RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/02/25/musk-is-shredding-government-not-even-close/

As night follows day, Democrats and their champions in the mainstream press have started trotting out their shopworn horror stories about budget cuts. And why not? It’s always worked in the past, turning Republicans’ knees into jelly. President Donald Trump needs to tell them to man up this time, and he can start by calling out the left’s world-is-about-to-end nonsense.

Anyone who follows the news would think that Trump and Elon Musk are carpet bombing the federal government. We keep seeing headlines about how Musk and DOGE are “shredding” and “dissecting” the federal government, about how spending cuts are causing “cruel and senseless devastation,” and the “human toll of the administration’s malevolence and incompetence.”

Reporters are busy scouring the earth for any sob story they can find – or make up – to put a human face on this supposed tragic turn of events, such as those poor federal workers who are confused and scared about having to list five things they did the previous week.

Then there are the repeated proclamations about “growing anger” among the public about the heartlessness of it all – with no evidence to support it – and how this is “putting Republicans in a difficult position.” (Never mind that Trump’s approval rating is currently higher than it ever was in his first term, according to the latest Harvard-Harris poll.)

The cumulative effect of all this is meant to rankle the public and put pressure on GOP lawmakers to make it stop.

Well, it’s time for a reality check.

As is always the case when it comes to cutting federal spending, both sides exaggerate what is going on. The ones cutting spending want the public to think they are hitting bone — witness Musk brandishing his chainsaw at the CPAC convention. The big government types want to play up the supposed harm. The result is usually that little, if anything, actually ends up getting cut.

https://spectator.org/judicial-resistance-setting-itself-epic-smackdown/

America, unfortunately, has long been suffering from a crisis of civics. Put simply, many Americans are woefully ignorant about the structure and features of their government. But every so often, an opportunity emerges to reteach some basics. The media’s predictable shrieks and howls of “constitutional crisis” notwithstanding, we are in the throes of a grand separation-of-powers standoff that will both serve as one such edifying civics lesson.

First: Enter the energetic executive.

In his frenetic opening weeks, President Donald Trump has channeled the spirit of The Federalist No. 70, in which Alexander Hamilton argued that only a unitary executive can govern with “decision, activity, secrecy, and despatch.” In starker, more modern terms, this newer Trumpian era has fully embraced two key principles associated with close MAGA allies: Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone” and Elon Musk’s “move fast and break things.” The crux is that people are easily distracted, often overwhelmed, and frequently overcome by shiny-object syndrome. This is especially true in today’s 24/7 social media environment.

Those two mantras explain how we get these remarkable first few weeks — this more assertive, more dynamic MAGA machine. We see “move fast and break things” in such moves as the executive orders on birthright citizenship and rooting out both “diversity, equity and inclusion” and gender ideology from the federal government.

We see it in the U.S. Agency for International Development wind-down, and we see it in the anticipated termination of the Department of Education. And we see “flood the zone” in the daily frenzy of executive orders. Indeed, White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf’s daily physical handing of new executive orders to Trump to sign has emerged as an unlikely cable TV fixture.

And now: Enter the judicial “resistance.”

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/america/trump-is-no-dictator/

Let me start this reply to Roger Partridge’s column (Trump’s War on Constitutional Democracy) by laying my cards on the table.  I know Roger Partridge.  He is one of the best lawyers in New Zealand.  He, like me, has grave worries about the sort of judicial activism or judicial usurpation of the role of Parliament that he sees over across the Tasman (and which, in enervated form, is on clear display here in Australia too).  Indeed, Roger and I have worked in parallel and at times together to try to rein back  the current imperial judiciary in New Zealand, a set of top judges seemingly intent on making significant inroads into parliamentary sovereignty simply by decreeing new supposed realities in big-ticket cases.  Indeed, in an excellent recent report, ‘Who Makes the Law? Reining in the Supreme Court’, Roger sets out the problems chapter and verse and then offers proposals to ameliorate this big-ticket problem.

He and I are fully in agreement about what is happening in New Zealand and I support all of his proposals. But for my purposes today I thought it best to begin by noting how much he and I agree about the state of Antipodean judicial and constitutional affairs.

