USAID Funding Billionaires

Stiff constituents! Devastate rural America! Trump and Musk need to gorge.

Let me say this at the outset, you are seeing Trump and Musk’s smoke and mirrors, a massive con game that will end up costing us $1.5 trillion in DAMAGES alone. I believe this is the future.

• No Federal employee firing will stand in court.

• No canceled Federal contract, USAID or other, will stand in court.

• All damaged will recover everything after the $4.5 trillion tax cut is passed.

• Republican legislators know all of this and lie to their constituents.

• They do not care if the deficit increases from $36 to $50 trillion.

• That is what we are about to endure unless we shut them down.

Michael Popok (Legal AF podcast) provides an in-depth overview of the 92 lawsuits and 34 injunctions and restraining orders filed against the Trump administration, where plaintiffs—including state attorneys general, public interest groups, and Democratic lawyers—are prevailing at an astonishing 99% rate.

Figure 1. While there has been a wall of opposition from Democrats, there is discomfort among Republican legislators at town halls. Those legislators are now hiding and shutting down future Town Halls. They are spineless, cowardly Republican legislators.

Because the Trump administration has executed the en masse terminations of USAID contracts under broad policy considerations, the terminations lack contracting officer business judgment required to sustain terminations for convenience. Accordingly, contractors and grantees impacted by such terminations should consider a challenge based on contracting officer abuse of discretion. Contractors who successfully challenge such terminations under the Contract Disputes Act could recover what they expected to receive under the contract, including lost profits. Krygoski Constr. Co. v. United States, 94 F.3d at 1545.

Challenges of a termination for convenience based on bad faith (i.e., done to harm the contractor) are usually unsuccessful because it requires a very difficult standard of proof (“well-nigh irrefragable” proof). Federal courts have, however, found that contracting officers abuse their discretion when they fail to exercise independent business judgment in terminating a contract. See e.g., N. Star Alaska Hous. Corp. v. United States, 76 Fed. Cl. 158, 209 (2007). In TigerSwan, Inc. v. United States, 118 Fed. Cl. 447, 453 (2014), the U.S. Court of Federal Claims found that “the contracting officer’s failure to make an independent decision weighs in favor of finding an abuse of discretion,” and that such a failure also means that “the contracting officer’s reasons for termination are not entitled to the deference typically afforded to contracting officer decisions.”

The next step for us is laid out by Joe Katz (Rogan’s List) in his best piece ever.

“WHAT WILL WE DO IF TRUMP DEFIES THE COURTS? The Trump Administration has taken defeat after defeat in the courts this week, and like all authoritarians they have responded by recommitting to their attacks on the legitimacy of those who dare to check their power. Elon Musk has again been insisting that judges cannot block the actions of the President and those who do must be removed, and multiple senior Trump Justice Department nominees testified before the Senate during their confirmation hearings that some court orders can be ignored. Matters may come to a head soon – Trump’s appeals of orders they’ve been resisting to release seized foreign aid funds are now before the Supreme Court. This is a constitutional crisis in motion, and it might be fast approaching the moment when it can no longer be ignored. Let’s once again reach out to our members of Congress and elected leaders on all levels of government and ask if they have a plan for how they will respond if the White House explicitly rejects the checks of the judiciary – and demand they publicly commit to using all tools available to them to preserve the rule of law and our Constitution. We can use scripts and language here. Let’s also make our own plans for how we’ll respond, starting with making sure we are plugged into the local networks where we can hear about immediate calls to protest.

Unconscionable Conduct. The House on February 25 by a vote of 217 to 215 approved a fiscal year (FY) 2025 budget resolution that directs the House Ways and Means Committee to approve net tax cuts of $4.5 trillion over 10 years.

The House Republican’s blueprint for $4.5 trillion in tax breaks is predicated on only $2 trillion in bogus budget cuts. That is unconscionable when we have a $36 billion deficit. Do they have $2 trillion of cuts lined up? They do not! They have smoke and mirrors “trust me”. Do they care? They do not! Will they pass a tax cut with only dogma behind it? They will.

