Category: Bureaucraps

BREAKING: NIH Chief Admits COVID Global Health Initiatives Were “Completely Made Up;” Reveals COVID Vaccines Don’t “Stop You From Getting COVID”.

Raja Cholan, Chief of the Health Data Standards Branch at the U.S. National Library of Medicine for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has raised eyebrows with his candid remarks on COVID vaccines, global health strategies, and their broader implications.

Cholan admitted he has chosen not to receive the latest COVID vaccine boosters, citing mixed evidence of their efficacy: “I haven’t gotten the latest COVID shots, and I’m not going to… there’s mixed evidence about if it really does anything.” He also expressed concerns over the risks the vaccine poses to younger individuals, saying, “For people that are 30 or under, it really increases your risk for heart conditions. The data does show that… I’m close enough to 30 to where I don’t want to have a heart attack.”

Cholan further questioned the vaccines’ effectiveness, stating, “I don’t even know if these vaccines stop you from getting COVID. They don’t.”

Cholan also linked the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to funding research in Wuhan, China, alleging, “There is some evidence out that the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases… they might have funded Wuhan, a lab in Wuhan, China, to make COVID.” He pointed to Dr. Anthony Fauci’s former role at NIAID, claiming, “That’s where Fauci was the director. Like they might have funded some labs to do vaccine studies and disease, like to prepare for an outbreak.”

Criticizing the expedited vaccine approval process, Cholan noted the contrast with the measles vaccine, which requires multiple rounds of testing: “The measles vaccine requires several rounds of approval, but the COVID-19 vaccines were accelerated through the approvals for all of us to get our boosters.” He also highlighted the financial motivations behind the vaccines, saying, “Pfizer and Moderna are just getting a bunch of money from it.”

Cholan concluded by commenting on the difficulty of implementing reform, even under an administration led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He pointed to the entrenched relationships between federal agencies and pharmaceutical companies, adding, “Anything that RFK would want to do probably would just, like, wouldn’t happen.”

O’Keefe Media Group reached out to Cholan for comment regarding his statements but did not receive a response. On release day of the first installation of the NIH Tapes, Cholan deleted his LinkedIn account, sparking further speculation about his involvement in the issues raised.

Tom Cotton slams ‘partisans and obstructionists’ in DOD reportedly plotting to block Trump plans

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., blasted anyone within the Defense Department working to safeguard certain norms or policies that they expect the incoming Trump administration to target.

“It appears that partisans and obstructionists inside the Department of Defense are laying groundwork to defy or circumvent President Trump’s plans for both military and civil-service reform,” Cotton wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in reference to reports of such strategizing among DOD employees.

“These actions undermine civilian control of the military and our constitutional structure of government.”

Earlier this month, it was reported that there were “informal discussions” occurring among Pentagon officials on what the department would do if Trump ordered the military for a domestic purpose or if he fired a significant number of employees, per CNN.

One anonymous defense official was quoted in the report saying, “Troops are compelled by law to disobey unlawful orders.”

“But the question is what happens then – do we see resignations from senior military leaders? Or would they view that as abandoning their people?” they reportedly asked.

President-elect Trump promised during his campaign to shake up the federal government, whether it be through staffing changes or reorganization. Some reports have indicated specific people are being looked at for termination once he enters office again. An ally of Trump, former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, has been vocal about his belief that the federal government must be shrunk in size.

Ramaswamy has been tapped by Trump, along with billionaire business magnate Elon Musk, to lead his planned Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in his new administration. The proposed department has the goal of reducing the size of government, cutting spending and increasing efficiency.

Cotton criticized Lloyd in his letter for “promulgating false claims that the incoming administration plans to arbitrarily fire uniformed leaders.”

Further, he slammed the secretary for a message after the election that the military would specifically follow “lawful orders” from Trump. Cotton said this was “a thinly veiled and baseless insinuation that President Trump will issue unlawful orders.”

“I have to observe that these actions and reports only prove the need for reform and fundamental change at the Department of Defense. And, of course, while inappropriate and annoying, these tactics are also useless because no action by the outgoing administration can limit the incoming president’s constitutional authority as commander-in-chief,” the Arkansas Republican wrote.

Cotton was recently elected to serve as chairman of the Senate Republican conference in the new Congress. He is also expected to take Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s place as the head of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

The DOD did not immediately provide comment to Fox News Digital for purposes of this story.

