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.

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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.

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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.

The post ‘Our Revenue Hit a Cliff’: Radical LGBT Groups See Mass Layoffs in Trump Era appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

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

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.

Infighting Among Repbulicans in the Forida House Fails to Protect Kids thumbnail

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.

The post Infighting Among Repbulicans in the Forida House Fails to Protect Kids appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

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

Pamela Geller

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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.

The post Republicans Face a Come-to-Jesus Moment on Reconciliation appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

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.

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.

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The Most Significant Accomplishments of Trump’s First 100 Days thumbnail

The Most Significant Accomplishments of Trump’s First 100 Days

By Family Research Council

Since Franklin D. Roosevelt ushered in the New Deal in 1933 in just three months, historians have measured a president’s success or failure by its first 100 days. As we reach President Trump’s 100th day in office, the 47th president’s second administration has taken a whirlwind of decisive actions to protect life, end artificial support for extreme transgender ideology, uphold religious liberty, secure America’s southern border, restore national sovereignty, and return to a traditional America First foreign policy fostering peace and prosperity.

President Trump’s second first-100-days in office have been “all about one thing: promises made and promises kept. And we have pages and pages and pages of those promises being kept already in just 100 days,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) told “This Week on Capitol Hill” host Tony Perkins ahead of this week’s milestone.

Here are some of the president’s most significant accomplishments since his recent return to the Oval Office.

Abortion: Protecting Pro-Life Rights

President Trump began protecting pro-life advocates’ unalienable right to freedom of speech, reversing his predecessor’s weaponization of government against pro-life Christians, and stopping pro-life taxpayers from financing abortion on day one. By the afternoon of January 20 — inauguration day — a Biden-era government website promoting abortion, ReproductiveRights.gov, had gone offline.

On January 23, Trump kept a campaign promise he had made at the 2023 Pray Vote Stand Summit by signing the pardon of 23 pro-life advocates jailed by the Biden-Harris administration. “This is a great honor to sign this,” said the president as he held the pardon aloft in the Oval Office.

The Biden-Harris Justice Department imprisoned many of those nearly two dozen pro-life advocates under a novel legal theory that accused them of violating both the Federal Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. From this time forward, the Justice Department will only press charges under the FACE Act if the allegation results in “death, serious bodily harm, or serious property damage,” announced the Trump administration in a January 24 memo. “Cases not presenting significant aggravating factors can adequately be addressed under state or local law.”

Trump also protected U.S. taxpayers from funding foreign abortions and many abortions in the United States. A January 24 presidential memorandum reinstated his 2017 Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance (PLGHA), which assures U.S. taxpayers shall not be forced to pay any foreign organization that commits, refers, or advocates for abortion. The action also aims “to ensure that U.S. taxpayer dollars do not fund organizations or programs that support or participate in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”

The same day, Trump signed an executive order “Enforcing the Hyde Amendment,” which assures the nearly five-decade-old policy embraced by President Jimmy Carter will be respected for the next four years. Although a younger Joe Biden voted for the Hyde Amendment — which safeguards taxpayer funds from footing the bill for most abortions through Medicaid — the White House detailed how the Biden-Harris administration subsequently undermined this longstanding norm by compelling taxpayers to underwrite “abortion-related travel expenses,” while “the Department of Veterans Affairs allowed hospitals to provide abortions, and the Department of Health and Human Services paid for abortions for illegal immigrants.”

Additionally, in March the Trump administration held up tens of millions of dollars in Planned Parenthood funding over allegations the nation’s largest abortion business adopted so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies that violated federal civil rights laws. Leakers have said this may presage a larger administration initiative to defund Planned Parenthood, which received $699.3 million in taxpayer funding and carried out 392,712 abortions in its 2022-2023 fiscal year.

The Trump administration’s pro-life actions should prove popular. Three out of four Americans (73%) oppose taxpayer-funded abortions overseas, and nearly six out of 10 of Americans (57%) oppose using federal funds for abortions at home, according to a Marist poll released in January.

Symbolically, Vice President J.D. Vance delivered a speech in person at the 2025 March for Life, and Trump sent a recorded message to the annual pro-life gathering. In his first administration, Trump became the first sitting president to speak to the March for Life in the flesh.

Extreme Transgender Ideology

President Trump has opposed extreme gender ideology from day one, protecting children from transgender hormone injections or surgeries, sheltering battered women and female prisoners from men who say they identify as female, and maintaining fairness in women’s sports.

On his first day in office, Trump signed the executive order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which said the federal government recognizes only two sexes, based in observable biological reality, from the moment of fertilization. “‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell,” says the order. “‘Male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”

Eight days later, the president’s executive order “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation” ended taxpayer funding for transgender procedures involving minors, allows those subjected to such experimental medical interventions to sue, and may lead to the prosecution of those who carry out transgender surgeries. The predatory transgender industry’s “maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex … will be a stain on our [n]ation’s history, and it must end,” the order declared.

Trump underscored this in a March 4 address to a joint session of Congress, when he told American youth directly, “Our message to every child in America is that you are perfect exactly the way God made you.”

