President Trump: China Trade, Tariff Deal ‘DONE’ thumbnail

President Trump: China Trade, Tariff Deal ‘DONE’

By The Geller Report

President Trump confirmed early Wednesday that the US reached a “deal” with China following intense, marathon trade negotiations in London.

“Our deal with China is done, subject to final approval with President Xi and me,” Trump announced on Truth Social Wednesday in full capitalization. “Full magnets, and any necessary rare earths, will be supplied, up front, by China.”

“Likewise, we will provide to China what was agreed to, including Chinese students using our colleges and universities (which has always been good with me!). We are getting a total of 55% tariffs, China is getting 10%. The relationship is excellent! Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

How are we vetting these students?

Trump says China trade, tariff deal ‘done,’ awaits his and Xi Jinping’s approval

“FULL MAGNETS, AND ANY NECESSARY RARE EARTHS, WILL BE SUPPLIED, UP FRONT, BY CHINA,” President Trump said.

By Natalia Mittelstadt, Just The News, June 11, 2025:

President Trump on Wednesday announced that the deal with China “is done,” and is awaiting his and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s approval.

“OUR DEAL WITH CHINA IS DONE, SUBJECT TO FINAL APPROVAL WITH PRESIDENT XI AND ME,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

“FULL MAGNETS, AND ANY NECESSARY RARE EARTHS, WILL BE SUPPLIED, UP FRONT, BY CHINA. LIKEWISE, WE WILL PROVIDE TO CHINA WHAT WAS AGREED TO, INCLUDING CHINESE STUDENTS USING OUR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES (WHICH HAS ALWAYS BEEN GOOD WITH ME!). WE ARE GETTING A TOTAL OF 55% TARIFFS, CHINA IS GETTING 10%. RELATIONSHIP IS EXCELLENT! THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!”

The U.S. and China reached a framework for a looming trade deal on Tuesday, which came on the second day of negotiations in London.

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Supreme Court Approves DOGE Access To Social Security Data thumbnail

Supreme Court Approves DOGE Access To Social Security Data

By The Daily Caller

The Supreme Court gave the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) the greenlight to access Social Security Administration (SSA) data on Friday.

The Trump administration asked the justices in May to pause a district court judge’s preliminary injunction preventing the SSA DOGE team from accessing certain records.

“We conclude that, under the present circumstances, SSA may proceed to afford members of the SSA DOGE Team access to the agency records in question in order for those members to do their work,” the court’s order states.

Justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor would have denied the request.

Jackson, in a dissent joined by Sotomayor, wrote that the majority is “jettisoning careful judicial decisionmaking and creating grave privacy risks for millions of Americans in the process.”

“I would proceed without fear or favor to require DOGE and the Government to do what all other litigants must do to secure a stay from this Court: comply with lower court orders constraining their behavior unless and until they establish that irreparable harm will result such that equity requires a different course,” Jackson wrote.

In a separate order, the Supreme Court also halted a lower court’s discovery order that would have required DOGE to turn over some material to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which sued to force DOGE to comply with its Freedom of Information Act request.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

AUTHOR

Katelynn Richardson

Investigative Reporter.

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EXCLUSIVE: White House Insiders Vent On Big Beautiful Breakup, Reveal Elon’s Final Straw

Some Dems Now Want To Play Nice With Musk After Endlessly Smearing Him As Nazi

Kayleigh McEnany Confronts Dem To Her Face For Claiming Biden ‘Was Mentally Capable’ Of Being President

EXCLUSIVE: White House Sources Say Elon’s NASA Pick Was Doomed From The Start

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


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.

The post Supreme Court Approves DOGE Access To Social Security Data appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

VIDEO: AEI Housing Market Indicators, May 2025 thumbnail

VIDEO: AEI Housing Market Indicators, May 2025

By Edward Pinto

AEI Housing Market Indicators May 2025 Briefing

You don’t want to miss this update! This month, we highlighted the following hot housing topics:

  • Recent movements in rates, demand, and supply: Mortgage rates remained elevated at 6.75%, while purchase rate lock volume dropped to a multi-year low—down 24% from the same week in 2019 and 5% year-over-year.
  • Home price appreciation (HPA) and months’ supply trends through March 2025: HPA slowed to 3.0%—its second lowest April rate in the series—while months’ supply declined to 3.2 months, just below pre-pandemic levels as inventory grows faster than seasonal trends
  • FHA appears not to be properly tracking its partial claims, costing taxpayers: FHA is not and collecting partial claims in about a quarter of cases, and taxpayers will be providing free money to certain FHA borrowers. Assuming an average partial claim amount of $23,000-$27,000 and 1.3 million unique claims since 2020, the taxpayer could lose $6.75 billion—not including partial claims completed before 2020.
  • An update on Bureau of Land Management sales to build starter homes: Making just 250 sq. miles of developable BLM land available for sale in 12 Western states would enable the private sector to add 1.75 million homes, a much of which would be family-sized starter homes for the working class. The 2025 Budget Reconciliation process provides an opportunity to address the Western region’s housing and development needs by expediting the disposal of target Federal lands for competitive sale at market prices.
  • Preview: The AEI Housing Success Playbook: The AEI Housing Center’s Housing Success Playbook provides five straightforward, proven policies to build an additional 1.6 million homes annually, and without subsidies. These include allowing smaller lots in new subdivisions, legalizing conversions of single-family homes, permitting backyard cottages and ADUs, enabling residential overlays in commercial zones, and developing starter homes on BLM land.
  • The surprising role of large developers in solving the housing crunch: The nation’s largest home builders have engineered a dramatic shift toward serving first-time homebuyers, with 51.2% of their new construction sales going to FTBs in 2024, up from 38.6% in 2014. This transformation has been driven by building smaller homes and offering financial tools like rate buydowns, while median lot sizes declined by 1,050 sq. ft., enabling greater affordability and access to starter homes.

The AEI Housing Market Indicators (HMI) provide accurate and timely metrics for the housing market. These include mortgage risk/leverage (with a particular focus on agency first-time buyer volume and risk), house prices and appreciation trends, housing sales (new and existing sales whether institutionally financed, cash, or other-financed), and inventory levels. Since the housing market is influenced by many different factors, all need to be considered together to better understand market trends.

WATCH: AEI Housing Market Indicators May 2025 Briefing

Monthly Update of the AEI Housing Market Indicators: Download this month’s slides

©2025 . All rights reserved.

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Critics of the Big Beautiful Bill ‘Are Going to Be Wrong,’ Johnson Warns thumbnail

Critics of the Big Beautiful Bill ‘Are Going to Be Wrong,’ Johnson Warns

By Family Research Council

For months, the bright lights have been on the House, capturing the made-for-TV drama of the Republicans’ Houdini-like wins. And while people have come to appreciate House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) as a sort of consensus whisperer, no one is quite sure what to make of his Senate counterpart. But now that Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) is in the reconciliation hot seat, America is about to see what Mitch McConnell’s replacement is made of. And as far as first tests go, this is a biggie.

Thune, who’s had a front-row seat for the House debate, knows that the job that awaits is no picnic. Like the speaker, he understands a thing or two about small margins. With just three votes to spare and 53 different opinions on next steps, corralling his caucus will require a mix of patience and thick skin. After listening to his caucus pick apart the draft passed by Johnson’s chamber, Thune’s early message is one of caution. “It’ll have to track very closely to the House bill,” he warned Monday, “because they’ve got a fragile majority and struck a very delicate balance.”

That in itself is a shift from earlier weeks, when Thune seemed to agree with the Republicans eager to make sweeping changes. Now, the South Dakotan says more reservedly, “[T]here are some things that senators want to add to the bill or things we’d do slightly differently.” Based on the soundbites coming out of his caucus, that’s putting it mildly. Goldilocks herself would go mad trying to find the sweet spot between the five factions of senators with competing goals.

There’s the group demanding more spending cuts (Ron Johnson, Wis.; Mike Lee, Utah; Rick Scott, Fla.), and another worried they go too deep (Susan Collins, Maine; Lisa Murkowski, Alaska). There are the pro-Medicaid reform Republicans and the not-so-pro-overhaul Republicans (Josh Hawley, Mo.; Murkowski; Jerry Moran, Kan.; and Jim Justice, W.Va.). While some cheer the end of Biden’s “clean energy credits,” others pan them (Murkowski; Moran; Thom Tillis, N.C.; John Curtis, Utah). While Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) rages against the debt ceiling hike, the more rural state senators are fighting the other chamber’s changes to health and supplemental nutrition programs (Chuck Grassley, Iowa). And remember the SALT caucus of the House? Well, Senator Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) admitted, “There’s not one Republican in the United States Senate” who cares about the state and local tax deduction cap.

And that’s to say nothing of the give-and-take on tax levels, ranges of defense and border spending, and a million other flashpoints tucked in the 1,100-page draft. Add that to the Byrd Bath, which will decide what belongs in reconciliation and what doesn’t, and you have the makings of four long, stress-filled weeks. “There’s always some who think it’s too hot, some [who] think it’s too cold,” observer Neil Bradley shook his head. “Where do you find the point where a majority think it’s just right?”

Great question — one that Thune will be losing his share of sleep over. In the end, he told reporters, “We’ve got to do what we can get 51 [votes] for.”

Johnson can sympathize. In his weekend sit-down with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, he spoke knowingly. “… [A]s all our friends in the Senate know, it took us over a year to reach that equilibrium point in the House,” he said on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill.” The most important takeaway, the speaker reminds Thune’s disgruntled Republicans, is that “we’re going to achieve over $1.5 trillion in savings. … It’s the largest amount of savings of any government that would ever be achieved in the history of mankind. It’s a good start. It’s not enough, but it’s a good start. And I think the Senate’s got to recognize that.”

One of the greatest misunderstandings — even with people in Washington — is that the reconciliation package was never meant to be the vehicle for all of the president’s spending cuts. When Elon Musk and others complain that the bill doesn’t reduce the deficit, there’s a fundamental disconnect about several things, the speaker underscores. For starters, he reminded everyone, “This is just the beginning of a long process. We’re going to have another reconciliation bill, possibly two additional bills, coming up in the near future.”

Secondly — and just as importantly — “you have to remember how the process works,” the speaker stressed. When Americans (including Musk) wonder why there aren’t more Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts in the “one, big, beautiful bill,” it’s simple. “There are two categories of federal spending,” Johnson pointed out. “One is mandatory spending, one is discretionary. The reconciliation package [deals] with the first category, not the latter. So it was not possible — literally, under the rules of the Senate — for us to put DOGE cuts in large measure in the reconciliation package. That has to be a separate instrument.”

And that “separate instrument” is what the White House is working on right now: a rescissions package to roll back discretionary spending that was already approved. Thanks to the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, presidents can permanently cancel funding to executive agencies if it’s within a 45-day window and if a simple majority of Congress approves. As we speak, Donald Trump is teeing up the first “of many” rescission proposals, worth about $9.4 billion of waste, fraud, and abuse.

