November 22, 2024

November 22, 2024. Annette’s News Roundup.

Matt Gaetz is gone.

Breaking on @MSNBC
At least 5 Senate Republicans were already a 'no' on Matt Gaetz — McConnell, Murkowski, Collins, Mullin, Sen.-elect Curtis — and had communicated to other senators they were unlikely to be swayed.

Time to turn to Trump’s other nominees, the “Finest People.”

Meet Pete Hegseth, the Fox television presenter who is Trump’s pick for Secretary of Defense.

The woman who Pete Hegseth paid off "went to a hospital and reported a sexual assault on October 12, where she underwent a rape kit exam and gave the clothes she was wearing on the night of the alleged assault to police. A nurse at the hospital first reported the alleged assault to authorities" according to CNN who reviewed the 22 page police report obtained from the incident.

You already know Bobby Kennedy, Jr. and Elon Musk. Both face serious sexual assault charges.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been tapped to serve as the Department of Health and Human Services secretary.

A former babysitter for the Kennedy family in the late 1990s told Vanity Fair this summer than Kennedy had, in separate incidents, rubbed her leg under the table during a meeting and asked her to rub lotion on his back.

A recent college graduate at the time, she also recounted an alleged sexual assault, telling the magazine that Kennedy had groped her.

The Washington Post reported that Kennedy had privately apologized to the woman in July via text message, saying he didn't remember the encounter but that any harm caused was "inadvertent." (Source. Axios).

This is only one issue on which RFK, Jr horrifies. As you likely know, he is also a leading anti-vaxxer. Plus there is much unbalance there too - for example, when he was revealed to be a man who put a dead bear in Central Park.

As to Elon Musk, besides being Trump’s shadow, he and Vivek Ramaswamy have been chosen to head up a new Department of Government Efficiency, known as “DOGE.”

Musk and his company SpaceX were hit with a lawsuit in June from eight former employees who alleged they were wrongly fired after raising concerns about sexual harassment and discrimination against women at the company.

SpaceX did not comment on the lawsuit at the time. The company rarely responds to press inquiries from media outlets.

The lawsuit accused Musk of "unwanted conduct and comments of a sexual nature" and said he "knowingly and purposefully created an unwelcome hostile work environment based upon his conduct of interjecting into the workplace vile sexual photographs, memes, and commentary that demeaned women and/or the LGBTQ+ community."

Context: The same employees had also filed similar charges against SpaceX with the National Labor Relations Board in 2022. Earlier this year, SpaceX sued the NLRB to dispute the charges, the New York Times reported. (Axios).

Meet the Dr. Oz. Trump nominated a TV Doctor to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Dr. Oz is most famous for baseless medical claims, like red onions to prevent ovarian cancer and Trump’s favorite, hydroxychloroquine, to prevent Covid 19.

He had to pay $5.25 million to settle claims he promoted phony weight-loss drugs.

During the pandemic, he urged reopening the schools and said it was acceptable for 2-3% of American children to die.

Like Trump’s other nominees, he also has no administrative experience.

"Dr. Oz will work closely with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to take on the illness industrial complex, and all the horrible chronic diseases left in its wake," Trump said in a statement.

Lest you think Trump’s female picks are more qualified…

Meet the real Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick for Department of Education.

Linda McMahon, Trump’s choice as education secretary, LIED and said that she had a bachelor’s degree in education on a questionnaire for a Connecticut Board of Education post. She resigned from the education board one day after the Hartford current told her that they were going to write a story about her false claim. Her excuse was that she “thought” she had a degree in education. 🤦🏽‍♂️.

One more thing.

A lawsuit filed last month on behalf of five former WWE "Ring Boys" accused McMahon and her husband, WWE mogul Vince McMahon, of being complicit in the grooming and sexual exploitation of children.

The lawsuit alleged the McMahons knowingly gave ringside announcer Melvin Phillips Jr. "free reign" to entice boys as young as 12 or 13 to help around the shows.

The lawsuit also alleged that the McMahons knew since at least as early as the 1980s that Phillips had a "peculiar and unnatural interest" in boys.(Axios]

There is Tulsi Gabbard too, for Director of National Intelligence.

Hillary called her a Russian asset. Nikki Haley called her “a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer”

This is true too.👇

Last but not least, meet Pam Bondi, Trump’s choice to be the nation’s top law officer now that Matt Gaetz had to withdraw.

A complaint filed by the Democratic Coalition Against Trump in 2016 read, "We believe that Pam Bondi, Florida Attorney General, and Donald Trump have violated federal voting laws including but not limited to bribery across state lines by way of a $25,000 campaign contribution from Trump to Bondi during her 2013 election by way of the Trump Foundation in return for AG Bondi dropping an investigation into Trump University. We ask the DOJ to investigate this matter." (Source. ABC News).

Floridians know who Pam Bondi is too - she attempted to sue the Affordable Care Act out of existence and overturn the pre-existing conditions clause. Further, she was a lead lawyer protecting Trump during the 2nd Impeachment.

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Musk and Ramaswamy intend to end Congressional power at Trump’s command.

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, these two unelected men lay out how they intend to change America by firing unelected men and women.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: The DOGE Plan to Reform Government.

Following the Supreme Court’s guidance, we’ll reverse a decadeslong executive power grab.

Our nation was founded on the basic idea that the people we elect run the government. That isn’t how America functions today. Most legal edicts aren’t laws enacted by Congress but “rules and regulations” promulgated by unelected bureaucrats—tens of thousands of them each year. Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections.

This is antidemocratic and antithetical to the Founders’ vision. It imposes massive direct and indirect costs on taxpayers. Thankfully, we have a historic opportunity to solve the problem. On Nov. 5, voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change, and they deserve to get it.

