Trump’s IRS Pick Had Some Interesting People Pay Off His Personal Debt

Donald Trump’s biggest 2024 donor isn’t too stoked about the administration’s spending habits. Weeks after exiting his temporary role in the White House, Elon Musk is still speaking his mind on critical Republican affairs. In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning , the former government-diminishing task rabbit lamented that the “big, beautiful” bill being deliberated in the Senate would practically undo the Department of Government Efficiency’s work. “I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit—not decrease[s] it—and undermines the work the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said . “I think a bill could be big, or it could be beautiful—I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion.” Musk’s DOGE was tasked with sizing down the federal government to cut spending. But in a separate interview Tuesday, the world’s richest man said he increasingly felt that his department was being used as a scapegoat for other administration failures. “DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” Musk told The Washington Post . “So, like, something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.” But Musk isn’t the only

Donald Trump has a five-step plan to keep Republican control of the House of Representatives in 2026, as part of a desperate bid to stave off yet another impeachment inquiry, Axios reported Tuesday. There is no shortage of potential subjects for an impeachment inquiry. Trump has openly profited from his seat, and helped his allies get rich too—whether by manipulating the market or by turning administration officials into salespeople . Not to mention, he claims to have accepted a massive gift from a foreign government, likely violating the U.S. Constitution. Suffice it to say, Trump needs to keep the Democrats out of power. Trump “knows the stakes firsthand. He saw what can happen. It’s clear he doesn’t want that again,” Matt Gorman, a top official for House Republicans’ campaign arm in the 2018 midterms, told Axios. “Investigations, impeachment—he knows it’s all on the table with a Speaker [Hakeem] Jeffries.” In an effort to maintain a GOP-led House, the president will try to prevent lawmakers from leaving their seats, either to retire or to run for another office. Any defections could hurt the party’s chances of retaining the seats and cost millions of dollars—which could hurt them come the next general

A good chunk of the white-collar criminals pardoned by Donald Trump after his massive “Day One” pardoning spree either have a political or financial tie to him. The president has issued 60 pardons since he offered political forgiveness to some 1,600 individuals charged in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. But out of those subsequent 60 unrelated to the attack, 12 people—or roughly one in five—were already in Trump’s orbit, according to ABC News . They included several politicos, including former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted on several counts of corruption, including for an attempt to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat after he left the position for the White House; former Republican Representative Michael Grimm, who pleaded guilty to tax fraud; former Nevada gubernatorial candidate Michele Fiore, who allegedly stole public funds intended to commemorate a slain police officer; and former Tennessee state Senator Brian Kelsey, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance fraud in 2022. Trump also pardoned major financiers of his presidential campaigns. Trevor Milton, the founder of the Nikola electric vehicle company, donated nearly $2 million toward Trump’s 2024 campaign. Imaad Zuberi, who has donated to both parties, issued “at least $800,000 to

Elon Musk isn’t done with the federal government after all. Days after the tech billionaire confirmed on X that his time as a special government employee had come to a close, the vice president revealed that the administration isn’t ready to let Musk go. “I think there’s an effort by the media to sort of say the Elon era is over, and I think that’s actually totally wrong,” JD Vance told Newsmax in an interview released late Thursday. “Now, he has, obviously, a day job, and he’s got to go back to his day job to run his companies, but the DOGE effort will continue, [and] Elon will continue to be an important adviser for both me and the president,” Vance continued. “And most importantly, the job of making the government more efficient, of not wasting people’s money, that has to continue. I think it’s one of the most important mandates that we got from the American people, and we will keep on executing on that mandate.” And Donald Trump similarly appears to be trying to extend Musk’s time in office. In a Truth Social post Thursday, the president announced that he would be holding a press conference with Musk

The president is taking his new Wall Street nickname very personally. Earlier this month, Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong coined an acronym to describe a popular new trading strategy centered around Donald Trump’s start-and-stop tariff policies: TACO, or “Trump Always Chickens Out.” But when confronted with the reality of his new reputation, during a White House press briefing Wednesday, Trump flipped out. “I kick out?” Trump said initially, misunderstanding the acronym. “Chicken out,” the reporter clarified. “Oh, isn’t that nice. ‘Chicken out,’ I’ve never heard that,” Trump said before ranting that he hadn’t lacked follow-through on his trade policies, referring to his arrangements with China and the European Union. Instead, Trump claimed that he had heard complaints he was too tough. “You call that chickening out? Because we have $14 trillion now invested, committed to investing—when Biden didn’t have practically anything; Biden, this country was dying,” Trump said. “You know, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. I went to Saudi Arabia, the king told me, he said, ‘You’ve got the hottest count—we’ve got the hottest country in the world right now.’ Six months ago, this country was stone-cold dead. We had a dead country. “We had a

