Important Takeaways:
- After being asked what his “life lesson or takeaway from these nine months in space” was, astronaut Barry Eugene “Butch” Wilmore replied, “Well, I can tell you honestly, my feeling on all of this goes back to my faith. It’s bound in my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
- “He is working out his plan and his purposes for his glory throughout all of humanity, and how that plays into our lives is significant and important, and however that plays out, I am content because I understand that,” Wilmore continued.
- “I understand that He’s at work in all things, some things are for the good — go to Hebrews chapter 11 — and some things look to us to be not so good. But it’s all working out for His good, for all those that will believe,” the astronaut added. “And that’s the answer.”
- As of Tuesday, the two astronauts have finally begun their long-awaited journey back to Earth on a SpaceX capsule, thanks to the combined drive and ambition of President Donald Trump and Musk to “go get them.”
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Important Takeaways:
- The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by Elon Musk, revealed the U.S. government manages over 4 million active credit card accounts, facilitating approximately 90 million transactions. According to DOGE, these transactions amounted to $40 billion in expenditures for Fiscal Year 2024.
- A detailed report from DOGE outlined that the Department of Defense (DOD) led in transaction volume, recording roughly 27.2 million purchases across 2.4 million accounts. Other notable agencies in terms of credit card spending included the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the General Services Administration (GSA).
- President Donald J. Trump continues to back DOGE’s initiatives, urging a reduction in government waste and advocating for a downsized federal bureaucracy. The National Pulse reported earlier this week that DOGE discovered $4.7 trillion in federal transactions lack a Treasury Account Symbol (TAS), a vital tracking code. This suggests tens of thousands of payments over many years are likely untraceable.
- On Tuesday, President Trump issued a memorandum to all federal agencies “requiring radical transparency regarding wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars.” The document emphasizes the need to halt excessive government spending on programs and projects not aligned with American interests.
- “For too long, taxpayers have subsidized ideological projects overseas and domestic organizations engaged in actions that undermine the national interest,” the memo states, adding: “The Trump Administration is aggressively investigating Biden-era programs that wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on inefficient and politically-driven projects, including canceling unnecessary government contracts and grants that do not serve the national interest.”
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Important Takeaways:
- President Donald Trump vowed to personally go to Fort Knox to inspect whether or not some of the nation’s gold reserves had been stolen.
- And he said the billions in bullion better be there when he opens the doors.
- ‘All my life, I’ve heard about Fort Knox. That’s where the gold is kept, right?’ he told the Republican Governors Association on Thursday night.
- ‘We’re going to open up the doors. I’m going to see we have gold there. We want to find out, did anybody steal the gold in Fort Knox?’
- He also vowed: ‘I’m going to actually go. We’re going to open the doors. We’re going to inspect Fort Knox. We want to make sure that we actually have, you know, 400 tons of gold, or whatever to hell it is. It’s a lot of gold. I don’t want to open it and the cupboards are bare.’
- Musk was asked on X about viewing the facility and responded: ‘Surely it’s reviewed at least every year?’
- But Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said it’s not and personally invited Musk to come view it.
- Trump indicated Thursday night he wants to come on the trip, which has not been scheduled.
- He told reporters on Wednesday that he wanted Musk to look into the issue. But he had no answer when a reporter asked him where the gold may have gone.
- ‘If the gold isn’t there, we’re going to be very upset,’ the president replied.
- Fort Knox holds roughly 147 million troy ounces of bulk gold, which represents over half the gold held by the U.S. federal government or 56.35 percent of the total.
- The U.S. Mint Police are responsible for protecting the gold reserve.
- Gold reserves in the U.S., just like all gold reserves, act as a financial safety net against economic instability.
- It stores actual, tangible value and helps hedge against inflation with the intention of maintaining public confidence in the nation’s currency despite the gold standard no longer being the way the economy operates.
- The last inspection of the gold reserves appears to have been in August 2017 when Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell brought a small group, including then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, to the vault.
- The first inspection of the vault was in 1943 by President Franklin Roosevelt in the aftermath of the Great Depression and in the throes of World War II.
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Important Takeaways:
- President Trump wants to create a defensive iron dome over America, similar to the one used by Israel to defend itself against Hamas and Hezbollah rocket attacks.
- Under a new executive order from the president, the Pentagon was given 60 days to come up with an initial plan for defending the country against a wide range of missile attacks.
- “We protect other countries, but we don’t protect ourselves. When Ronald Reagan wanted to do it many years ago we didn’t have the technology, but now we have phenomenal technology,” Trump said in January during a speech at the House Republican Retreat in Florida.
- The order focuses on potential threats, including ballistic, hypersonic, and advanced cruise missiles plus other next-generation aerial attacks. Trump also specified the need for deploying new space-based sensors that would identify, track, and intercept missiles.
- Deterrence is one of the primary goals of the new system – missile defenses that would make enemies question whether their first strike could hit its mark.
- While cost would likely be one of the biggest roadblocks, several Republican lawmakers are already working on a funding package, and Coates points out that freeing up money for projects like this is a big benefit of the work being done by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
- President Trump is calling for all components of this defense shield to be American-made.
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Important Takeaways:
- The years-old contract was discovered by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and reveals that the Pentagon awarded $9.15 million to Thomson Reuters Special Services, LLC (TRSS).
- The contract was filed under the Pentagon’s ‘Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services’ and ‘Research and Development’ programs.
- The connection to the media company is likely what led to the outrage from DOGE, Musk and Trump over the huge contract.
