined, with government-funded media outlets playing a significant role in shaping public opinion. This raises important questions about the independence of the press and the potential for government influence over media narratives.

**Conclusion**

Trump’s strategy to dismantle the Deep State is a bold and multifaceted endeavor aimed at restoring executive control over the federal bureaucracy. By leveraging executive orders, personnel reclassification, political appointments, and technological reforms, the administration sought to realign governance with the democratic will of the electorate. While these efforts faced fierce resistance from entrenched bureaucrats and media institutions, they represented a necessary step in reasserting constitutional oversight over an administrative apparatus that had grown increasingly unaccountable. The ongoing battle over the Deep State’s influence remains a defining issue in American politics, with future administrations likely to either build upon or dismantle Trump’s legacy in this arena.

**Executive Orders and Reclassification**

- **Executive Order 13839: Promoting Accountability and Streamlining Removal Procedures Consistent with Merit System Principles** [https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/06/01/2018-11939/promoting-accountability-and-streamlining-removal-procedures-consistent-with-merit-system-principles](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/06/01/2018-11939/promoting-accountability-and-streamlining-removal-procedures-consistent-with-merit-system-principles)

**Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Elon Musk's Role**

- **Musk creates new power base in Washington with takeover of US agencies** [https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk\\-creates\\-new\\-power\\-base\\-washington\\-with\\-takeover\\-us\\-agencies\\-2025\\-02\\-05/](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk%5C-creates%5C-new%5C-power%5C-base%5C-washington%5C-with%5C-takeover%5C-us%5C-agencies%5C-2025%5C-02%5C-05/)
- **Elon Musk's secretive government IT takeover, explained** [https://www.vox.com/politics/398366/musk\\-doge\\-treasury\\-sba\\-opm\\-budget](https://www.vox.com/politics/398366/musk%5C-doge%5C-treasury%5C-sba%5C-opm%5C-budget)
- **DOGE is making major changes to the federal government. Is it legal?** [https://www.npr.org/2025/02/04/nx-s1-5286314/department-of-government-efficiency-doge-explainer-elon-musk](https://www.npr.org/2025/02/04/nx-s1-5286314/department-of-government-efficiency-doge-explainer-elon-musk)
- **How Elon Musk's DOGE Is Reshaping the US Government** [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-04/how-elon-musk-s-doge-is-reshaping-the-us-government](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-04/how-elon-musk-s-doge-is-reshaping-the-us-government)

**Media and Financial Narratives**

- **Fed agencies ending $8M Politico contracts after Elon Musk calls them 'wasteful' use of taxpayer money** [https://nypost.com/2025/02/05/us\\-news/fed\\-agencies\\-ending\\-8m\\-politico\\-contracts\\-after\\-elon\\-musk\\-calls\\-them\\-wasteful\\-use\\-of\\-taxpayer\\-money/](https://nypost.com/2025/02/05/us%5C-news/fed%5C-agencies%5C-ending%5C-8m%5C-politico%5C-contracts%5C-after%5C-elon%5C-musk%5C-calls%5C-them%5C-wasteful%5C-use%5C-of%5C-taxpayer%5C-money/)
- **Elon Musk's access to Treasury's payment system is raising alarms** [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/musk-treasury-social-security-access-federal-payment-system-trump/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/musk-treasury-social-security-access-federal-payment-system-trump/)

**Critiques and Legal Challenges**

- **Elon Musk tightens grip on federal government as Democrats raise concerns** [https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-donald-trump-doge-21153a742fbad86284369bb173ec343c](https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-donald-trump-doge-21153a742fbad86284369bb173ec343c)
- **How the world's richest man laid waste the US government** [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/04/trump-elon-musk-federal-government](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/04/trump-elon-musk-federal-government)

**Additional Context**

- **Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead new 'Department of Government Efficiency' in Trump administration** [https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/12/politics/elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-department-of-government-efficiency-trump/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/12/politics/elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-department-of-government-efficiency-trump/index.html)

SaidIt uses a slightly-customized version of [Markdown](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax) for formatting. See below for some basics.

| *you type:* | *you see:* |
|


Brooks Kraft /Getty

February 5, 2025 05:00 PM ET

The Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have offered their workforces a "deferred resignation" offer akin to the [one](https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/01/trump-reportedly-will-offer-buyouts-all-2-million-federal-workers/402571/) recently sent to federal civilian agencies through the Office of Personnel Management, the spy agencies confirmed Wednesday.

The CIA and NSA have also offered their workforce a similar deal. On Tuesday, the *Wall Street Journal* [reported](https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/the-cia-is-about-to-get-a-trump-makeover-16fc0cbf) the CIA offer, and similar [reports followed](https://therecord.media/nsa-deferred-resignation-retirement-doge) about the National Security Agency. 

“As directed by OPM and DoD, the deferred resignation program is available to eligible NSA employees,” a spokesperson for the signals intelligence agency said.

The Trump administration, seeking to downsize the federal workforce, has announced that employees who resign by Thursday will remain on the payroll with full benefits until the end of September. *\[Editor's note: The agreement also [says](https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5128421-trump-administration-federal-employees-buyout/) employees might be called back to work "in rare circumstances"; they also give up the right to redress if the government reneges, according to a [Feb. 4 memo](https://www.opm.gov/media/xmxfp34k/opm-memo-legality-of-deferred-resignation-program-2-4-2025-final-1.pdf) from OPM. The memo asserts that the offer is legal; others, including Democratic lawmakers, have [raised doubts](https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/the-cia-is-about-to-get-a-trump-makeover-16fc0cbf).\]* 

The offer asks IC workers to decide on the offer by Feb. 6.

It’s not clear how many IC staffers would accept the proposal. *\[On Tuesday, administration officials [told](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/04/trump-buyout-offer-federal-workers-deadline/78208851007/) reporters that more than 20,000 feds had taken the offer. That's about one percent of the total federal workforce, which typically sees about five or six percent attrition each year.\]*

Around two weeks ago, an email landing in employees’ inboxes from the address hr@opm.gov told recipients that it was a “test of a new distribution and response list” and asked them to reply “YES” to it. Many workers suspected it was a phishing email and reported it to their IT departments. 

A second test email went out the following day, and federal employees were later sent a deferred resignation offer using the same system shortly thereafter, saying they would be paid until Sept. 30 — provided they resign by Feb. 6. It wasn’t clear at the time whether that type of offering would be made available to the intelligence community.

President Donald Trump has long railed against the intelligence community, accusing it of being weaponized against him, his campaign and his allies.

Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee rallied against White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in a [Wednesday letter](https://www.warner.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?a=files.serve&File_id=C0A7443F-D83F-4CE1-B616-0FF5E27EA43D) accusing Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency — a cost-cutting unit headed by billionaire Elon Musk — of circumventing classified information protocols with DOGE [recently accessing systems](https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2025/02/unions-sue-treasury-over-doge-access-payment-systems/402744/?oref=ge-homepage-river) inside the Treasury Department, Office of Personnel Management and USAID.

“As you know, information is classified to protect the national security interests of the United States. Government employees and contractors only receive access to such information after they have undergone a rigorous background investigation and demonstrated a ‘need to know.’ Circumventing these requirements creates enormous counterintelligence and security risks,” they wrote.