DOGE=BS

Something we expected: DOGE was a malevolent, stupid waste of time and resources. The fact that Musk was given access to sensitive, secure governmental systems is most likely a crime in and of itself. We don't need ignorant, biased, incompetent billionaires deciding which government programs should continue and which should be terminated. Musk is a liar like his idol Trump.

GAO AUDIT OF DOGE

Two days ago, the Government Accountability Office released its audit of DOGE’s so called Wall of Receipts.

Elon Musk claimed DOGE saved taxpayers $215 billion. The GAO found billions in supposed savings that weren’t real at all. More than $27 billion came from contracts DOGE said it terminated that were never actually terminated. Auditors couldn’t verify how DOGE calculated 96% of its claimed grant savings, and many of the leases DOGE took credit for eliminating were already being closed before DOGE existed.

Independent analysis has put the amount of clearly identifiable savings much closer to $5 billion.

But even the word ‘savings’ is a lie.

They didn’t find waste, fraud or abuse. They saved money by stopping the government from providing services that helped Americans as well as humanitarian programs overseas that we’d supported for decades because they saved lives, prevented disease and instability, and served America’s interests around the world.

USAID programs providing food, clean water, vaccines and treatment for HIV, tuberculosis and malaria disappeared. More than 80% of its humanitarian programs were canceled. At Social Security, staffing cuts contributed to longer waits and problems processing claims for elderly and disabled Americans.

Federal agencies lost scientists, IT specialists, claims processors and experienced employees who actually made government work. There are documented purchasing problems, service delays and increased costs across numerous agencies thanks to these unnecessary cuts.

And the human cost was much bigger than the dollar savings. About 386,000 federal civilians lost their jobs as a result of the Trump downsizing, while a Boston University researcher’s model estimates that cuts to USAID programs contributed to more than 780,000 additional deaths worldwide in the first year, including roughly half a million kids.

So when MUSK says he ‘saved’ money, ask the obvious question. Saved it from what?

From treating malaria. Feeding starving children. Processing Social Security claims. Keeping experienced people in government. Maintaining programs Americans had already decided were worth paying for.

Does Elon have any grasp of what it’s like to be a retired, working class American living on a limited income? Does he understand the nightmare of living in a third world country where food is scarce and medical care is desperately needed? He doesn’t know or care.

Musk talked about saving $2 trillion. DOGE claimed $215 billion. We may have gotten something closer to $5 billion in identifiable savings, while destroying services worth far more to the people who depended on them.

That’s like saving money on your electric bill by burning down your house. Many of us already knew this. Now a GAO audit has officially confirmed it.

Elon Musk waved his golden chainsaw around onstage like a demented clown while thousands lost critical services and hundreds of thousands died. DOGE was enormous in its own right.

Compared to everything else he’s done to the federal government, DOGE was just another disgusting act in Trump’s corrupt circus.

08/08/2026 Sources: 

U.S. Government Accountability Office, “DOGE Wall of Receipts: More Transparency Needed on How Savings Are Derived from Contract, Grant, and Lease Terminations,” August 6, 2026; 

Reuters, “100 Days of DOGE: Lots of Chaos, Not So Much Efficiency,” April 24, 2025; 

Reuters, “From Fighting HIV to Interpreters, USAID Cuts Wide Swath of Programs,” March 6, 2025; 

Reuters, “U.S. Government Workforce Shrinks by 12% Since September 2024,” March 4, 2026; 

Boston University, “Tracking Anticipated Deaths from USAID Funding Cuts,” March 21, 2025; 

Forbes, “Musk Escalates Unproven USAID Claims in Fiery Posts as Studies Link DOGE Cuts to Child Deaths,” July 1, 2026. 

#douglasarthurjohnson

AI illustration made using ChatGPT

Douglas Arthur Johnson (Facebook)

Abdul el-Sayed

The Democrats are going to have to come together, regardless of their differences, to defeat the Republicans come election day this November. Progressives? Establishment? Centrists? Anti- or pro-Israel? It's essential they bury their differences and vote together to take back our government from the fascists.

It seems certain that Trump and his fascist enablers will try to rig the election to keep the Groping Old Pedophiles (GOP) in power. Trump is trying every trick in the book, and he will probably try to declare some kind of bullshit "emergency" to justify trying to take over elections. 

We should be proud that someone like Abdul ran and won the Democratic nomination for Senate from Michigan. Immigrants are what America is all about. They make the nation stronger, no matter what the white supremacists say. What we are experiencing in America is only a temporary setback. These fascists will also pass from the scene. Hopefully we can get it done without too much blood being spilled.

