Free Republic

DOGE is shifting attention to the Department of Education sparking a mini revolution among agency bureaucrats as Elon Musk's nerd army stormed into the building on Tuesday and saved over $900 million. Musk's lieutenants Akash Bobba and Ethan Shaotran, both 22 years old already have access to the department, NBC News reported. And there are reportedly as many as 16 team members are on the directory and have entered the premises as the agency begins to be ripped apart. Rep. Melanie Stansbury, (D-MD) described the terror agency staff are feeling after Musk's team entered to 'actively dismantle' the department. 'They...

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Trump Administration to restore the gender ideology webpages it deleted. US District Jud7ge John Bates of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, a George W. Bush appointee, ordered Trump to restore the pages by midnight tonight. Last month, President Trump scrubbed public health websites of all things related to “gender ideology.” A group dubbed Doctors For America sued the Office of Personal Management and numerous government agencies, claiming the removal could prevent doctors from helping patients. Judge Bates agreed with Doctors for America and ordered the extremist ideology to...

(Reuters) -A federal judge on Tuesday ordered U.S. health agencies to restore websites that they abruptly took offline in response to an executive order by President Donald Trump telling them to scrub websites of "gender ideology extremism." The temporary restraining order by U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington, D.C. came in response to a lawsuit by the left-leaning medical advocacy group Doctors for America, which said the sudden removal of websites by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration hampered doctors' and researchers' ability to fight disease. Bates ordered all websites specifically identified...

The GOP is protecting him at every turn. No one voted for Elon Musk. This is a constitutional crisis.

A federal judge rejected an attempt by some of the United States’s most powerful unions to block Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing the Department of Labor’s data. On Friday, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge John Bates issued a ruling striking a blow to AFL-CIO and five other large labor unions’ efforts to stop DOGE from accessing data filed in the Labor Department’s system, as well as information from the Education Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.The labor unions failed to show that “at least one...

The most dramatic narrative shift in this post-lockdown period has been the flip in the perceptions of government itself. For decades and even centuries, government was seen as the essential bulwark to defend the poor, empower the marginalized, realize justice, even the playing field in commerce, and guarantee rights to all. Government was the wise manager, curbing the excess of populist enthusiasm, blunting the impact of ferocious market dynamics, guaranteeing the safety of products, breaking up dangerous pockets of wealth accumulation, and protecting the rights of minority populations. That was the ethos and the perception. Taxation itself was sold to...

Feb 7 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday declined to block Elon Musk's government cost-cutting department from accessing the U.S. Department of Labor's systems, an initial setback for the government employee unions resisting his efforts to shrink the federal bureaucracy. The temporary ruling by U.S. District Judge John Bates in Washington, D.C., is the first step in a lawsuit against the Labor Department by one of the largest U.S. labor unions, which alleges billionaire Musk could obtain sensitive information about investigations into his own companies and competitors by accessing government computer systems. Bates ruled that "although the Court harbors...

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by billionaire Elon Musk, has reportedly gained access to all systems of the Small Business Administration (SBA), according to PBS on Monday. An email sent to SBA employees revealed that DOGE official Edward Coristine requested access to HR, contract, and payment systems during a call with staff. Employees were told the access was approved but were not informed by whom, and the request required immediate action for Coristine and Donald Park, advisers to DOGE. The SBA, an independent US government agency, supports small businesses and entrepreneurs by providing resources, loans, and disaster recovery...

George Soros 'didn’t want to create an employment agency,' his son says George Soros was "very upset" by the massive number of employees and "amount of bureaucracy" at his liberal nonprofit, the Open Society Foundations, according to the Democratic megadonor’s son. Alex Soros, the 39-year-old son of the 94-year-old hedge fund billionaire, told the Financial Times his "only regret" since taking over Open Society Foundations several years ago is that he didn’t slash the nonprofit’s workforce sooner. "My father didn’t want to create an employment agency, he wanted to create a network of networks and he was very upset with...

Trump signs executive order to withdraw from the World Health Organization

LOS ANGELES—Barry Josephson enjoyed a peaceful life in his hilltop home in the Pacific Palisades, save for one constant worry: the highly flammable brush that clogged the surrounding government-owned land. “We all take a risk living here,” the producer of films including “Enchanted” said. “But that land should be maintained.” There have been at least five fires in the area since Josephson moved there eight years ago. Most were fueled by brush, which consists of drought-resistant shrubs that burn easily and intensely. Impatient with government bureaucracy, including a $150 fee for permission to remove brush from state parkland, some of...