Trump made it official policy that the military’s emphasis on winning wars and lethality is “inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria. This policy is also inconsistent with shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex” in his January 27 executive order “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” on January 27. The order reverses President Biden’s order opening the military to those who openly identify as transgender but grandfathers in those who have been “stable” for at least 36 months. The executive order stated that identifying as transgender prevents people from living an “honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”

On February 5, Trump announced his administration would prosecute Title IX violations by schools or universities that force female students or athletes “to compete with or against or to appear unclothed before males.” Allowing males to compete in women’s sports is “demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls,” stated the executive order “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” He also cut off student loan forgiveness for LGBTQ activists in a March 7 executive order, “Restoring Public Service Loan Forgiveness.”

The Trump administration has steadfastly implemented these orders against intransigent blue states such as Maine, led by Governor Janet Mills (D). On April 7, the Trump administration notified Maine officials that it would withhold all non-essential funding from the state Department of Corrections after it placed a 6’1” man who confessed to murdering both his parents (and his dog) in a women’s correctional facility. The Biden administration, by contrast, forced women to share prison cells with trans-identified male offenders and filed lawsuits against states that refused to go along with his orders. By January, 15% of all inmates in female correctional facilities were men.

On April 11, the Education Department announced it was moving to cut off all K-12 funding to the state of Maine for flouting federal law, cutting off prison funding. Similarly, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins held up USDA funding for “administrative and technological functions” in Maine schools that forced girls to change in front of, or compete against, boys.

Th White House released a theologically rich and inspiring statement celebrating Holy Week. One year earlier, then-President Joe Biden placed the weight of his bully pulpit behind a campaign needling Americans to celebrate the “Transgender Day of Visibility,” which also fell on Easter Sunday. Biden’s transgender proclamation ran nearly seven times as long as his Easter statement.

Trump press aides have said they do not respond to questions from reporters who put their personal pronouns in their biographies or social media profiles.

Restoring Religious Liberty

President Trump has established religious liberty departments within Cabinet agencies and recently hosted a conference on the violation of Christians’ rights. The administration has pointedly denounced violations of religious liberty and free speech rights by U.S. allies in Europe. Vice President J.D. Vance told the Munich Security Conference in February that the continent’s “backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious [believers], in particular, in the crosshairs.” Days later, police handcuffed a 74-year-old grandmother for silently offering to talk to mothers outside an abortion facility. They charged her with violating Scotland’s Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) Act, which carries a potential fine ranging from £10,000 ($12,600 U.S.) to an unlimited amount.

Securing the Border

On the president’s signature issue, Trump swiftly returned order to the U.S. border by reinstating the Remain in Mexico policy, ending the policy of catch-and-release, designating criminal syndicates such as Tren de Aragua and MS-13 as foreign terrorist organizations or criminal enterprises, and using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport illegal immigrants. He also signed the Laken Riley Act into law and turned the CBP One app from importing to exporting illegal immigrants. He has deported 135,000 illegal immigrants to date.

His policies have proven effective. “Illegal border crossings dropped precipitously. In March, U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement said 7,181 people were apprehended nationwide between border crossings — a 14% decrease from February and a 95% drop from March 2024,” reported the Associated Press. As Trump told Congress, “The media and our friends in the Democrat Party kept saying we needed new legislation. ‘We must have legislation to secure the border.’ But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.”

National Sovereignty

President Trump has restored national sovereignty by withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO), effectively scuttling any chance the global body had of seeing significant progress on the WHO Pandemic Agreement. “WHO proved itself to be a corrupt organization run by the Chinese Communist Party and global leftists,” Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told “Washington Watch” earlier this month. “President Trump is acting boldly, swiftly, and decisively.” WHO reported a $2.5 billion budget shortfall shortly after Trump’s announcement.

The 47th president also promptly withheld U.S. taxpayer funds from the World Trade Organization (WTO), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

The February 4 directive also ordered the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations to “conduct a review of [Ameria’s] membership in UNESCO,” the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. President Ronald Reagan exited the organization in 1984, but George W. Bush rejoined in 2003. Trump then withdrew again in 2018, but the Biden administration reversed that decision in 2023.

On February 6, Trump issued an executive order titled “Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court,” rebuffing the ICC for investigating U.S. personnel “without a legitimate basis” and for “issuing baseless arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant” for committing war crimes in Israel’s response to the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack by Hamas.

Moving to Abolish the Department of Education and Hold the Federal Bureaucracy Accountable

In what may prove to be President Trump’s most consequential action, he has taken the first steps to abolish the Department of Education. On March 11, the Trump administration fired half of the Department of Education’s staffers. Although the DOE has spent more than $3 trillion since its formation by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, U.S. reading scores in 2023 were “not significantly different from the average score in 1971,” according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The action fulfills a campaign promise made in a July 2023 online video and repeated at the 2023 Pray Vote Stand Summit to “move everything back to the states.”

The same order directs the secretary of Education to assure all public schools abide by the “requirement that any program or activity receiving Federal assistance terminate illegal discrimination obscured under the label ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or similar terms and programs promoting gender ideology.”

Trump’s executive orders and actions have also rooted out racially discriminatory policies branded under the label “diversity, equity, and inclusion” — which often include LGBTQ indoctrination — from federal agencies and sought to thwart bureaucrats who simply maintained DEI policies and offices under different names. Meanwhile, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has exposed federal waste, fraud, and abuse, and sought to make the vast federal workforce responsive to the will of the American people.