That, Johnson reiterated, is what Congress has been waiting for. “I mean, there was no playbook for what Elon Musk and DOGE were doing. They didn’t have a set of procedures to follow. They had to create them as they went.” And now, he continued, Republicans are ready to make those recommendations a reality. Nothing that Musk’s team did will go to waste, the speaker assured Americans.

“The work will go forward and continue, because what he’s done is he’s brought a spotlight into these agencies — into these bureaucracies that we were never able to see. We got a perspective on it that Congress was never allowed because the bureaucracy was hiding so much data. I mean, we didn’t know, obviously, that Congress was funding transgender operas in Peru and all these other crazy things that were happening under USAID,” Johnson said, shaking his head. Elon found it because he cracked the code. He got inside the belly of the beast with his algorithms, and he uncovered it, and we’ve got to wipe it out.”

But the headlines that the House is adding to an already ballooning deficit are baloney, the speaker argued. “I sent a long text message to [Musk] to explain to him and make sure that he understands that he was looking at [an] analysis of the bill that was not accurate.” He pointed to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of the bill and emphasized, “CBO is historically inaccurate. It’s run by Democrats. … They’re not going to give us a fair score. But the important thing to remember about this is that they do not use dynamic scoring. They use static scoring. In layman’s terms, all that means is they don’t give us any credit for the growth. The Big Beautiful Bill is going to be jet fuel to the U.S. economy. It is a pro-growth economy builder. It’s going to lower tax rates, lower regulations, [and] incentivize U.S. manufacturing again. When that happens, we know what [the effect will be].”

Let’s not forget, the speaker reminded Perkins, “We already did this in the first Trump administration, [and we] had the greatest economy in the history of the world after the first two years, because we cut taxes and cut regulations. Now we’re doing it on steroids. So the tremendous growth that will be achieved by this is being totally discounted by CBO. They’re saying it will add to the deficit. It’s not true,” he declared. “By our calculations, we are going to reduce the deficit because of all the growth that we stimulated. Just watch and see that the critics are going to be wrong.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

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White House Sends Congress $9.4 Billion Rescissions Package thumbnail

White House Sends Congress $9.4 Billion Rescissions Package

By The Daily Caller

The White House sent a $9.4 billion rescissions package partly aimed at codifying work done by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to Congress late Tuesday.

The House Oversight Committee confirmed that Congress had received the package in a post to X.

“The White House just sent Congress a $9.4B rescissions package—including $1.1B in CUTS to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS. These outlets ATTACK the America First agenda on the taxpayers’ dime. We’re ready to STOP this propaganda machine,” the post read.

The news comes after Russell Vought, Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), announced May 28 that the White House would be sending a rescissions package to Congress this week.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said May 28 in an X post that he is “eager and ready to act” on the measure. “When the White House sends its rescission package to the House, we will act quickly by passing legislation to codify the cuts,” he wrote.

The upcoming rescissions package is set to include $1.1 billion in funding cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the organization that helps fund National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). It also proposes an $8.3 billion reduction in funding for foreign aid, such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), NBC News reported.

The package can be approved in both the House and Senate with a simple majority, enabling Republican lawmakers to move it forward without Democratic backing.

Lawmakers will have 45 days to act on the proposal to rescind previously appropriated funding.

Although Elon Musk has departed DOGE and turned his attention to his various business ventures, the agency is expected to remain active through July 4, 2026.

Editor’s note: A quote has been altered to better reflect the original statement.

AUTHOR

Ashley Brasfield

Reporter.

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Did Republicans Just Give DOGE A Big Beautiful Backstab?

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The post White House Sends Congress $9.4 Billion Rescissions Package appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

EXCLUSIVE: Social Security Fraud Just Tip Of The Iceberg, Trump’s New Commissioner Says thumbnail

EXCLUSIVE: Social Security Fraud Just Tip Of The Iceberg, Trump’s New Commissioner Says

By The Daily Caller

Social Security Administration (SSA) Commissioner Frank Bisignano said Social Security numbers are vulnerable to exploitation and fraud across multiple government agencies, from the DMV to Medicare.

The former Wall Street executive, confirmed earlier this month after the agency cycled through five leadership changes in five months, said the problem extends far beyond Social Security benefit fraud to encompass the entire federal system where the numbers are used for identification.

“Fraud can happen in many ways. It doesn’t just have to be through Social Security,” Bisignano said in an exclusive interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It could be on the many ways people use a Social Security number to get access …  the Social Security number needs to be a lockdown number.”

Bisignano also warned that because social security numbers are used by multiple federal agencies, fraud risks can balloon beyond the social security system. He said he would be trying to find coordinated solutions to head off fraud.

“The job is about building the largest level of integrity, the highest accuracy rate,” he said.

The commissioner said he is implementing artificial intelligence systems and operational overhauls to address these vulnerabilities across the agency’s 500 million annual interactions with Americans. He said current systems fall short of acceptable security standards.

The agency currently operates with a 1% error rate, he said, but Bisignano aims for “five nines” accuracy — 99.999% — comparable to private sector standards.

“If you’re running at something below that, it will give way to mediocrity at best, and will give way to failure and opportunity for bad things to happen,” he said.

Bisignano has been visiting field offices nationwide to assess operations firsthand, including recent trips to New Jersey locations. He emphasized the importance of understanding ground-level operations before implementing changes.

“I always believed that I need to go see the word to understand the work,” he said. “My job is to help them do their job better and bring the tools.”

In addition, Bisignano rejected Democratic criticism that the Trump administration seeks to cut Social Security benefits, citing his personal background as the son of a World War II veteran and federal agent.

“The idea that I’d be doing anything other than trying to bolster it up is just crazy,” he said.

The commissioner also announced the agency expects to complete Fairness Act payments by the end of June, delivering benefits to 3.2 million Americans ahead of the initially projected timeline of one year.

“This organization will learn how to execute with excellence,” Bisignano told the DCNF.

AUTHOR

Thomas English

DCNF Technology Reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


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.

The post EXCLUSIVE: Social Security Fraud Just Tip Of The Iceberg, Trump’s New Commissioner Says appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

YOUR TRUST IS BEING WEAPONIZED: The New Wave of Scams Preying on the Elderly, the Innocent, and the Faithful thumbnail

YOUR TRUST IS BEING WEAPONIZED: The New Wave of Scams Preying on the Elderly, the Innocent, and the Faithful

By Majority Report

When Ryan Last took his own life, it broke something inside me.

Ryan was a 17-year-old straight-A student. A kind soul. Preparing for college. A young man full of promise. But all it took was a single online scam to unravel his world. Someone pretending to be a girl convinced him to send a private photo. Then came the blackmail: Pay up, or we show everyone.

He panicked. He paid what he could from his college fund.

But they wanted more.

Humiliated. Terrified. Alone.

Ryan took his life and left behind a note apologizing for “not being smarter.”

No teenager should feel that kind of shame. And no parent should ever have to bury their child because of a scam.

But this nightmare isn’t a one-off. It’s a rising national epidemic.

This hit close to home for us. Our granddaughter’s boyfriend, a Liberty University student, fell for the same scam. Praise God, he didn’t take his own life—but the emotional toll was real and lasting.

Every day, more and more scams flood this nation, including dozens of Social Security scams, check scams, billing scams, and too many more to mention here!

And it’s hitting those we love the most: our children… and our elderly.

🎯 The New Targets of Evil: Christians, Grandparents, Children and the Kindhearted

Scammers are no longer just sleazy roofers or shady mechanics. Those old-school con games have evolved into something far more dangerous—and far more evil.

Now, scammers use artificial intelligence to clone the voice of your grandchild begging for help.

They impersonate your pastor.

They pose as federal agents, Social Security reps, or even your bank.

They come in emails, pop-ups, text messages, and robocalls.

They don’t just want your money.

They want to weaponize your trust.

They want to exploit your compassion—especially if you’re a Bible-believing Christian.

Why? Because they know our hearts.

We’re generous. We believe the best in people.

We love. We give. We help.

They see that as weakness. But it’s not weakness—it’s righteousness. And it’s time we defend it.

🧭 What We’re Doing About It — And How You Can Help

At Christian Action Network, we’re launching a national initiative to demand the creation of a Federal Anti-Scam Bureau — a dedicated agency focused solely on ending this epidemic of deception.

This campaign includes:

✅ A national Stop Lethal Scam Attacks NOW! survey

✅ A call for mandatory sentencing for repeat scammers

✅ A free educational tool: our Top 15 Targeting Scams, full-color flyer

✅ A push for state governors to issue regular scam alerts to all households

We’re not asking the FBI to stop doing its job. In fact, even FBI Director Kash Patel recently said:

“We want to work at the FBI because we want to fight violent crime and be sent out into the country to do it.”

Exactly. Let FBI agents track down murderers and terrorists—not spend their days chasing phone, email, and text scammers. We need a dedicated team focused on fraud—and we need it now.

📬 How You Can Take a Stand

You can help fight back today by:

📝 Filling out the “Stop Lethal Scam Attacks NOW!” survey

Share

I’m sending this survey to our nationwide network of supporters, and I would like to include your answers when I submit the results to Congress.

Your voice matters.

Your life matters.

Your money matters.

And your compassion doesn’t deserve to be turned into a weapon.

Let’s make sure no more Ryans fall.

Let’s protect our seniors, our families, and our churches.

Together, we can stop the scams—and strike back against this rising wave of digital evil.

📎 Click here to fill out the survey ➤

Why America Needs a Federal Anti-Scam Bureau

FBI agents, trained to handle violent criminals, are increasingly burdened by investigating widespread scams that drain their resources and focus.

This diversion leaves violent crimes less thoroughly addressed and scam victims inadequately protected.

A dedicated Federal Anti-Scam Bureau would change that.

With specialized agents solely focused on stopping scams, educating the public, and swiftly bringing scammers to justice, we could significantly reduce scam-related losses and tragedies.

Protecting our families, seniors, and communities from ruthless predators demands specialized attention.

Without immediate and focused intervention, scammers will continue to thrive, causing devastating emotional and financial harm across our nation.

Your completed survey sends a strong message to Congress and government leaders:

Americans demand action.

We must demonstrate widespread public support to ensure lawmakers prioritize creating this critical agency.

Now is the time for collective action and a united voice.

Please complete and return your survey today—your participation is crucial in this fight for justice and safety.

📎 Click here to fill out the survey. ➤

AUTHOR

MARTIN MAWYER

Martin Mawyer is the President of Christian Action Network and host of the “Shout Out Patriots” podcast. Follow him for more action alerts, cultural commentary, and real-world campaigns defending faith, family, and freedom.

©2025 . All rights reserved.


Please visit the Majority Report substack.