A study released on Wednesday by the World Meteorological Organization found an 80 percent likelihood that at least one of the next five years will break new heat records, surpassing 2024 to become the hottest year ever recorded. The National Weather Service has predicted that this summer will be among the hottest ever in the United States. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is taking a chain saw to programs that keep people alive when temperatures soar. As Republicans attempt to slash Inflation Reduction Act subsidies for renewable energy and electric vehicles, drastic cuts to programs that ostensibly have nothing to do with climate change could put more people at risk of getting sick and dying from extreme heat. Case in point is the relatively low-profile Low Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program, known as LIHEAP. Created by Congress in 1981 as a means to help people afford the costs of heating and cooling their homes, it currently helps some 6.2 million people pay their bills. In early April, the Trump administration fired the program’s entire staff of fewer than 30 people , whose jobs were housed within Robert F. Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services. Congress allocated $4.1 billion to

For Rae Vermeal, the experience of one Pima County senior illustrates the complexity of the housing struggle for older people in the region. The woman owns her home and gets $967 through Social Security.

This article was originally published on DadisFIRE. AI was used for light editing, formatting, and readability. But a human (me!) wrote and edited this. Some jobs don’t just take your time, they drain your energy, patience, and eventually, your relationships. A long shift might pay the bills, but it can also chip away at your marriage in ways that don’t show up on a paycheck.

Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be aware of his own administration’s new restrictions on student visas. When asked by a reporter when the U.S. would resume interviews for student visas, which were halted Tuesday , the president was clueless. “When do you think your administration could resume these interviews?” the reporter asked. “On what?” Trump replied, clearly bemused. The reporter then said “on the foreign student visas.” Trump thought she was saying “French,” but then others around clarified that she was referring to all foreign student visas. Trump was still unclear, and seemed to be stuck on previous questions. “What are you refer—foreign visas for what? Are you talking about for colleges?” Trump asked. The reporter replied in the affirmative, to which Trump said, “OK, so you’re off of Israel, so now you’re talking about colleges, right?” REPORTER: When could the administration resume interviews for foreign students visa? TRUMP: On what? REPORTER: Foreign student visas TRUMP: For the French? REPORTER: All the foreign students TRUMP: What are you referring-- foreign visas for what? pic.twitter.com/ynKnbjQ0Xt — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 28, 2025 The reporter again said yes, which seemed to clear things up for the president. His answer, though, was meandering,

A contentious plan to fully eliminate free-roaming horses from a Delaware-sized region in southwest Wyoming has cleared its environmental review process, and roundups are scheduled to start in about seven weeks.

Washington doesn’t know what to do about its tariff plan anymore. Components of the White House’s tariff plan were shot down by two different judges on Wednesday and Thursday, sending the Trump administration’s controversial economic strategy—and its subsequent public defense—into a tailspin. During a White House press briefing on Thursday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt aggressively asserted that the administration would “win” its appeals, all while insisting that other countries would blindly continue to negotiate with Donald Trump, even as the future of his tariff agenda is up in the air. “Why would other countries continue these trade deal negotiations?” asked NBC News’s Gabe Gutierrez. “Because other countries around the world have faith in the negotiator in chief, President Donald J. Trump. And they also probably see how ridiculous this ruling is, and they understand the administration is going to win,” Leavitt said . “And we intend to win, we already filed an emergency appeal, we expect to fight this battle all the way to the Supreme Court.” Leavitt then shared a missive for foreign nations, claiming that the president “reserves other authorities” to enact the trade policy. “But I can confirm our ambassador for trade, Jamison Greer, already heard from

FBI Director Kash Patel lost his cool when asked a simple question about his wildly overdue budget. During an interview on Fox News Wednesday, Patel clumsily dodged a question when host Brett Baier asked whether he ever planned to provide a complete budget for the fiscal year 2026, after missing the deadline to turn one over. “Do I have a budget at the FBI? Sure, of course I do. But the Office of Management Budget at the White House sets the budget for the United States government. And so, if they have a budget which we agree with, they need to roll that out. And they’re doing so on their one timeline, and working with Congress on that,” Patel said . Patel continued, insisting that “we’re not the guys running around on private jets.” “And somebody, maybe in Congress, should ask for how many flights on a private jet Director [James] Comey took or my predecessor, Director [Chistopher] Wray, took and how many personal trips they took,” Patel said. “I know they want to take pot shots at me, but I have been working nonstop on this job, including pretty much every single weekend. And somebody should ask the tens

Federal authorities have taken down what they call "one of the largest and most dangerous drug trafficking organizations in U.S. history." The operation targeted the Sinaloa Cartel through the seizure of a record-breaking 400 Kilograms of Fentanyl - the largest in the history of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) - which was the lead agency in the multi-state effort.