In less than 100 days, President Donald J. Trump has “accomplished more than most politicians and presidents accomplish in an entire lifetime,” Speaker Johnson told Perkins.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: JD Vance To Tout First 100 Days At USA Steel Plant 

RELATED VIDEO: POTUS Trump did more for the American people in his first 100 days than Biden in four years

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 The Most Significant Accomplishments of Trump’s First 100 Days appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

EXCLUSIVE: JD Vance To Tout First 100 Days At USA Steel Plant thumbnail

EXCLUSIVE: JD Vance To Tout First 100 Days At USA Steel Plant

By The Daily Caller

Vice President JD Vance will mark the administration’s first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term with a factory tour of the U.S.’s largest manufacturer of steel, the Daily Caller has learned.

Vance, alongside EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, will travel to Huger, South Carolina, on Thursday to visit a Nucor Steel Berkeley factory, which makes all its steel in the U.S., according to plans shared with the Daily Caller. The vice president and Zeldin will tour the factory while it is operating and then Vance will deliver remarks “touting the Trump administration ushering in America’s industrial renaissance during its first 100 days,” a White House official told the Caller.

“Nucor Steel employs tens of thousands of Americans in good paying jobs and produces key raw materials for defense, infrastructure, and domestic manufacturers, making our workers better off and our entire nation safer. The Trump administration is undoing onerous regulations and unfair trade rules to usher in an American industrial renaissance,” Taylor Van Kirk, the vice president’s press secretary, told the Caller in a statement.

With the president’s 100th day of his second term Tuesday, the White House has a week of celebration planned to tout Trump’s accomplishments. On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt briefed reporters with White House border czar Tom Homan on the administration’s efforts to secure the southern border. Photos of 100 illegal immigrants arrested and convicted for crimes, such as rape and murder, lined the White House drive where reporters work.

Leavitt plans to brief Tuesday about the state of the economy and the administration’s work alongside Department of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. In an effort to tackle both the economy and the “industrial renaissance” he plans to build, Trump has enacted a flurry of tariffs on various imports. In February, Trump signed an executive order resurrecting a 25% tariff on all foreign steel and aluminum, a move he made in his first term.

Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on about 90 countries in what the White House deemed “Liberation day” at the beginning of April. A week later, the president paused the tariffs on the countries and implemented a 10% baseline tariff. The steel tariffs remain in place as of late April.

“In just his first one hundred days President Trump has accomplished more than Joe Biden did in four years. President Trump has issued a record number of executive orders and is speeding through his key nominations, and Vice President Vance and the entire White House are taking their cues from the president’s breakneck pace,” Van Kirk said in a statement to the Caller.

“Most importantly, in just a hundred days, Americans have become safer, more prosperous, and more free: Border crossings hit their all-time low, wokeness is dead, waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government are on the retreat, inflation is down, military recruiting is way up, and the president is forcing other nations to come to the negotiating table and start treating American workers fairly,” she continued.

AUTHOR

Reagan Reese

White House correspondent. Follow Reagan on Twitter.

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Good Morning, America!

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

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Waste and Fraud Unmasked by DOGE Sparks Question — Why Didn’t Congress Find It First? thumbnail

Waste and Fraud Unmasked by DOGE Sparks Question — Why Didn’t Congress Find It First?

By Family Research Council

So much waste, fraud, and inefficiency in federal spending have been exposed since President Donald Trump re-entered the Oval Office three months ago that it raises the question: why didn’t Congress shine the light on such outrages long before Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) came along?

Americans for Limited Government (ALG) President Rick Manning, for example, put it well recently, asking congressional watchdogs what they “have been doing over the past 20 years? Where was their spending oversight? Why have they not forced these systems to be opened up for public review so they could dig deep into the spending on authorized programs to determine whether they are being administered properly, and that the taxpayer has been getting their [money’s] worth?”

Manning’s question makes sense, considering what DOGE has uncovered barely three months into its deep-dive, including trillions of dollars in checks issued by the Department of Treasury — with no coding showing the purpose of the spending, billions of dollars of improper payments to ineligible or fictious Social Security, Medicare, pandemic, and unemployment beneficiaries, and millions of grant dollars to pay for things like transgender surgeries for Latin American men.

To get some answers to the question posed by Manning and others, The Washington Stand dug into the years of demands from congressional investigators to executive branch departments and agencies for millions of documents, threatened and delivered subpoenas, transcribed interviews, whistle-blower reports, and public hearings.

What we found can best be summed up in a comparison of what those sleuths looked at as a measure of their priorities in two years, including 2022 when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress and Democrat President Joe Biden was in the White House, and 2024 when Republicans controlled the House, but Biden remained in office.

More specifically, we focused on one House committee, known in 2022 as the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (HOGR), and in 2024 after the panel was renamed the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability (HCOA).

