In Support of Alien,104-Year-Old, Transgender Mice
if you've understandably been under a rock, know that our great leader just hurled a long weird bilious speech to what's left of Congress. He vowed to forge "the freest (and) most dominant civilization ever to exist on the face of this earth” by lying about everything, making up amazing achievements and reviling Democrats, veterans, migrants, workers, Canada, Mexico, health care, safety nets, Stacey Abrams and a woke government that spent $8 million "making mice transgender." "This is real," he said. Uh huh.
During his hallucinatory litany of boasts, shams and grievances - after humbly declaring he was "saved by God to make America great again" - the lies came fast and brazen. He lied about migrants, "asylums," autism, Panama, tariffs, Jan. 6, military recruitment, fictional dead 100-year-olds getting Social Security, eggs, Stacey Abrams, the "Green New Scam," "weaponized government," "illegal alien hotel rooms," the "billions" DOGE is illegally "saving," along with its devastation. No more "waste fraud and abuse - the days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over." Dems: "LOL." Biden "didn't just open our borders, he flew illegal aliens over them" until "beautiful" Aurora/ Springfield "buckled under the weight of migrant occupation LIKE NOBODYS EVER SEEN." Now, he and an unelected bureaucrat are ushering in "the great liberation of America." Behind him, two smarmy, smirking, Christo-fascist ghouls ate it up. Before him, a gilded room of lickspittles cheered, stood, shouted in grateful excitement. Natalie Portman in Revenge of the Sith: "So this is how liberty dies...with thunderous applause."
Still, little King Donnie had sads: Seeing mean Democrats before him, he realized there is "nothing I can say to make (them) smile or applaud these astronomical achievements." Instead, they sought an apt response to the horror. Many didn't attend; some wore pink in solidarity, held signs that read "False" and "Musk Steals"; New Mexico Rep. Melanie Stansbury stood holding a sign that read, “This Is Not Normal” until some GOP creep ripped it from her and tore it up. Several Dems turned their backs and/or walked out, backs of shirts reading, "No Kings Live Here." Asked what she'd say to Trump, Jasmine Crockett offered, "Stop being Putin’s ho." Most visibly, Texas Rep. Al Green, who "understood the assignment," shook his furious cane and yelled "No Mandate" until he was forcibly removed - exquisitely just as Trump brayed he'd restored free speech, thank God almighty, free at last. The world, aghast, took note: A French Senator: "Washington has become Nero’s court, with an incendiary emperor (and) submissive courtiers... We are at war with a dictator backed by a traitor."
Tariffs, one of Trump's fave words, among the seven he knows, often came up for the alleged "trillions and trillions" they'll bring in from China, Brazil, India, the EU, everyone, "making America rich again and great again - it's happening." Also happening: stocks are plunging, a "little disturbance" the six-time-bankrupt financial wizard is "ok with" as we the paycheck-to-paycheck people ride it out. "The stock market is crashing and prices are rising,' noted Rep. Eric Swalwell. "This guy has gone to the Super Bowl, the Daytona 500, and a UFC fight. He should go to the fucking supermarket and see what people are spending to feed themselves." Next fave in MAGA's popularity hierarchy came othering - migrants, DEI, transgender- with his sacred vow, "Our country will be ‘woke’ no longer." Whew. No more Mom For Liberty filing lawsuits (dismissed) charging her kid's school “secretly socially transitioned" her kid. Finally, the kicker - thank you Jesus! - no more $8 million in taxpayers' money spent by woke feds "making mice transgender and other gender-bending social experiments." Which is def "real."
To be clear here: Sex-changed mice, we suspect, are really, fundamentally why Al Gore invented an unforgiving, unforgetting, sometimes insanely entertaining Internet. Why else would we need it? (Besides dog videos). So welcome, bienvenue to the giddy meme fest that exploded after Trump spewed out his delectable new fever dream about woke troops of scientists creating teams of secret boy mice playing soccer against teams of unknowing girl mice and always winning. And then Haitians get to eat them. So unfair, just like Jack Smith and grand juries and rape charges. No wonder the American Empire is crumbling. Still, after a day of extensive punditry and speculation, nobody has any fucking idea yet what Mr. Dementia-cum-Idiocy is talking about. Some think he's been hearing about (not reading) some of the frenzied, paranoid ramblings of right-wing media about scientists working overtime to create a Woke/Trans/ Brave New World. Or maybe he caught a phobic itch from Nancy Mace's bathroom trans hysteria, or a February hearing exploring the hysteria...sorry, concerns.