President Trump has asked the two of us to lead a newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to cut the federal government down to size. The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have abetted it for too long. That’s why we’re doing things differently. We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees. Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we won’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We’ll cut costs.

We are assisting the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America. This team will work in the new administration closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget. The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings. We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws. Our North Star for reform will be the U.S. Constitution, with a focus on two critical Supreme Court rulings issued during President Biden’s tenure.

In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022), the justices held that agencies can’t impose regulations dealing with major economic or policy questions unless Congress specifically authorizes them to do so. In Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), the court overturned the Chevron doctrine and held that federal courts should no longer defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of the law or their own rulemaking authority. Together, these cases suggest that a plethora of current federal regulations exceed the authority Congress has granted under the law.

DOGE will work with legal experts embedded in government agencies, aided by advanced technology, to apply these rulings to federal regulations enacted by such agencies. DOGE will present this list of regulations to President Trump, who can, by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission. This would liberate individuals and businesses from illicit regulations never passed by Congress and stimulate the U.S. economy.

When the president nullifies thousands of such regulations, critics will allege executive overreach. In fact, it will be correcting the executive overreach of thousands of regulations promulgated by administrative fiat that were never authorized by Congress. The president owes lawmaking deference to Congress, not to bureaucrats deep within federal agencies. The use of executive orders to substitute for lawmaking by adding burdensome new rules is a constitutional affront, but the use of executive orders to roll back regulations that wrongly bypassed Congress is legitimate and necessary to comply with the Supreme Court’s recent mandates. And after those regulations are fully rescinded, a future president couldn’t simply flip the switch and revive them but would instead have to ask Congress to do so.

A drastic reduction in federal regulations provides sound industrial logic for mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy. DOGE intends to work with embedded appointees in agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions. The number of federal employees to cut should be at least proportionate to the number of federal regulations that are nullified: Not only are fewer employees required to enforce fewer regulations, but the agency would produce fewer regulations once its scope of authority is properly limited. Employees whose positions are eliminated deserve to be treated with respect, and DOGE’s goal is to help support their transition into the private sector. The president can use existing laws to give them incentives for early retirement and to make voluntary severance payments to facilitate a graceful exit.

Conventional wisdom holds that statutory civil-service protections stop the president or even his political appointees from firing federal workers. The purpose of these protections is to protect employees from political retaliation. But the statute allows for “reductions in force” that don’t target specific employees. The statute further empowers the president to “prescribe rules governing the competitive service.” That power is broad. Previous presidents have used it to amend the civil service rules by executive order, and the Supreme Court has held—in Franklin v. Massachusetts (1992) and Collins v. Yellen (2021) that they weren’t constrained by the Administrative Procedures Act when they did so. With this authority, Mr. Trump can implement any number of “rules governing the competitive service” that would curtail administrative overgrowth, from large-scale firings to relocation of federal agencies out of the Washington area. Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home.

Finally, we are focused on delivering cost savings for taxpayers. Skeptics question how much federal spending DOGE can tame through executive action alone. They point to the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which stops the president from ceasing expenditures authorized by Congress. Mr. Trump has previously suggested this statute is unconstitutional, and we believe the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question. But even without relying on that view, DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.

The federal government’s procurement process is also badly broken. Many federal contracts have gone unexamined for years. Large-scale audits conducted during a temporary suspension of payments would yield significant savings. The Pentagon recently failed its seventh consecutive audit, suggesting that the agency’s leadership has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent. Critics claim that we can’t meaningfully close the federal deficit without taking aim at entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which require Congress to shrink. But this deflects attention from the sheer magnitude of waste, fraud and abuse that nearly all taxpayers wish to end—and that DOGE aims to address by identifying pinpoint executive actions that would result in immediate savings for taxpayers.

With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government. We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail. Now is the moment for decisive action. Our top goal for DOGE is to eliminate the need for its existence by July 4, 2026—the expiration date we have set for our project. There is no better birthday gift to our nation on its 250th anniversary than to deliver a federal government that would make our Founders proud. (Wall Street Journal, op-ed).

One more thing.

Look who MAGA chooses to work with these two.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a standard-bearer for the MAGA wing of congressional Republicans, said on Thursday that she would serve as the chairwoman of a planned House subcommittee meant to partner with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in their work with the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. The panel is being planned by Representative James Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, she said. (New York Times).

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Your Daily Reminder

Trump is a convicted felon.

On May 30th, he was found guilty on 34 felony counts by the unanimous vote of 12 ordinary citizens.

The Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump was scheduled to be sentenced on July 11th and September 18th. He will now be sentenced on November 26.

In a decision issued November 12th, Judge Merchan granted the stay until Nov. 19. He gave the prosecution until then to file an outline of appropriate next steps.

Tuesday was the day!

Manhattan prosecutors on Tuesday rebuffed President-elect Donald J. Trump’s request to dismiss his criminal conviction in the wake of his electoral victory, signaling instead their willingness to freeze the case while he holds office.

In a letter to the judge overseeing the case, prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office emphasized that a jury had already convicted Mr. Trump of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal. Prosecutors and judges are often loath to unravel a jury’s verdict.

But acknowledging the unprecedented nature of the case — Mr. Trump would be the first felon to serve as president — the prosecutors raised the prospect of a four-year freeze so that he will not be sentenced for his crimes until he is out of office.

The judge, Juan M. Merchan, will decide in the coming weeks whether to freeze the case or dismiss it outright, a momentous ruling that will shape the outcome of the only one of Mr. Trump’s four criminal cases that made it to trial.

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