They will hide from their constituents, but cannot hide from their fraud. None of the Administration’s firing will stand in court. None of the Administration’s cancellations of contracts will stand in court. All will be made whole with lost profit, damages, and legal fees recovered.

Obviously, Republican legislators do care what their constituents think; hence, they lie to their constituents. Republican legislators do not care if their constituents are being damaged by their Government. They actually make fraudulent misrepresentations to get their constituents to roll over on it. You would have thought that more than one single Republican would vote against the tax bill’s passage. There was only one. I call those voting for passage scumbags.

Next steps on the tax cut package are long and cumbersome before anything can become law — weeks of committee hearings to draft the details and send the House version to the Senate. Therefore we must besiege our legislators right now.

Senate Republicans passed their own scaled-back version. And more big votes are ahead, including an unrelated deal to prevent a government shutdown when federal funding expires on my birthday, March 14. Those talks are also underway.

Talking out of both sides of their mouth but voting for, several Republican lawmakers say that they worry that scope of the budget cuts being eyed — particularly some $880 billion over the decade (think Medicaid) to the committee that handles health care spending or $230 billion to the agriculture committee that funds food stamps—will be too harmful to their constituents back home. Ya think? It is much worse, Jess Piper!

Figure 2. Rural hospitals will close in droves without Medicaid funding. Over 180 closed since 2005. I believe that none will survive without Medicare and Medicaid funding sources. Zero.

As they press ahead, Republicans are running into a familiar problem: slashing federal spending is typically easier said than done. Cuts to the Pentagon are off limits. Other government outlays are targeted. All foreign aid is whacked. On the cutting block: health care, food stamps, student loans, and other programs affecting constituents. Nursing homes are filled with the old and indigent on Medicaid. Poor family’s rely on food stamps.

Figure 3. DOGE’s biggest line item is $35 billion saved from Federal workforce reductions. Those reductions are going to be overturned at a total cost to the Treasury of $105 billion.

DOGE was also caught quietly canceling five of its biggest budget cuts on its infamous bogus list. It had just touted those last week. I call for certified cost and pricing data. Pursuant to FAR 15.406.

DOGE did not own up to being so incompetent. (These are junior leaguers doing this.) They had errors in the $ billions—claiming $8B was cut from ICE, when it was actually $8M, claiming $2 billion in cuts to USAID which was actually $655 million erroneously counted 3 times. They have essentially found nothing, but are cutting U.S. policy illegally. This shall not stand, and they do not care.

Keystone Kops on steroids is a humorous thought, but this is not at all funny. People are getting seriously hurt and your Republican legislators are actually killing their constituents.

These Republican legislators do not care, and they add racist tropes and insulting “get a job” mantras to their heartless spiels. Disgusting.

Figure 4. The World’s wealthiest billionaire (with no peer) stealing from the needy to line further his own pockets is as disgusting as it gets.

Please note an increase in annual spending of $90 billion during the same period in which Musk blows smoke up your behind that he has slashed $50 billion. No mention of that.

Making zero progress, Musk's efforts have not slowed government spending any at all. It is all propaganda. It is high drama, bird flu-infected cow manure. Your Republican House legislator is telling you how good it is for you, and you are eating it up! Demand a Town Hall and bring cow pies to throw.

A Reuters analysis of Treasury data shows that the government spent $710 billion during Musk’s first month as President, up 13% from the same period last year. That $90 billion increase is largely driven by mounting interest costs related to the nation's $36 trillion debt load, and rising health and retirement costs incurred by our “War Baby” aging population. Adding to the national debt will wipe out our grandchildren’s future.

Egregiously, Republican are counting “savings” from a reduction of interest rates that Federal Reserve Chairman Powell just said will not happen. You did see the House Republicans revise their forecast based on Powell’s remarks?