Some suggest he confused three NIH projects - total cost $477,121 -administering female homones to monkeys to study the effect on immune systems after research showed trans women are 50 times more likely to get HIV. Or similar experiments on mice by the University of Pennsylvania's Transgenic and Chimeric Mouse Facility to test effects of hormone therapy on breast cancer, fertility, asthma, bone health, reproduction and endocrine systems. Or mixing up transgender with transgenic, what you get when you inject foreign DNA into lab animals to monitor how their cells mutate,much like humans with cancer and other diseases. Or he's such a moronic bigot every time he sees trans starting a word his first reflex is to mindlessly demonize. Whatev: There are no sex-change operations on mice. "The very notion of a "transgender mouse" is completely ridiculous," notes Dr. Jeremy Faust. "Mice can't tell you their gender. They don't know their pronouns. They are mice." Bottom line: "We want to fund science, not cut it. Trump and his allies don’t seem to have any idea what science is or why it matters."
Meanwhile, the fallout, chaos, ineptitude go on. Though Trump blathered about America's "warriors who shed their blood on fields of battle," DOGE now wants to cut up to 80,000 employees from Veterans Affairs; one furious lawmaker/veteran: "I don't ever want to hear 'thank you for your service' from that draft-dodging coward again." He's already backtracking on his "very dumb trade war," with a proposed exemption for U.S. automakers and a bizarre pivot trying to make it into a drug war. He's facing at least 96 lawsuits - from farmers, Quakers, immigrants, Alaska, USAID, FBI agents - and the DOJ is running out of lawyers to take them on. He's already losing court cases - he's been ordered to reinstate 6,000 USDA workers, and even SCOTUS just ruled against him, saying he can't freeze USAID payments. The UK hates his "vile" VP, deeming him a clown, dunce, knob, and little man deserving of "a smack in the ear." Hamilton is the latest show to cancel at the Kennedy Center because "he took away our national arts center from all of us," and nobody wants to go to his fucking fascist party.
Or, evidently, hear him yammer on for hours. Polls show viewership at a record low versus other presidents' SOTU speeches from the last two decades and even his own previous ramblings. The next day - clearly defensively 'cause Trump hates being laughed at more than anything, even trans or black people - the White House issued a press release angrily refuting "the Fake News losers" who dared to fact check any of his 7,628 lies, especially the infamous transgender mice one. "Yes, Biden Spent Millions On Transgender Animal Experiments," they shouted from their alternative-reality roof-tops, listing unintelligible scraps of financial reports packed with medical terms they blithely zoomed right past to conclude - big leap here - "President Trump was right (as usual)." Good try, but many were unconvinced. "White House Scared of Trans Mouse," read one headline. Also, of course, the Internet is forever. "I support the 149-year-old transgender mice in their fight against Trump," declared one loyal netizen for posterity. Another, "I found the transgender mouse they spent $8 million on. And she's fabulous."
EU Accused of 'Bowing to Pressure' From Trump With Plan to Increase LNG Investments
On Wednesday, the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, unveiled its Affordable Energy Action Plan, a list of actions ostensibly aimed at securing affordable and clean energy for European citizens. But the plan includes a measure focused on funding international liquefied natural gas exports, which has been criticized as a win for Big Oil companies in the United States and for lacking business sense.
The plan calls for the European Union to back export infrastructure for liquefied natural gas (LNG)—which may have a worse carbon footprint than coal—and long-term LNG contracts to secure "a better deal for imported natural gas."
While the document does not directly single out U.S. LNG export projects, during a press conference on Wednesday centered on the Affordable Energy Action Plan, Dan Jørgensen, European Commissioner for Energy and Housing, said that the European Union has "been dependent on LNG from the U.S. and we will continue to be so in the future" when asked about reliable sources of LNG.
This "would mark a major change in the bloc's energy policies, strengthening the continent's links to the carbon-intensive liquefied natural gas it eventually wants to phase out," according to Politico, which reported on this provision of the plan before the full plan was released.
The business case for the LNG proposal would be "disastrous," wrote a spokesperson for the environmental group Friends of the Earth US in a statement Wednesday, adding that "the Action Plan is music to the ears of Trump's Big Oil buddies."
When it comes to LNG, the plan notes that the Commission will "explore options going beyond demand aggregation and will look into other approaches (e.g. the Japanese model)."
For the past five decades, Japan has been the world's biggest buyer of LNG, directly purchasing stakes in overseas LNG ventures in order to secure access to gas at "preferential prices," perPolitico. Using this approach, Japan has become the largest public backer of American LNG projects.
However, as demand for natural gas has fallen in Japan, Japanese utilities—once purely buyers of LNG—are increasingly selling the product abroad, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
This trajectory makes the "Japanese model" more of a "cautionary tale" as opposed to something that the European Commission ought to pursue, wrote to Seb Kennedy, an energy journalist and market analyst.
