Billions in 'savings' quietly deleted; Elon awards himself huge new contract at FAA; Trump keeps losing in court (and defying orders); Also: Un-finding the EPA's landmark climate 'endangerment finding'...
By Brad Friedman on 2/26/2025, 6:34pm PT  

"This country has gotten bloated and fat and disgusting and incompetently run," said the President of the United States today before his first Cabinet meeting. At least he's right on that last part, as detailed on today's BradCast. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]

Donald Trump and Elon Musk's corrupt gaslighting of the nation continues, as their DOGE Bros continue to violate the law by cancelling contracts they have no legal right to, in the supposed name of "government efficiency" and cutting "waste, fraud and abuse" from the federal government. And yet, they've been unable to find any evidence of any fraud or abuse to date. Other than their own.

The only transparency DOGE has offered to document their "cost-cutting" claims at federal agency after agency is a so-called "Wall of Receipts" claiming to have "saved" $65 billion for the American people. But multiple analyses of those "receipts" by news outlets and people who understand how government contracting ... and math ... and reality ... actually work, have found error after error. The actual savings from canceled contracts and public services to taxpayers is closer to $2.5 billion, rather than $65 billion (which is chump change in the U.S. budget either way). The DOGE Bros seem to have acknowledged as much when they quietly removed their top five largest so-called spending cuts from their website in the middle of the night on Tuesday without notice or explanation.

As these clowns and liars continue their attempted national gaslighting, pretending to cut "waste, fraud and abuse" in government grants and contracts, Musk awarded his own company, SpaceX, a huge new federal government contract to deploy some 4,000 Starlink Internet terminals for the FAA. Given that Trump has fired all of the Inspectors General who would certainly have flagged the obviously grotesque conflicts of interest involved in such an arrangement, Musk --- whose companies and tens of billions in government contracts had previously been regulated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (which are all now being gutted, killed and/or neutered by Musk himself) --- he's probably got nothing to worry about.

Nonetheless, as federal judges continue to order pauses on much of Trump's most unlawful activities for the moment --- (or try to, the Administration apparently doesn't find it necessary to follow court orders) --- Musk is further gaslighting and poisoning MAGA brains on his social media cite, calling for the impeachment of "unelected" judges who, he charges, are threatening democracy...by standing up for the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution.

Also today, Desi Doyen explains the breaking news on Trump's EPA Administrator attempting to roll back agency scientists' 20-year old finding that greenhouse gasses cause global warming and, therefore, pose a threat to the health of Americans. That "endangerment finding", according to SCOTUS almost 20 years ago, means that the EPA must regulate greenhouse gasses under the Clean Air Act. So now, the Administration is trying to fraudulently UN-find the EPA's landmark finding under Trump's corrupt, new leadership.

Finally, in related matters, Desi has our latest Green News Report, detailing new studies on the quickening melting of the world's glaciers; sea ice plummeting to record lows among ridiculously high temps in the Arctic; and Trump's order to shut down all, already-operating EV charging stations at federal facilities. Because, ya know, Trump is just cut government waste, fraud and abuse, right?...

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