I need to note that because I certainly do not agree with how Roger has characterised the first month or so of the second term of President Trump in Saturday’s Quadrant Online.   Readers who haven’t done so should first look at what Roger argued. Here’s a sample:

♦ Roger notes that Trump has made 50 executive orders since taking office a little over a month ago.  (Roger does not tell readers that Joe Biden issued 60 such orders in more or less the same amount of time.)

♦ He condemns Trump’s use of emergency powers as regards justifying tariffs on Mexico and Canada and suspending asylum applications.

♦ He claims that Trump is trying to rewrite the 14th Amendment by executive order to stop birthright citizenship.

♦ He praises the lower Federal Court judges who have issued nationwide injunctions to stop the suspension of asylum claims and birthright citizenship applications.  Indeed, he cites what some of these judges have said.  But Roger never lets readers know that every such injunction-issuing judge was a Democrat appointee.

♦ He notes J.D. Vance’s questioning of whether unelected judges have this authority to override executive power and Vance’s assertion that such actions by judges is constitutionally illegal. For Roger, that sort of scepticism ‘reveals a fundamental attack on constitutional government’.

As an aside, when Roger writes a report detailing how New Zealand judges have gone off the rails – and they have – by legislating from the bench is he not in that context ‘openly questioning judicial authority’?  And what’s wrong with such questioning?  Moreover, there would be plenty of left-wing Kiwis in the so-called ‘Judge’s Party’ who would word-for-word characterise Roger’s who-makes-the-law? critique as ‘a fundamental attack on constitutional government’.

But back to the US.  Is the Vice-President somehow constitutionally prevented from criticising unelected judges?  If so, that’s a constitutional norm I have never heard of and certainly would not support.  I think what Roger really appears to dislike is the hint Vance makes that the Trump administration might in extremis simply ignore these lower court injunctions – you know, the way President Lincoln did when he flat out ignored the Supreme Court’s writ of habeas corpus as regards arbitrarily detaining citizens and the way that President Jefferson wrote what he would do if democratic executive government were to be hamstrung by activist judges.  I will come back to this issue.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/23/the-three-amigos-give-a-progress-report/

Whatever else you can say about the  Joe Biden administration, I think you have to admit that its effort to keep the public informed about its progress in realizing the president’s agenda was impressive.  I think, for example, of the way his press secretary memorialized his first month in office.  She convened a briefing at the White House on February 20 at which three senior members of the new administration gave reports on their progress in realizing the president’s agenda and then answered questions from reporters.

What, you don’t remember that? Neither do I. I had briefly confused the masked ball that was the early months of the Biden administration with stunning performance of Trump and his team in these early weeks. There is Trump himself, of course, who thrives on his exchanges with the press. His prime lieutenants—Vice President J. D Vance, for example, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have been front and center giving talks, answering questions, and responding to criticisms.

One of the most impressive performances—it is not too much to call it historic—occurred on February 20 when press Secretary Karoline Leavitt invited Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz to the podium to say a few words about the administration’s accomplishments during its first month in office. They touched on everything from Trump’s dismantling of the DEI concession in government to inflation and the economy to foreign policy, especially with respect to the war in Ukraine.

Stephen Miller, who spoke first, set the tone when he described the culture of DEI as the “illegal” practice of discrimination based on race and/or sex. What we call “diversity, equity, and inclusion” today is really just a more toxic form of the “affirmative action” mandates that have been with us for decades. The key to the success of both is based on a rhetorical sleight-of-hand.  Talk about “equality” but practice discrimination. It’s nice work if you can get it.

By ending DEI throughout the federal government, Miller said, Trump has “restored merit as the cornerstone of all federal policy; restored the full, fair, impartial enforcement of our federal civil rights laws for the first time in generations; and he has cracked down on individuals across this government and nonprofits who have engaged in illegal racial discrimination against the American people.”

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2025-2-20-the-end-of-the-eric-adams-prosecution-and-hoiier-than-thou-federal-prosecutors

Since my post a few days ago about the demise of the Eric Adams prosecution, controversy has continued to swirl around the matter. On the side supporting the action of the Trump/Bondi Justice Department, several new voices have emerged to join what were previously the lonely cries of a handful of people like myself and Josh Blackman. These new voices include James Copland and Rafael Mangual (of the Manhattan Institute), writing in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on February 18; and Alan Dershowitz in a column in the New York Post on February 19.