In 2022, Democrats running HOGR were extremely active, but exposing waste, fraud, and corruption in government was not a priority. In 2024, Republicans focused almost entirely on waste, fraud, and corruption in government, but they met a solid wall of refusals to cooperate from political appointees and career civil servants in the executive branch.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a 30-year Democratic veteran of the House, chaired HOGR in the 116th and 117th Congress with Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, as the Ranking Member in 2022. When Republicans regained the House majority in 2023 for the 118th Congress, Comer succeeded Maloney as chairman. Because it has such wide-ranging investigative authority, the oversight panel is a major newsmaker.

Maloney’s HOGR publicly issued at least 189 official letters to government and corporate individuals and entities, providing detailed background information to explain and justify the panel’s concerns, as well as posing multiple questions to recipients who were expected to answer as if they were under oath. In only a handful of those many letters did Maloney go beyond questions and ask for documents related to the subject and issues in the committee’s investigation.

Sorting the letters according to investigative issues produces the following breakdown:

  • 26 of the 189 letters, or 14%, were focused on one of a wide assortment of left-wing ideological causes such as confirming the failed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Constitution, converting the United States Postal Service (USPS) vehicle fleet to Electric Vehicles (EVs), weaponization of election disinformation, and the availability and accessibility of menstrual products, among others.
  • 17 of the letters, or 9%, focused on allegations that the 20 biggest fossil fuel corporations like Exxon and Shell were exaggerating their efforts to reduce carbon emissions and prevent climate change-caused disasters.
  • 14 of the letters, or 7.4%, concerned Trump scandal allegations, including classified documents kept illegally at his Mar-a-Lago compound, allegations of excessive rates charged to representatives of foreign nations staying at the Trump Hotel in the nation’s capital, improper foreign gifts to Trump, and claims various Trump family members and appointees profited from their positions in government.
  • 11 of the letters, or 6%, dealt with issues related to cryptocurrency.
  • Nine of the letters, or 5%, were devoted to allegations of food and supply-chain inflation.
  • Five of the letters, or 2.6%, questioned whether social media giants like Facebook were sufficiently aggressive in removing disinformation from the internet.
  • Only 14, or 7.4% of the letters covered issues of oversight of government programs such as the propriety of contracts awarded by the departments of Agriculture and Defense to particular firms, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concerning its response to shortages of infant baby formula.

The balance of the letters, 93, covered a wide range of unrelated topics such as allegations former Washington Redskins’ owner Dan Snyder tolerated a work environment hostile to women, accusations New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) wasn’t doing enough to assure mental health care access for Riker’s Island prison inmates, Amazon labor policies and cheers for state-level programs such as New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s (D) “Cumulative Impacts” program.

Only one of the 189 letters was addressed to a federal agency — the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector-General (IG) — concerning the failure to produce documents requested on three occasions about that office bungling its investigation of allegations of sexual improprieties by government workers.

Notably, the HOGR did not ask the Social Security Administration (SSA) about checks being paid to dead recipients or the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) about improper payments to unqualified recipients covered by the Medicaid and Medicare programs. The improper payments issue has been prominent in the work of DOGE.

Maloney, who lost her 2022 re-election bid after serving in the House since 1993, could not be reached by TWS for comment. A spokesman for the Democratic minority members of the committee did not respond to TWS’s request for comment.

The oversight panel was even more prolific in writing official letters during Comer’s chairmanship in 2024, with a total of 210. And where only one HOGR request to a federal agency in 2022 concerned failure to produce requested documents, such requests were at the center of virtually every major controversy involving the committee in 2024.

Comer’s investigators encountered opposition from the Biden administration-led executive branch to virtually every request for documents, not just to those involving the controversial and politically sensitive corruption allegations related to the chief executive’s family business.

“Biden withheld tens of thousands of documents pertaining to his involvement in his family’s corrupt influence-peddling racket that generated millions for the Bidens and their associates. … [The White House] refused to hand over documents pertaining to its war on domestic energy production, which drove up energy costs for Americans and jeopardized our national security. And the Biden administration failed to provide critical information about President Biden’s border crisis. Thankfully, the Biden nightmare is now over, and President Trump is taking action to reverse President Biden’s detrimental policies and is providing transparency to the American people,” Comer told TWS.

For example, an executive order (EO) signed by Biden in March 2021 directed an executive branch-wide campaign to ensure voter access by, among other techniques, funding supposedly non-partisan groups conducting voter registration campaigns. Republican critics contended that those registration campaigns always seemed to focus on strongly Democratic areas.

Comer’s panel made its first inquiry to the Biden White House about the EO on May 13, 2024, seeking all documents concerning the drafting, implementation, and third-party organizations involved, to be produced no later than May 28, 2024.

“The executive order requires the heads of federal agencies to allow ‘approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations and state officials to provide voter registration services on agency premises.’ To date, the administration has not provided a comprehensive list of who these approved organizations are, the process for becoming approved, or any guardrails for agencies in implementing this order,” Comer said.

Three months later, in an August 26 letter to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Shalanda Young, Comer emphasized the delays.

“The committee received a short letter response from Office of Management and Budget (OMB) over one month past the deadline, in which none of the requested documents or communications were produced. Additionally, OMB has not provided a timeline for production of responsive documents despite several requests by committee staff to work with your agency on this matter to obtain the requested documents and communications,” Comer told Young in the letter.