Julie Donoho introduces us to Abdul el-Sayed.

NBC News is announcing that Michigan democrats just nominated some guy as their senate candidate.

He was born in Rochester Hills, a suburb of Detroit.

This guy grew up playing youth hockey, but had to give it up because it conflicted with football in high school. Giving up hockey allowed him not only to play high school football but to wrestle and play lacrosse, too. He went on to captain his public high school wrestling, football and lacrosse teams.

After high school he attended the University of Michigan where he played on Michigan's men's club lacrosse team while double majoring in biology and political science.

He graduated with highest distinction and delivered the commencement address at his graduation at UofM.

Following undergrad he attended Michigan Medicine on a full ride for two years before heading to Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship where he earned a Doctorate of Philosophy in public health. He then went back and completed his MD at Columbia University.

The guy is an academic and athletic standout coming from a Michigan Public High School who then launched his higher education journey at our own flagship Public University.

He is an expert in health policy.

He is not a private school, trust fund nepo baby.

He is married to the mother of his children.

Over the coming weeks you're going to see SO MANY bots, political pages, campaign staffers, TV idiots and garden variety racists reverting to tropes, prejudices and fears.

They're going to draw attention to this man's name, his skin tone and his religion.

They will ignore every other aspect of his character, his accomplishments, and his policy positions.

Regardless of how anyone votes, we should absolutely be proud of this guy. We may not all agree politically, but Abdul El-Sayed is as American as any of us, and he's truly one of the best and brightest minds our state has produced.

Julie Donoho

ICE abuse

This one is no surprise. ICE has hired every misfit they can find. Bully? Come on! Sex abuser? Welcome! Elementary school dropout? You're smart!! Ignorant fool? You're our kind of guy! 

Border Patrol agents have a bad reputation here in South Texas. So, naturally, many of them have joined ICE where they have even more authority to terrorize the population. And these are only the instances that we are aware of.

Reich Wing Watch

 

A new report on ICE criminals should be a five-alarm fire, and somehow it’s barely a headline.

The Ohio Immigrant Alliance just released “They Walk Among Us,” a 36-page analysis of 59 current or former ICE and Border Patrol employees accused, charged, or convicted of violent or sexual offenses. The findings:

→ 50 of 59 cases (84.7%) involve s*x offense charges or convictions

→ 37 of 59 (62.7%) involve crimes against children

→ 35 cases specifically allege s*x offenses against children — the single largest category in the whole report

→ 25 of the 59 cases happened in just 2025-2026 alone

Read that last one again. Nearly half the cases in this report are from the last two years. This is not a legacy problem — it’s an accelerating one.

The report gives names: Brashad Johnson, the DHS official who ran background investigations on other agents, was himself later convicted of soliciting prostitution involving a minor. Former Border Patrol agent John Daly III is identified as the “East Valley Serial Rapist.” Juan David Ortiz, a former Border Patrol supervisor, was convicted of murdering four women.

Ohio Immigrant Alliance director Lynn Tramonte says her team started digging after spotting a pattern of Cincinnati ICE agents committing offenses against women — and found “an inordinate number” of cases involving children, committed by agents with a decade or two on the job.

The report also points to gutted vetting and training: a former ICE attorney testified the agency cut 240 hours out of its 584-hour training program.

No Vetting, No Training, No Accountability

The report details how DHS has systematically weakened the safeguards meant to prevent dangerous individuals from becoming federal agents, and warns that this list of 59 agents will likely grow unless emergency measures are implemented. 

Last year, NBC reported that ICE began skipping the prior background check process to rush recruits through hiring and training, resulting in the acceptance of some individuals with pending domestic violence charges. In addition to lax vetting, the Trump administration weakened other requirements and standards that have made ICE and Border Patrol agents more dangerous than ever for local communities.

A former ICE lawyer responsible for training testified that the current instruction program is “deficient, defective and broken.” He said, “On my first day, I received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant. For the last five months, I watched ICE dismantle the training program, cutting 240 hours of vital classes from a 584-hour program.”

The report’s own framing is blunt: this isn’t an aberration. It’s a culture. And the org is calling on Congress to freeze ICE/CBP funding until real oversight exists.

Worth noting: the report’s 59 cases span the full spectrum from allegations to convictions — not everyone listed has been convicted. But the pattern of an agency failing to screen out or remove people who should never have been armed with federal authority over immigrants and children? That part isn’t in dispute.