The post YOUR TRUST IS BEING WEAPONIZED: The New Wave of Scams Preying on the Elderly, the Innocent, and the Faithful appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

20 Reasons Why Congress Must Unite Behind the One, Big, Beautiful Bill thumbnail

20 Reasons Why Congress Must Unite Behind the One, Big, Beautiful Bill

By The White House

Congressional Republicans MUST unite to pass President Donald J. Trump’s One, Big, Beautiful Bill and take advantage of the once-in-a-generation opportunity they were given by voters.

Here are 20 reasons why Congress must unite behind the One, Big, Beautiful Bill:

  1. It delivers the largest tax cut in American history. This means an extra $5,000 in Americans’ pockets with a DOUBLE-DIGIT percent DECREASE to their tax bills. Americans earning between $30,000 and $80,000 will pay around 15% less in taxes.

  2. It includes NO TAX ON TIPS and NO TAX ON OVERTIME. This makes good on two of President Trump’s cornerstone campaign promises and will benefit hardworking Americans where they need it the most — their paychecks.

  3. It delivers Big, Beautiful Deportations. The bill permanently secures our borders by making the largest border security investment in history, funding at least one million annual removals of illegal immigrants and ramping up “mass deportation operations to a level never before seen in American history.”

  4. It finishes President Trump’s border wall. As a result, 701 miles of primary wall, 900 miles of river barriers, 629 miles of secondary barriers, and 141 miles of vehicle and pedestrian barriers will be constructed — stopping deadly fentanyl from flowing into our communities and securing the border from dangerous illegal immigrant murderers and rapists.

  5. It boosts Border Patrol and ICE agents on the frontlines. It empowers immigration authorities to carry out their mission by hiring 10,000 new ICE personnel, 5,000 new customs officers, and 3,000 new Border Patrol agents — and gives $10,000 bonuses in each of the next four years to agents on the frontlines.

  6. It protects Medicaid for Americans by kicking 1.4 million illegals off the benefits. This bill eliminates waste, fraud, and abuse by ending benefits for at least 1.4 million illegal immigrants who are gaming the system.

  7. It requires able-bodied Americans to work if they receive benefits. With 4.8 million able-bodied adults choosing not to work, The One, Big, Beautiful Bill puts work requirements in place and supports them as they find dignity through employment.

  8. It reverses the spending curse plaguing Washington, D.C. The legislation delivers the largest deficit reduction in nearly 30 years, with $1.6 trillion in mandatory savings.

  9. It ends taxpayer-funded sex change for minors. It reverses the Biden-era mandate that Medicaid cover so-called “gender transition” procedures for minors — ending the taxpayer-funded chemical castration and mutilation of American children.

  10. It provides historic tax relief to Social Security recipients. It slashes taxes on seniors’ Social Security benefits.

  11. It will give Americans PERMANENT tax relief through the Trump Tax Cuts. If the bill doesn’t pass, Americans will see the largest tax increase in history.

  12. It finally modernizes air traffic control, fulfilling President Trump’s plan to completely overhaul the systems that keep Americans flying safely and efficiently. This will allow President Trump to update our air traffic control systems and act where the Biden Administration failed (despite repeated warnings).

  13. It ends the taxpayer-funded Green New Scam. The legislation repeals or phases out every “green” corporate welfare subsidy in Democrats’ so-called “Inflation Reduction Act,” immediately stops credits from flowing to China and saves taxpayers $500+ billion every year, and reverses electric vehicle mandates that let radical climate activists set the standards for American energy.

  14. It incentivizes MADE IN AMERICA. It rewards companies that build their products in America with lower taxes — and allows Americans who buy an American-made vehicle to fully deduct their auto loan interest.

  15. It is pro-family. The One, Big, Beautiful Bill increases the child tax credit, establishes MAGA Accounts for newborns to start saving, and strengthens paid family leave.

  16. It repeals Democrats’ insane attack on the gig economy. It repeals the requirement that Venmo, PayPal, and other gig transactions over $600 be reported to the IRS.

  17. It protects family farmers. The bill prevents the greedy death tax from hitting two million family-owned farms who would otherwise see their exemptions cut in half and cuts taxes on farmers by over $10 billion.

  18. It’s a once-in-a-generation chance to revolutionize our nation’s defense capabilities and protect the homeland against new threats. It funds President Trump’s Golden Dome, invests in American shipbuilding, and modernizes our military.

  19. It unleashes American energy dominance. The legislation increases onshore and offshore oil and gas leases, which provides certainty for energy producers, spurs job growth, and makes energy more affordable for American consumers.

  20. It boosts American mineral development. This bill increases mining of domestic minerals and makes America less dependent on foreign adversaries for critical minerals.

©2025 . All rights reserved.

The post 20 Reasons Why Congress Must Unite Behind the One, Big, Beautiful Bill appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

EXCLUSIVE: Massive Telecom Merger Champions Workers In A Way Biden Admin Never Could, FCC Chair Says thumbnail

EXCLUSIVE: Massive Telecom Merger Champions Workers In A Way Biden Admin Never Could, FCC Chair Says

By The Daily Caller

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) greenlit Verizon’s $20 billion acquisition of Frontier Communications on Friday — but only after Chairman Brendan Carr insisted on a slate of labor protections he said there was “no way” the Biden administration would have pursued.

The deal requires Verizon to adopt sweeping reforms benefitting tower climbers, trench diggers and fiber splicers — a class of “unsung heroes” he said the previous FCC ignored in an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“I don’t envision a world in which the prior administration would have looked out for America’s tower crews and blue-collar workers in this way,” Carr told the DCNF. “It comes down to the priorities of the administration and what types of deals are struck — and we didn’t see any of these types of deals. We saw deals at the FCC, specifically designed to benefit different progressive stakeholder groups, but there was nothing along these lines happening out of the prior administration.”

Carr, who negotiated the agreement alongside the National Association of Tower Erectors (NATE), made labor reforms a non-negotiable prerequisite for regulatory approval. The chairman emphasized his years of experience embedding himself with telecom crews, scaling towers alongside workers to gain firsthand insight into the risks and realities they face.

“I’ve spent a lot of time with them,” Carr said. “I’ve been on top of several 2,000-foot broadcaster towers with them, on top of water towers — basically every type of pole — and it’s real work. It’s hard work. And it’s important that we make sure they’re being treated fairly.”

The agreement — outlined in Verizon’s letter to the FCC — cracks down on persistent industry pain points, limiting Verizon’s reliance on 1099 workers, creating hotlines to report illegal laborers and ending the “turf vendor” model. Under that system, local firms were routinely shut out by middlemen who parceled out contracts to low-cost subcontractors, driving down wages and weakening safety standards on site, according to a NATE press release from January. The trade organization didn’t respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

Verizon will also scrap its matrix pricing structure, a flat-rate payment scheme NATE criticized for ignoring regional cost variations and the real-world complexities of certain projects.

NATE, which represents over 1,000 businesses in the telecom construction sector, lauded the agreement as a “breakthrough” in a Monday press release — specifically thanking Carr for his role.

“Chairman Carr has invested a lot of time and sweat equity visiting sites and conducting tower climbs with some of America’s best contractor firms and technicians,” CEO Todd Schlekeway said. “These tangible field experiences have provided the Chairman with a deep understanding of the prominent role that NATE members play daily conducting the tough, gritty work on the frontlines to enable connectivity.”

Smaller contractors also scored practical financial wins under the deal. Verizon agreed to accelerate audits — ending long payment reviews by capping them at six months after project completion — and committed to covering third-party compliance software fees, removing a costly headache for firms forced to buy expensive reporting tools just to collect payment. New joint working groups between Verizon and NATE will keep tabs on implementation, ensuring the changes stick.

“Most people, when they turn on their smartphone or turn on their TV — if they think about it at all — maybe they think it’s magic or pixie dust,” Carr said. “But it’s some of the best people you’ll ever meet. Just real, salt-of-the-earth American workers.”

To secure FCC approval, Verizon also agreed to scrap its company-wide diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs “effective immediately,” according to a letter filed with the commission Friday. The telecom giant dropped its workforce diversity targets, ended bonus incentives linked to demographic quotas, and folded multiple employee resource groups into a single compliance-focused office. Verizon didn’t respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

Carr described this change as a “good step forward for equal opportunity, nondiscrimination and the public interest” in an X post Friday.

Hours later, the FCC announced its approval of the Verizon-Frontier merger, with Carr casting the included protections as part of the broader pro-worker posture of the Trump administration.

“Usually when you see large transactions, they have a way of taking care of Wall Street interests and Main Street can get left to the sidelines,” the chairman explained. “But one of the things President Trump has been very clear about is that his administration is looking out for the blue-collar worker. You can certainly see that in this particular FCC decision.”

AUTHOR

Thomas English

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICES:

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


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.

The post EXCLUSIVE: Massive Telecom Merger Champions Workers In A Way Biden Admin Never Could, FCC Chair Says appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

Trump 2.0 Takes Chainsaw To The Deep State With Historic Cuts Of Staff, Budgets thumbnail

Trump 2.0 Takes Chainsaw To The Deep State With Historic Cuts Of Staff, Budgets

By The Daily Caller

The intelligence community is quietly undergoing structural changes as agencies tackle government bloat, reorganize departments and dismantle the Biden administration’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.

One of Trump’s first directives targeted weaponization in the federal government, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) — which oversees the IC — is focused on uprooting the politicization of the agency.

DNI Tulsi Gabbard launched the Director’s Initiatives Group (DIG) in April to end government weaponization and increase transparency, and she recently announced that the agency is now 25% leaner.

“The 25% reduction in the staff includes both permanent ODNI cadre officers and detailees from other IC elements, who will be returned to their home agencies as ODNI streamlines its mission space,” a source familiar told the Daily Caller.

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Ratcliffe is also eying politicization and potential waste in his agency.

“Director Ratcliffe has made it clear that the CIA will pursue President Trump’s national security priorities with laser-like focus,” CIA spokeswoman Liz Lyons told the Daily Caller. “The Agency is determined to provide the President with an unparalleled intelligence advantage and, under Director Ratcliffe, we are aggressively doing just that.”

Ratcliffe vowed to restructure the CIA to “eliminate” politicization during a recent cabinet meeting with the president.

Similarly, Deputy Director Michael Ellis warned against politicization in a February message to CIA staff, noting their work needs “to be free from politics, bias, or any other distraction.”

Conservatives have accused the IC of politicization for years.

The FBI relied on the since since-debunked Steele dossier to accuse former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, of being a Russian agent. The bureau also reportedly surveilled school board parents and raided the homes of pro-life protesters.

Fifty-one former officials signed a letter casting doubt on the New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s emails, falsely claiming it had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation, even though when Ratcliffe served as DNI during Trump’s first term, he determined there was no evidence Hunter Biden’s laptop was a “Russian disinformation campaign.”

