All posts tagged "Federal Government"

WASHINGTON — After a slow start, President Donald Trump has been ramping up the pace of judicial nominations — but it remains to be seen if his recent public breakup with the increasingly far-right Federalist Society will impact the quality of his picks.

While Senate Republicans have tried to stay out of the fray, Democrats have enjoyed watching the brewing right-wing civil war.

“I love it. It's delicious,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told Raw Story. ...

Truth Social users replied in droves with support for Elon Musk after Donald Trump posted a threat to take away the Tesla founder's government subsidies.

According to the Washington Post, Musk's companies have received $38 billion from the federal government over the past 20 years.

In their ongoing war of words Thursday, Trump posted, "The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!" ...

WASHINGTON — As Elon Musk hits the exit from the Trump administration, the top Democrat on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) DOGE — Delivering Government Efficiency — Subcommittee is laughing off the billionaire as a “fraud” and “poser” who squandered his shot to streamline government.

“Turned out that literally everything Elon Musk said on TV was just bullsh—t,” Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), the ranking member on the DOGE panel, told Raw Story in an exclusive interview at the U.S. Capitol.

Stansbury also divulged secrets about her GOP counterpart, including a recent moment during a particularly tempestuous hearing when she felt the need to slide Greene a snack. ...

Billionaire Elon Musk is expanding his political interests beyond the federal government to eye state races that could benefit his companies if the right people are elected, according to an opinion piece in The New York Times.

Musk has turned his gaze to Wisconsin, where he is unsurprisingly supporting the conservative candidate for the state's supreme court. A victory for Musk's candidate, Judge Brad Schimel, "would flip the court from liberal to conservative control, with potentially enormous implications for access to voting, legislative districts, abortion and more," wrote law professor Kate Shaw.

She continued, "Just as it has been difficult to disentangle Mr. Musk’s personal financial motives from his ideological goals when it comes to dismantling the federal bureaucracy, it’s not clear how much of his Wisconsin intervention is ideologically driven and how much may be more narrowly self-interested. In January — just a week before Mr. Musk’s endorsement of Judge Schimel — Tesla sued the state of Wisconsin in a challenge to state dealership rules that may well end up before the State Supreme Court."...

As Donald Trump and Elon Musk continue to run roughshod over the federal government with seeming impunity, there are at least three areas of restraint that could stand in their way, according to analysis by The Washington Post.

"So far the resistance has been minimal," writes chief correspondent Dan Balz. "Democrats have offered little opposition beyond rhetoric. Republicans in Congress have acted as if they are an extension of the executive branch rather than a separate branch of government."

What, then, can keep the two billionaires in line if the system of checks and balances fails to stop their "search-and-destroy mission designed as much to intimidate federal workers and exact retribution against perceived enemies as it is to make government more efficient"?...

A former U.S. State Department employee under the first Trump administration is urging current federal workers to take an offered buyout and flee Washington.

Chuck Park served as a diplomat for 10 years before quitting the Foreign Service in disgust in 2019. Park wrote an opinion piece for The Washington Post then to explain his decision, and is now urging other government employees in the second Trump administration to follow his lead.

In a new opinion piece, Park references the "Fork in the road" email sent by "First Buddy" Elon Musk on Jan. 28, urging federal employees to consider taking a "deferred resignation offer." Park writes in Tuesday's piece, "Here’s my advice to civil servants: Take the fork."...