Full report via Ohio Immigrant Alliance / reporting by Davis Vanguard

Mr Corruption

Still playing catch-up from our recent vacation to the mountains. Bad weather is becoming an everyday thing now. Heavy flooding rains, big hail, high winds, tornadoes, wildfires, you name it. We are entering a period of climate chaos. Just watch the nightly news. And we have Republicans trying to dismantle the agencies that keep an eye on this crazy weather. We hit some bad weather on the drive up and back, but fortunately for us no flooding, and no wildfires very close to us.

Meanwhile, in DC, Mr Corruption is still at it. Another from Allen Clifton.

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to rant for a second, and I'm definitely going to use "adult language."

Donald Trump sued his own government for $10 billion, then had his Department of Justice "settle" the lawsuit for $1.8 billion.

Oh, and to give himself and his family perpetual immunity from IRS scrutiny.

Since that's not f*cking insane — complete immunity from the IRS.

I don't have the words, honestly.

And I don't give a sh*t if it's dead, it gets revived, or what happens with it. Yes, I hope it's done with and we can move on, but I don't believe that for a second. This president and his crooked administration have no ethics, and Republicans in Congress have already showcased, repeatedly, that they're spineless and won't hold him accountable for anything.

That said, even if this slush fund never pays out a penny to anyone — Trump tried to get this through.

That's what matters.

Can anyone logically explain to me how it's constitutional or legal for a sitting president to sue the very government of which he's the executive, then have the Department of Justice, run by people he chose to lead the agency, "settle" with him for nearly $2 billion of taxpayers' money?

I don't give a damn what warped view anyone might have of the Constitution — there's absolutely no way our Founding Fathers ever conceived of such a blatantly corrupt act being carried out by a president.

Actually, I'm wrong. They did.

It's called impeaching and removing them from office.

Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about a consensual affair.

Donald Trump won't face any repercussions for literally trying to steal $1.8 billion in taxpayer money to create a slush fund for himself.

I'm so f*cking tired of this MAGA cult defending this bullsh*t.

If you all want to just admit that you don't care what he does and you're fine with the corruption, then say that. I'll think you're a lowlife piece of crap — just like Trump — but at least you'll be honest.

But please don't sit there and try to treat the rest of us like we're all stupid and try to defend a sitting president suing their own government and having their own DOJ "settle" for nearly $2 billion.

And don't dare sit there and act as if you would be okay with this if a Democrat tried the same thing. You all lost your damn minds when Barack Obama wore a tan suit, so I know you wouldn't be okay with him trying to take $1.8 billion in taxpayer dollars.

It really is incredible that this is how far down the GOP has gone. How brainwashed the typical conservative voter is. That even with something as clearly unethical and corrupt as this, they don't care.

They're still over there obsessed about Hunter Biden's laptop while Trump is trying to steal nearly $2 billion from taxpayers, and they don't seem to care.

And the guy who helped him do all of this in the first place, Todd Blanche, is the person these Republicans are going to confirm as our next attorney general — this president's former personal attorney.

Because, yeah, what could possibly be corrupt or unethical about the former personal lawyer for a sitting president serving as the nation's attorney general? That doesn't scream "conflict of interest" or anything.

Again, this is the same acting attorney general who helped oversee this entire $1.8 billion settlement effort in the first place.

The reality that those two facts didn't automatically disqualify Blanche — he's Trump's former lawyer and he was part of this $1.8 billion deal — is embarrassing.

I'm exhausted with these right-wing sheep treating the rest of us like we're as stupid as they are and pretending we don't see what this clearly was: Trump abusing his power to try to steal nearly $2 billion in taxpayer dollars and shield himself and his businesses from IRS scrutiny.

Nothing the right does anymore surprises me. As I've said plenty of times, there's nothing they can do, no matter how low they go, that surprises me.

Hell, they're okay with Trump protecting child predators through his coverup of the Epstein files — which Blanche is also helping with — and you really don't get any lower than that.

That said, it's still sickening to sit here and realize this is where we're at in this country.

Corruption that's so blatant it's being defended by Trump supporters, who are claiming that it's clearly not unethical because he's not trying to hide any of this — he's doing it all out in the open.

Yeah, no sh*t he is. Why wouldn't he?

When he's backed by a cult that never holds him accountable for anything, why should he go through all the trouble of trying to hide any of this?

Donald Trump treats his supporters like mindless idiots who will defend anything he does, and the vast majority of them never disappoint him by doing just that.