On the other side of the argument, an ex-colleague of mine sends me a copy of an “open letter” dated February 17, and signed by a gigantic list of well over 1000 former federal prosecutors. This letter essentially adopts the arguments set forth in the resignation letter of ex-SDNY US Attorney Danielle Sassoon, including echoing some of her language. A fair description is that these guys adopt a holier-than-thou attitude, claiming to be wholly pure and above politics and devoted only to the “facts and law.” Here are some excerpts:

As prosecutors, we were rightly prohibited from making criminal charging decisions based on someone’s political association, activities or beliefs, or because of our personal feelings about them. We knew it was impermissible to treat a defendant more leniently just because they were powerful or well-connected, or more harshly because they were not. We were taught to pursue justice without fear or favor, and knew our decisions to investigate and charge should be based only on the facts and the law. . . . Against this backdrop, we have watched with alarm as these values have been tested by recent actions of the Department’s leadership. Some of you have been ordered to make charging decisions based expressly on considerations other than the facts and the law, including to serve solely political purposes. To all of you, we communicate this: We salute and admire the courage many of you have already exhibited, and that will guide all of you as you continue to serve the interests of justice. You have responded to ethical challenges of a type no public servant should ever be forced to confront with principle and conviction, in the finest traditions of the Department of Justice.

The bold is in the original.

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5155741-elon-musk-doge-dividend-trump-gop

With Democrats screaming that the sky is falling with each federal workerthe Department of Government Efficiency axes, Elon Musk’s team needs some good public relations.

James Fishback, CEO of “free-thinking” investment firm Azoria, has an excellent idea.   

Fishback made headlines recently by posting on X that, “President Trump and Elon Musk should propose a DOGE dividend — a tax refund check sent to every taxpayer, funded exclusively with a portion of the total savings delivered by DOGE.” 

Musk, who evidently sleeps with one eye trained on his X feed, sounded positive about the proposition, responding, “Will check with the president.” 

Why not? What better way to bring home to people the benefits of cutting waste and fraud out of the federal budget?  

Fishback explains his plan: “Our proposal for the President is simple: tax-paying households should receive $1 for every $5 of total savings that DOGE delivers. That means that if DOGE delivers $2 trillion in total savings, 79 million American households will receive a $5,000 check next summer because of President Trump’s bold leadership.”  

Imagine the benefits: 

Sending out checks will make DOGE’s success real, tangible and celebrated. Nobody dislikes getting money in the mail.
Taxpayers, whose money has been funneled into distasteful and wasteful ventures like spending $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia or $2.5 million to fund electric vehicles in Vietnam, will catch a rare break — finally! 
Democrats, who have reflexively and idiotically opposed DOGE’s efforts, will be silenced. Given their resistance — and their lack of leadership and message — they will not retake the House or the Senate in the midterm elections. Republicans will own what will come to be the most popular initiative ever undertaken by either party — reforming our bloated inefficient government and returning to taxpayers money that would have been wasted.
Additionally, the dividend will mean that the more spending DOGE purges from the $6 trillion federal budget, the bigger the checks will be. That means the country will be rooting for more cuts and more closings, cheering on Musk and his DOGGIES at every turn. 
If reducing government spending pinches growth, which it could, putting some money in consumers’ pockets would provide a valuable offset. One of the reasons the economy grew robustly while Joe Biden was in the White House is that he spent money recklessly, creating the kinds of deficits usually reserved for fighting wars or deep recessions.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/20/tom-hanks-margaret-brennan-and-the-european-ministers-reveal-it-all/

Three recent but completely unrelated events illustrate the deranged hatred of Donald Trump and his supporters continuing now even into a second decade. And yet the venom only further marginalizes the left.

In its too-long 50th anniversary spectacle, Saturday Night Live offered a skit in which marquee actor Tom Hanks did an impression of what the left thinks is a supposedly neanderthal Trump supporter.

The episode was NBC’s tele-version of the recent Obama-Hillary Clinton-Biden vocabulary of cheap MAGA disparagement: clingers, deplorables, irredeemables, chumps, dregs, semi-fascists, and ultra-MAGAs.

Most of those stereotyped props were evident in Hanks’ character.

He was wearing a red MAGA hat (real and not the fake versions of Jussie Smollett’s wild and sinister imagination).