YOU DID NOT! I call what I see going on fraud.

I am fortunate to have Katie Britt and Tommy Tubeville as my two senators. I might as well go ahead and get it over with, really. But I will see them in hell first with AOC holding my hand.

At a House hearing, AOC took on Elon’s immature crew for their failures:

“We have not heard a single concrete number of the amount of waste and abuse that has been identified. There’s kind of this vague magic wand around waste…What’s being suggested is that…people seeing the doctor is a waste…These are peoples’ lives that are on the line and we cannot laugh them away.”

So we all know what is going on. The House budget resolution also proposes a $4 trillion increase in the current $36.1 trillion statutory limit on federal debt. Why so much? They know their bogus line about getting trickle down to work this time does not hold water. They are not stewards of this country, obviously. Each will benefit from a tax cut, but we will not.

Figure 5. Trump and Musk are grifters with a single-focus intent on a tax cut. They face an enormous tax burden and you are expendable. “Face it,” they say, “You are going to die anyway.”

A grassroots campaign calling for a nationwide economic blackout is gaining steam. We must do this now. We can take them down first.

Folks are being asked to avoid spending any money online or in-stores for 24 hours this Friday, in protest of Trump and Musk siphoning Treasury dollars, corporate greed, and rising prices. I say for 48 months instead. The protest excludes purchases for medicine, food, etc. And there are similar, week-long actions planned in March and April against Amazon, Nestlé, and Walmart. Personally, I am going flat out. No buying period, except rice and bullion cubes, period. I will thus take on DOGE, defend Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and more.

Figure 6. The planned protests are here. I think we need much more than this and we need it now. I will expand the February 28 Economic Blackout indefinitely.

Under the House’s “one big, beautiful bill” approach for reconciliation legislation, the budget resolution directs other House committees to reduce federal spending by at least $1.5 trillion but makes approval of the full $4.5 trillion in net tax cuts contingent on Congress achieving a higher goal of $2 trillion in spending cuts. That is why we need to raise the budget ceiling by $4 trillion? See the con?

The Senate on February 20 by a vote of 52 to 48 approved a "skinny” FY 2025 budget resolution that contains budget reconciliation instructions related to border and defense spending, domestic energy production, and a minimum level of unspecified spending cuts. The Senate-passed budget resolution does not contain tax reconciliation instructions. Under the Senate two-bill approach for reconciliation legislation, tax cuts policy changes and additional spending cuts would be addressed in a second budget reconciliation authorized under an FY26 budget resolution. What is going on will not save rural hospitals. They need further subsidy. I propose that in my rural platform.

Figure 7. Rural hospitals will not be able to survive if Medicaid and Medicaid expansion funding is cut.

A budget resolution does not require the president’s signature. The House and Senate must adopt an identical budget resolution. Doing so unlocks budget reconciliation procedures that allows the legislation to advance with a simple majority vote in the Senate.

House and Senate leaders will need to decide how best to resolve differences between budget resolutions passed by each chamber, either through a House-Senate conference committee or by the House and Senate trading proposed amendments to the resolutions passed by each chamber. We need to block every effort, even if it means storming the Capitol. We can do that too. Who can tie a noose?

It is financially irresponsible to base a tax cut on untruthful testimony and bogus data.

A reasonable request is testimony under oath and backed up with a certified claim financial submittal. Proof of budget reductions is not too much to ask. It is mandated. We are talking in $ trillions here. The Administration will back off the fraudulent and bogus line items, or they could become people in jail. Smoke and mirrors disappear with certified data.

Trump already asked, “Can we shoot them in the legs?”), but the military refused. You know how far with this that he is going. The next fork in the road, no one knows what will unfold. Grab a flashlight, we are in the dark now.

Know where we are. Know what fork in the road is coming. We have serious work to do to regurgitate ourselves and overcome the coup attempt.