And This Is Why the Public Doesn’t Trust the DOJ

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ)’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has released its annual report identifying the top management and performance challenges currently facing the federal agency.

Among the OIG’s findings, a lack of public trust in the DOJ remains a “longstanding” problem, Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz announced Monday, and strengthening such trust poses “a significant challenge.”

However, in its 59-page report highlighting incidents that have contributed to the department’s confidence crisis, the DOJ watchdog largely overlooked transgressions under the Biden-Harris administration, which still reigns. Instead, the OIG looked farther back to Trump’s time in office, his first term, as we head into the president-elect’s second.

Based on the OIG’s oversight work, the inspector general’s office blames a medley of Trump-era episodes as reasons why public trust in the institution has eroded over time.

First, the OIG report points to public statements that former federal prosecutor David Freed, a Trump-nominated U.S. attorney, made about an ongoing criminal probe into alleged ballot tampering during the 2020 presidential election.

Freed had said several mail-in military ballots, mostly cast for Donald Trump, were discarded (tossed into the trash) at a Pennsylvania election office in pro-Trump Luzerne County.

Ultimately, the OIG concluded that Freed’s comments “unnecessarily inserted partisanship into the investigation” and “created a false impression” that the incident was “much more serious than DOJ leadership knew it to be.”

The report also calls attention to another OIG inquiry into claims that senior DOJ appointees placed “political pressure” on the trial team prosecuting Roger Stone, a close confidant of Trump, so that they lowered their sentencing recommendations.

While the OIG did not find evidence that the prosecution’s revision was the result of “improper political considerations,” the report chastises the “unusual substantive involvement,” though not prohibited by law or policy, of then-Attorney General Bill Barr and other high-level DOJ officials in the second sentencing recommendation’s preparation and filing.

Their embroilment in the case against the president’s political ally “affected the public’s perception of the Department’s integrity, independence, and objectivity,” the OIG says.

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Well, we need to eliminate NFA-34, FFA-38, GCA-68 & 18 U.S. Code  Chapter 44, as well, or some other bunch of bureaucraps will simply start enforcing those laws & regulations.

As Trump Heads to White House Rep. Burlison Pushes Plan to Abolish ATF

With President-elect Donald Trump heading to the White House and Congress under Republican control, Rep. Eric Burlison (R) is pushing ahead with plans to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, commonly known as the ATF.

FOX News quoted Burlison describing the ATF as “a disaster.”

He said, “For several decades they’ve been a disaster agency [which has] been violating the Second Amendment.”

Burlison wants a scenario in which states handle their gun law enforcement without federal agencies breathing down their necks.

He re-posted an X post from Ted Nugent on Friday:

The ATF issued numerous rules during the Biden/Harris administration, one of which criminalized owners of legally purchased AR-pistol stabilizer braces. Another one of the ATF’s rules declared that 80 percent complete firearm frames are firearms and therefore can only be acquired via background checks.

The ATF also issued a rule instituting, for all intents and purposes, universal background checks.

Lawsuits filed by Gun Owners of America, the Firearms Policy Coalition, and the Second Amendment Foundation, have rendered many of these and other ATF rules unenforceable or otherwise moot. Legal action on some of the rules continues and Rep. Burlison wants an America in which the lawsuits would not be necessary because the ATF would not exist.

The Honeymoon Is Over: Trump’s Pick for Labor Secretary Is a Teachers’ Union Fave

Well, that didn’t last as long as I would have liked. President-elect Donald Trump had been on a roll with his choices for roles in his next administration. On Thursday, he ruined the good vibes with one horrible, horrible Cabinet pick.

In Tuesday’s Morning Briefing, I celebrated Trump’s nomination of Linda McMahon to be Secretary of Education. Her strong views on school choice rattle the people in charge of the teachers’ unions, who are the biggest obstacle to education reform because they’re powerful leftist political lobbies. I noted that substantive progress with school choice would be “a direct shot at the heart of the Democrats’ main source of funding.”

On Thursday, Trump did something to make the teachers’ unions happy.

The Wall Street Journal:

Hard to believe, but Donald Trump on Friday night nominated a favorite of teachers union chief Randi Weingarten as his Labor Secretary. Why would Mr. Trump want to empower labor bosses who oppose his economic agenda and spent masses to defeat him?