"The E.U.'s proposed foray into foreign LNG investments appears to be a high-stakes gamble fraught with pitfalls. By risking public funds on ventures that have already demonstrated turbulent market behavior, Europe may be setting the stage for future financial misadventures," Kennedy wrote on Monday.
Meanwhile, Politico also reported that U.S. President Trump—who made restarting reviews of applications for approvals of liquified LNG projects one of his first official moves in office—is "pressing the EU to buy more American LNG, threatening to impose severe tariffs if the bloc doesn't meet that and other demands."
In her response to the European Commission's Action Plan, Laurie van der Burg, global public finance program manager at Oil Change International, a group that fights for a fossil fuel-free world, said that the proposal constitutes "bowing to pressure from the Trump administration and lining the pockets of the fossil fuel industry."
Climate and consumer groups argue U.S. LNG exports are harming public health, devastating the environment, and raising prices for working families.
"In my community, LNG has brought more than just terminals and pipelines; it has ushered in a wave of health crises, environmental degradation, and economic disparities," said Roishetta Ozane, founder of Vessel Project of Louisiana and co-director of Gulf Fossil Finance Hub, in a statement on Wednesday tied to the release of the Affordable Energy Action Plan.
"Our water is contaminated and we're forced to purchase water in plastic bottles. All while the promise of jobs feels hollow against the backdrop of our poisoned land," Ozane wrote. "We deserve better than to be collateral damage in the pursuit of energy profits. Enough is enough."
The Real Reason for Soaring Egg Prices? Gouging by the 'Rotten Egg Oligarchy'
The nation's largest egg producers would have American consumers believe that avian flu and inflation are behind soaring prices, but a report published Tuesday shows corporate price gouging is the real culprit driving the record cost of the dietary staple.
The fourth installment of Food & Water Watch's (FWW) Economic Cost of Food Monopolies series—titled The Rotten Egg Oligarchy—reports that the average price of a dozen eggs in the United States hit an all-time high of $4.95 in January 2025. That's more than two-and-a-half times the average price from three years ago.
"While egg prices spiral out of reach, making eggs a luxury item, Big Ag is profiting hand over fist," FWW research director Amanda Starbuck said in a statement. "But make no mistake—today's high prices are built on a foundation of corporate price gouging. Our research shows how corporations use the worsening bird flu crisis to jack up egg prices, even as their own factory farms fuel the spread of disease."
FWW found that "egg prices were already rising before the current [avian flu] outbreak hit U.S. commercial poultry flocks in February 2022, and have never returned to pre-outbreak levels."
Furthermore, "egg price spikes hit regions that were bird flu-free until recently," the report states. "The U.S. Southeast remained free of bird flu in its table egg flocks until January 2025, and actually increased egg production in 2022 and 2023 over 2021 levels. Nevertheless, retail egg prices in the Southeast rose alongside January 2023's national price spikes."
"The corporate food system is to blame for exacerbating the scale of the outbreak as well as the high cost of eggs," the publication continues. "Factory farms are virus incubators, with the movement of animals, machines, and workers between operations helping to spread the virus."
"Meanwhile, just a handful of companies produce the majority of our eggs, giving them outsized control over the prices paid by retailers, who often pass on rising costs to consumers," the paper adds. "This highly consolidated food system also enables companies to leverage a temporary shortage in one region to raise prices across the entire country."
Cal-Maine, the nation's top egg producer, enjoyed a more than 600% increase in gross profits between fiscal years 2021-23, according to FWW. The Mississippi-based company did not suffer any avian flu outbreaks in fiscal year 2023, during which it sold more eggs than during the previous two years. Yet it still sold conventional eggs at nearly three times the price as in 2021, amounting to over $1 billion in windfall profits. Meanwhile Cal-Maine paid shareholders dividends totaling $250 million in 2023, 40 times more during the previous fiscal year.
The report highlights how factory farming creates ideal conditions for the spread of avian flu, a single case of which requires the extermination of the entire flock at the affected facility, under federal regulations.
"These impacts cannot be understated," FWW stressed. "Today's average factory egg farm confines over 800,000 birds, with some operations confining several million. This magnifies the scale of animal suffering and death, as well as the enormous environmental and safety burden of disposing of a million or more infected bird carcasses."
Citing U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) figures, The Guardianreported Tuesday that more than 54 million birds have been affected in the past three months alone.
Egg producers know precisely how the supply-and-demand implications of these outbreaks and subsequent culls can boost their bottom lines. Meanwhile, they play a dangerous game as epidemiologists widely view a potential avian flu mutation that can be transmitted from birds to humans as the next major pandemic threat—one that's exacerbated by the Trump administration's withdrawal from the World Health Organization and cuts to federal agencies focused on averting the next pandemic.
"We cannot afford to place our food system in the hands of a few corporations that put corporate profit above all else."