Comer said a subpoena would be on the table if the requested documents were not produced by September 2. The documents were never produced, according to a committee spokesman.

Similarly, the oversight Republicans repeatedly pressed Secretary of State Antony Blinken to produce multiple documents and other unredacted records regarding the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC), headed by former Secretary of State John Kerry.

In a lengthy August 7, 2024, letter to Blinken, Comer pointed to multiple ways in which State Department officials evaded providing requested materials: “In a recent production to the committee regarding the SPEC office’s staff names and payroll information, the department made significant unjustified redactions and has withheld fully responsive information, thus undermining the committee’s ability to effectively perform its oversight functions.”

Comer further pointed out that it was “only after the threat of compulsory process did the department release some documents and communications revealing a sophisticated and targeted coordination between leftist environmental groups and the SPEC office that undermines U.S. foreign policy, energy policy, and national security policy.”

The committee also dug into the federal government’s chronic problem of improper payments, one of the most widely publicized examples of wasteful federal spending highlighted by the DOGE effort in 2025. In a March 26, 2024, statement, the committee noted the latest in a long-running series of reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on the vast extent of improper payments across major federal departments.

“The GAO’s new report found there were $236 billion in improper payments in Fiscal Year 2023. Nearly 80 percent of Fiscal Year 2023 improper payments are concentrated in five areas: the Department of Health and Human Services’ Medicare and Medicaid programs; the Department of Labor’s federal pandemic unemployment assistance; the Department of Treasury’s Earned Income Tax Credit; and the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program loan forgiveness. Since 2003, cumulative improper payments have totaled $2.7 trillion,” the statement said.

The panel’s Subcommittee on Government Operations and the Federal Workforce, chaired by Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) was the point of the spear in addressing improper payments, convening three hearings during 2024 to examine the costs, causes, and needed reforms.

Against the backdrop of hyper-partisanship that dominated Congress and the rest of the national political scene throughout the year, Sessions and Ranking Member Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Md.) demonstrated in those hearings that members of the opposing parties can still work together seeking workable solutions to national problems on Capitol Hill.

Asked by TWS about his relationship with the Baltimore Democrat, Sessions responded that “Mr. Mfume understands this main point: If you’ve got misdirected payments to the extent that we have, that means the people that money is intended for will not get it.”

In an October 29, 2024, joint letter to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, who heads GAO, Sessions and Mfume recognized the obstacles presented by the lack of congressional access to vital documents and poor record-keeping by agencies.

“The subcommittee seeks to continuously evaluate whether agencies are getting better or worse at ensuring the levels of fraud seen during the pandemic will ‘never happen again.’ Unfortunately, because of limited or unreliable information maintained by federal agencies, the subcommittee has been unable to adequately assess agencies’ progress,” they told Dodaro.

As a result, Sessions, Mfume, and GAO launched a wide-ranging probe of why agencies too often seem incapable of eliminating improper payments and what Congress must do to fix things.

“We’re in the process now, because this is the first time in four years that we’ve had access to excessive amounts of misdirected spending. This is the first time we’ve had that kind of visibility. We knew numbers existed, fed to us by official people about money that was misdirected with, for example, COVID payments,” Sessions told TWS.

“But when you start going $400 billion here and this and that there, you are not really putting it all together for the State Department, USAID, EPA, and so forth,” he added. The Texas Republican is confident that the joint effort he and Mfume launched with GAO will yield concrete, long-term reforms enacted by Congress and signed into law by the president that ultimately will produce victory in the war against wasteful and corrupt spending throughout the executive branch.

AUTHOR

Mark Tapscott

Mark Tapscott is senior congressional analyst 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.

The post Waste and Fraud Unmasked by DOGE Sparks Question — Why Didn’t Congress Find It First? appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

Trump Admin Freezes Additional $1 Billion In NIH Grants To Harvard University thumbnail

Trump Admin Freezes Additional $1 Billion In NIH Grants To Harvard University

By The Daily Caller

The Trump administration is pausing more than 500 grants worth an additional $1 billion from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to Harvard University, senior HHS officials told the Daily Caller.

Senior Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials told the Caller that the decision to pause the funds is because the institution has been “intransigent with respect to obligations to protect students on this campus from the effects of insidious antisemitism.” The grants include those that were funding the institution’s training of its scientists and other non-clinical trial grants, the officials told the Caller. The frozen grants will not effect the care of any children, the officials added.

“Harvard needs to fully come into compliance with Title IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” a senior HHS official told the Caller regarding what the university needs to do to have the funds unfrozen. “They need to remedy the violations of Title IV with respect to Jewish students on campus, they need to make sure that the not violating title six with respect to their admissions practices, and they need to provide sufficient guarantees that this conduct is not going to repeat itself.”

The Trump administration previously sent a list of demands to the institution, asking for several audits on their response to anti-Israel protests on campus and their admissions process. The institution released a public letter defying the administration’s requests. From there, the Trump administration moved to freeze $2.2 billion to the university. Monday’s action, shared with the Caller by senior HHS officials, is in addition to the $2.2 billion frozen.

“[Harvard’s public letter] clearly demonstrates that the university can, when motivated, respond quickly, but we’ve seen them go 18 months without apparently being sufficiently motivated to address the rampant antisemitism on this campus,” one senior HHS official told the Caller.