Mr. Trump’s regrettable choice is Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Ms. Weingarten on Thursday tweeted her support for the freshman Republican. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, who spoke at the Republican National Convention, has also been pulling for her. In a Truth Social post, Mr. Trump said she’ll work toward “historic cooperation between Business and Labor.” But Ms. Chavez-DeRemer has backed union giveaways like the Pro Act, which are not “cooperation.”

I’ll get to the Pro Act in a moment. For the moment, let us focus on the fact that Randi Weingarten is a vile human being. She was the face of school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, and championed keeping them closed far longer than even the other tyrants thought was necessary. Weingarten wrecked a generation of public school children, forcing them into a brutal game of “catch up” that many will never win.

Then she lied about her role in all of that.

She’s Team Trump with the Chavez-DeRemer choice though:

When one of the most clinically insane leftists in America thinks that a Republican politician did a good thing, it means that the Republican just did a clinically insane leftist thing.

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DOD ‘Intentionally Delayed’ National Guard Deployment To The Capitol On Jan. 6

Federal bureaucrats within the Department of Defense (DoD) delayed the deployment of the National Guard on Jan. 6, 2021 and covered it up, according to a House Republican investigation of government conduct related to the Capitol riot.

On Thursday, Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., who is leading a review of the work completed by the partisan Jan. 6 probe run by then-Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, sent a letter to the inspector general for the Department of Defense demanding a correction to an agency report published in November 2021.

“This report was the final product of the DoD IG’s review into the events of January 6, and reviewed how the DoD responded to requests for support as the events unfolded,” Loudermilk, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight for the House Administration Committee, wrote. “Throughout the Subcommittee’s extensive investigation into the failures of January 6, 2021, we have discovered numerous flaws and inaccuracies in the report that your office has yet to appropriately address.”

Such flaws and inaccuracies, however, may have been part of a partisan cover-up after GOP lawmakers discovered the Pentagon was responsible for delays in guard deployment.

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Trump’s pick for FCC chairman…..

We Are Living in Interesting Times

We are living in interesting times. Tulsi Gabbard will be taking the role of Director of National Intelligence, John Radcliffe will be Director of the CIA, Matt Gaetz will (I predict) be the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy will be the Secretary of HHS, and the rumor is that Kash Patel will be Director of the FBI; if Gaetz and Patel aren’t confirmed, the rumor is they will be investigating senators’ federally-funded hush-money payments for the senators own sexual peccadilloes (which is why I predict they’ll be confirmed).

This reminds me of other interesting times.

During and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a lot of the Soviet client states own governments collapsed. Sometimes violently, as with Romania or the fission of Yugoslavia, sometimes more quietly, but pretty uniformly, the Soviet-aligned satrapies were replaced by their own people.

The unification of East and West Germany wasn’t particularly violent, but the Germans on both sides of the Wall were very interested in finding out what The German “Democratic” Republic was doing, and to whom, during its reign.

Central to that and one of the largest parts of the GDR government was the Minsiterium für Stattssicherheit, familiarly abbreviated to the Stasi. A good summary is at the link (at least now, that is, Wikipedia), but in short, the Stasi arrested upwards of 250,000 people and extended its hooks into every aspect of East German life.

The ratio for the Stasi was one secret policeman per 166 East Germans. When the regular informers are added, these ratios become much higher: In the Stasi’s case, there would have been at least one spy watching every 66 citizens! When one adds in the estimated numbers of part-time snoops, the result is nothing short of monstrous: one informer per 6.5 citizens. It would not have been unreasonable to assume that at least one Stasi informer was present in any party of ten or twelve dinner guests. Like a giant octopus, the Stasi’s tentacles probed every aspect of life.

— John O. Koehler, “Stasi:The Untold Story of the East German Secret Police”

After the “Peaceful Revolution” of 1989, Stasi offices were taken over by the German people, while former Stasi officers desperately tried to destroy files and records, unsuccessfully, as it turned out.

But why did the Stasi collect all this information in its archives? The main purpose was to control the society. In nearly every speech, the Stasi minister gave the order to find out who is who, which meant who thinks what. He didn’t want to wait until somebody tried to act against the regime. He wanted to know in advance what people were thinking and planning. The East Germans knew, of course, that they were surrounded by informers, in a totalitarian regime that created mistrust and a state of widespread fear, the most important tools to oppress people in any dictatorship.

—Hubertus Knabe, German historian

The files were massive and damning. It was no wonder they were trying to destroy them. As I say, they were interesting times.