- In a post to his Truth Social account on Thursday, Trump wrote: ‘DOGE: Looks like Radical Left Reuters was paid $9,000,000 by the Department of Defense to study ‘large scale social deception.’ GIVE BACK THE MONEY, NOW!’
- On the government website that tracks and publishes contracts the $9 million award to TRSS is listed on the purchase order as being for ‘Active Social Engineering Defense (ASED) Large Scale Social Deception (LSD).’
- The goal of the ASED programs is to enhance U.S. cybersecurity by creating systems that detect, analyze and mitigate threats that exploit human psychology.
- There is a note on the contract award stating that some funding provided in 2020 and beyond was related to COVID-19 and included Disaster Emergency Fund Code (DEFC) ‘N,’ which means that money was distributed in an emergency capacity.
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Important Takeaways:
- When I decided to write this article, I was feeling quite overwhelmed, because there is just so much going on right now. This is going to be a very long article, and I will take it one step at a time. With all that being said, let’s take a look at some of the highlights…
- [And I, not the author of this article highlighted the highlights so you have to go to the website for more information]
- The U.S. Treasury
- If you want to understand what is really going on in any organization, you need to follow the flow of money.
- So Elon Musk has been wanting access to the U.S. Treasury’s payment system, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent granted him that access on Friday…
- After getting in, Musk discovered that payment approval officers at the U.S. Treasury were simply rubber-stamping all payment requests that were submitted to them…
- Every single year, more than 6 trillion dollars is disbursed through the U.S. Treasury’s payment system…
- In a typical year, over one billion payments are made by the U.S. Treasury, and not a single one was ever being denied.
- OPM
- The Office of Personnel Management is the largest HR department on the entire globe.
- “A team including current and former employees of Musk assumed command of OPM on Jan. 20, the day Trump took office. They have moved sofa beds onto the fifth floor of the agency’s headquarters, which contains the director’s office and can only be accessed with a security badge or a security escort, one of the OPM employees said…. The sofa beds have been installed so the team can work around the clock, the employee said.”
- Aides to Elon Musk charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials.
- … During an internal meeting Friday morning, Trump administration officials directed OPM senior career staff to begin making plans to cut the agency’s workforce and programs by 70%. Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the meeting confirmed the details of the meeting to Federal News Network…
- USAID
- When officials from Musk’s team went over to USAID headquarters, they were physically prevented from entering.
- In response, the representatives from Musk’s team “threatened to call US Marshals to be allowed access”…
- Two top security officials at the US Agency for International Development were put on administrative leave Saturday night after attempting to refuse officials from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency access systems at the agency, even after DOGE personnel threatened to call law enforcement, multiple sources familiar told CNN.
- According to sources, personnel from the Musk-created office physically tried to access the USAID headquarters in Washington, DC, and were stopped. The DOGE personnel demanded to be let in and threatened to call US Marshals to be allowed access, two of the sources said.
- The DOGE personnel wanted to gain access to USAID security systems and personnel files, three sources said. Two of those sources also said the DOGE personnel wanted access to classified information, which only those with security clearances and a specific need to know are able to access.
- If you go to USAID’s website now, you will find that it has been shut down…
- On his Twitter account, Robby Starbuck detailed how this works…
- USAID essentially functions as one of many money laundering machines for Democrats in DC. Here’s how it works:
- Activists create obscure NGO
- Dems fund it lavishly
- NGO does bare minimum (or actively hurts the United States)
- Activists get paid and donate to Dems
- Not only that but USAID helped spread their gender ideology nonsense and brought millions of illegals into our country.
- That’s why Democrats are freaking out about the possibility that USAID’s being shut down by President Trump. It needs to be done.
- The EPA
- It appears that the EPA could soon be getting a lot smaller.
- Last week, over 1,000 EPA employees were notified that “they were deemed to be on probationary status” and could soon be fired…
- …The same message will be sent to other agency workforces, a White House official said. Across the US government, the latest data shows there are more than 220,000 employees on probation.
- The FBI
- Last week, the Washington Post reported that “at least eight senior FBI executives” were being terminated…
- A top Justice Department official on Friday ordered the firing of at least eight senior FBI executives and a sweeping examination of the work of thousands of other bureau employees, including all those who worked on investigations tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post.
- The directive from Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said those field agents and FBI support staff could face “additional personnel action,” suggesting that the number of firings could swell in the coming weeks.
- Ken Dilanian with NBC News reported that a number of the FBI’s “top executives” were told they would be out of a job by Monday. Friday, Dilanian reported a “purge” was underway that could see the heads of up to 20 of the FBI’s 55 field offices relieved.
- Dilanian reported, “The purge is bigger than first understood, we are told, and includes more than 20 heads of FBI field offices, including the ones in Miami and Washington, DC.”
- Vast numbers of federal workers that have been working at home since the pandemic began are going to have to start showing up at the office each day.
- If they choose not to report, they will gladly be given their walking papers…
- President Trump on Wednesday warned that federal workers will have to show up to the office “or be terminated,” framing his administration’s so-called buyout offers to 2 million employees as an effort to shrink the government.
- “We’re requiring them to show up to work or be terminated,” Trump said in remarks from the East Room before signing an immigration bill into law.
- “We think a very substantial number of people will not show up to work, and therefore our government will get smaller and more efficient,” Trump added. “And that’s what we’ve been looking to do for many, many decades, frankly.”
- In the entire history of the United States, we have never seen anything quite like this, and there is widespread panic among federal employees right now…
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