Now, the IC is dealing with “deep state actors” leaking classified information to the press. Sources leaked to the The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in May about the IC’s plans to surveille Greenland.

Gabbard slammed the leakers as “deep state actors” who are “politicizing and leaking classified information” in a statement to WSJ.

The CIA is being revamped, but Ratcliffe has not made the “kind of broad cuts” required of other agencies, a Thursday report from CNN claimed.

Although Trump’s federal workforce directives can include national security exemptions, Lyons told the Caller that Ratcliffe is zeroing-in on ways the agency can be more efficient.

“Under Director Ratcliffe, the CIA is implementing President Trump’s Executive Orders to ensure that the workforce is responsive to the Trump Administration’s national security priorities,” she stated. “Even if exemptions are available for national security reasons, the Director believes that CIA can improve efficiency, which is why he invited Mr. Musk to headquarters earlier this year for his insight.”

Elon Musk, head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), visited the CIA and met with Ratcliffe in April to discuss DOGE’s efforts to improve government efficiency.

While the agency’s operations are often shrouded in secrecy, Ratcliffe fired officers involved in DEI and dismissed a CIA official who played a key role in Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for members of the military.

The Trump administration plans to reduce the CIA’s workforce by about 1,200 people over multiple years, The Washington Post reported, citing a source familiar.

Ratcliffe emphasized “meritocracy” in an unclassified March 31 CIA memo obtained by the Caller.

“Moving forward, you will be part of a smaller, more elite and efficient workforce,” he wrote. “We will need everyone at CIA to prioritize efforts that add the greatest value and reduce those we can no longer afford to do.”

He added that “the years of growing budgets and resources are behind [CIA].”

The CIA is also reorienting its focus toward Latin America, specifically the drug cartels. This is a shift from the past two decades, where the CIA has been primarily concerned with Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, the New York Times (NYT) reported in 2021.

Trump designated the cartels “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” in one of his first executive orders.

The CIA merged the Western Hemisphere Mission Center (WHMC) and the Counternarcotics Center (CNC) into one unit — the Americas and Counternarcotics Mission Center (ACMC), according to an unclassified April 14 CIA memo obtained by the Caller.

Trump expects the agency to “play a prominent role” in targeting transnational cartels, the memo noted.

The CIA has reportedly been operating a covert drone program to identify fentanyl laboratories in Mexico, anonymous officials told the NYT.

The agency is considering using “lethal force” against Mexican drug cartels, a U.S. official and three people familiar told CNN in April. The CIA is reviewing its authorities and assessing the potential risks of targeting the cartels, according to the outlet.

The agency has also recently made efforts to improve intelligence collection on Russia and China.

The National Security Agency (NSA) is reportedly also facing cuts under Trump’s new vision for the IC. The agency has been ordered to slash “up to 2,000 civilian roles,” three people familiar told Recorded Future News.

The NSA is a signals intelligence (SIGNT) agency within the Department of Defense (DOD). Trump fired Biden-appointed NSA Director Timothy Haugh in April.

The NSA referred the Daily Caller to DOD for questions about restructuring.

“NSA is focused on carrying out the priorities of the President, Secretary of Defense, and Director of National Intelligence, which include evaluating and making strategic adjustments to its civilian workforce,” a DOD spokesperson told the Caller.

“As a combat support agency, NSA is working with the Department to meet [DOD’s] goals and ensure that workforce adjustments are conducted while we continue to execute NSA’s SIGINT and Cybersecurity missions,” the statement continued.

The DOD intends to target its “bloated headquarters,” Hegseth announced in early May.

He introduced the General and Flag Officer Reductions Policy, or the “Less Generals More GIs” directive in a video.

Hegseth ordered at least a 20% reduction of 4-star positions in the Active Component, 20% reduction of the National Guard’s general officers and a minimum 10% reduction in general and flag officers, according to a DOD memo.

“We’re going to shift resources from bloated headquarters’ elements to our warfighters,” Hegseth stated in the video.

He also directed $5.1 billion in “wasteful spending” cuts in accordance with DOGE’s findings in April.

However, the Trump administration has proposed a record $1 trillion defense budget — even though the Pentagon has yet to pass an audit.

The law enforcement arm of the IC is also not immune to restructuring.

Trump’s proposed Fiscal Year 2026 budget includes a $545 million cut to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), citing a reduction in “DEI programs, pet projects of the [Biden] administration, and duplicative intelligence activities,” according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The proposal’s recommendations concern discretionary funding.

The Caller reached out to the FBI for comment on the budget proposal and examples of any waste, fraud or abuse the bureau has eliminated. The bureau referred the Caller to Patel’s comments during committee hearings.

FBI Director Kash Patel testified in May before the House Appropriations Committee and said the bureau was “trying to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.”

Patel is reorganizing the agency to “streamline operations,” according to his May 8 opening statement. The FBI is “ensuring that the Bureau is a good steward of taxpayer dollars,” his statement added.

However, Patel pushed back against the OMB’s proposal to slash funding during his hearing. He told congressmembers the budget cuts were not what the FBI had requested.

“The proposed budget that I put forward is to cover us for $11.1 billion which would not have us cut any positions … we need more than what has been proposed,” he told Democrat Connecticut Rep. Rose DeLauro.

Patel appeared to reverse his comments the following day, and he expressed support for OMB’s budget when testifying before the Senate Appropriations Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee.

“We will make and agree with this budget as it stands and make it work,” he told Democratic Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen during the senate hearing.

“I was simply asking for more funds because I can do more with more money,” Patel added.

Rep. DeLauro asked what positions would be cut due to the funding reduction, and Patel said he is not looking to cut positions.

“Ma’am, at this time, we have not looked at who to cut,” he answered. “We are focusing our energies on how not to have them cut.”

In addition to restructuring the intelligence community’s workforce, Trump has sought to eliminate DEI from federal agencies.

The CIA, ODNI, FBI and NSA have made efforts to comply with Trump’s executive orders, including by removing DEI language from government websites.

Notably, the FBI closed its DEI office in December 2024.

DNI Gabbard told Trump during a cabinet meeting that she closed the IC Human Capital Office, deeming it a “DEI slush fund.”

Additionally, Gabbard fired over 100 intelligence staffers who were in sexually explicit NSA chats.

Former President Biden’s CIA Director William J. Burns prioritized DEI, a CIA official told the Caller.

Under the Trump administration, however, the agency has scrapped its DEI office.

“Director Burns made it clear that strengthening diversity and inclusion at CIA was one of his highest priorities,” the official said. “Under Director Ratcliffe, there has been a significant change — the DEI office has been shut down and mission objectives are prioritized instead.”

AUTHOR

Eireann Van Natta

Associate Editor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The post Trump 2.0 Takes Chainsaw To The Deep State With Historic Cuts Of Staff, Budgets appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

EXCLUSIVE: Plurality Of Swing Voters Support Trump’s China Tariffs, New Poll Reveals thumbnail

EXCLUSIVE: Plurality Of Swing Voters Support Trump’s China Tariffs, New Poll Reveals

By The Daily Caller

A new survey from the Protecting America Initiative (PAI) shows a plurality of voters in 19 key swing districts back Trump’s tariffs and trust him more than major retailers to stand up for American workers.

The respondents generally place the blame for trade issues on corporate retailers and believe the companies, not consumers, should bear the cost of any price hikes, according to the poll, first reported Wednesday by the Daily Caller. Many swing district voters blame retailers for the outsourcing that likely fueled U.S. dependence on China and believe retailers should bring jobs back home.

The survey, conducted from May 1–6, polled 1,000 likely voters across 19 battleground districts identified by the Cook Political Report, with a margin of error of ±2%. It included 636 live phone interviews and 364 text-to-web surveys, with the data weighted to reflect demographics and voter registration trends.

The findings highlight a divide in trust when it comes to defending American workers as 43% of voters trust Trump while 39% trust retail CEOs.

Seventy-eight percent say retailers should absorb price increases tied to outsourcing and tariffs. This view cuts across political, age, and demographic lines, reflecting broad frustration with corporations appearing to offload the consequences of their decisions onto consumers.

Swing voters expressed deep skepticism toward major retailers.

Seventy-five percent of voters agree retailers exploited COVID-19 by using the pandemic as an excuse to raise prices, post record profits, and never bring costs back down, with 50% strongly agreeing, according to the PAI poll.

Now, that same 75% worry these companies will exploit tariff-related price hikes to keep overcharging consumers.

Eighty-three percent support investigations into corporate price gouging, and 78% back tough penalties for companies that used the pandemic or trade tensions to inflate prices, according to the PAI poll.

That concern may already be playing out. A viral TikTok video appears to show Hallmark hiking prices on its Kansas-made Christmas ornaments while blaming the increase on tariffs.

Many voters say they’re still paying pandemic-era prices even though the crisis is over. A full 84% agree it is time to investigate who’s profiting and why prices haven’t come down, including 64% who strongly agree.

PAI polling also shows that 81% of voters are more likely to support candidates who call for investigations, while 79% favor those who back legislation to rein in corporate price gouging.

AUTHOR

Ashley Brasfield

Reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

IG Reports Give Fuller Accounting of Biden Military Lowlights thumbnail

IG Reports Give Fuller Accounting of Biden Military Lowlights

By Family Research Council

“The sins of some people are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later” (1 Timothy 5:24). This principle of biblical wisdom is just as valid in politics. Not every fault is instantly known and judged; others only “appear later” — but, rest assured, they “cannot remain hidden” (1 Timothy 5:25). In November 2024, voters knew enough about President Biden’s failure to reject his party’s successor, but the full accounting of Biden’s blunders will only come to light with time.

That accounting has now begun. Congressional committees and inspectors general had already begun investigations into the most egregious failings of the previous administration, but stonewalling tactics threw sand in the gears. As the Trump administration feels no compunction about exposing the missteps of its predecessor, those investigations will now move forward much more smoothly.

Gaza Pier

One such accounting concerns the infamous floating pier that Biden ordered the U.S. military to assemble along the coast of Gaza. The whole exercise was political — a subtle dig at Israel for insisting on screening aid that entered Gaza overland, a transparent concession to the pro-Hamas rabble that Biden sought to placate, and a stubborn refusal to acknowledge that Hamas would promptly loot aid humanitarian aid that arrived in Gaza (even off the pier!)

Operation Neptune Solace, as the pier project was dubbed, required the labor of 1,000 U.S. servicemembers over several months, as well as $320 million in equipment, yet it disintegrated almost instantly. As it turns out the pier was not designed to withstand even a “gentle breeze,” which is average weather on the Gaza coast. After only 20 days of partial operation, including multiple repairs, the pier operation was abandoned.

Of course, the Biden administration tried to spin this not as a total failure, but as a partial success. The pier did deliver some aid — about a third of the aid it hoped to land — and the operation’s total casualties amounted to three soldiers with non-combat injuries, the Pentagon said.