Now we’re having our own interesting times. I think we’re in nearly similar times to the German Peaceful Revolution. Oh, I don’t mean to imply that the FBI, CIA, and DoJ were as bad as the Stasi — I would be very much amazed that there were hundreds of thousands of people imprisoned for Wrongthink.

But thousands? Seems likely. And more thousands were intimidated, charged, and harassed. All of them are in government files that are now vulnerable to being disclosed. Jeremy Epstein’s passenger lists. Records of the FBI agents and informers who were supposed to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer. Records of Crossfire Hurricane and DoJ cooperation with Fani Willis, Alvin Bragg, and Letitia James. And most interesting of all, files covering people we don’t know to expect. That’s the way political police work — they don’t intimidate and investigate and collude with only the people we expect.

As I say, we live in interesting times.

Matt Gaetz may scare Democrats more than President-elect Trump
Gaetz doesn’t seem to care. He has bigger things on his mind.

Last January, former U.S. Congressman Matt Gaetz [R-FL-1] introduced H.R. 374. It was a short bill that became known as the “Abolish the ATF Act.”

“The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is hereby abolished,” Gaetz’s bill said.

It was simple, really.

Unfortunately, it received the same response as other bills Gaetz had submitted, such as H.R. 9534, the National Constitutional Carry Act, or H.R.3142, the Stand Your Ground Act of 2023. The bills were introduced but never received any further attention.

Gaetz didn’t seem to care about his lost legislation. He had bigger things on his mind.

Gaetz will always be known best for leading the fight that dumped the former Republican Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, last year. But for those who really know the 42-year-old former congressman who lives in Fort Walton Beach, Florida with his wife Ginger, this too was just par for his course.

Gaetz’s critics were never the silent type. Now, they’ve become slaphappy and completely unglued.

Axios reported there were gasps in the room coming from Republican lawmakers when Gaetz name was first announced.

“It must be the worst nomination for a cabinet position in American History,” John Bolton told NBC’s Meet the Press. Gaetz is “totally incompetent” for the AG position, Bolton said, adding, “This is a nomination the Republican Party would oppose.”

“I don’t think it’s a serious nomination for the attorney general,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska. “This one was not on my Bingo card.”

The BBC seemed to get Trump’s Gaetz decision better than the rest of the traditional media. They said Gaetz’s “bombastic approach” meant that he has no shortage of enemies, including some of his fellow Republicans.

“And so, Trump’s choice of Gaetz for this crucial role is a signal to those Republicans, too — his second administration will be staffed by loyalists who he trusts to enact his agenda, conventional political opinion be damned,” the BBC wrote.

Gaetz recent resignation from the House brought a quick halt to the internal investigations that had plagued him for the past few years, and House Speaker Mike Johnson referred to Gaetz as an “accomplished attorney.”

“He’s a reformer in his mind and heart, and I think that he’ll bring a lot to the table on that,” Johnson said.

To be clear, Gaetz has denied every allegation made against him, which are now moot.

Critics be damned

Matt Gaetz was not available Thursday. Calls to his former congressional phone numbers went straight to voicemail. Additional phone numbers were not answered either.

Gaetz is nothing new or divisive to longtime Floridians. In fact, he’s exactly what we want from our public servants. A longtime radio host told me Thursday morning that Gaetz’s now former constituents cared about two issues: “Guns and guns.” I would strongly agree.

Gaetz cares more about the Second Amendment than anyone else in Congress — especially the Democrats. So, of course they are going to attack him personally. In fact, Gaetz is currently attracting as much if not more hate and discontent from the left than President-elect Donald J. Trump.

Unfortunately, much of the press Gaetz now faces is about what you’d expect, especially the stories from NBC.

A story published by NBC News Wednesday titled, “Justice Dept. employees stunned at Trump’s ‘insane,’ ‘unbelievable’ choice of Matt Gaetz for attorney general,” sums up most of the angst that characterizes the legacy media.

“OMG,” a current senior Justice Department official said. A second department official called the selection “truly stunning,” and a third labeled it “insane,” the story claims. Of course, none of the alleged Republicans were named.

I’m pretty confident that Gaetz isn’t bothered by NBC’s stories or those of other likeminded reporters. After all, he’s got as they say in his section of Florida’s panhandle, bigger fish to fry.

Matt Gaetz has strongly supported the Second Amendment since his first day in Congress, and he will get President-elect Trump’s backing for his new job regardless of what the Democrats choose to do, even if it takes a recess appointment or some other type of maneuver.