Hanks sounded off as a superstitious evangelical, a slow-speaking Southern twanger, and a poorly dressed slob.

And of course, the SNL writers insisted that he play the gratuitous racist. So, Hanks, as a clueless Black Jeopardy contestant, initially refused to even shake the hand of the African-American, assumed intellectually and morally superior, gameshow host.

We are supposed to believe the Hanks caricature is in contrast with progressives—usually represented in society as the bicoastal enlightened, well-spoken, and snappily dressed.

Perhaps the SNL crowd thought the counterpart to Hanks’ MAGA sluggard was the recent hard-left, Democratic standard-bearer—the eloquent Kamala Harris of mesmerizing word-salad fame?

Aside from the reality that Trump captured a record number of African-American male voters, nearly split the Hispanic vote, and made gains with Asian- and Jewish-Americans, he also won massive defections from Wall Street and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/democrat-faces-of-failure/

Pity the poor Democrats – actually, don’t pity them because they are terrible people, and their sorry situation is purely of their own making. They got too used to being in charge, too used to ruling from their throne, and now that they have to get off it they have found that their spindly legs have withered and atrophied, so they hobble around, unable to stand fully upright. It’s funny for us, but it’s an existential challenge for them. What are the Democrats to do? Who do the Democrats have to try to do it with? Their bench is worse than the 2024 White Sox, which is a sportsball metaphor indicating that they’ve got nobody good on their team. And they’ve got no prospects for the future.

Now, this is all great for America, but we need to temper our gloating by remembering that we’re Republicans, and Republicans have a unique ability to squander any advantage they happen to have, so let’s not get too uppity just yet. Yet, we do appear to be in a rare interregnum when Republicans are making smart choices and ruthlessly pressing their advantage, so maybe this is when we run up the score. The Democrats are down, and I say kick ‘em in the gut.

The Democrats have the worst issue set ever. They’re still embracing the same nonsense that helped lose them the election. Complicating it is that they have an opponent with a supernatural power to make his opponents assume the least viable political position possible at any given time simply because it’s the opposite of where he says he stands. Trump has maneuvered these people into deciding that the hill they want to die on is USAID funding of bizarre social pathologies overseas and of the regime media here at home. If there are two things the American people dislike, it’s foreign aid and the pinko press, yet that’s where the Democrats decided to position themselves – as unapologetic Japanese soldiers 40 years after the war fighting to the death to take hard-working Americans’ money and give it to grubby, ungrateful foreigners and the reporters who hate them. The other issues they’ve decided to stick with are just as unpopular. DEI? Everybody outside of a faculty lounge and the Beltway hates it. Trans lunatics and perverts who want to hang out in girls’ changing rooms? Again, there are skin rashes that poll better. Where are the Democrats? All over them. And that was just last week.

https://tomklingenstein.com/how-pete-hegseth-can-purge-wokeness-from-the-military/

President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have a clear mandate to restore the United States Armed Forces as the global standard of military excellence, rolling back four years of decline under the DEI-obsessed Pentagon of the Biden-Harris administration.

They will face resistance to these reform efforts not just from the political Left and the Democratic Party, but from an entrenched class of senior officers whose bureaucratic ethos and commitment to woke ideology have undermined mission readiness, eroded cohesion and morale among the troops, and transformed our military from a merit-based institution singularly focused on national defense into a laboratory for costly and destructive social experimentation.

Hegseth’s success in setting the Pentagon straight will depend on his effectiveness in checking the overreach of these woke officers and restoring civilian control over our Armed Forces. That will require more than simply overturning race– and sex–based quotas, ending the indulgence of transgenderism in the uniform, or any of the other worthy and necessary measures to unmake the woke military at the level of policy. To achieve real and lasting change, Hegseth must enact structural reforms that remove not just the woke policies themselves but the climate and the culture from which they emerged. 

Below are three ambitious but achievable recommendations that Hegseth could adopt to tame the scourge of wokeness in uniform and restore control of our defense establishment to the American people and their elected representatives.

Eliminate woke officers by restoring civilian control of personnel processes.

It would be difficult to overstate the extent to which the upper echelons at the Pentagon have been taken over by left-wing ideology. In one analysis published by the Center for Renewing America, out of almost 600 generals and admirals, over 60 were found to have politicized their service to an objectionable extent — more than one in ten.