Since the Trump administration’s initial opening demand of the university, officials have not received any formal outreach from the institution, the sources told the Caller.

Harvard University sued the Trump administration on Monday over the frozen funds, the New York Times reported.

As far as if there are additional funding freezes in Harvard University’s future, a senior HHS official told the Caller that “all options are on the table,” but there weren’t specific grants they were currently considering pausing next.

“This is a pause of grant funding, not a termination. So we can assuming Harvard decides to come back into compliance with his federal civil rights laws, be turned back on,” a senior HHS official told the Caller.

The Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to the Ivy League, pausing billions of dollars to several universities over their response, or lack their of, to alleged anti-semitism on campus.

In March, Trump’s Education Department warned 60 institutions, including all the Ivy league institutions with the exception of Penn and Dartmouth, that it would take action if they “do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus.”

The administration followed up the letter in April, pausing $210 million to Princeton University and $510 to Brown University while federal investigations take place into the institution’s response to anti-semitism on campus are ongoing.

AUTHOR

Reagan Reese

White House corespondent. Follow Reagan on Twitter,

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

The post Trump Admin Freezes Additional $1 Billion In NIH Grants To Harvard University appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

Trump Admin Gets Serious About Collecting Defaulted Student Loans After Borrowers Got A Pass Under Biden thumbnail

Trump Admin Gets Serious About Collecting Defaulted Student Loans After Borrowers Got A Pass Under Biden

By The Daily Caller

The Department of Education (ED) Monday announced it will begin involuntary collection efforts for student loans after a five year pause.

A senior department official told the Daily Caller News Foundation the effort is aimed at removing the burden from taxpayers since involuntary collections were put on pause during the pandemic in March 2020 and never resumed under the Biden administration. ED will begin referring defaulted student loans to collections starting May 5 through the treasury offset program.

“The federal government student loan portfolio has continued to grow and we’ve got a record amount of our borrowers that are at risk of or in delinquency and default,” a senior ED official told the DCNF. “The federal student loan portfolio is headed towards a fiscal cliff if we don’t start repayment and collections.”

Only one in four borrowers are current on their student loans and as many as 4,000,000 borrowers are in late-stage delinquency of between 91 and 180 days, a department official informed the DCNF. About 35% of the federal student loan portfolio are 60 days delinquent and 5.3% have been in default for more than seven years.

“The current administration believes that American taxpayers can no longer serve as collateral for student loans. Student loan debt must be paid back,” the official said.

After a 30-day notice, the department will begin an administrative wage garnishment for unpaid loans beginning in the summer.

The department plans on kickstarting a “significant outreach effort to make borrowers aware of the obligations they have” as well as notifying them of the programs available for repayment, such as the income-driven repayment.

“We wholly believe that Congress has a role to play in fixing the higher education system that puts students in a position where they can afford their loan payments,” the department official told the DCNF. “So we’re looking forward to working with Congress on their efforts to streamline loan repayments as well as lowering college costs.”

Student loan repayments were temporarily paused during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic during the first Trump administration but the pause was continuously extended since. Former President Joe Biden attempted several times to forgive student loan debt, though many efforts were ruled unconstitutional.

AUTHOR

Jaryn Crouson

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Trump Admin Freezes Additional $1 Billion In NIH Grants To Harvard University

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republishd 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 Trump Admin Gets Serious About Collecting Defaulted Student Loans After Borrowers Got A Pass Under Biden appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

DOGE Exposes Millions in Blue-State Unemployment Fraud thumbnail

DOGE Exposes Millions in Blue-State Unemployment Fraud

By Family Research Council

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has revealed that it has found close to $400 million worth of fraudulent unemployment claims that have been paid out by the federal government since 2020. The revelation comes as the overall cost-cutting goals of the Trump administration initiative have become much more modest, but experts say that the effort is still vitally important in order to help reverse the trend of massive federal deficits year after year.

In a post on X last week, DOGE announced that it had uncovered over 24,000 claims from people purporting to be over 115 years old, for a total of $59 million in unemployment benefits. Another 28,000 people between the ages of one and five claimed $254 million, and another 9,700 people “with birth dates over 15 years in the future” claimed $69 million. “In one case,” DOGE reported, “someone with a birthday in 2154 claimed $41k.”

In a follow-up post on April 10, DOGE noted that “California, New York, and Massachusetts accounted for most of these improper claims, totaling $305M in unemployment benefits. Additionally, California accounted for 68% of the unemployment benefits paid to parolees identified by CBP on the terrorist watchlist or with criminal records.”

Notably, the three states are almost entirely controlled by the Democratic Party, with the governorship and both state legislative chambers led by Democrats in all three states. “There’s a reason for the mass exodus from Democrat-run states that have mismanaged their economies and driven residents to the nearest Republican-led state,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields told Fox News. “High taxes, poor stewardship of taxpayer dollars and progressive policies continue to yield negative results, which is why Americans overwhelmingly support the work of DOGE.”

A February poll indeed showed that over three-quarters of Americans supported the work of DOGE. But by March, polls showed that enthusiasm for the cost-cutting efforts had cooled off substantially, with 47% saying they had a negative view of the Elon Musk-led effort and 41% saying they had a positive view of it. Still, the polls indicated that a majority of Americans support the idea that the federal government should be downsized.