Florida and now the entire country need Matt Gaetz.

Thousands of ICE Officers Will Be Reassigned From Desk Jobs to Field Work.

The New York Post is reporting that incoming Border Czar and former Border Patrol agent Tom Homan will reassign U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who are currently engaged in processing asylum applications and other office work to the field.

During the Biden administration, up to 70% of ICE officers from field offices were assigned to desk jobs. Most of them will be assigned and, after training in fieldwork, hit the streets of America’s sanctuary cities.

Homan put those cities on notice.

“If they’re not willing to do it then get out of the way — we’re coming,” Homan said. He noted that tougher immigration enforcement will require more manpower “so if I have to flood agents to the sanctuary cities to get the job done then that’s what we’re gonna do.”

It’s unclear how Trump’s mass deportation plan will work. It’s a good bet that people will not be randomly stopped on the street and asked for their “papers.”

But doing the job that cities refused to do — holding illegal alien criminals convicted of felonies to turn over to ICE — would be a very good start.

“If the fugitive operations street team isn’t making enough arrests, they’ll crack down on them first,” a source told the Post. He’s referring to the ICE program that helps field offices locate and arrest illegal aliens who represent a threat to national security or public safety.

“And if that’s still not enough, then they’ll probably be mandated to add more officers to the arrest team to make more arrests.”

Grandstanding Democrats are waving the bloody shirt, promising to resist the federal government’s efforts to arrest illegal aliens. One of the early frontrunners for the 2028 Democratic nomination, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, challenged Homan to enforce the law in Illinois.

“To anyone that comes to take away freedom and dignity of Illinoisans, I would remind you that a happy warrior is still a warrior,” Pritzker said.

“You come for my people – you come through me.”

The 300-pound Pritzker would certainly present a problem trying to go through him. But Homan threw down his own gauntlet in response.

“Game on. We’ve got no problem going through him. I’ve got 20,000 men and women in ICE who are going to do their job with no apology,” Homan said. “And if any governor wants to stand in the way, go ahead and do it. We’ll see what happens. We’re not gonna be intimidated.”

Homan, who served in the last Trump administration as acting ICE director, said that in his first week on the job, he plans to visit the southern and northern borders and meet with Border Patrol and ICE personnel to get a sense of their greatest needs.

He also indicated that he would prioritize making arrests of illegal migrants who pose threats to national security and public safety, and bring back worksite raids, which the Biden-Harris administration halted in October 2021.

“And look, there’s some worse than others, I get that,” Homan continued. “And even if they’re not a criminal alien, when you cross that border and you overwhelm the border patrol… that’s when the fentanyl comes across to kill a quarter-million people. That’s when you have a 600% increase in sex trafficking. That’s when you have a record number of terrorists crossing the border. Illegal immigration is not a victimless crime.”

“We’re gonna enforce the law without apology… and if any governor wants to stand in the way, go ahead and do it. We’ll see what happens. We’re not gonna be intimidated.”

I think Pritzker, Gavin Newsom, and other Democratic governors have met their match.

Parting shots?

BLUF
This is what happens when you have a government run by coastal elites with little or no knowledge of how most of the country lives and works. OSHA will hold public hearings beginning this week on the impact of the new regs on small-town and rural volunteer fire departments.

New OSHA Emergency Response Standards Could Shutter 80% of Volunteer Fire Departments.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is seeking final approval for a massive overhaul of the “Fire Brigade Standard” that’s been in place for 50 years. The 608 pages of new rules, quite simply, would mean that about 80% of volunteer fire departments in the United States would be forced to cease operations.

“Over 85 percent of America’s fire departments are either volunteer or mostly volunteer. Nearly 700,000 of America’s 1,056,000 firefighters are volunteers or paid per call firefighters,” a group of lawmakers, led by Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Christopher Coons (D-Del.) said in a statement. “The proposed rule would apply to more workers than the existing standard and would require fire departments to furnish new reports, trainings, equipment, and health services.”

OSHA’s new standards would “increase training requirements, require more pre-planning for emergency situations, set stricter limits on the lifespan of some firefighting equipment, and impose more rigorous health screenings for [fire] fighters,” according to KCUR public radio.

For full-time firefighters, the new rules will save lives. Since the original Fire Brigade Standard was published, we’ve learned a great deal about carcinogens burned away in fires as well as toxic fumes that can lead to cardiovascular disease. Most firefighters who die while on the job do not die in fires but die of cancer and heart disease. A new standard is long overdue.

