DOGE Kills Shutdown Rumors, Vows to Continue Terrorizing Americans

The Department of Government Efficiency is claiming that it is still operational, despite reports that the agency has disbanded. 

In a post on X Monday night, the account called a Reuters article reporting that the agency “doesn’t exist” with eight months remaining on its charter “fake news.” 

“As usual, this is fake news from @Reuters,” the post read. “President Trump was given a mandate by the American people to modernize the federal government and reduce waste, fraud and abuse. Just last week, DOGE terminated 78 wasteful contracts and saved taxpayers $335M.  We’ll be back in a few days with our regularly scheduled Friday update. 🇺🇸”

DOGE has not posted since then, or offered any proof of the cuts. It also didn’t refute a key piece of information in the Reuters article: that DOGE is no longer a “centralized entity.” Its acting administrator, Amy Gleason, is now an official adviser to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Department of Health and Human Services, even as she makes jokes on LinkedIn.

Many of DOGE’s functions have been taken over by the Office of Personnel Management, and many of its employees have moved to other agencies within the government. So what does the X post mean? Maybe DOGE is still a tool in the hands of Elon Musk and Russell Vought, or a scapegoat whenever the Trump administration wants to make massive cuts. 

Whatever the case, the massive damage DOGE caused to the federal bureaucracy will live on and probably continue for the rest of the Trump administration. Whether the name lives on is another story. 

A well-timed phone call from House Speaker Mike Johnson may have been the tipping point for the White House to call off releasing Donald Trump’s new health care plan.

Ahead of the decision Monday, Johnson cautioned Trump officials against including a two-year extension to Affordable Care Act subsidies as part of the president’s so-called “Healthcare Price Cuts Act,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

Johnson reportedly told White House officials that Republicans just couldn’t get behind extending subsidies, after the speaker had spent more than a month railing against Democrats’ bid to save the subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year. Should those tax credits permanently lapse, an estimated 5.1 million Americans will lose their health coverage by 2034.

Johnson’s decision to throw a wrench in Trump’s rollout comes as insurance premiums are set to skyrocket starting in January, and premiums for individuals will increase by as much as double for millions of Americans.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is attacking the Scouts for not being nice enough to boys.

Hegseth plans to cut all military ties with Scouting America, formerly known as the Boy Scouts, on the grounds that they are attacking “boy-friendly spaces,” being too “genderless,” pushing “gender confusion,” and adopting diversity, equity, and inclusion, according to a draft memo to Congress reviewed by NPR.

“The organization once endorsed by President Theodore Roosevelt no longer supports the future of American boys,” Hegseth wrote in the memo.

“The Boy Scouts has been cratering itself for quite some time,” Hegseth said in a 2024 Fox interview. “This is an institution the left didn’t control. They didn’t want to improve it. They wanted to destroy it or dilute it into something that stood for nothing.”

Under the proposal, Scouts will no longer receive medical and logistical support for their massive “National Jamboree” and will no longer be allowed to visit military bases.

The proposal has not yet been sent to Congress but would bring an end to 100 years of support from the U.S. government.

“Scouting is and has always been a nonpartisan organization,” Scouting America said in a statement responding to the news. “Over more than a century, we’ve worked constructively with every U.S. presidential administration—Democratic and Republican—focusing on our common goal of building future leaders grounded in integrity, responsibility, and community service.”

Retired Army Staff Sergeant Kenny Green—who has three children who are scouts—was caught off guard by Hegseth’s proposal.

“It’s gonna be kind of harsh the way I say this.… It’s kind of like they don’t care about us more than they care about their perceived message. Scouting … it probably is not a perfect organization, but … I can’t even say how vast their benefits are, especially for military families.”

From fat-shaming troops to complaining that soldiers have been emasculated, this is par for the course for the defense secretary.

The peace plan offered by the Trump administration to end the war between Russia and Ukraine appears to contain few, if any, concessions from Russia, an administration official admitted Tuesday.