This article was originally published on ChaChingQueen.com, a site my wife and I own. AI was used for light editing, formatting, and readability. But a human (me!) wrote and edited this.

Donald Trump is planning to kill Voice Of America and replace it with a MAGA propaganda machine. The remaining 800 employees at the federally funded, award-winning newsroom are expecting to receive termination notices as soon as Wednesday, multiple unnamed sources told Politico . This would effectively shutter the agency, following the roughly 600 VOA employees who were fired earlier this month. In March, it appeared that the Trump administration was attempting to interfere with the organization’s journalistic independence, suspending one of its top reporters for relaying others’ criticism of the president, and reassigning VOA’s veteran White House bureau chief to a different beat. Later that month, Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the agency that oversees VOA, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, or USAGM, altogether, as part of a wider reduction in force throughout the federal government. The move sparked a lawsuit from journalists, federal workers, and their unions alleging that USAGM had not fulfilled its duty to protect the freedom of the press or maintain a separation of powers. Further, by conducting a mass reduction in force, USAGM may have potentially violated its collective bargaining agreement with its employees. A representative for the American Federation of Government

Despite the fanfare over Elon Musk’s supposed departure from the Department of Government Efficiency, Donald Trump says that the billionaire bureaucrat isn’t really going anywhere. “Many of the DOGE people are staying behind, so they’re not leaving. And Elon’s not really leaving. He’s gonna be back and forth, I think. I have a feeling. It’s his baby, and he’s gonna be doing a lot of things,” Trump said during a press conference in the Oval Office Friday. The press conference was held to mark the end of Musk’s time as a so-called “special government employee,” a title that allowed him to bypass certain ethics requirements during his 134-day stint in Trump’s administration. The president made sure to give Musk a gaudy golden key—what it actually unlocks went totally unaddressed—to make sure he could get back into the White House. “This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning,” Musk said, promising that DOGE’s “influence” would “only grow stronger” over time. Earlier Friday, the billionaire bureaucrat shared a post on X asserting that the legacy of DOGE was more psychological than anything else. Surely, it will take longer than four months to forget the image of Musk running around

This article was originally published on ChaChingQueen.com, a site my wife and I own. AI was used for light editing, formatting, and readability. But a human (me!) wrote and edited this.

This article was originally published on ChaChingQueen.com, a site my wife and I own. AI was used for light editing, formatting, and readability. But a human (me!) wrote and edited this.

Fielding phone calls from concerned growers has become a commonplace occurrence for Nick Levendofsky, the executive director of the Kansas Farmers Union. The upheaval in the U.S. Department of Agriculture since President Donald Trump took office in January has left many farmers with unfulfilled contracts and broken commitments. Grants that once offered vital financial lifelines have been frozen. Programs that once provided assistance and aid have been eliminated. Uncertainty about the future has become the bumper crop. “It’s just been a barrage from the very beginning,” said Levendofsky of the changes made by the Trump administration. “We were getting phone calls from not just members of ours, but farmers and ranchers in general, saying, ‘What do we do?’” He recalled a recent conversation with the owner of a vineyard in northeastern Kansas who had been promised a loan to build solar panels and an electric vehicle charger. But with USDA freezing funding for the renewable energy projects guaranteed by the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act, the farmer was stuck with the bill for the already completed project. “He had a $55,000 USDA-guaranteed loan that now USDA said, ‘We’re not going to pay,’” said Levendofsky. In April, a federal judge ordered the

This article was originally published on ChaChingQueen.com, a site my wife and I own. AI was used for light editing, formatting, and readability. But a human (me!) wrote and edited this.

Joe Heller was the editorial cartoonist for the Green Bay Press-Gazette in Green Bay, Wis., from 1985 until being laid off in July 2013. He still draws several cartoons a week and distributes them through his own syndicate. Through Heller Syndication, his cartoons regularly appear in more than 400 newspapers, making him the most successful self-syndicated editorial cartoonist in the nation. His cartoons are reprinted many times in USA Today, Denver Post, St. Paul Pioneer Press, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek Japan, The Week and The Washington Post. Joe’s cartoons have won numerous distinctions, including 10 Best of Gannett awards, eight Milwaukee Press Club awards and two Honorable mentions for the John Fischetti Award. He lives in Green Bay with his wife, Pamela. He is a regular featured cartoonist for the NKyTribune .