According a new report released this month by the DOD Inspector General (IG), this casualty estimate was just plain wrong. “In response to our request and a review of records, USCENTCOM reported that 62 U.S. personnel suffered injuries during Operation Neptune Solace,” the report stated. “Based on the information provided, we were not able to determine which of these 62 injuries occurred during the performance of duties or resulted off duty or from pre-existing medical conditions.” One soldier, who was medevacked from the pier in May with critical injuries, died in October.

The loss in material was also substantial. “The Navy reported damage to 27 watercraft and INLS equipment pieces totaling approximately $31 million,” the IG recorded, while the Army’s total damage report was classified. Much of the damage was due to equipment that was punctured or bent after colliding in the rolling seas; the Army and Navy’s separate equipment was never designed to be used together. But what do 60 soldiers and $30 million matter in pursuit of political brownie points?

The Biden Pentagon could keep the Gaza pier’s devastating toll under wraps for a while, but the true impact did “appear later.”

Afghanistan Equipment

Only days earlier, another inspector general report slammed another critical failure of the Biden administration. In an ill-advised decision to withdraw from Afghanistan by a pre-determined, arbitrary deadline, President Biden ordered American forces to evacuate the country in haste, leaving behind equipment, allies, and even American citizens. More specifically, the U.S. left behind 78 aircraft, 40,000 military vehicles, and over 300,000 weapons.

Even worse, Biden’s hasty retreat kneecapped the friendly, democratic government of Afghanistan, causing it to collapse rapidly before an advancing Taliban, the very group America defenestrated from power more than two decades earlier. Even worse, it now appears that the Taliban has reverted to its old ways, allowing more than two dozen terrorist organizations to train on its soil, including at least four offshoots of al-Qaeda.

In an April 30 report, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) succinctly compiled this information as follows:

“A February UN sanctions monitoring team report said that al Qaeda affiliates in Afghanistan … ‘continued to have access to weapons seized from the former Afghan National Army, transferred to them by the de facto authorities/Taliban or purchased from the black market.’ The Taliban army chief of staff said the regime planned to provide the army with more advanced weapons and equipment, but did not specify from where or whom it could come. In 2022, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) reported that out of $18.6 billion worth of equipment that was transferred to the ANDSF between 2005 and August 2021, $7.12 billion remained in Afghanistan.”

From this summary, it’s not hard to infer that Biden’s disastrous withdrawal left high-tech American military equipment to the very terrorist organizations that we entered Afghanistan to destroy more than two decades ago.

Some of this came to light during the Biden administration — but it only came to light piecemeal and gradually, despite the administration’s refusal to accept (or assign) responsibility.

Conclusion

These are not the first reports exposing previous governmental misdeeds, nor will they be last. Congress this week also exposed the FBI’s deceptive mishandling of the 2017 assassination attempt of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) and other Republican lawmakers. Last month, the DOJ “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias” assembled the first tranche of grievances to be redressed.

The point is, grievous mistakes have a way of becoming known eventually. Sin can only hide in the shadows for so long. It is therefore wise to take the advice of Proverbs, “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy” (Proverbs 28:13).

American governments would be well served to frankly own up to their own shortcomings. Attempts to cover up the truth only lead to more political fallout in the long run. As Moses once warned a faction of Israelites who sought to avoid accountability, “be sure your sin will find you out” (Numbers 32:23).

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘Trans Is Out’: DOD Begins Removing Trans-Identifying Military Members

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

The post IG Reports Give Fuller Accounting of Biden Military Lowlights appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

‘Our Revenue Hit a Cliff’: Radical LGBT Groups See Mass Layoffs in Trump Era thumbnail

‘Our Revenue Hit a Cliff’: Radical LGBT Groups See Mass Layoffs in Trump Era

By Family Research Council

As the legacy media highlight questionable polls and short-term economic dislocations to portray President Donald Trump as uniquely unpopular with the American people, some of the main financial and political movements of the Democratic Party have engaged in a series of mass layoffs — especially groups focused on promoting LGBT ideology.

GLSEN — founded by Kevin Jennings in 1990 as the “Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network” to promote extreme transgender ideology in public schools — announced in February it would lay off 60% of its workforce. The announcement came one day before the nation’s leading LGBTQIA+ pressure group, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), announced it would cut 20% of its staff in February, laying off about 50 people.

GLSEN’s leader “says that the business decision was painful and necessary in response to mounting financial pressures and coordinated right-wing attacks,” which the LGBT lobby is apparently losing, reported The Advocate. GLSEN Executive Director Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, whom the outlet describes as “the first [b]lack and nonbinary person to lead the organization,” announced the LGBT pressure group fired 18 employees on February 3. “We are not an injured version of the GLSEN we were before Monday. We are a new organization,” the director insisted.

But Willingham-Jaggers admitted the lack of corporate support blew a hole in the organization’s bottom line. “We hit a ceiling — and then our revenue hit a cliff because of right-wing attacks … [T]otal revenue is down,” said Willingham-Jaggers. “They saw Target back off, and then they came for us even harder.” Willingham-Jaggers chided donors that they “need to fund us like they want us to win.” In the same vein, HRC President Kelley Robinson said “the last several years” have presented “historic challenges to our progress,” specifically from “historical softening’ of HRC’s support “in institutions, out of fear.”

These moves underline “the broader financial strain facing LGBTQ+ advocacy groups amid a shifting political and philanthropic landscape,” reported The Advocate.

According to the Human Rights Campaign’s most recent financial disclosures, HRC raised $75 million in its 2024 fiscal year — a $10 million decrease from the previous year — but spent $88.9 million, cutting its total assets by $12.6 million. (HRC still had robust total net assets totaling $45.7 million as of March 31, 2024.) With HRC, too, the largest funding decreases came from “Corporate & foundation grants & contracts” (down $5 million year over year) and “planned giving” ($1.9 million).

GLSEN’s ‘Rainbow Library’ and HRC’s ‘Gender Snowperson’ Meet the DNC

Both GLSEN and HRC have long sought to indoctrinate public school students with extreme LGBT ideology. The nation’s largest public schools union, the National Education Association (NEA), instructed teachers in 33 states how they can obtain a free “Rainbow Library” from which GLSEN describes as “an initiative that provides LGBTQ+ affirming text sets to schools free of charge. We have already sent Rainbow Library sets to 8,100 schools and libraries.”

GLSEN encouraged teachers to insert transgender ideology into math problems. For instance, in one of GLSEN’s suggested word problems, teachers would ask math students to calculate how long it will take to “spread the use of the singular they/them/their pronoun” used by individuals who identify as “nonbinary.” Since “any encounter will lead to a percent of the population adopting the they/them/their pronouns as part of regular use, the students can determine how long it will take for the entire population to adopt the use.”

GLSEN also suggested inserting multiple gender identities into student surveys that traditionally ask for a student’s sex. “[T]eachers need to be sure they include both intersex and other as choices,” and if “the students want to include data for gender, a variety of choices need to be included, such as agender, genderfluid, female, male, nonbinary, transman, transwoman, and other,” insisted GLSEN.

As this author has detailed at The Washington Stand:

“HRC’s ‘Welcoming Schools” program instructs teachers to read the book ‘They, She, He, Easy as ABC’ to children in preschool or kindergarten. Its pre-Klesson plan defines ‘gender identity’ as ‘How you feel. Girl, boy, both or neither. Everyone has a gender identity,’ conducts school trainings, and creates lesson plans for teachers beginning in ‘pre-K.’ By third grade, it encourages students to use the ‘Gender Snowperson’ exercise to ‘understand the differences between gender identity, sexual orientation and sex assigned at birth.’

“The HRC … opposes laws protecting minors from transgender procedures and has denounced laws ‘allowing misgendering of transgender students’ or regulating ‘drag performances.’”

Ironically, Robinson has accused conservatives who resist the forced insertion of LGBT ideology into their children’s curriculum of “launching a culture war against our kids.”

Both also have ties to the Democratic Party. HRC has crossed into the partisan sphere, hosting Jill Biden and dedicating $15 million to the 2024 presidential election. Shortly before election day, Robinson reassured her followers Republican ads highlighting Democrats’ extremism on the transgender issue “would fall flat again in 2024.”

GLSEN, too, has enjoyed ties to the Democratic Party since President Barack Obama nominated its controversial founder, Kevin Jennings, to serve as his “Safe Schools Czar.”

Yet corporations which accurately forecasted President Trump’s victory in 2024 have backed off support for his ideological, and political, foes in the LGBT movement. The president has taken swift action to defund, and at times prosecute, those who impose transgenderism in the schools. In his first 100 days in office, Trump has signed executive orders defining sex as a biological reality, protecting women’s sports, and prosecuting states that force girls to change in front of trans-identifying males for Title IX violations.

GLSEN, HRC to Focus on Schools, Workplace Policies, and Redefining Religion

Yet both groups insist they will double-down on propagandizing our nation’s youth in the schools — and changing their views of what the Bible teaches about sexual morality issues.

GLSEN’s plans for the future include a focus on young people and teachers, described as “supporting educators and students in local communities, amplifying youth voices” by The Advocate. Similarly, going forward, The Advocate reported, “HRC officials said schools and workplaces will be a primary area of emphasis.”

HRC will also attempt to redefine the position of the Christian religion on LGBTQ ideology. The Advocate reports that HRC plans to launch new “storytelling initiatives,” one of which will ask Mariann Edgar Budde — the cleric whom The Episcopal Church considers a bishop, who confronted President Trump in a service at the National Cathedral shortly after his inauguration — to provide “moral clarity on LGBTQ+ rights from a religious vantage point.”

In the future, both groups will have to implement their agenda with decimated workforces, thanks to the cultural winds ushered in by last November’s election.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘Trans Is Out’: DOD Begins Removing Trans-Identifying Military Members

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

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PERKINS: For Congress, This Tick Tock Is Not about an App

By Family Research Council

If you already battle high blood pressure, you may want to skip this next exercise. But for the rest of us, open a browser to USDebtClock.org and watch the neon-red digits spin faster than Reverend Al Sharpton when a TV camera blinks on. In the next few minutes, the display will rise by roughly $40 million, pushing the debt far beyond $36 trillion and accelerating toward $37 trillion. That’s more than $265,000 for every American household. And every added dollar is another chain of bondage for our children and grandchildren, a silent tax on their freedom and future.

Why the relentless rise? One reason is the waste, like that exposed last week by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. His report confirms that President Joe Biden’s 2021 withdrawal left the Taliban with 78 aircraft, 40,000 military vehicles, and more than 300,000 weapons — hardware American taxpayers bought for roughly $25 billion. Terrorists are now better armed than when we entered Afghanistan in 2001, funded with borrowed money

That was the Biden administration. Surely Republican leadership will reverse course — right? Not so fast. Keep your eye on that spinning debt clock.