This widely popular sentiment helped energize DOGE’s initial flurry of activity after President Trump’s inauguration in January, with Musk predicting that the department could start cutting roughly $4 billion per day in order to reach the goal of $1 trillion in cuts by the end of the current fiscal year on September 30. But over the weekend, The New York Times reported that Musk predicted during a Cabinet meeting on April 10 that DOGE’s cuts would only total about $150 billion by September, 85% less than their original goal.

Nevertheless, DOGE has uncovered a significant amount of fraud that has eaten up millions of taxpayer dollars in addition to the false unemployment claims. Last week, the department revealed that under the Biden administration, almost four million noncitizens were assigned Social Security numbers, with 1.3 million of those individuals receiving Medicaid benefits.

In wide-ranging comments to The Washington Stand, Quena González, senior director of Government Affairs at Family Research Council, expressed great appreciation for the effort that DOGE is undertaking.

“DOGE is to be commended for scrutinizing the scope and size of government to look for waste, fraud, and abuse,” he remarked. “No administration has attempted to move at the speed and scale with which President Trump has.”

“Cutting government waste is always difficult, for three principal reasons,” he explained. “First, no government entity voluntarily resigns; government bureaucracies, by definition, are self-perpetuating. As President Ronald Reagan said, ‘No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!’”

González continued, “Second, when the government starts spending taxpayer money on something, a whole cottage industry springs up around facilitating that government funding, lobbying to make sure that taxpayer dollars continue to flow, and coaching the recipients to continue to request and receive more and more funding every year. Quoting Reagan again, ‘The first rule of a bureaucracy is to protect the bureaucracy.’ Third, those who would discipline government spending have to locate and stop the actual funding streams that have been set up. This is technical work that takes time and often requires congressional action in order to be effective.”

González went on to acknowledge that DOGE has had some missteps and will likely commit more in the future. “Cutting government spending of taxpayer dollars will meet so many entrenched interests that to be successful DOGE has had to move very, very quickly and at times act bluntly,” he noted. “Disciplining the size and scope of government is probably the fastest way to create political enemies in Washington. President Trump understands this; remember, this ain’t his first rodeo, and he saw how the entrenched interests in Washington blocked his efforts to ‘drain the swamp’ during his first administration.”

González concluded by applauding DOGE for its efforts to end taxpayer-funded abortion. “Christians, in particular, should cheer the fact that, from the very beginning, DOGE put taxpayer funding for abortion providers in its sights, and now it appears Congress may follow suit by defunding big abortion in the budget reconciliation process, making DOGE’s aspirations statutory.”

“Let’s not lose sight of what a reasonable goal this is,” he contended. “Taxpayers should never have been forced to subsidize big abortion in the first place; Planned Parenthood alone receives nearly $700 million a year from taxpayers, then raises and spends tens of millions of dollars — nearly $70 million in the past presidential election alone — painting even the most benign pro-life protections as ‘extreme.’ If Planned Parenthood and its ilk want to not only snuff out a million unborn lives a year, then turn around and tithe to the politics of Molech, they should at the very least be required to do their blood-soaked work on their own dime and stop forcing pro-life taxpayers to participate.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Johnson after Pulling Off another Stunner: ‘It’s a Benefit to Be Constantly Underestimated’

RELATED VIDEO: On this Tax Day 2025, let’s remind Congress what Americans voted for!

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 DOGE Exposes Millions in Blue-State Unemployment Fraud appeared first on Dr. Rich Swier.

10 Beautiful Bills for a Better America thumbnail

10 Beautiful Bills for a Better America

By Family Research Council

As Congress debates major issues regarding taxes, tariffs, and trade, it would be heartening for faith, family, and freedom Americans if it found time to pass topical bills that address other pressing concerns such as protecting unborn life, dismantling taxpayer-funded abortion, conscience protections, and more.

A number of these measures have been introduced in diverse forms in past Congresses indisposed to adopt them. Others are ideas whose time had not yet come. But in these still-early days of the 119th Congress, the two chambers of Congress, one of which had time for Senator Cory Booker’s (D-N.J.) around-the-clock oration, might well find room on their schedules to debate measures that accommodate conscience, support mothers and families, and protect an underappreciated national responsibility — the collection and analysis of social metrics.

Here are 10 measures that fit this general description, with the acknowledgement that they are only a sample of proposals that are within striking distance of adoption and worthy of congressional attention even in a crowded calendar.

Hawley Child Tax Credit Expansion

Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) champions an expansion of the child tax credit, a longtime bipartisan proposition, to $5,000 from its current value of $2,000 per child. The credit would reportedly be refundable against payroll taxes, be available during the year in which the child was conceived, and be paid out over the course of the year rather than remitted as a lump sum at tax time.

S. 4524, Lankford Conscience Protection Act of 2024

Reintroduced most recently in June 2024, legislation like this is urgently needed in an environment where existing federal conscience protections languished unenforced in the Biden years, and states like Illinois and Washington are moving to require physicians or pregnancy centers to refer for abortions against their convictions that these actions are morally and ethically wrong. S. 4524 would have reinforced several existing federal conscience laws and grant individuals and institutions a private right of action to assert their conscience claims in federal court. The proposed law would clarify that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) must investigate alleged conscience violations and can suspend federal funds for health-related services if the violators do not respect conscience.