Maria Bartiromo interviewed U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker on Fox Business Tuesday morning, and pointed out that General Jack Keane, former Army vice chief of staff, told her that Russian President Vladimir Putin “hasn’t given up one concession in all of these months that [we’ve] been negotiating.”

Whitaker agreed and tried to spin what is obviously true by casting it as part of negotiations.

“There is some truth to what the general says, but let’s remember that there’s no perfect answer to this situation,” Whitaker said, adding, “Neither side is going to get what they want. We don’t know until we have a deal that’s hammered out who’s giving up what.”

Whitaker said that the Russians had a stronger position on the battlefield, and were making small gains every week, and that “unless Europe and the United States decided to take a different tack, this is where we end up, negotiating a peace deal from the reality.”

“We can all live in what-if worlds, but we have to live in the real world,” Whitaker added.

The initial plan proposed by the U.S. was heavily weighted toward Russia and even seemed to be translated from Russian, based on the syntax and vocabulary used. Even Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it “the wish list of the Russians.” U.S. and Ukrainian negotiators have since modified the plan, but that’s not likely to go over well with Putin.

Why did the Trump administration go public with Russia’s ideal solution instead of bringing Ukraine in on the process earlier? Now, while the deal may be acceptable to one side, it’s likely to fall through and prolong the fighting.

At least one Republican lawmaker was so outraged by the White House’s supposed Russia-Ukraine peace plan that he considered resigning from Congress then and there.

The Trump administration unveiled a 28-point peace plan last week that catered to some of Russia’s most outrageous demands, such as requiring Ukraine to swear off NATO membership and to hand over Crimea and the eastern Donbas region. Those two details alone have reversed long-standing U.S. policy with regard to the area.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have balked at the arrangement, but Nebraska Representative Don Bacon was reportedly “so angry” at the idea that he thought about quitting the lower chamber altogether, he told Axios Monday night.

Bacon has little to lose since he’s already on track to retire—he announced in June that he will not seek reelection in 2026, capping his 10-year career in Congress in early 2027.

That’s given the 62-year-old some extra wiggle room to lament the Trump administration’s maneuverings, damning the rushed peace process as the “Witkoff Ukrainian surrender plan” after special envoy Steve Witkoff, who played a major role in crafting the deal.

“In the end I have a commitment to our constituents to fulfill my term,” Bacon told Axios, noting that he “shared [his] anger” with House Speaker Mike Johnson but opted not to mention his resignation.

Ukraine and its European partners were excluded from the plan’s drafting process, reported The Guardian. But there is some evidence that the plan may have come directly from the Kremlin: Several sentences in the document are passive and clunky in English but make more sense when translated into Russian. That could be the influence of Kirill Dmitriev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s envoy, who worked on the project alongside Witkoff.

Donald Trump has touted himself for months as a great peacemaker, pushing a narrative that he has—so far—solved eight foreign conflicts. Practically all of his war-solving braggadocio is “demonstrably untrue,” to the extent that several of the examples he often lists were never even at war. But despite repeated efforts, he has not made any headway on the Russia-Ukraine war.

Trump has conceded quite a bit to Russia’s dictator, to no avail. This summer, Trump literally rolled out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska, marking Putin’s first return to U.S. soil in more than a decade. But after the theatrics were over, the two world leaders still failed to reach a consensus on how to end the bloodshed, with Trump losing his cool while Putin demanded that Ukraine cede even more territory to Russia.

More than 13,300 civilians have been killed and 31,700 injured in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February 2022, according to a United Nations report from June.

The Justice Department is still signing criminal indictments with Lindsey Halligan’s name—almost a day after a judge ruled that she was unlawfully appointed as interim U.S. attorney.

Federal prosecutors were initially instructed to sign court filings in the name of Halligan’s first assistant, after U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie concluded Monday that Halligan had no authority to preside over the Eastern District of Virginia since she was never confirmed by the U.S. Senate. But just an hour later, internal emails instructed the department to continue using Halligan’s name, labeling Currie’s decision “premature,” reported MS NOW’s Lisa Rubin.