Allen Clifton

AOC

Right-wingers belittle Democrats whenever possible. No matter how smart, no matter how accomplished, no matter if they are wildly popular or not, Dems will be vilified, usually without any repercussions, as the Republicans have now simply become a LIE-FACTORY. Fortunately, most people can see through the character assassinations. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is a good example. 

“Just an unqualified bartender” 

Representative Ocasio-Cortez graduated cum laude from Boston University in 2011 with a double major in economics and international relations. During college she interned in Ted Kennedy's office handling immigration casework, which is constituent service, the actual daily work of a congressional office.

After graduating she worked at the National Hispanic Institute as educational director and founded a small publishing venture, Brook Avenue Press, aimed at children's books about the Bronx. She also organized for the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign. So she had campaign experience, legislative office experience, nonprofit management experience, and a relevant degree before she ever ran for office.

The bartending experience is true and simultaneous to the other activities. Her father died in 2008 during the financial crisis, the family faced foreclosure pressure, and she waited tables and tended bar to help her mother keep the house. That is a normal thing for a person in their twenties in New York to do while their credentialed career pays nothing.

She promotes it because it's a class signal, and because the contrast with the average net worth of Congress is the point she's making. 

She has an impressive resume and it's even more impressive how these things aren't well know. 

I think that says something about the quality of her character.

Christopher Armitage

Tom Nichols

Jeanine Pirro actually did the right thing about the reflecting pool. When evidence was presented that the contractor working on the pool was at fault and not any vandals, she dropped the charges against the innocent Americans. The truth makes a comeback!! 

Trump, on the other hand, had his narrative (aka "lie") and raged against Pirro. Trump cannot accept the truth about much of anything. He has to make up lies about everything. This is a personality disorder that might just get us all killed. And still, Republicans sit on their hands.

Trump’s Irrationality Is Dangerous

The president’s recent rant is a sign of serious dysfunction in the Oval Office.

By Tom Nichols

Many Americans—and much of the rest of the world—have become inured to Donald Trump’s strange rants. When he shouts about sharks, when he drones on about his brilliant uncle, when he casually ponders violating the Constitution, his supporters try to dress his statements up as some kind of strategy: He’s not lost touch with reality, you see. He’s doing the weave, or he’s owning the libs. He’s fighting the fake news and flooding the zone. He knows what he’s doing.

These excuses have never really held much water. But his rant yesterday about the Reflecting Pool (speaking of things that don’t hold water) was a warning that the president has encased himself in the hard amber of irrationality that inevitably surrounds authoritarian leaders. He has become detached from reality—and that detachment is extremely dangerous.

The Reflecting Pool mess is different from other Trump obsessions because it reveals just how immune to evidence and logic his beliefs have become, even when a trusted lieutenant wheels an entire box of supporting evidence into the Oval Office. In Trump’s world, nothing is ever innocent. If something went wrong, the fault must lie with Americans conspiring against him, not with a contractor who did shabby work. And so the boss put out the order: Find the criminals who destroyed my lovely pool.

The task of prosecuting this inane case fell to Jeanine Pirro, who has known Trump for more than three decades. She has long been one of his most loyal defenders on Fox News, and she was his personal choice for the job of U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia after the failed nomination of Ed Martin. She dutifully charged multiple people with vandalizing the Reflecting Pool, including the Olympic athlete David Hearn. But last week, she moved to drop the case after admitting that the pool’s condition was “the result of a botched installation” and not of criminal activity. Trump immediately turned on her. In a Truth Social post after Pirro’s filing, Trump said he disagreed “100%” with his old friend. “I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM.”

This outburst, however, was merely a warm-up for a nearly 10-minute performance yesterday afternoon in the Oval Office that went well beyond Trump’s usual whining. Pirro, he said, “choked” under pressure from the court. She “made a mistake. It was vandalism.” He continued:

One of the things was, the Reflecting Pool hasn’t worked since 1922, because it always leaked. It always leaked from 1922. You know, it’s the largest, longest pool ever, all that. The concept is beautiful, but it always leaked because of the size, because of maintenance, whatever. But it was built in 1922, and from the day it was built, it was—it leaked. Biden spent $58 million. Barack Hussein Obama spent much more than that. He said, “I have an idea. Let’s take the river from, let’s take the water from the Potomac.” So they took the water from the Potomac, and it was putrid. It was putrid. It was a disaster. Biden was a disaster.

