404 Media reports that Musk's highly touted government waste tracking website is the pinnacle of transparency in government. The problem is that it is an empty shell: Elon Musk's Waste.gov Is Just a WordPress Theme Placeholder Page -- Musk told reporters all of DOGE's actions are "maximally transparent." The website tracking waste is currently about an imaginary architecture firm. “Waste.gov: Tracking government waste,” the tagline for the website, archived here, says. .... “We actually are trying to be as transparent as possible. In fact, our actions—we post our actions to the DOGE handle on X, and to the DOGE website. So all of our actions, which are maximally transparent,” Musk said. “In fact, I don’t think there’s been — I don’t know the case that where [sic] an organization has been more transparent than the DOGE organization.”
Once the 404 Media reported about the faux website, Musk took it down to hide it. The images above are from the archived web site page.
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The New Republic reports about an implication of the USSC grant of immunity to DJT that TNR spins as a setback for DJT in a lawsuit. TNR writes: "Trump’s Supreme Court Immunity Ruling Just Came Back to Bite Him -- A federal judge ruled Monday that Trump’s FBI must disclose records from its Mar-a-Lago case file, complying with a FOIA request by Bloomberg’s Jason Leopold. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell decided that the Supreme Court’s decision—combined with his return to the White House and its executive privileges—has insulated Trump enough from further criminal prosecution to allow the release of documents."
DJT did not want the case file documents to be released. To hide the documents showing his crimes, DJT ordered the federal agency involved to argue that the government could neither to confirm or deny the existence of the requested records or information because of the possibility of DJT being prosecuted in the future for the laws he broke in his Mar-A-Lago crime spree. That's an odd argument considering the DoJ released photos of the documents.
Remember these photos from
the fun-filled past?
Ah, the good old days . . . . .
Anyway, the judge blew a raspberry at DJT's argument and said the documents had to be released because (i) the USSC gave him vast immunity from prosecution in 2024 (Trump v. US), and (ii) because a sitting president cannot be prosecuted, even without the extra wall of immunity he got in 2024. Since there was no realistic chance of him being prosecuted for any of those federal crimes, his claim of possible future prosecution was baloney.
Although TNR spun this as a setback for DJT, it is in only a very narrow sense. The documents will be released, maybe causing a moment or two of mild discomfort for him, but probably not. To me, the much bigger point is a federal judge saying that all of his past federal crimes are no longer prosecutable. That's the main point.
“He didn’t get away with anything, yet.”
Remember what the cynical liar Mitch McConnell said in 2021 about a former president being prosecutable?
“President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office. ... He didn’t get away with anything, yet. We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being [held] accountable by either one.”
Guess what? He got away with all of his federal crimes. For practical purposes, we no longer have a significant criminal or civil justice system in this country for DJT or MAGA supporters or elites he chooses to protect. And, he can protect by (1) pardoning himself or his criminal friends for federal crimes, (2) ordering his subverted Department of Justice to not prosecute himself or his criminal friends for federal crimes, (3) pressuring or coaxing state law enforcement in red states to not prosecute himself or his criminal friends for state crimes, and (4) threatening state law enforcement in blue states to not prosecute himself or his criminal friends for state crimes in those states.
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The Independent reports an incident that shows how aggressively DKT and MAGA are using their power to obliterate inconvenient facts and truths to advance their twin authoritarian and pro-corruption policy goals: "USAID inspector fired after revealing nearly $500m in food aid was about to spoil amid Trump funding freeze -- The inspector general for the U.S. Agency for International Development was fired on Tuesday – one day after his office issued a critical report warning that nearly $500 million in food was about to go bad due to President Donald Trump’s freeze on the agency."
If one isn't mistaken, isn't letting half a billion in food spoil a form of waste? Seems so. But, the spoils here isn't the food gone bad. It's DJT and MAGA's power to fire fraud and waste watchdogs in the federal government and replace them with deeply corrupt loyalist MAGA goons. This is the new normal. Like it or not, it's time to get used to it.
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I don't like it!