So far, 70 avian flu cases—one of them fatal—have been reported in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, under Trump, the CDC has stopped publishing regular reports on its avian flu response plans and activities. The USDA, meanwhile, said it "accidentally" terminated staffers working on avian flu response during the firing flurry under Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. The agency is scrambling to reverse the move.
"We cannot afford to place our food system in the hands of a few corporations that put corporate profit above all else," the FWW report argues. "Nor can we allow the factory farm system to continue polluting our environment and serving as the breeding ground for the next human pandemic."
"We need to enforce our nation's antitrust laws to go after corporate price fixing and collusion," the publication adds. "We also need a national ban on new and expanding factory farms, while transitioning to smaller, regional food systems that are more resilient to disruptions."
That is highly unlikely under Trump, whose policies—from taxation to regulation and beyond—have overwhelmingly favored the ultrawealthy and corporations over working Americans. Meanwhile, one of the president's signature campaign promises, to lower food prices "on day one," has evaporated amid ever-rising consumer costs.
According to the USDA's latest Food Price Outlook, overall food prices are projected to rise 3.4% in 2025. Eggs, however, are forecast to soar a staggering 41.1% this year—and possibly by as much as 74.9%.
"If President Trump has any interest in fulfilling his campaign pledge to lower food prices," Starbuck stressed, "he must begin by taking on the food monopolies exploiting pandemic threat for profit."
'An American President Is Not a King': Judge Reinstates Labor Regulator Illegally Fired by Trump
A federal judge on Thursday reinstated Gwynne Wilcox, a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board, and suggested that U.S. President Donald Trump's attempt to fire her was an example of the Republican testing how much he can exceed his constitutional powers.
Wilcox filed a federal lawsuit in February, after Trump ousted her and NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell—who was appointed by former President Barack Obama to serve in the District of Columbia—declared Wilcox's dismissal "unlawful and void."
"The Constitution and case law are clear in allowing Congress to limit the president's removal power and in allowing the courts to enjoin the executive branch from unlawful action," Howell wrote in a 36-page opinion. She also sounded the alarm about arguments made by lawyers for the defendants, Trump and Marvin Kaplan, chair of the NLRB.
"A president who touts an image of himself as a 'king' or a 'dictator,' perhaps as his vision of effective leadership, fundamentally misapprehends the role under Article II of the U.S. Constitution."
"Defendants' hyperbolic characterization that legislative and judicial checks on executive authority, as invoked by plaintiff, present 'extraordinary intrusion[s] on the executive branch,' ...is both incorrect and troubling," the judge wrote. "Under our constitutional system, such checks, by design, guard against executive overreach and the risk such overreach would pose of autocracy."
She stressed that "an American president is not a king—not even an 'elected' one—and his power to remove federal officers and honest civil servants like plaintiff is not absolute, but may be constrained in appropriate circumstances, as are present here."
"A president who touts an image of himself as a 'king' or a 'dictator,' perhaps as his vision of effective leadership, fundamentally misapprehends the role under Article II of the U.S. Constitution," Howell asserted. "In our constitutional order, the president is tasked to be a conscientious custodian of the law, albeit an energetic one, to take care of effectuating his enumerated duties, including the laws enacted by the Congress and as interpreted by the judiciary."
The judge cited a widely criticized February 19 social media post from the White House, which features an image of Trump in a crown, with text that states, "Long live the king."
"The president seems intent on pushing the bounds of his office and exercising his power in a manner violative of clear statutory law to test how much the courts will accept the notion of a presidency that is supreme," Howell warned. "The courts are now again forced to determine how much encroachment on the legislature our Constitution can bear and face a slippery slope toward endorsing a presidency that is untouchable by the law."
The president's attempt to fire Wilcox halted federal labor law enforcement in the United States. AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler celebrated Howell's ruling in a Thursday statement, saying that "more than a month after Trump effectively shut down the NLRB by illegally firing Gwynne Wilcox, denying it the quorum it needs to hold union-busters accountable, the court ordered Wilcox immediately returned to her seat, allowing the NLRB to get back to its essential work."
"The court also sent an important message that a president cannot undermine an independent agency by simply removing a member of the board because he disagrees with her decisions," she said. "Working people around the country count on equal justice and fair decision-making from an independent NLRB—and today, because of Wilcox's commitment to the mission of the NLRB and her refusal to stand by as Trump illegally removed her from the board, the NLRB can get back to work."
Wilcox isn't the only federal worker who has challenged the president's power to fire her. As Politicodetailed:
On Thursday, a federal workplace watchdog fired by Trump—Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger—dropped his legal bid to reclaim his post after a federal appeals court permitted his termination. Cathy Harris, a member of the Merit Systems Protection Board, which oversees the grievance process for many federal employees, is also resisting Trump’s effort to remove her and was reinstated last month by a federal judge.