But how did Trump know that Pirro was wrong and he was right? “We have photographs or tapes,” he said, “like moving cameras, right? We have them where people are on the side, cutting it with a box knife.” Trump then admitted that he wasn’t “thrilled” with the work the contractor did, but “in addition, there was vandalism.” He complained about some damage to the grass nearby, but then came back to the pool, where “they took knives or cutters, and they cut the material—it’s material. And they put their hands and they pulled it.”

Pirro undermined all of this in a lengthy filing to the court that accompanied her request to withdraw the case. Perhaps in an earlier time, when Trump appeared more amenable to listening to the advice of friends and trusted advisers, he might have been satisfied with the harassment of his opponents. As the New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan wrote in their recent book on Trump, he admitted that he wanted charges filed just to harass perceived enemies such as New York Attorney General Letitia James, even if the charges were unlikely to stick. “I want to make her life miserable,” they quote him as saying to an adviser.

But Trump has now passed from being a stubborn narcissist to a cocooned authoritarian. Political scientists since World War II have studied the problem of “irrational” leaders, people in positions of power who seem unable to accept any version of reality that conflicts with their assumptions. Irrational, in this sense, does not mean “stupid,” or “incompetent,” or “psychotic.” It refers more specifically to leaders who have become so trapped by their own self-regard, so isolated from the outside world, so imprisoned within their own sense of infallibility that they refuse to consider any arguments or information that conflicts with their beliefs.

Trump reportedly relishes being compared to some of the great dictators of the past, but he apparently does not comprehend how their stories are also warnings. Joseph Stalin was so certain he had outfoxed the Nazis that he fell into catatonic denial for several days after the Germans attacked in 1941. Saddam Hussein refused to believe that American troops were crossing into Iraq, even as tanks rumbled toward Baghdad. Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania was one of many leaders throughout history who refused to believe that he was about to be deposed, despite troops advancing on their palace. (He and his wife died shouting orders at their firing squad.)

Trump’s detachment from reality is sometimes amusing and often alarming, but the price of his irrationality until now has been mostly economic and reputational (or, in the case of the Reflecting Pool, aesthetic, now that the cases against innocent Americans have been dropped). His belief in tariffs, for example, is a flatly irrational attachment to a tool that has been proven, over and over, to harm Americans. Likewise, his fixation on NATO has undermined decades of careful diplomacy and weakened the strongest alliance in history.

The war in Iran, however, has shown that Trump’s inability to perceive reality has become truly dangerous. He led the United States into a disastrous conflict because he thought his “gut” was smarter than the advisers who warned him that deposing Iran’s regime was unlikely. He continues to mislead the American people, and perhaps himself, about America’s strategic defeat at the hands of one of its worst enemies. The world economy and the balance of power have been changed, perhaps for many decades to come, because Trump cannot draw links between cause and effect; he does not understand that his actions and the failures that follow are somehow related to each other.

Iran is a disaster, but Trump’s irrationality could create other, even more perilous situations. When the water systems in seven states were recently subjected to cyberattacks, Trump blamed his fellow Americans, despite evidence of foreign involvement. What if America suffers another mass-terror attack, and Trump decides that it, too, is the work of disloyal Americans instead of foreigners? Will his underlings round people up based on such a delusion? Or perhaps Trump, if his party is beaten soundly in the midterms, will make up his mind that such a loss is impossible and call for invalidating the election’s results. He might even inspire his supporters to violence—as he did on January 6, 2021.

More worrisome is the possibility of a military crisis that unfolds quickly and threatens U.S. allies or the United States itself. If Russian President Vladimir Putin decides to test NATO and attacks a member of the alliance, or if China begins to move in the Pacific, could anyone in Trump’s inner circle contradict the president’s presumptions and biases? If, say, Russia or China or other powers go to a heightened state of nuclear alert, Trump would have to make decisions of potentially cataclysmic importance. Would he listen, even to basic information, if it conflicted with his omniscient gut?

Trump has always been notoriously un-briefable, but in his first term, he had people who would try to speak the truth to him. More important, he was capable, at least to some limited degree, of occasionally listening to those assistants. All of that is gone. Trump slamming his old friend Pirro shows that when even the most trusted allies offer him the truth, he won’t accept it.

Trump is not going to have some sudden epiphany about the need for an open and honest policy process. Like other authoritarians before him, the president has retreated, irrevocably, behind the walls of his own Forbidden City of the mind—a place where he is the emperor, his judgment is always right, and his commands must always be obeyed.

Tom Nichols is a staff writer at The Atlantic and a contributor to the Atlantic Daily newsletter.