Congress is assembling what the president calls the “one, big, beautiful bill,” a massive budget reconciliation package that needs only 51 Senate votes. Reconciliation is a rare chance to rein in spending and strip out policies that violate the GOP’s professed values —v alues that have grown hazy in the absence of a formal platform but still generally include protecting life, safeguarding children, and practicing fiscal restraint.

Yet about 20 House Republicans are threatening to torpedo the entire bill unless Planned Parenthood — the nation’s largest abortion business — continues to receive roughly $700 million a year in fresh taxpayer funding. Let that sink in: self-described pro-life lawmakers are ready to keep borrowing from your grandchildren to bankroll an organization that Congress has investigated for trafficking in baby body parts, an organization repeatedly accused of shielding sexual predators from justice.

With chemical-abortion pills now accounting for as many as two-thirds of all abortions, Planned Parenthood is eyeing its next profit center: cross-sex hormones and other so-called “gender-affirming” drugs — even for minors.

Do you really want your federal tax dollars underwriting permanent medical harm to confused children?

Here’s the bottom line: Planned Parenthood is not in the business of saving lives; it is in the business of ending or permanently altering them — about 400,000 last year alone. A Republican White House and a Republican-led Congress have zero moral or fiscal justification for sending one more dime its way.

So pray for courage — and then pick up the phone. Tell your representative to pass a reconciliation bill that cuts spending, protects the unborn, and refuses to subsidize Planned Parenthood. The debt clock is ticking, and so is the conscience of the nation.

AUTHOR

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins is president of Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

The post PERKINS: For Congress, This Tick Tock Is Not about an App appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

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Infighting Among Repbulicans in the Forida House Fails to Protect Kids

By Royal A. Brown III

The article below is from Florida Citizens Alliance.

Infighting over the budget is also main reason why special session was called.

FL Legislative session for 2025 will prove even worse than failed 2024 session thanks to FL House Speaker Perez and Senate President Albritton along with Senate Rules Committee led by last year’s Senate President Passidomo who killed the top 10 Legislative priority bills in 2024.

This year, they really went after Gov DeSantis’s anti-woke agenda as well as his original support for Trump’s immigration plan producing a very flawed “Trump Act” (Tackling and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy Act) which did nothing to stop illegals from registering for and voting in elections nor assisting with Trump’s deportation efforts not to mention a $600M price tag including 80 new LE officers for RINO Wilton Simpson’s Ag, Dept, allegedly to “secure FL’s borders” rather than being assigned to DeSantis’s existing election crimes unit.

Bills which favor pro development (in face of lagging infrastructure) and declining rural areas have also passed. Follow the money.

Take a look at the Florida Tracking Report for major 2025 Legislature Bills.

Recommend you take a look at the Republican Liberty Caucuses (RLC) Freedom Index Report for 2025 when it comes out. It will show this session results even worse than in 2024.


Florida Citizens Alliance

Infighting Among The Three Branches in Florida Derail Legislative Session

Infighting among the House, the Senate, and the Governor derailed what could have been a successful legislative session in protecting children’s mental health. Many of FLCA’s priority bills that would have taken steps to empower parents, teachers, and students were also stalled on the Senate Side due to this infighting. Some examples of this were HB 1505/SB 1288 and HB 1539/SB 1692. An important bill amendment that would have taught human fetal development education starting in middle grades was also removed last second by Senator Calatayud (R-Miami Dade) on HB 1255.

Each Branch played a role in this fight, where major priorities for leadership were also stalled. It is truly amazing how all three branches snatched defeat from so many recent years of “Florida First”!

We achieved victories such as the stoppage of multiple bills that would have had bad outcomes and rolling back important steps we have taken over the past several years to protect children and drive better learning outcomes. An example of a bill we were able to successfully stop was SB 370 and HB 219, which would have required certain health screenings for students without parental approval.

Another victory we had was the passage of SB 7016, which changes the rules related to petition gathering for constitutional amendments. This bill will have a long-lasting impact on protecting our constitutional amendment process from bad actors who have taken advantage of it over the past few election cycles.

Also, while typically not in our education or child-focused lane, we also saw the passage of the gold and silver bills that passed both chambers.

For more information on the legislative session, please watch out for our first legislative scorecard. We will be releasing our scorecard early this summer.

Ryan Kennedy

Director of Policy and Advocacy

©2025 . All rights reseerved.

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DOGE Is Doing the Clean-Up Leftists Can’t Stand thumbnail

DOGE Is Doing the Clean-Up Leftists Can’t Stand

By Joan Swirsky

In this allegorical scenario, Honey and Hank moved into a cozy home in a small community in New England 30 years ago.  The next day, their neighbor, Irene, brings over a hot, homemade casserole to welcome them to the neighborhood.

Within minutes, Honey and Irene “connect” in a phenomenon known as human chemistry. They just seem to “get” each other. And as their relationship evolves, they learn that they are on the same page on just about everything: raising kids, favorite foods, must-see TV programs, Mommy-and-Me classes, even the crocheting and knitting that their grandmothers taught them. And each of them has three children, with two of them having the same name!

As luck would have it, their husbands also hit it off and have quite a lot in common, the biggest that both are on-the-road salesmen.

Over the years, the couples become so close that they vacation and celebrate birthdays and holidays together. Honey and Irene even exchange house keys and list each other as emergency contacts on medical forms.

All good…for 30 years!

Uh-Oh…

Then, one day, Honey gets a phone call from her bank manager, Mr. Hervey, requesting that she and Hank come in for a sit-down.

“Of course,” Honey says, speculating with Hank that the investment they made with the bank’s money manager has either yielded a brilliant bonanza or — yikes — has gone bust.

When they sit down the next day with the Mr. Hervey — whom they call Linc, short for Lincoln — they notice a decidedly serious look on his face.

“Look,” he says. “We live in a small town where everyone knows everything about everyone else. I know Irene and her husband Fred very well. And I know how close you’ve been over all these years. I even know that you exchanged house keys in case of an emergency. And Honey, I know that you gave Irene the PIN to your bank account, again in case of an emergency.”

At this point, Honey and Hank are nonplussed, having no idea where Linc Hervey is going with this strange introduction.

“Well, I hate to tell you this,” he says, “but we just discovered that over the years — many, many years — Irene has been withdrawing money from your account — very cleverly, so you would never notice — but now it has added up to a small fortune.  A real fortune.”

When Mr. Hervey tells them the amount, they are both dumbstruck, speechless, almost out of breath.

Enter Politics

Both Hank and Fred, as mentioned, were businessmen, capitalists, conservatives. At the same time, both men tolerated that their wives were liberals with do-gooder instincts to save the climate, save the whales, save humanity! Both men had decided that it wasn’t worth arguing, because most other things in their lives were so harmonious.

But sitting in front of the bank manager, who had just informed him that his wife’s best friend was a colossal fraud, a thief, and worthy of a felony conviction, Hank immediately took out his iPhone and looked up the numbers of his lawyer and his local police department, with the intention of having Irene (and possibly her husband Fred, as a co-conspirator) served with papers and then arrested and, he hoped, indicted and imprisoned.

Honey, on the other hand, started screaming at the bank manager. “How dare you accuse Irene of any wrongdoing? You are on a witch hunt. You have no proof!”

“Unfortunately, Honey, we have empirical proof,” Linc said, “all scrupulously documented on our computers, going back years, in fact decades.”

Skip to 2025

Is this scenario not exactly what Americans — and, for that matter, the entire world — have been witnessing in real time as Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) discover the malfeasance, fraud, and criminality of not the fictional housewife Irene, but the real live people who run our massive government institutions? To name only a few, there are the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Pentagon, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).  All of these have been fleecing our country — with our tax dollars — not of millions or billions, but of trillions of dollars!

In fact, DOGE has been unearthing the deep corruption involving both Republicans and (mostly) Democrats and proving the maxim that to unearth criminal behavior, always, always, always follow the money!

We have learned that our elected officials have sent vast fortunes to terrorist groups with eye-popping millions upon millions of dollars.  And looky here:

Among other egregious examples of the kinds of waste, fraud, and abuse DOGE has been uncovering is that tens of millions of dead people are on our Social Security rolls, many of them children and people over 115 years old! And look what DOGE found — that $4.7 trillion in payments from the Treasury Department were “almost impossible” to track. That is trillion, with a T!

DOGE has also found that California, New York, and Massachusetts, three deep-blue states — surprise, surprise! — were responsible for over half of the fraudulent unemployment claims in the United States since 2020, again involving massive mountains of  money.

Enter the Pearl-Clutchers

OMG, bleat the perpetually sky-is-falling, glass-is-half-empty leftists. This is illegitimate! While, according to Victor Davis Hanson, Musk acts completely under executive authority.

Like Honey, they are shooting the messenger. That is understandable. After all, most of the criminality has been committed by the people they trusted, sent money to, voted for, based their entire belief systems on. Talk about an existential threat!

But unlike Honey, if it were their own personal bank accounts that were robbed, you can be sure they would be squarely in Hank’s camp, going after the crooks with the intention of bringing them to justice.

They remind me of a child having a temper tantrum in Aisle 4 of a supermarket — flailing arms, copious tears, kicking and screaming, crashing the cans and breakable jars off the shelf, simply because Mommy didn’t buy those all-important Animal Crackers.

“Clean-up in Aisle 4” is then blared over the loudspeaker.

That is what DOGE is all about: cleaning up the monumental financial mess that our greedy and corrupt elected officials and government agencies have inflicted on all of us.

Here is a way to keep track of the immense savings — and criminality — DOGE is uncovering every day.  So far, literally billions — going on trillions — in fraud, waste and abuse.

May this grand effort to Make America Great — and financially solvent — Again continue unimpeded!

©2025 . All rights reserved.

The post DOGE Is Doing the Clean-Up Leftists Can’t Stand appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

The Unforgivable Betrayal of the Do Nothing GOP Congress thumbnail

The Unforgivable Betrayal of the Do Nothing GOP Congress

By The Geller Report

The midterm elections are going to gut punch Congressional Republicans. Voters will not turn out for a party they screwed them. The GOP, save for Trump and a handful of Republicans, have turned their back on their constituency. Congress will not codify the President’s orders. They are actively obstructing the Trump agenda.

Judicial tyranny, extending tax cuts, election integrity etc. etc. — nothing. Just another week long recess.

Trump is Sisyphus, the GOP Congress is the hill.

Democrats always got things done when no matter how slim their majority.

What Is The Point Of Having A GOP Congress?

What’s become increasingly clear is that absent Trump and a few Republicans, the GOP lacks the willingness and ability to govern.

By: Shawn Fleetwood, The Federalist, May 8, 2025:

Throughout the 2024 election cycle, Republicans pledged that, if elected, they would use their congressional majorities to reverse the disastrous policies enacted by President Biden and Democrats. Whether it was bringing down Bidenflation or curbing the border invasion, the campaign message from the GOP was clear: Elect us and we’ll fix it.

