Does Chucky Schumer really believe that $20 million for Sesame Street in Iraq will somehow benefit the U.S.?  Or $7 million to promote LGBT advocacy in Jamaica and Uganda?  Uganda enforces the death penalty for gays.

The list goes on and on and on.  I don’t need to bore you with the recitation.  But it is extremely important to understand that $1.5 million promoting DIE in Serbia isn’t about DIE.  It’s about something much more sinister.

President Eisenhower coined the term “military-industrial complex,” referring to a revolving door between the Defense Department and manufacturers of bombs and bullets.  This revolving door saw the DoD ask for munitions and shovel the money to manufacturers, and those manufacturers made handsome profits.  Gratitude for those profits led the war industry to reward its patrons with campaign contributions and other “private” benefits.

World War II filled this feed trough to overflowing.  Of course, after the war, the profits of the defense industry would shrink as the money in the feeder dried up.  Is it any surprise that the Korean War started not long after V.J. Day?  Given this obvious fact, it’s not hard to make a case that the U.S. has been in a nearly constant state of war for a very long time.  And it’s even more obvious why certain political persons (NeverTrumps? RINOs? pro-war lefties?) are so adamant that we need to support the cause du jour with our hard earned wealth.  The war industry in their state would suffer if they didn’t, and they might lose votes.  That may also be why Joe Biden and the Democrats were somewhat “soft” in their opposition to Israel’s war of liberation from Hamas in Gaza.  Their patrons in the war industry would be harmed by full opposition, while paid protests would be enough to establish their Jew-hating bona fides.

USAID was created by President Kennedy through Executive Order 10973, after the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 allowed him to do so.  Notice that key fact.  USAID was optional.  Left-wing apologists claim that the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998 (also here, not identical!) turned it into a congressionally mandated organization.  A text search of both versions of the act revealed a pot full of “Agency for International Development” instances.  And a curious thing failed to show up.  All of those pointed to various funding and management prescriptions for USAID.  Not one of them said, “We establish USAID as an agency of the State Department” or something to that effect.

When the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was split in 1980 under President Carter, it was accomplished by the Department of Education Organization Act, which says, “There is established an executive department to be known as the Department of Education.”  No such language exists anywhere regarding USAID.  Arguing that an act of Congress is required to get rid of it is like saying you can’t pull out that tree you planted without first getting my permission.  The fact that I gave you the fertilizer is irrelevant.  You chose to plant it, and now you want to get rid of it.  It’s in your power, not mine.

DOGE is another case of gaslighting by the left.  Tom Renz (@RenzTom on X) has done yeoman work exposing this scam by the frightened swamp.  It seems that DOGE is not a new government entity at all.  Trump’s executive order masterfully changes the name of the “United States Digital Service” into the “United States DOGE Service.”  It doesn’t even change the letters of the government software development agency created under Obamacare.  It just changes it into something useful.

Of particular importance, because DOGE is inside the government, it doesn’t have to answer questions about how its employees have access to government computers.  President Trump has full authority under Article II, Section 1, Sentence 1, to give access to anyone he wants.  Being inside at the beginning just makes it easier.  But wait!  There’s more!

Trump and Musk had to have carefully planned every step of this.  Recall that Elon dismissed the majority of the workforce for X and still gets everything done.  I’m sure that the whiz kids who are doing the algorithmic audits all over the government had their software all refined by doing the same job at X.  So when it took them hours to expose all the corruption in USAID, that was no surprise.  They had refined their skills, allowing their computers to collate and reorganize the financial records into meaningful results.  And no one’s personal data were revealed...yet.  If money for USAID programs was diverted, the term for that is “misappropriation of funds,” punishable by up to ten years under 18 USC §641.  I’m certain that there will be many songbirds who will prefer supervised freedom to three hots and a cot with monthly visitation.

Finally, federal employee unions are screaming that Trump’s buyout offer is illegal.  The fact that he can eliminate the unions entirely with a stroke of his pen is lost on them.  But the judge issued his temporary injunction under the rule that the plaintiff’s lawyers’ presentations are presumed true at the outset.  But once each case is properly briefed, any honest judge (Will we find one?) will find for Trump.

Let’s go back through the key issues.  First, DOGE is inside the Executive Branch of the government, with full access granted by the president. Unless its employees reveal privileged information, as that IRS employee did with Trump’s tax returns, they aren’t breaking any laws when they do their automated audits.  The screaming about “Who elected Elon?!” goes nowhere.  Who elected the two million or so employees of the federal government?  Are you upset because they aren’t your guys?  Thought so.

Second, because USAID was created by an E.O., it can be uncreated by an E.O.  I know, this one will have a bit longer arguments in front of a judge, but there is no “establishment” language for USAID in any statute that I know of.  Without that, the swamp is just ooze.

Third, we have the issue of standing.  Article III §2 starts with “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity ...”  The key for those in Rio Linda is the word “Controversies,” which pops up several times a bit later in the same section.  For a legal controversy to exist, at least two parties must have a “cognizable” disagreement.  That other word identifies an argument that the Court has authority to settle.  And this is where the swamp must take the bull squarely by the tail and face the situation (apologies to W.C. Fields).  Trump’s attorneys really did their homework.

None of these “cases” gives any federal employee or Congress any cause to complain.  Congress is boxed out because these are policy decisions by the Executive, and no Congresscritter was harmed in the making of the decision.  No federal employee has a property interest in the existence of his job.  The Civil Service Act provides procedural protections for firing from a job, but if the job no longer exists, the employee is simply out of luck.  Pressing “Delete” on USAID is that sort of situation.  Offering someone a buyout is even harder to challenge.  When you get to decide whether to check or not check the box, there is no case.  You either did or did not.  End of story.

I’m skipping the popcorn on this one, going straight for the cake and ice cream.  Celebrations are in order.