H.R. 796, Miller Second Chance for Moms Act

Introduced on January 28, 2025 by Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), this legislation would amend the basic federal food, drug, and cosmetics legislation to require the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to mandate a warning label be placed on the abortion drug mifepristone. The warning label would advise women of the availability of an abortion pill reversal (APR) protocol that can often rescue their baby after the woman has taken the drug. It would require the secretary of HHS to create or contract with a 24/7, toll-free hotline to advise women on how to access abortion pill reversal with referrals limited solely to providers of APR.

H.R. 7, Smith No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2025

Introduced on January 22, 2025, Rep. Christopher Smith’s (R-N.J.) bill is an expanded version of previous anti-funding measures and now has 81 House of Representatives co-sponsors. The bill would make permanent the terms of the Hyde Amendment, which permits funding of abortion only in cases of rape, incest, or where a physical disorder, injury, or illness would threaten a woman’s life. It would apply to the full sweep of Hyde Amendment provisions applicable now to annual spending bills. H.R. 7 would also bar federal subsidies for the portion of health insurance premiums that pay for abortion coverage.

H.R. 271 and 272, Fischbach Defund Planned Parenthood and Protecting Life and Taxpayers Acts

These measures, introduced on January 14, 2025, would prohibit Planned Parenthood from accessing any discretionary or mandatory federal funds because of its immersion in the provision and promotion of abortion. The Protecting Life Act would require all federally-funded entities to certify that they will not carry out abortions or provide funds to any other entity that carries out abortions beyond the terms permitted by the Hyde Amendment. The Senate version of the Defund Planned Parenthood Act, S. 203, was introduced on January 23, 2025 by Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and has 11 co-sponsors. In addition, a coalition of 150 pro-life groups has called on Congress to cut funding for Planned Parenthood in the upcoming budget reconciliation bill.

S. 334, Risch American Values Act

This bill carries forward pro-life foreign assistance policy. Introduced on January 30, 2025 by Senator James Risch (R-Idaho), the bill would amend the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to ensure that no appropriated funds may be used to pay for abortion as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to be sterilized. The bill would also bar the use of funds to pay for biomedical research related to techniques of induced abortion or coerced sterilization. The bill has a dozen co-sponsors.

H.R. 627/S. 178, Norman-Ernst Ensuring Accurate and Complete Abortion Data Reporting Act of 2025

Introduced by Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) on the House side and Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) in the Senate, this is a critical piece of legislation that will ensure the demographic and some health implications of induced abortion are tracked and analyzable to the extent possible in a national, public framework. The urgency of this legislation, which would redress a half century of voluntary and incomplete national reporting, is all the greater thanks to the rapid expansion of chemical abortion conducted with little to no medical evaluation or supervision. The bill notes the disturbing facts that not a single data point regarding abortion is publicly available for all 50 states, and that three states, constituting 15% of U.S. abortion volume, share no reports at all with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

H.R. 578, Roy FACE Act Repeal Act of 2025

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) has led the fight against the much-abused Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a law that was weaponized during the Biden administration to target right-to-life demonstrators with vindictive prosecutions and harsh penalties. President Trump, as one of his initial executive actions, pardoned men and women, including grandmothers, who had been sentenced to lengthy prison terms for engaging in protests, while making little or no progress in identifying or prosecuting individuals who attacked churches and pregnancy help centers. Absent repeal of this legislation, Roy says, biased enforcement will promptly resume in a future administration. “Data my office obtained from Merrick Garland’s DOJ showed that 97% of FACE Act prosecutions from 1994-2024 were against pro-life Americans.”

H.R. 722, Burlison, Life at Conception Act

The United States has seen a recent spike in abortions, beginning before the 2022 Dobbs ruling but continuing in its wake, with one source reporting that our nation’s abortion toll has risen to more than one million abortions per year. As Congress and the states look for ways to support mothers, the fact remains that for much of the country, the legal status of the unborn is a void that must be filled. It is lawful in much of the land to dismember a child in the womb; to destroy a child in the third trimester or a human embryo because it is affected by Down syndrome or is not the preferred sex; to set aside a child born alive and deny him or her life-saving care; to use public funds to pay for and promote abortion; to leave a woman alone in a bathroom to expel the new life from her womb; or to ship abortion drugs across state lines with little or no medical support.

To address these wrongs, legislation is needed that not only delivers unprecedented levels of support for men and women to act for the good of their child, but to safeguard each and every innocent life. The Life at Conception Act, with 73 co-sponsors, faces a steep challenge in this Congress but it too would be a beautiful bill, one with the added virtue of honoring our best hope for a better future for America.

AUTHOR

Chuck Donovan

Chuck Donovan served in the Reagan White House as a senior writer and as Deputy Director of Presidential Correspondence until early 1989. He was executive vice president of Family Research Council, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, and founder/president of Charlotte Lozier Institute from 2011 to 2024. He has written and spoken extensively on issues in life and family policy.

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