The Supreme Court likely will soon weigh in on Congress' ability to insulate executive branch officials from being fired by the president without cause. With Dellinger's decision to drop his legal fight, Harris' case appears likeliest to reach the high court in the near-term. It’s possible Wilcox's case will get folded into that ongoing fight.
The nation's highest court has a right-wing supermajority that includes three Trump appointees, though they have at times ruled against the president—including on Wednesday, when five justices refused to overturn a lower court order about foreign aid.
With Dropped Enforcement, Trump Accused of 'Inviting a Corporate Crime Spree'
U.S. President Donald Trump "is handing out 'get out of jail free' cards to corporate lawbreakers," declared Rick Claypool, author of a Tuesday report about the administration ending probes and enforcement actions against dozens of companies.
Claypool is a research director for the watchdog Public Citizen. His report "covers 429 separate investigations and cases against 361 corporations over alleged lawbreaking—including at least 25 involving allegations of criminal misconduct."
During the first six weeks since the inauguration, the researcher found, the Trump administration halted or moved to dismiss actions against 89 corporations—or 25% of the companies in Public Citizen's tracker of prominent cases.
"The consequences for the public when corporations face a diminished threat of enforcement are disastrous," Claypool warned in a statement. "Meanwhile, honest businesses that are not Trump administration insiders—or that refuse to play along with the ultra-MAGA ideological agenda—may face serious disadvantages from Trump's politicized approach to enforcement."
As his report, Corporate Clemency, details, the beneficiaries of the recent dismissals are:
- All 42 corporations facing Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) cases and investigations (seven dismissals have been sought so far);
- Twenty corporations facing Department of Justice (DOJ) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) cases and investigations into possible Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations;
- Eight corporations facing DOJ Civil Rights Division cases and investigations (one dismissal, a case against Elon Musk's SpaceX, has been sought so far);
- Seven corporations facing DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Division cases and investigations;
- Seven cryptocurrency corporations facing SEC cases and investigations, five of which the Trump administration has filed to dismiss; and
- Six employers facing Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) cases for discrimination against transgender and nonbinary workers, which the Trump administration has filed to dismiss.
"Additionally, firings of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) members and EEOC commissioners mean these regulators lack the quorum needed for finalizing enforcement decisions, including NLRB cases against 100 corporations included in the tracker," the report explains. "There are nearly 27,000 open NLRB cases in total."
The corporations that began the Trump administration with the greatest number of probes or cases in the Public Citizen tracker are Musk's Tesla (eight) and SpaceX (four), billionaire Jeff Bezos' Amazon (seven), Big Pharma's Pfizer (five), banking giant Wells Fargo (four), and the insurance company UnitedHealthcare (four).
The report highlights that "of the 361 corporations facing federal enforcement actions, 56 have close ties with the Trump administration," 17 of which "are benefiting from the enforcement pauses that have halted investigations and cases."
The document also identifies 34 companies that collectively gave at least $34 million toward Trump inaugural festivities.
Amazon and Pfizer each gave $1 million, as did many others: Adobe, Apple, AT&T, Boeing, Coinbase, ExxonMobil, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, Google, Hyundai and its affiliate, Johnson & Johnson, Kraken, Lockheed Martin, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Stanley Black & Decker, Stellantis, and Toyota.
Ripple, Robinhood Markets, and Uber gave even more, while Abbott Laboratories, Bank of America, Citibank, Coca-Cola, CoreCivic, Ericsson, Hewlett Packard, and Syngenta gave less or an undisclosed amount.
Apple and OpenAI's contributions came from the companies' chief executives, Tim Cook and Sam Altman, while Uber had a corporate donation and one from CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. All three of them appear on the report's list of "Big Tech oligarchs seeking corporate clemency from the Trump administration," alongside Musk, Bezos, TikTok's Shou Zi Chew, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta—which owns Instagram and Facebook—and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
"President Trump talks 'tough on crime,'" the report says, "but his administration is once again betraying a preference for going soft on corporations that break the law."
Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman similarly called out not only Trump—who was convicted of 34 felonies—but also Attorney General Pam Bondi and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel, who all "bloviate about how tough they are on crime."
"The reality is the Trump administration by its actions is inviting a corporate crime spree," Weissman said in a statement. "Not only does the wholesale abandonment of cases against alleged corporate wrongdoers let bad actors off the hook, it invites—and virtually guarantees—a surge in consumer rip offs, endangerment of workers, poisoning of the air and water, discriminatory employment practices, and more."
Public Citizen's analysis comes amid mounting alarm over Trump's so-called Department of Government Efficiency, led by Musk, the richest person on Earth. As Common Dreamsreported Monday, the Center for Biological Diversity noted in a new lawsuit that Trump's executive order establishing the government-gutting initiative requires all federal agencies to form DOGE teams.