The move is a flagrant violation of Currie’s court order, which threw out Donald Trump’s cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“Ms. Halligan has been unlawfully serving in that role since September 22, 2025,” Currie wrote in her opinion. “All actions flowing from Ms. Halligan’s defective appointment … constitute unlawful exercises of executive power and must be set aside.”

Currie tossed the case “without prejudice,” giving Trump a potential pathway to try the cases again on the same charges should he legally replace Halligan.

Trump handpicked Halligan—a former White House aide with no prior prosecutorial experience—to replace the last attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Halligan’s predecessor, Erik Siebert, had refused to prosecute Comey and James after he couldn’t find incriminating evidence against the pair.

Halligan was sworn in to the powerful position in September. Ignoring protocol, the Trump loyalist moved full steam ahead on prosecutions under the banner of Trump’s approval for months, despite the fact that she was never confirmed by the Senate.

Border Protection Commander Gregory Bovino made several wild attempts to dodge questions while testifying about his excessive use of force against protesters in Chicago.

In a 223-page injunction ruling last week, U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis slammed Bovino over his “evasive” testimony, claiming that he’d only responded to questions with “cute” answers or by “outright lying.” A look at the transcript of Bovino’s testimony, newly released on Monday, revealed just how bad things got during his deposition.

While discussing a video of him deploying chemical irritants on protesters in the Little Village neighborhood—which he admitted to having lied about—Bovino played dumb and became combative.

“Is C.S. gas commonly known as tear gas?” asked the interviewer.

“I don’t know, I—I don’t refer to it that way,” Bovino replied, though C.S. gas is one of the most commonly used tear gases in the world.

When asked whether he would admit to throwing a canister of tear gas on that particular day, in that particular location, Bovino said he would deny it.

“You said canister—I threw two. That’s plural,” Bovino replied. As the interviewer attempted to rephrase the question, Bovino continued to argue over the semantics.

Bovino had also previously claimed he had been hit in the head by a rock before deploying chemical irritants, but in his deposition said he’d been “mistaken.”

“The white rock was thrown at me, but that was after I deployed less lethal means in chemical munitions. I was mixed up with several other objects in a very chaotic environment. And I confused that white rock with other objects that were thrown at me,” he said.

Bovino repeatedly played dumb when asked about potential misconduct committed by federal agents under his command during “Operation Midway Blitz.”

When asked about the details of a video of the ICE processing center in Broadview, a suburb of Chicago, that he said he’d watched in preparation for the deposition, Bovino said: “I can’t recall the details of that video that I looked at.”

When further pressed, he confirmed that “there were figures in the video,” before again saying, “I can’t remember.”

Later, when the interviewer asked whether Bovino was “responsible for ensuring that [CBP agents] complied with the law,” the CBP chief replied, “I’m responsible for them to do what now?”

When asked about an incident where agents deployed tear gas in Irving Park as parents and children departed their homes for a Halloween parade, Bovino claimed that the actions of agents “were justified if that happened.” But he maintained that he did not review any video of the incident, speak with any agents involved, or recall reading any reports on the incident.

Republican Senator Jim Justice and his wife didn’t pay his taxes, and now have to pay the IRS $5 million. 

On Monday, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Justice and his wife, Cathy, seeking  $5,164,739.75 in unpaid federal income taxes as of August. The debt goes all the way back to 2009, and includes accrued interest and penalties. So Justice and his wife cut a deal to pay back the IRS.

Justice served two terms as West Virginia’s governor, being elected as a Democrat in 2016 before switching parties the next year. After serving two terms, he was elected U.S. senator for West Virginia in 2024. He made hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from the sale of coal mines in 2009, vaulting him to the Forbes list of billionaires, which he stayed on until 2021. 

But during that time, Justice was racking up debt in the form of personally guaranteed bank loans, court judgments, and environmental liabilities. In 2016, The Washington Post reported that he had unpaid bills and fines to coal regulators and suppliers, and by January of this year, Forbes magazine reported that his liabilities had exceeded his assets. 