This is fine for big-city departments and other departments whose full-time firefighters are augmented by volunteers. But the new standards also cover other emergency employees who would be forced to go through training programs and other regulatory rigmarole that small towns and rural counties simply couldn’t afford.

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Court Vaporizes 50 Years of Environmental Law Leaving Trump’s EPA to Build on the Ashes

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit summarily vaporized 46 years of Federal environmental regulations. Writing in a case called Marin Audubon Society, et al v. FAA, et al, the majority of a three-judge panel ruled that the Council on Environmental Quality, a cabal inside the Executive Office of the President charged with ensuring that National Environmental Protection Act requirements are interpreted uniformly across the federal government, had illegally used the Federal Register to publish that guidance thereby giving citizens, agencies, and even the courts the impression that their internal guidance had the authority of law.

The decision was written by Karen LeCraft Henderson (George H. W. Bush) and A. Raymond Randolph (George H. W. Bush) with Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan (Joe Biden) dissenting, and it found:

As the parties argue the case, it centers on whether the Agencies complied with regulations of the Council on Environmental Quality, an entity within the Executive Office of the President.  We will not address these arguments.  The CEQ regulations, which purport to govern how all federal agencies must comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, are ultra vires.

Ultra vires means the CEQ was acting “beyond the legal scope of it authority.”

The court goes on to detail the shenanigans by which an advisory body with no regulatory authority was able to write environmental regulations for the entire United States for nearly a half-century just because it decided it could.

Making the case even more awesome is that it was set off by enviro-wackos suing the FAA for allowing sightseeing flights near some national parks. The enviros claimed the FAA used the wrong standard established by the CEQ to permit the flight. They ended up being right in a backhanded kind of way.

This decision throws the entire environmental regulation scheme governing the federal government into chaos. I suspect that many of the CEQs regulations will be reissued by other agencies, but after Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (see The Supreme Court Firebombs the Administrative State and Tells Congress to Get Off Its Butt and Work) that slew the medusa called “Chevron deference,” the survival of those replacement regulations is not assured.

The silver lining is that Trump’s EPA, under Lee Zeldin (see We Have Another Trump Cabinet Pick: Lee Zeldin Gets the Nod), will get the first crack at reworking useless and expensive regulations.

Complete Decision

Marin Audobon Society vs. FAA by streiff on Scribd

The answer is “Hubris”

The question not being asked.

This Autumn has been rough for the Southeast. First, Hurricane Helene ripped up Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, and then Hurricane Milton hit a different part of Florida and tore it up.

And the season isn’t over yet.

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By now, you may have already heard about what happened down in Florida and may well have happened elsewhere. It turns out that personnel working for FEMA knocking on doors to see if people were eligible for federal funds were told to skip the homes of obvious Trump supporters.

After publication of this story, a FEMA spokesperson told The Daily Wire it was “deeply disturbed” and “horrified” by the employee’s actions, and that it has “taken extreme actions to correct this situation.”

“While we believe this is an isolated incident, we have taken measures to remove the employee from their role and are investigating the matter to prevent this from happening ever again,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “The employee who issued this guidance had no authority and was given no direction to tell teams to avoid these homes and we are reaching out to the people who may have not been reached as a result of this incident.”

“This is a matter that we take extremely seriously and we are doing everything we can to make sure all survivors receive support from FEMA. To date, we have helped over 365,000 households impacted by both Hurricanes Helene and Milton in the state of Florida and have provided over $898 million in direct assistance to survivors.”

“We are horrified that this took place and therefore have taken extreme actions to correct this situation and have ensured that the matter was addressed at all levels. Helping people is what we do best and our workforce across the agency will continue to serve survivors for as long as it takes.”

That’s all fine and well.

Plus, the individual responsible for that, Marn’i Washington, has been fired from her position and the case has been referred to the Office of Special Counsel. That means she faces potential prosecution for her actions, which should most definitely happen.

However, while people are focusing on what happened—and for understandable reasons—I can’t help but ask the question no one else seems to be asking. Why did she think she could get away with it?

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FEMA outrage reveals weaponized government — and points Trump toward reform.

One of President-elect Donald Trump’s first orders of business must be to de-weaponize the federal government. One episode from Florida illustrates why.