The center's complaint stresses that "Mr. Musk and other billionaire and tech executives working with DOGE stand to benefit personally and financially from the DOGE teams' work, including by securing government contracts, slashing environmental rules that apply to their companies, and reducing the government's regulatory capacity and authority, including by targeting specific agencies, statutes, and spending decisions that affect their businesses."
$60 Billion in Waste and Fraud Easily Found Where Trump Refuses to Cut: The Pentagon
A trio of government watchdogs on Friday advised U.S. President Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser, Elon Musk, to take a "road map for achieving efficiency" at the only federal agency that has failed seven consecutive audits of its spending, and the one that spends by far the most in taxpayer money: the Department of Defense.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has spent recent weeks seizing data and slashing spending and tens of thousands of employees at agencies across the government, including the Department of Education, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Department of Labor.
But Musk's advisory body has had considerably less to say about waste and fraud at the Pentagon. The Tesla CEO met with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier this month for preliminary talks about possible spending cuts; Hegseth suggested climate programs at the Pentagon could be on the chopping block, but did not mention any cuts to weapons systems—advocating instead to shift current spending to other DOD programs.
"Unlike cuts to education, medical research, environmental protection, and food assistance programs, the administration is proposing that any Pentagon 'savings' be redirected to missile defense systems, border militarization, and other controversial and destructive military projects," wrote Mike Merryman-Lotze of the American Friends Service Committee in a column on Friday. "This is an enormous missed opportunity. We don't need a rearranging of the deck chairs on the Pentagon's titanic budget. We need fundamental change."
A new report by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, the Stimson Center, and Taxpayers for Common Sense on Friday suggested "eliminating dysfunctional weapons systems and outmoded business practices"—steps that would cut at least $60 billion in waste and inefficiencies at the DOD.
"The result will be more security at a lower cost," said William Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute.
The report highlights significant cuts that could be made, including:
- The F-35 combat aircraft program, saving $12 billion or more per year;
- Aircraft carriers, saving $2.3 billion or more annually;
- Canceling plans to replace land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), saving $310 billion total; and
- Cutting long-range missile defense, saving $9.3 billion per year.
The think tanks also advised introducing measures to rein in overcharging by defense contractors, who are known to charge the government as much as 3,800% above the fair and reasonable price, as one did for a spare part in a recent case; and cut excess basing infrastructure around the world, saving as much as $5 billion each year.
"Contrary to popular belief in Washington, national security and fiscal discipline are not mutually exclusive," reads the report. "In fact, they are inextricably linked. Budgeting for U.S. national security needs today and into the future requires that policymakers tackle wasteful spending and inefficiencies across the board, and with the Pentagon budget closing in on $1 trillion per year, the United States cannot afford to ignore it."
"Thankfully, tackling Pentagon programs and practices that do not offer a good return on investment will not only save taxpayers billions of dollars—it will also help illuminate and sustain the U.S.' greatest national security priorities," the report continues.
Gabe Murphy of Taxpayers for Common Sense pointed out that F-35 combat aircrafts and the Sentinel ICBM are "overpriced, underperforming, and out of step with current missions."
Defunding such weapons programs "would allow us to invest more in real priorities," said Murphy.
Truly eliminating waste at the Pentagon, Hartung toldThe Intercept on Friday, "would mean abandoning America's 'cover the globe' military strategy in favor of a genuinely defensive approach, and one would have to make sure that cuts in legacy systems weren't just filled in with drones and other emerging tech."
"We need a better balance between military spending and investments in diplomacy, development, humanitarian aid, global public health, and environmental protection," Hartung added. "Some of our biggest existential threats are not military in nature—such as climate change and pandemics."
Trump Mass Firing of Federal Workers Is a Very Local Issue, Warns Watchdog
"What Donald Trump and Elon Musk aren't telling you is that under the banner of DOGE they are gutting Americans' jobs and eliminating their essential services all across the country," said one critic.
While mass layoffs of federal workers and draconian cost-cutting by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency may seem like a distant issue to many Americans, a leading influence-monitoring watchdog warned Thursday that the Trump administration's sweeping cuts "are coming to your city services next."
"President Donald Trump and Elon Musk haven't just been taking a chainsaw through federal departments in Washington, D.C. Their crusade against regular Americans, and the services they depend on, has found its latest target: public servants directly serving in communities across the country," Accountable.US said in a statement.
The group noted that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) "has taken aim at workers across the country who are providing critical services ranging from veterans' care, administration of Social Security benefits, public health, forest service management, and more."
"That's because at least 80% of all federal workers live outside of the Beltway, with federal field offices facing cuts which will lead to degraded services in communities in every state," Accountable.US added. "Already, Americans are feeling the impact of office closures and the elimination of jobs."