Lars Ultra MAGA Larson @LarsLarsonShow Those 60 engines sent yesterday to the Cali fires are not on the fire lines...yet. https://opb.org/article/2025/01/08/oregon-sending-crews-help-battle-los-angeles-area-wildfires/ They've been ordered to submit to a DOT inspection in Sacramento that's scheduled for 4:30 pm today. If they clear the inspection, they'll THEN be able to drive 400 miles to Pacific Palisades. Talk about "looking a gift horse in the mouth." Then, on the way home, they get inspected again, and if they get red tagged, it's "fix it before you can return." Does liberal stupidity know no bounds? (I'm still waiting for a return call from @OSFM...

Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives are planning to introduce legislation to abolish the controversial Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration. According to Fox News, Congressman Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) will introduce the bill, which has earned several prominent co-sponsors, including: Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Mike Collins (R-Ga.), Bob Onder (R-Mo.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Mary Miller (R-Ill.), Keith Self (R-Texas), and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.). In a statement announcing the legislation, Congressman Burlison denounced the ATF as an “unconstitutional agency.” “The Constitution makes it very clear that when it comes to the federal government, there...

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday granted two requests from California to enforce strict standards for vehicle emissions, including a rule aimed at banning sales of new gasoline-powered cars in the state by 2035. The incoming Trump administration is likely to try to reverse the action. The California rule is stricter than a federal rule adopted this year that tightens emissions standards but does not require sales of electric vehicles. EPA said its review found that opponents of the two waivers did not meet their legal burden to show how either the EV rule or a separate measure on heavy-duty...

The debate around the value of flexible work for government workers has intensified, not only at the federal level but also in state government, with certain legislators adamant about mandating a return to traditional office settings. In Wisconsin, this has come to a head, with Gov. Tony Evers (D) threatening to veto any state budget that contains return-to-office mandates for state employees. Using Wisconsin as a lens, it is evident that pushing government employees back into the office en masse is not only counterproductive but also short-sighted, ignoring the realities of modern work dynamics and evidence supporting flexible arrangements. Wisconsin’s...

The clash over working from home is expected to be one of the major battles for the incoming Trump administration. The nation's biggest federal union is pushing back against claims by President-elect Donald Trump's supporters over teleworking for civil servants. The American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 800,000 federal and Washington city workers, said assertions that staffers are abusing work-from-home flexibility are serving as cover for Republican lawmakers to try to tear down the government. The clash over telework is expected to be one of the major battles for the incoming Trump administration as conservatives push for the civil...

There are at least four steps Trump can take immediately to make good on campaign promises to vanquish DEI from the federal bureaucracy. According to the White House, “hours after taking the oath of office,” President Joe Biden embarked on an ambitious “day one,” “whole of government” agenda to “advance racial equity.” What followed was a shock-and-awe program of racial preferences. During his term, Biden signed three signature pieces of legislation — the American Rescue Plan Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act — which gave certain preferred racial groups access to programs, benefits, and special treatment,...

We do not live in anything resembling the nation that was envisioned by our Founders, and for the first time in modern American history, we seem to have reached a consensus in recognizing that fact. This was just dramatically evidenced in a presidential election, in which a broad coalition of voters from the political left and right voted overwhelmingly for a Donald Trump, who promised to create a “government efficiency commission” to be headed by Elon Musk. SNIP Lowi observed, writes Mark Steyn in After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the...

As part of his new administration, President-elect Donald Trump has said he wants to revive Schedule F — an ultimately unsuccessful effort from the end of his first term that sought to remove civil service job protections for potentially tens of thousands of career federal employees. But based on survey data, one famous GOP pollster argued that the public would not support such a policy. Frank Luntz told attendees at a National Academy of Public Administration conference on Nov. 14 that 61% of respondents — including majorities of Democrats, Independents and Republicans — would prefer a “non-partisan, nonpoliticized civil service...

And whoever it is that Trump finally puts in charge of the Department of Justice as Attorney General is likely to have the same agenda as Gaetz in purging liberal hardliners from its staff of lawyers who have not only taken part in the lawfare against Trump but also enabled the woke virus to spread throughout the government. That's a battle that Americans who understand the grave damage that Leftist ideology is doing to the country know must be fought. And while some on the left are mocking Trump's idea of Department of Government Efficiency led by billionaire Elon Musk...