But now that they’ve been given the reins of power, many congressional Republicans have shown little interest in actually governing in accordance with the pitch they made to voters just a few short months ago.

On Wednesday, reporting surfaced that a cabal of House Republicans is fighting efforts to end the flow of federal taxpayer funds to Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, which also offers harmful chemical and surgical castration procedures. According to NOTUS, this group of lawmakers — which reportedly included Republican Reps. Mike Lawler, Brian Fitzpatrick, and Jen Kiggans — “made it clear to House GOP leadership that they oppose adding a measure to cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood” to the House’s reconciliation package.

So, if slashing the taxpayer subsidization of entities that terminate unborn babies isn’t on the budget chopping block for Republicans, then what is?

It’s apparently not fully repealing Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act or making significant reforms and reductions to Medicaid. Congressional GOPers have come out opposing both options over the course of the party’s reconciliation negotiations.

And what about enshrining President Trump’s executive actions (abolishing the Education Department and DOGE cuts) or other conservative-backed priorities (judicial reform and major spending cuts) into the package? Where’s the sense of urgency among Republicans to do those things?

While time will tell what a final reconciliation bill will entail, the writing on the wall does not bode well for conservative voters wanting to enact generational change at the federal level. Much like their failed 2017 effort to repeal and replace Obamacare, many congressional Republicans seem more interested in protecting Democrats’ overreaching and destructive policies than defanging them.

What’s become increasingly clear is that, absent Trump and a few Republicans, the GOP lacks the willingness and ability to govern.

Unlike their Democrat counterparts, Republicans have no concrete, collective worldview. The party is a coalition of competing ideological factions that fail to agree upon a singular vision of what is viewed as American success, a reality that inevitably produces the type of intraparty policy disputes evidenced in the ongoing reconciliation negotiations.

The GOP’s biggest defenders will often concede that the party has its issues but argue that a Republican-run government is better than a Democrat one because the latter’s policies are far more dangerous and catastrophic. While that may be true, it doesn’t change the long-term consequences of Republicans’ fecklessness.

Putting a Band-Aid on a leaky pipe doesn’t fix the leaky pipe. It merely slows the leakage and neglects to fix the root of the problem.

The same is true of having a GOP-run Congress.

If electing Republicans is only about temporarily stopping the bleeding caused by Democrats without repealing their disastrous policies and replacing them with conservative-based solutions, then what is the point of having a Republican-run Congress at all? Under this logic, conservatives would essentially be voting for managed decline over immediate decline. In the end, everyone still loses.

This is in no way an advocation for Democrat control of government. It is a diagnosis of the establishment rot plaguing the Republican Party, and a call to action for conservatives to start taking self-governance seriously.

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

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POSTS ON X:

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Republicans Face a Come-to-Jesus Moment on Reconciliation

By Family Research Council

It was only a matter of time before House Republicans stepped on the big landmines buried under the landscape of reconciliation. For months, GOP leaders had been tiptoeing around the tripwires, desperately trying to keep the fragile peace. But this week, with the clock ticking down to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) self-imposed Memorial Day deadline, there was nowhere else to step but smack-dab onto the most explosive debate of the president’s “big, beautiful bill.”

For Johnson, who had to be dreading this part of the negotiations, finally getting his 220-member family to sit down and slog through the sticking points on Medicaid reform is a feat in itself. Whether he can cobble together a unified majority at the end of it is the $1.5 trillion question. Part of his headache, as hardline conservatives are quick to point out, is that moderate Republicans are about as enthusiastic about reducing the deficit as their big-spending Democratic counterparts. Especially if it involves paring down bloated programs that Democrats are crying wolf over.

In a two-hour meeting Tuesday night, the collision course Republicans have been on since the 2024 elections finally came to a head. By the end of it, about a dozen GOP members from deep blue states seemed to emerge victorious, somehow managing to persuade the speaker to back off of two pools of taxpayer dollars that were ripe for reform: Medicaid’s Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) and the state and local tax deduction (SALT). For the swing-state Republicans, it was a coup, but one that came at a very steep price.

If those programs are off limits for a major overhaul, House Freedom Caucus members warned, Republicans have lost the biggest bites of the apple when it comes to Medicaid savings. Some experts estimated the changes to both FMAP and SALT could be worth as much as $600 billion of the GOP’s $880 billion target. And frankly, conservatives worry, they’re running out of places to cut. No one understands that better than Mike Johnson, who gave his word during the war over the budget framework that the House would find at least $1.5 trillion in savings in the final bill. And yet, in this “ultimate group project,” as some are describing the reconciliation package, he had little choice.

The problem for the speaker is the same one that’s given him nightmares for the last year and a half. “[H]e can’t please the moderates without risking an uproar from conservatives. And vice versa,” Punchbowl News’s reporters point out. It’s the “dynamic that’s plagued the last three Republican speakers. Moderates help give Republicans their majorities. Yet they’re often forced to swallow conservative policies that don’t fit the political makeup of their districts.”

Unfortunately for everyone, these concessions only make the path to enacting Donald Trump’s agenda that much murkier. Somehow, Republicans have to find a way to pay for the extension of the president’s 2017 tax relief — or else, Johnson cautioned, everyone is going to have “an increased tax amount [of] $2,000 to $3,000 per family. That’s what’s going to happen if we don’t make the tax cuts permanent.”

Now, as Johnson and his committee chairs scramble to come up with a Plan B to find the dollars they need to offset those costs, even he’s had to adjust his thinking — and his calendar. “It just made sense for us to push pause for a week to make sure that we do this right,” the speaker told reporters Tuesday. Instead of rushing the process, the thorny mark-ups that were scheduled for this week have been pushed off until leaders can find a solution that pleases both sides. “It’s going to take a lot more of these kinds of conversations, ultimately, to get to an understanding that 99% of the House Republican Conference can agree with,” Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) admitted.

So what exactly are the programs that were taken off the table? The short answer is a hugely complicated web of payments, tax caps, and reimbursements that have been abused since Barack Obama expanded Medicaid to people who had no business being on it. But there’s a lot more to these four-letter acronyms (which are more like four-letter words to fiscal hawks).

State and Local Taxes (SALT)

“For as long as Americans have paid federal income taxes,” Bloomberg explains, “they’ve been able to subtract some of what they pay to their state and local governments from their taxable income. This federal deduction for state and local taxes — the SALT deduction, for short — has a big influence on how the tax burden is divided. It tends to help taxpayers in wealthier, more urban states, where sales taxes are higher and real estate costs more.” Back in his first term, President Trump limited the deduction to $10,000 in every state.

With that cap set to expire, GOP moderates (especially the ones from wealthier blue states like New York, New Jersey, California, and Maryland, where things like property taxes and the cost of living are much higher) want to raise the deduction to anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000. Most conservatives would rather keep the number where it is or eliminate the deduction altogether. After all, most of them represent people who would never be able to claim that write-off. (Only 10% of Americans who itemize their taxes do.) Not to mention that expanding the cap would cost money that the government doesn’t have.

“Lifting the SALT cap to $15,000 for individuals and $30,000 for couples,” House Republicans have warned, “would cost around $500 billion relative to extending Trump’s expiring tax cuts.” Enter the fiscal hawks’ outrage. Instead of finding cuts, moderates are finding ways to spend even more. Still, Johnson vows, “We’re going to find the equilibrium point on SALT that no one will be totally delighted with, but it’ll solve the equation, and we’ll get it done.”

Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP)

Heads collectively exploded when Johnson was asked about a far more egregious practice: Medicaid’s FMAP. When reporters pressed the speaker about changing the federal cost share, the Louisianan replied, “No. … I think we’re ruling that out as well, but stay tuned,” he said.

This debate goes back even further, all the way to the Obama administration when Democrats grossly expanded the government’s health care program to entire populations of previously ineligible, able-bodied Americans. Thanks to that White House and Joe Biden’s, millions of people have flooded the Medicaid rolls, most of whom aren’t seniors, children, or disabled — and who, by their very participation — are robbing truly needy people of the care and benefits they deserve. That problem only ballooned under COVID, as Biden bogged down the program with financially-strapped — but otherwise unqualified — Americans.

Now, years later, Medicaid is struggling to keep up with the burden of enrollees it was never meant to serve — pushing legitimate patients with disability or chronic illnesses to the sidelines.

Republicans have been clamoring to radically overhaul the system and return Medicaid to its original parameters, saving taxpayers billions of dollars in the process. But states have been reluctant to do that because of this FMAP loophole that actually encourages them to grow the program beyond its original purpose. As Stefani Buhajla explained in National Review, the deep dark secret of Medicaid is that its federal funding actually “undermines the program’s core mission.”

Right now, the federal government reimburses a whopping 90% of expenses of those “working-age, able-bodied adults” who were folded into Medicaid under Obama, “regardless of the state’s level of wealth.” In other words, “the federal government provides more-generous support for less needy individuals and comparatively less support for those who are in greatest need of care,” Buhajla emphasized. Those same states don’t receive anywhere close to that reimbursement for the participants who belong in the program.

“It’s nuts,” Family Research Council’s Quena González told The Washington Stand. “It incentivizes states to continue to expand services and eligibility and availability — but only to the expansion population. To those who are disabled or who truly do need some sort of help like this, the states are less incentivized.”

But, he insisted, the FMAP itself is broken, because no state is reimbursed at less than 50%. It’s a great deal for them. “Every state is robbing the American taxpayer by reaching into the till. But they’re hyper-incentivized to do this when they expand beyond the traditional Medicaid populations. See the perverse incentive here? If you’re a blue state Republican from New York or New Jersey, and your state expanded Medicaid by going into these ineligible populations, you get a 90% federal match.” If your colleagues want to cut that, González explained, “it’s not going to be popular back home. So now you’re over a barrel. You’re wedded to this lopsided expansion category — which, by the way, penalizes states that refused to expand Medicaid like Florida and Texas.”

Instead, he continued, Florida and Texas are put in the position of subsidizing the bad choices of leaders in the northeast. It creates this impossible situation where liberal and moderate Republicans from these blue states are “fighting tooth and nail to keep a mega-subsidy that never should have existed.” And the conservatives’ point is that just by returning Medicaid to its original parameters, Republicans could probably save hundreds of millions of dollars.

The House Freedom Caucus understands this. There are more able-bodied Americans “on Medicaid now than any other group,” they stressed, “which means the neediest Americans get lower priority. … This is why Medicaid spending has skyrocketed 51% in the last 5 years alone. This isn’t ‘cutting benefits,’” they reiterated in rebuttal of the Democrats’ claims. “We’re trying to fix the program and protect the most vulnerable.”