For example, in Pennsylvania, DOGE is closing Rural Housing Service, Internal Revenue Service, and Fish and Wildlife Service field offices that employ and serve local residents. In Michigan, hundreds of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration workers have been laid off. In Nevada, federal office building maintenance staffers in Las Vegas and Reno have been let go. The list goes on and on.
"What Donald Trump and Elon Musk aren't telling you is that under the banner of DOGE they are gutting Americans' jobs and eliminating their essential services all across the country," Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk
said Thursday.
"From veterans' services to Social Security benefits, the administration is recklessly playing politics with benefits Americans depend on," Carrk continued. "It's all in service of paying for tax cuts which will benefit Trump, Musk, and their wealthy friends' pocketbooks, but push regular Americans further behind."
On Friday, Carrk further called the Trump-Musk cuts "a slap in the face to workers across the country, who get up everyday and serve others in their community."
"The fact these unnecessary job cuts are in service of paying for tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, makes it all the more despicable," he added.
In many cases, people who enthusiastically voted for Trump have been fired, including disabled Air Force veteran Nathan Hooven, who was terminated last month from his job at a Virginia medical center for veterans. As Common Dreamsreported Wednesday, up to 83,000 Department of Veterans Affairs jobs are on the Trump-Musk chopping block.
"I think a lot of other veterans voted the same way, and we have been betrayed," Hooven toldThe Associated Press Wednesday. "I feel like my life and the lives of so many like me, so many that have sacrificed so much for this country, are being destroyed."
Despite efforts like the "New York Wants You" campaign to hire laid off federal workers, finding new employment can be a tremendous challenge, especially for older workers and people with disabilities. There are approximately 3 million federal employees, more than 50% of whom are age 45 or older.
"Federal workers all across the country are starting to look, and it's impacting people everywhere," Cory Stahle, an economist at the job search platform Indeed, toldThe New York Times Friday. "It's hard to think this isn't going to stress test the labor market in the coming months."
The Trump-Musk purge has many targeted workers shaking their heads in disbelief.
"Why are government employees suddenly the enemy?" Timothy Nicolazzi, a program analyst at the Department of Housing and Urban Development facing the loss of his job, told the Louisville Courier Journal Friday.
"A lot of us took these positions because we wanted to continue serving our country in a different capacity," the veteran added. "We just keep asking why, why is this happening to us? When did we become the enemy? When did serving our country become the wrong thing to do?"
Facing Trump Attack, People 'Stand Up for Science' at Rallies Across US and Beyond
"When research stops, people suffer and people die," said one campaigner.
Scientists and their supporters in dozens of U.S. cities—as well as across Europe—rallied on Friday to demand the Trump administration end its assault on federal agencies, including those that research health, the climate, and other life-or-death issues.
The main "Stand Up for Science" rally was held Friday afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial, with advocates responding to a call made by Emory University doctoral candidate Colette Delawalla last month—as federal employees were learning of President Donald Trump's efforts to limit research grants at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the administration's order for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to purge any articles that mention gender identity or LGBTQ+ issues, and as Lee Zeldin, who has opposed clean air and water protections, took the helm of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
"I'm planning a Stand Up for Science protest in D.C.," wrote Delawalla in frustration on the social media platform Bluesky on February 8.
Since Delawalla and other organizers, including University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill doctoral student J.P. Flores and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory biologist Emma Courtney, began planning the event in Washington, the science community's alarm over the actions of the Trump administration has only grown.
In late February, reporting showed that the Trump administration had circumvented court rulings in order to block tens of billions of dollars in NIH grants that fund crucial research on numerous diseases.
At the rally on Friday, former NIH Director Francis Collins said the science research that takes place at the agency is "for the people."
With numerous global public health threats currently evolving—the spread of avian flu and several measles outbreaks in the U.S. and a new variant of mpox discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo—Collins said that "this would be a terrible time to dismantle our infectious disease research and our global public health efforts."
"The success of the American public science enterprise, which is the envy of the rest of the world over the past decades, it is of the people, by the people, and for the people," said Collins. "It's one of our nation's greatest achievements, enabling stunning discoveries about how life works, extending life expectancy, reducing disease burden, and, by the way, science is responsible for more than 50% of the economic growth of the United States since World War II."
Other recent anti-science actions by the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress include: the passage of a bill to end the Methane Emissions Reduction Program; right-wing billionaire Elon Musk's continued efforts via the so-called Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) to cut science and research spending at federal agencies, and the last week's firing of hundreds of staffers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Trump and Musk's actions have led universities to begin reducing admissions and even rescinding placement offers to post-graduate programs, threatening the future of biomedical research.
