Feb. 4, 2025: 8:30 p.m.:

Trump: California high-speed rail project ‘worst managed project that I think I’ve ever seen’

It was originally a point of a bit of bragging that California would have the nation’s first high-speed rail system. The project was intended to connect San Francisco to the Los Angeles basin in less than three hours at speeds up to 200 miles per hour. Then it would extend out to Sacramento and San Diego, which would total 800 miles with as many as 24 stations, according to California High-Speed Rail Authority.

The only problem with this exciting endeavor is that, according to President Trump, “it’s the worst managed project that I think I’ve ever seen” because “its hundreds of billions of dollars over budget.”

President Trump wants to do an investigation into the project to find out why it’s so ridiculously over budget.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: “The train that’s being built between Los Angeles and San Francisco is the worst managed project that I think I’ve ever seen… Hundreds of billions of dollars over budget… We’re going to start an investigation of that.” pic.twitter.com/CPEgTdv16w

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 4, 2025

Feb. 4, 2025: 8:00 p.m.:

Elon Musk says Trump will ‘succeed’ in eradicating Department of Education

President Trump wants to shift control of education from the federal level to the state level. In getting rid of the Department of Education, it will also cut cost on the federal level. Cutting federal costs and making the government function more efficiently is something the president has tasked Musk with overseeing via the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk posted on X that Trump will “succeed” in shutting the department down. Trump will likely move forward with the closure via an executive order, according to Newsweek.

Education Department Secretary nominee Linda McMahon will likely head up the effort to shut down the Department of Education.

BREAKING: President Trump says he told Linda McMahon he wants her to close the Department of Education:

“I want Linda to put herself out of a job…We spend more per pupil than any other country in the world and we’re ranked at the bottom of the list.” pic.twitter.com/BWOdjlG848

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) February 4, 2025

(FOX NEWS) — Members of the Senate voted late Tuesday to confirm Pam Bondi, attorney general nominee of President Donald Trump, voting 54-46 to install the longtime prosecutor and former Florida attorney general to head up the U.S. Department of Justice.

Bondi’s confirmation comes as both the Justice Department and FBI have been under scrutiny by Democrats in Congress, who have raised concerns over Trump’s recent decision to pardon or commute the sentences of 1,600 criminal dependents in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots and to oust more than 15 inspectors general and special counsel investigators.

To date, there are no known plans to conduct sweeping removals or take punitive action against the agents involved in the Jan. 6 investigations.

WATCH: Senate votes to confirm Pam Bondi for U.S. attorney general

If I say that Elon Musk is the smartest, boldest, most creative entrepreneur in the world, I don’t think I will get pushback.

President Donald Trump’s move to bring him to Washington and put him at the top of a new Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, to do the seemingly impossible – to streamline a vastly outsized government spending behemoth – injects hope that yes, maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Musk, the world’s richest man, is not beholden to anyone, and so there is little danger of him getting bogged down and imprisoned in the Washington culture of politics and quid pro quo.

He can stand above it all and turn the Titanic around before it hits the iceberg for which it’s clearly headed.

There’s a lot of talk that almost 75% of the federal budget is untouchable, mandatory spending.

The top of that list is the largest, and oldest, entitlement program, Social Security – 21% of federal spending. Short of passing a law to change it, it is on automatic pilot.

After reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk, I see him as uniquely qualified to lead an historic, essential transformation of Social Security.

When Trump noted, in his inaugural speech, his commitment “to give the American people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy and, indeed, their freedom,” I believe him.

But these ideals cannot be achieved without taking on our broken Social Security program.

Even the rhetoric surrounding this discussion is not American in character. “Saving the system.” We don’t serve systems in our free country. We preserve the freedom and integrity of individuals.

The nation’s founders, who pledged “our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor” for the ideals of the Declaration of Independence would be aghast that today practically every young American is forced to pay a tax into a Social Security program that cannot fiscally honor its promised benefits.

They would also be aghast that the pedigree of the largest federal program is not American. The first social security system – where citizens were taxed by government, which then promised to take care of them – was introduced in 1889 by German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. This was the beginning of the modern welfare state, which inspired Franklin Roosevelt to sign America’s social security system into law in 1935.

Immediately after Roosevelt signed Social Security into law, its constitutionality, appropriately, was challenged. Transfer payments – taxing one set of citizens to pay for benefits for another set of citizens – never existed in America and were not viewed as constitutional.