On the Senate side, Dr. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) agreed. “We have over 90 million people on Medicaid now. Ninety million,” he repeated on “Washington Watch” Monday. “It was meant to be [for] those who need that help, [who] need that hand up. It was meant for folks in a nursing home [who] maybe that can’t afford nursing home care or folks with a disability. The poorest amongst us is who it was meant for.” And yet, he shook his head, “It’s on a rocket ship as far as the amount of money we’re spending on it.”

Johnson’s Dilemma

“But if you take FMAP reforms off the table and also raise the SALT cap, where do you look for savings?” González wonders. “You can’t say, as a House moderate, ‘We get 100% of everything we want, or we take our marbles and go home.’ At some point, we have to tell them, ‘We can’t afford all of this. We can’t afford the president’s tax cuts, the push for border security and defense, and also make the tax cuts permanent.’ Everyone is realizing that there’s just not enough money to go around and do everything they want to do.” Not only are we “robbing from our children,” he argued, “but we’re playing fast and loose with the truth about where we are financially.”

While there are still ways to salvage some reforms — new work provisions for the Medicaid expansion category is one — the speaker is walking a tight line with conservatives, who are very aware how much they’ve given up already. “I don’t make promises that I can’t keep,” Johnson underscored, presumably about his pledge to conservatives to cut spending. “This is a consensus-building operation,” he implored. “We’ve been working really hard to take all the input and find that kind of equilibrium point where everybody is at least satisfied. Some people are not going to be elated by every provision of the bill. It’s impossible.”

And let’s be honest, Marshall piled on, “It’s an uphill battle. There’s no doubt about it.” But, he insisted, “I have a lot of confidence in Speaker Mike Johnson [and Rep.] Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) over there on the Budget Committee. Those folks, I think they’re doing great work. I think we’ll get it done.” He paused and smiled. “But there’ll be a little bit of hair-pulling yet to get it all the way across the finish line.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

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DOGE Employees Work Around-the-Clock to Save American Taxpayers Billions of Dollars thumbnail

DOGE Employees Work Around-the-Clock to Save American Taxpayers Billions of Dollars

By Family Research Council

Last week, the man behind the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk, invited Fox News’s Jesse Waters to attend his team’s weekly board meeting. Just as Bret Baier’s previous March interview with Musk and part of the DOGE team had been, this meeting was eye-opening — revealing specific, appalling cases of government agencies’ waste, fraud, and abuse of millions in taxpayer dollars. In addition, this meeting revealed a number of young, college-aged DOGE employees who view their around-the-clock work to be their patriotic duty — helping the United States become financially stable for decades to come.

One Employee Dropped Out of Harvard to Help Save America’s Economy

Yet while they selflessly serve, they receive threats (Musk has also received death threats, and Teslas having been set on fire, smashed, and vandalized). One young DOGE team member told Waters:

“Many of … us have … gotten hate mail threats from reporters and the public alike. I think, you know, speaking for myself — I dropped out of Harvard and came here to serve my country, and it’s been unfortunate to see, you know, lost friendships. … Most of campus hates me now. But I think fundamentally, I hope people realize through conversations like this that reform is genuinely needed. And if … there’s one group of people who really have a shot of success it’s the people here. You know, they’re up until 2:00 a.m. Monday through Sunday. DOGE does not recognize weekends. We’re working all the time.”

When Waters asked him what inspired him to drop out of Harvard, he responded, “There’s a lot of reform that’s needed. I think the value of this and the impact here is so much more vast than anything you could learn in a classroom, doing computer science.”

Waters replied, “And you guys are sleeping here? I’m hearing you guys are up all night? You have this meeting at 10:00 p.m. every Wednesday?”

He replied, “We’ll probably … go back to work right after this, yeah.”

So far, DOGE estimates they have saved the country $165 billion, which is $1,024.84 per taxpayer.

DOE Employees Used $4 Billion COVID Fund for Parties at Caesar’s Palace, Stadiums

At their weekly meetings, Musk asks each team leader to give a report on how their team is doing. The first team member gave an incredible example right off the bat. He explained, “When a payment is made (and the computer of the Treasury pays about $5 trillion per year, crazy amounts), there was formally not a budget code on there. A payment was made, you did not know what it was for. It could have been for anything.”

He went on to explain, “There was a $4 billion COVID fund in the Department of Education. There was no receipt required, so people could just draw down on it. When people looked into it before us, they found that money was being used to rent out Caesar’s Palace for parties, rent out stadiums, etc. So the one change that we made is we had the simple requirement that if you draw down money, you must first upload a receipt. … Upon doing so, nobody drew down money anymore.”

Another Fraud Discovery? ‘Just Another Day at the Office’

Sadly, this is just one of numerous examples of government waste or fraud. Waters asked, “When you find these things, do you guys get mad? Are you like, ‘Yes, I got one!?’ How does it make you feel?”

One of the DOGE team leaders answered, “It’s so common. You get numb to it.”

Musk agreed, saying, “Unfortunately, the hundredth time you’ve heard it, it’s hard not to get a little numb. By the 200th time, you’re like, ‘Well okay, it’s just another day at the office.’”

‘Institute of Peace’ Had Loaded Guns, Spent Taxpayer Money on Private Jets, Had $130,000 Contract with Former Taliban Member

Another DOGE employee gave an example of where they encountered a “battle” with government agency employees. He explained, “We went into the agency and found they had loaded guns inside their headquarters. Kind of the opposite of the title — by far the least peaceful agency we’ve worked with, ironically. Additionally, we found that they were spending money on things like private jets, and they even had a $130,000 contract with a former member of the Taliban.”

He went on to describe:

“Just a few hours after we got into their headquarters, we found their chief accountant had deleted over a terabyte of accounting records. You would have to ask, ‘Why would somebody do that?’ We were able to recover that from a few great employees at the Institute of Peace. And I think the most troubling thing was, they received $55 million a year from Congress, and any money that went unspent — instead of returning it to Congress — they would sweep it into a private bank account which has no Congressional oversight, and that’s what they would use to fund events at their headquarters on the private jets.”

DOGE has referred this case to the Department of Justice and the FBI.

Good, Hardworking Government Employees Are Thankful for DOGE and Helping Them to End Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

Waters asked the DOGE team if there are good people that come up to them and thank them for what they are doing.

An employee enthusiastically responded, saying, “Absolutely! There are people in the State Department that will stop you — or all of the agencies that we’ve been to — that’ll stop you in the hallways or write emails and say, ‘I was scared to write this,’ or ‘I don’t know if you’re interested in this.’ But they usually have great ideas, and … they often have the best ideas because they’ve worked in the places, and they’ve been stifled by the bureaucracy for so many years. So one of the great things, that, at least in my experience … we listen to them and empower them.”

Musk wholeheartedly agreed and added, “So, yes, in fact I’d like to emphasize that because we’d like to just give a big ‘thank you’ to all the government employees who are helping reduce the waste and fraud because … we really couldn’t do it without you. So it’s a group effort.”

Another employee affirmed that DOGE employees are supportive of the agencies that they are working in and that they could not do their work without the help of hardworking government employees. He said:

“We are encountering droves of government employees who are missionaries, not mercenaries, who are actually here serving because they believe in what they’re doing. They want to do things well. We are trying to empower them, and they feel empowered now to ask the question of ‘Why aren’t we doing this? What else can we be doing? How can we fix this?’ And I think agency by agency, it is filled with exceptional government employees, and when we give them the tools, when we give them the systems, and we leave behind systems to help them do their jobs better, that’s the permanent change, and they’re embracing that not because it’s new to them. It’s because it’s something they’ve always wanted to do, but for the first time ever we’re giving them the tools and the collaboration to be able do that.”

Waters responded, “It’s a very important message. That message needs to get out a lot more. I’m so glad you said that.”

The employee added, “We have exceptional people at all of our agencies. Exceptional. I mean, they do a thankless job, and they work incredibly hard.”

AUTHOR

Kathy Athearn

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

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Trump Seeks ‘Transformative’ Spending Cuts In First Budget Request Of Second Term thumbnail

Trump Seeks ‘Transformative’ Spending Cuts In First Budget Request Of Second Term

By The Daily Caller

President Donald Trump is seeking massive cuts to government programs, including culling more than $160 billion in non-defense spending in his fiscal year 2026 (FY26) budget request.

Trump released a budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year Friday morning, which asks Congress to approve slashing non-defense discretionary spending 22.6% below fiscal year 2025 levels. Trump’s request to reduce this spending to its lowest level since 2017 builds on the Department of Government Efficiency’s cost-cutting initiatives to root out government waste and downsize the federal government. 

White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director Russ Vought said Friday the government programs that the White House is proposing to cut were “tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life” in a letter to Senate Appropriations Committee chair Susan Collins.

Collins replied in a statement emailed to the DCNF on Friday characterizing the budget request as late and detailed several “serious objections” the senior appropriator has to the president’s budget proposal.

“Ultimately, it is Congress that holds the power of the purse,” Collins wrote.

Trump’s first budget request of his second term will be subject to congressional approval. Lawmakers must pass a fiscal year 2026 budget before the Sept. 30 funding deadline.

The FY26 budget request seeks to cut discretionary spending by 7.6% overall with many government agencies seeing roughly 35% cut on average, according to senior OMB officials. The president’s budget blueprint also seeks substantial funding increases to defense and border security priorities which senior OMB officials characterized as “historic” investments.

Trump’s budget request would increase defense spending by 13% to more than $1 trillion for FY26. The president’s budget request would also boost Department of Homeland Security funding by 65% to aid the administration’s border security and deportation efforts.

The proposal also calls for canceling more than $20 billion in Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) “Green New Scam” funds that Biden characterized as one of his signature legislative accomplishments. The IIJA programs on the chopping block include the Department of Transportation’s electric vehicle (EV) charging grant program, according to the White House budget request.

“EV chargers should be built just like gas stations: with private sector resources disciplined by market forces,” the White House fact sheet states.

Conservative GOP lawmakers praised Trump’s budget request for reining in government spending back to pre-COVID levels. Congressional Republicans are also eyeing steep spending cuts of $1.5 trillion or higher in the president’s anticipated “one big, beautiful bill.”

“Today, the White House released a transformational budget that maintains strong funding for our national defense while reducing the woke, weaponized, and wasteful bureaucracy by 20% even farther back than pre-COVID levels,” Republican Texas Rep. Chip Roy wrote in a statement posted to X. “Combined with our joint efforts to rescind additional wasteful spending, and deliver a reconciliation bill that will extend and expand the Trump tax cuts while reforming Medicaid and other programs to reduce deficits, we are poised to deliver prosperity, freedom, and strength to the American people.”

“President Trump’s budget reflects his bold and unwavering commitment to reining in Washington’s runaway spending, right sizing the bloated federal bureaucracy, and putting our nation on a path to balance,” House Budget Committee chairman Jodey Arrington wrote in a statement following the budget request’s release.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated to reflect Sen. Collins’ statement to the DCNF.

AUTHOR

Adam Pack

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


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