Elon Musk was getting high on ketamine, psychedelics, Adderall, and ecstasy frequently while on the campaign trail for President Trump last year. Multiple sources reported that the billionaire was using so much ketamine that it was hurting his bladder, a common side effect of frequent use. The New York Times reports that Musk traveled with a box of about 20 different pills on him, including but not limited to Adderall, according to a photo and multiple sources. Musk being high all the time might explain some of the “quirks” that his fans chalk up to him being some misunderstood genius. That weird, babbling speech at CPAC in February? The weird jumping ? That might have something to do with frequent use of the drugs mentioned above. This is the richest man on earth. He was firing people and cutting programs without care at DOGE. He tried to buy an election in Wisconsin. He recently had another child with another woman, while Grimes tweets at him on X about theirs. He heiled Hitler and is still trying to get to Mars, all while he whines about his multiple companies “ suffering .” His being an avid drug user is unsurprising, but

The massive tax and spending bill passed by U.S. House Republicans would likely result in 3.2 million people losing food assistance benefits, and saddle states with around $14 billion a year in costs, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

This article was originally published on DadisFIRE. AI was used for light editing, formatting, and readability. But a human (me!) wrote and edited this. Everyone keeps asking the same thing: When will the housing market crash? According to Dave Ramsey, it won’t. At least not in 2025.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem quietly removed a list of “sanctuary” states, cities, and counties after outrage from the National Sheriffs’ Association. The Department of Homeland Security published a list Thursday of what it called “ sanctuary jurisdictions ,” accusing the areas of obstructing federal immigration enforcement. “Each jurisdiction listed will receive formal notification of its non-compliance and all potential violations of federal criminal statutes,” the DHS statement warned. The list quickly sparked a harsh condemnation from the National Sheriffs’ Association, which represents more than 3,000 elected sheriffs across the country. “This list was created without any input, criteria of compliance, or a mechanism for how to object to the designation,” Sheriff Kieran Donahue, the group’s president, warned in a statement on Saturday. “Sheriffs nationwide have no way to know what they must do or not do to avoid this arbitrary label.” The list was created “in a manner that lacks transparency and accountability” and that “violated the core principles of trust, cooperation, and partnership with fellow law enforcement,” Donahue added. The warning was especially notable given that the National Sheriffs’ Association, which has supported Donald Trump’s most controversial Cabinet nominees in his second term, has also historically backed federal

Donovan Elliot, 61, admitted to distributing large quantities of methamphetamine and fentanyl-laced heroin, with sentencing scheduled for September in New Jersey. A Queens Village, New York, man pleaded guilty in federal court in Newark to drug trafficking charges involving multiple kilograms of methamphetamine, fentanyl, and fentanyl-laced heroin, federal prosecutors announced.

This story appears as part of a collaboration between The Maine Monitor and Maine Focus, the investigative team of the Bangor Daily News, a partnership to strengthen investigative journalism in Maine. Read more about the partnership.

White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett insisted Thursday that Donald Trump “always wins,” even after the president’s vacillating tariff policies faced a massive defeat in federal court. During an interview on Fox Business’s Mornings With Maria , host Maria Bartiromo asked Hassett for his reaction to a journalist teaching Trump about a new investing theory , TACO, which stands for “Trump always chickens out.” The economic adviser replied to the dig with another slogan. “I think if President Trump had just a minute more, if you go back into the room behind the Oval, he’s got all his hats and things over there, and he has a hat which is the accurate response to what that person said, which is ‘Trump always wins,’” Hassett said. “If you go look, a lot of people are wearing that hat, ‘Trump always wins’ and ‘Trump was always right.’” Hassett claimed that Trump’s tariffs had forced other countries to “come to the table with massive concessions, opening up their markets to our products, and lowering their tariffs on us.” So far, only Israel , India , and Vietnam have moved to slash tariffs on U.S. products. Negotiations with other trading partners, such

A new warning from Brazilian pulp exporter Suzano SA has raised concerns about the potential for toilet paper shortages and price hikes in the United States. While store shelves currently remain well stocked, the company reports that ongoing supply chain disruptions and new U.S. tariffs are already affecting shipments.

Republicans are so gravely concerned about the national debt, right? After all, they’re the party of prudence and fiscal responsibility. They’re the grown-ups in the room, the ones who tap the brakes while those crazy, irresponsible Democrats keep pumping the accelerator, spending like drunken sailors on shore leave in Macau. So, a question for you. Of all the non-wartime presidents going back to 1900, who are the top five in terms of adding to the national debt? First, I stipulate “non-wartime presidents” because financing a war, by definition, means adding massively to the debt. During wartime, everybody understands this. In this sense, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt are the debt kings. They each increased the national debt by a staggering percentage —nearly 800 percent in both cases. But the former helped win World War I, aiding the cause of democracy and making the United States a global power for the first time, and the latter defeated fascism. Especially in the second case, it was worth every penny. After them, who’s next, do you suppose? Maybe LBJ, with all that Great Society money sluicing through those shambolic, on-the-take community organizations? Jimmy Carter, the first modern president to leave us with what