Last month, the IRS filed a tax lien against Justice and his wife, saying they owed more than $8 million. Justice claimed at the time that the charges were politically motivated. Now it seems he has to admit defeat.  

The GOP is finally being honest about why it’s itching for military intervention in Venezuela. Shocker—it wasn’t about the drugs, it was always about the oil. 

“I would love to see a change in government,” Fox News host Larry Kudlow said to Republican Representative Maria Salazar on Monday. “My wife’s from Nicaragua.… The dictators there rely on Venezuelan oil. But at the same time, a lot of Americans don’t want actual U.S. participation in regime change in Venezuela. They would much prefer the Venezuelans to do it on their own. Do you think the pressure that [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro has received will force him to leave on his own?”

“Maduro is not Fidel Castro, Maduro is not a brave boy.… He is on that very nefarious list of the terrorist organization, that the airspace above Venezuela has been closed off and the commercial airlines from the United States are not flying. He’s understanding that we’re about to go in,” Salazar replied.

She then went on to outline the top three reasons for more U.S. intervention in the Latin American country. Reason number one? Oil. 

“Venezuela—for the American oil companies—will be a field day. Because it will be more than a trillion dollars in economic activity. American companies can go in and fix the whole oil rigs,”  she said.

Salazar continued. 

“We’re gonna be doing a favor to us, to our children, to our economy, to our oil companies, and to the Venezuelans.” 

Regardless of your issues with Maduro (and there are many), Salazar’s language here is undeniably imperialistic. It feels like it’s ripped straight from the banana republic era of Latin America, or the Bush era before the invasion of Iraq. Republicans and the Trump administration have made such a big show of bombing drug boats to save “thousands” of American lives, when they really just wanted an excuse to enact the intervention Salazar refers to. But now they’ve gone fully mask-off. 

“Wow, at least with Iraq they had the decency to try and convince the American public about weapons of mass destruction,” one X user wrote. “Now they are just straight up telling us what they really want and no one can stop them.”

A regime change would not be some chill, bloodless agreement that sees Maduro willfully stepping aside and handing over all of his country’s most valuable resource. It would most likely be met with violence that would hurt the Venezuelans more than anyone else. 

“U.S. military action could trigger a crisis on the same order as happened in Iraq after the U.S. regime change effort there,” Caracas-based International Crisis Group senior analyst Phil Gunson told The New Republic. “If the U.S. does decapitate the government, the multiple armed actors could bring about a degree of anarchy. None of these different groups have any incentive to just lay down their arms. There have been several decades of accumulated resentments on various sides, and it’s not fanciful to imagine that there could be lynchings. There could be bombings or selective assassinations.”

Salazar saying  “us,” “our children,” and “our economy,” before she even mentions the citizens of the country she wants to invade so badly tells you everything you need to know about where U.S. priorities are. 

Republican Representative Elise Stefanik is scrambling to recover her gubernatorial campaign’s messaging after President Donald Trump had a cozy meeting with her political foil, New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

Stefanik’s already botched bid to become governor of New York was thrown into flux Friday after a googly-eyed Trump shut down her wildly racist claim that Mamdani was a “jihadist.” Instead, he called the mayor-elect a “very rational person” and said he would feel safe living in New York City during Mamdani’s tenure.

In an interview with News12 Monday, Stefanik doubled down anyway, saying that she and Trump would have to “agree to disagree.”

“I stand by my statement. He is a jihadist,” Stefanik said of Mamdani. “This is an area where President Trump and I disagree. But what we all want to work toward is making New York more affordable and safe, and that’s where I have a very strong record and working relationship with the administration.”

Amid a massive meltdown over the meeting, Laura Loomer, the self-described “proud Islamaphobe” with the president’s ear, noted that Trump had put Stefanik in a bad position. “Dems just need to run clips of the presser today to defeat Elise,” Loomer wrote on X Friday.

Within a matter of minutes into the joint press conference with Mamdani, Trump managed to blow up Republicans’ talking points about the incoming mayor, which might have given them a leg up in the upcoming midterm elections in 2026.