Today is Monday, February 3, 2025. The latest outrage from the nascent Dump administration is the power that Chump has invested in his billionaire chum, Elon Musk, to take a sledgehammer to legitimate government agencies, one especially, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) which primarily offers food assistance to countries around the world.

Congress created USAID, the organization that dispenses foreign aid for the U.S. government to developing nations around the world, back in 1961, but Musk and Dump seem intent on trying to shut it down completely, which is clearly unconstitutional.

Without any evidence – Musk takes his playbook from his Orange Turd friend – compared the agency to a rotten apple, a “ball full of worms,” during an appearance on his social media platform. He said there’s nothing worth saving with regard to the agency.

During an appearance in the Oval Office today, Dump dismissed USAID workers as “radical left lunatics.” What an insane thing to say, but Dump is not sane, as we should all know by now. Dump insisted that he would not need Congress to undo the agency they originally set up if “there was fraud.” Again, a baseless claim. Hah! Dump failed to elaborate on the fraud allegation, as expected, but he did repeat a specious claim that USAID paid tens of millions of dollars for condoms to go to Hamas. There is no evidence of such a ridiculous claim from the “president.”

But there is a palpable sense of dread at the agency, where the website has been taken down and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been named acting director.

Dozens of senior officials have been placed on leave after the president ordered that foreign aid be placed on hold.

More than 10,000 officials at the agency were informed not to come to agency headquarters today. Security officials were placed on leave after refusing to allow representatives from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to headquarters over the weekend.

Critics of this disgusting action stood up to the president. One of those critics was Jeremy Konyndyk, who served at the agency during the Biden and Obama administrations, during an appearance on CNN today, and said, “This is the world’s richest man [Musk] deciding the world’s richest country should stop helping the world’s poorest people.” He added, “That is the story here. The president does not have the authority to unilaterally shutter a federal agency that has been established in congressional and congressional statute.”

Another agency Dump and his billionaire pal have their sights on is the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in which agents have been asked by the Department of Justice (DoJ) to fill out a questionnaire explaining their work on cases involving the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. This could be viewed as a precursor to a mass firing at the agency, according to a report from CNN’s justice team.

However, agents are being encouraged to stay and wait to be fired.

Dozens of officials who worked on January 6 cases have already been fired at the DoJ after they were told by acting Attorney General James McHenry they cannot be “trusted” to faithfully” implement fucking Dump’s agenda. In other words, they were perceived as too independent. As you must know, an autocrat demands only undying fealty to him and no one else.

I won’t write about Dump’s declared war on allies Canada and Mexico in his dimwitted declaration to impose tariffs on goods coming from both countries. Already, this has backfired in his fat, puffy face. Today he retreated from the tariff threat for both Mexico and Canada. Of course, Dump will declare this retreat a win since he supposedly got concessions from the two countries. Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, promised to send 10,000 troops to Mexico’s border with the United States. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to work together on policing the flow of fentanyl – which is truly minuscule – into our country and said that Canada would spend $1.3 billion to ramp up its border security.

The former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who is a Democrat but was openly critical of the Biden administration over its economic policy, said that imposing tariffs will help no one but American enemies since it will alienate allies and warn other countries from negotiating with a madman like Dump.

Oh, and this is only two weeks into the Dump administration. It seems far longer.

I will not be posting here tomorrow since I have my monthly reading group meeting at 6:30, where we will be discussing Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! This time I might be going to Julius’s after the meeting, depending on how I feel. Actually, I’m meeting a former school colleague for the first time since I retired way back in 2017 at 12:30 on the East Side. So I’ll be busy tomorrow.

Enjoy your Tuesday.

And so it went!