"When research stops, people suffer and people die," said Samantha Jade Durán, a disability justice advocate, at the Stand Up for Science rally in Washington, D.C. on Friday. "We cannot let that happen. We have seen what's possible when we invest in science. Polio was eradicated. HIV was transformed from a death sentence to a manageable and undetectable condition. Cancer treatments are getting better every year, and these breakthroughs didn't happen by accident. They happened because we chose to fund science."
On social media, organizers on Friday posted images of large rallies in Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City.
Solidarity marches also took place in Paris and Montpelier, France.
The rallies on Friday, said U.S. organizers, are "just the beginning."
"Our policy goals include a restoration of federal scientific funding, the reinstatement of wrongfully terminated employees at federal agencies, an end to governmental interference and censorship in science, and a renewed commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in science," said organizers in the U.S. "We are also committed to empowering scientists—and anyone who has benefited from scientific advancements—to engage in sustained advocacy in the years to come."
Jobs Report Seen as 'Calm Before the Storm' as Trump Chaos Rattles US Economy
"Donald Trump is on track to be the first president to deliberately engineer a severe depression," warned one observer.
Labor Department figures released Friday show that U.S. job growth was weaker than expected last month as President Donald Trump worked to eviscerate the federal government—the nation's largest employer—and whiplashed financial markets with his erratic tariff announcements and reversals.
The U.S. added 151,000 jobs in February, fewer than the projected 170,000. But economists stressed that the numbers don't yet show the full extent of the damage Trump has done in the opening weeks of his second White House term.
"Unfortunately, this is the calm before the storm as trouble is clearly brewing and the pain will be felt across the economy in coming months," said Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute.
While Gould stressed that "it's too soon" for jobs data to reflect the impact of the Trump administration's effort, in concert with billionaire Elon Musk, to gut the federal workforce—which has impacted some 100,000 government employees thus far—she said emerging numbers are still cause for concern.
"Nominal wage growth continues to hold steady, rising 4% over the year," Gould noted. "After falling steadily since its peak in June 2022, inflation has hovered around 3% for 20 months. As a result, average real wages have been rising. These gains could all be lost with the proposed tariffs and deportations."
The jobs data comes a day after Trump declared on his social media platform that "the Golden Age of America has just begun"—a message that appeared incongruous with economic trends and the perceptions of small business owners, investors, and working-class Americans facing a potentially massive tax hike and looming cuts to food assistance, Medicaid, and other benefits.
"Just one month on the job, warning signs are flashing across the Trump economy," Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative, said in a statement Friday. "Inflation is rising, consumer confidence is plummeting, business investment is pulling back, and now, the labor market is stalling."
"Instead of focusing on tax breaks for billionaires and giant corporations," Jacquez added, "Trump should find a way to get the economy back on track for working families before it spirals into recession."
"Trump has the power to issue commands in the domains that he controls, but he can't command the stock market to levitate, or prices to moderate, or consumers to feel confident, or people who have just been laid off to go out and shop."
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a billionaire, conceded Friday that the U.S. economy is showing signs of wavering but insisted it's a "natural adjustment as we move away from public spending to private spending."
"We've become addicted to this government spending, and there's going to be a detox period," Bessent told CNBC.
But economists have warned that Trump's instability and constantly changing whims could result in a prolonged reduction in private investment. The president's tariff policy has been so chaotic that it has some wondering whether he's trying to wreck the economy on purpose.
"If we don't get clarity by the back half of this year, economic uncertainty can be like a deer in the headlights," Nancy Lazar, chief global economist at the investment bank Piper Sandler, toldThe New York Times on Friday. "Things just stop. Business confidence is muted, employment is muted, and capital spending is put on hold."
Richard Trent, executive director of the Main Street Alliance, said in a statement Friday that "small business owners don't need more chaos."
"In the past month alone, market turmoil has frozen hiring, disrupted key programs, and rattled confidence," said Trent. "There's still time to correct this, but that requires President Trump and Elon Musk to work with Congress, follow the law, and restore stability. Main Street needs steady leadership, not chaos and cutbacks."
In a column earlier this week,The American Prospect's Robert Kuttner wrote that less than two months into his second term, "Donald Trump is on track to be the first president to deliberately engineer a severe depression."
"Trump has the power to issue commands in the domains that he controls, but he can't command the stock market to levitate, or prices to moderate, or consumers to feel confident, or people who have just been laid off to go out and shop," Kuttner wrote. "In a couple of weeks, the budget talks will reach the point of an increasingly likely government shutdown. Closing the government will be even more of a hit to total demand and consumer and investor confidence."
"In agreeing to reopen the government, Democrats are in a good position to demand that Trump reopen the whole government, starting with the parts that Musk has illegally shut down," he added. "In the meantime, this engineered crisis is entirely Trump's."