Not long ago you might have charged me with paranoid conspiracy theorizing if I had told you that federal disaster relief workers were deliberately keeping Trump supporters from receiving government assistance.

But they were, and a FEMA supervisor has been fired for it.

FEMA skipping Republicans’ homes:

Marn’i Washington allegedly told FEMA workers in Florida to skip houses with Trump signs out front after Hurricane Helene.

“Avoid homes advertising Trump,” she wrote in a “best practices” memo to employees, a copy of which was obtained by Daily Wire, reportedly reinforcing this with a verbal order.

Er, except that it was true. And The New York Times, as of this writing, had not corrected its false reporting, which itself constitutes disinformation.

So does that mean the conspiracy theorists are right?  Well, yes and no.

If the “conspiracy” would involve a handful of big-shots in a smoke-filled room sending out orders to their minions, not really.

That happens in government sometimes — as with the federal campaign to quash dissent on social media over COVID policy and the disputed 2020 election — but usually it doesn’t work that way.

Because it doesn’t have to.

When you have a federal workforce that overwhelmingly favors the Democratic Party, coupled with nonstop media (and social media) accounts of how awful Republicans are and how it’s fair to do pretty much anything to stop them because they’re basically Hitler, you don’t need to issue orders.

People act on their own.

I very much doubt that any FEMA higher-up told Marn’i Washington to skip over houses with Trump signs.

She just knew that she hated President Trump and wanted to punish his supporters. Then she took action.

Democrats like to see themselves as vital soldiers, defending democracy — and, coincidentally, their party’s power — from opponents who are not merely different, but outright evil.

This sense of self-importance is coupled with a self-esteem-boosting snobbery: They tell themselves they deserve to be in charge because they’re so much smarter and better and more moral than the hoi polloi.

And the allegedly high stakes justify even the most immoral actions because they’re in service of a higher cause — stopping Hitler! (An excuse that’s always available: Democrats characterize just about all of their GOP opponents as the next Hitler, going all the way back to Tom Dewey in 1948.)

Trump has said he will fire bureaucrats who get in the way of his reforms, and plans to vastly thin the civil service in general. This will help.

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Sedition, Insubordination, Conduct Unbecoming. In a time of war; Treason.
This sort of thing must be rooted out and the bureaucraps fired, those on active duty who took part relieved, and those who may not have been on active duty (retired), recalled and face courts martial. The military must be completely subordinate to the elected constitutional national command authority and follow their legal orders or what we’ll wind up with is a military hunta akin to the praetorian guard of the roman empire who decided who the next emperor would be after disposing of the last one.

Sorry, We Can Only View This Secret Pentagon Meeting as a Plot to Foment an Insurrection

John Frankenheimer directed a movie called Seven Days in May in the 1960s, starring Kirk Douglas as a military officer who uncovers a coup against the president of the United States by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who signed a deeply unpopular nuclear disarmament treaty. That’s a movie. In 2024, the Pentagon brass plotted to countermand President-elect Donald J. Trump’s orders. If we’re going by the Left’s rules here, this is an insurrection. It’s a military coup. What’s worse is that these anti-Trump meetings were held in secret and then got leaked to the media (via CNN):

Pentagon officials are holding informal discussions about how the Department of Defense would respond if Donald Trump issues orders to deploy active-duty troops domestically and fire large swaths of apolitical staffers, defense officials told CNN.

Trump has suggested he would be open to using active-duty forces for domestic law enforcement and mass deportations and has indicated he wants to stack the federal government with loyalists and “clean out corrupt actors” in the US national security establishment.

[…]

“We are all preparing and planning for the worst-case scenario, but the reality is that we don’t know how this is going to play out yet,” one defense official said.

Trump’s election has also raised questions inside the Pentagon about what would happen if the president issued an unlawful order, particularly if his political appointees inside the department don’t push back.

“Troops are compelled by law to disobey unlawful orders,” said another defense official. “But the question is what happens then – do we see resignations from senior military leaders? Or would they view that as abandoning their people?”

CNN’s Scott Jennings tore apart these unelected bureaucrats yesterday. We’re back to the same Deep State games, but this time, Trump, with no re-election ahead of him, can go hard and fast to rid the Pentagon and any agency of troublesome government workers who think they’re above the law and not accountable to the will of the people. The illegal orders narrative is also ridiculous, soaked in the anti-Trump hysterics that have engulfed the Left.

Secret meetings on thwarting a duly elected president are not a good look.