However, the Roosevelt-era Supreme Court, by vastly expanding understanding of the Constitution’s “general welfare” clause, opened the door to German socialism in America.

The massive growth of entitlement and welfare spending – transfer payments – goes back to that 1937 court decision Helvering v. Davis, which deemed transfer payments, and Social Security, constitutional.

While Jefferson and Lincoln look out onto the national mall in Washington, the spirit of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck hovers over the whole city.

To succeed at this transformational opportunity, I hope Musk will appreciate that first and foremost, this is not about budgeting and accounting but about ideas and principles.

No one proposes to threaten Social Security benefits current retirees receive. That is sacred.

But we must free young Americans, our future, from failed German socialism, and return them to American capitalism.

At least give them a choice – a choice to take ownership of the funds, now being taxed and forced into a broken system, and invest them, over a working lifetime, in the American economy.

Washington is now so jaded, our establishment now so confused and corrupt, no one believes it can be done.

But it can be done, and Elon Musk can do it. I pray he’ll step up to this historic leadership challenge and save our nation.

Feb. 4, 2025: 7:00 p.m.:

Trump: ‘The U.S. will take over the Gaza strip’

President Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday to discuss the conflict between Hamas and Israel. Then he addressed reporters at the White House, according to Barrons.

“The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it. And be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on this site,” said Trump.

BREAKING President Trump: “The U.S. will take over the Gaza strip.” pic.twitter.com/IMLY348vEt

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) February 5, 2025

Imagine a birthday cake so large that it has 250 candles on it. Such could be the case on July 4th next year, when America will celebrate two and a half centuries of our national independence. Just last week President Trump issued Executive Order 14180 to plan for that birthday.

The order calls for a “grand celebration worthy of the momentous occasion.” And it adds, “It is also the purpose of this order to take other actions to honor the history of our great Nation.”

I’m so glad Trump sees the value of this. The president writes, “Task Force 250 shall coordinate with the executive departments and agencies to plan, organize, and execute an extraordinary celebration of the 250th Anniversary of American Independence.”

Another point he makes in his executive order is to reinstate the protection of “America’s Monuments from Vandalism.” Back in 2020, there were many American historical statutes that were toppled or defaced by leftist revolutionaries. It began with Confederate memorials, but it desecrated the memory of many other past leaders in our history. Even George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were not exempt.

The Biden administration undid Trump’s executive order to protect America’s monuments. But now Trump has reinstated the prohibition from defacing these historical markers.

It is right and just for America to make a big deal about our 250th birthday. On July 4, 1776, by the unanimous voice vote, 56 men in Philadelphia, representing about 3 million souls in the 13 colonies of British North America, adopted the final wording of the Declaration of Independence.

It was a risky move. If America had lost the war, these men could have ended up being executed for treason.

The essence of the Declaration of Independence is “the consent of the governed” under God. In fact, the Declaration mentions God four times:

• “… the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God …”
• “all men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights …”
• “… appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions …”
• “… with a firm Reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence …”

In the Declaration of Independence, the founders declared independence from Great Britain. But at the same time, they declared dependence upon Almighty God. Without His help, they didn’t think their bold action would succeed.

Today’s secularists gnash their teeth at the idea of God having anything do with America’s founding. But He does. Furthermore, history is replete with examples of societies that removed God and consequently unleashed mass killings.

Atheism has a bloody track record. Stalin has slain his millions. Mao his tens of millions.

Thomas Jefferson, the key author of the Declaration of Independence, asked this question elsewhere. These words are chiseled in stone at the Jefferson Memorial: “God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?”

Why do we have an immigration crisis right now? Why do people vote with their feet to try to get into this country? What makes the U.S. so special? The answer has to do with one simple fact: We have an excellent foundation – one that recognizes that our rights come from God. Period.

Even when America doesn’t live up to its creed – that our Creator has endowed us with certain unalienable rights – it’s still a good creed.

As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed in his classic speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963: “I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.’” King, of course, was quoting the Declaration of Independence.

I believe that what is best about America gets back to our Judeo-Christian heritage. I don’t think there would be an America without the unique role the Bible played in the founding of our nation. Because America began as a Christian nation, people of all faiths or no faith are welcome here.

It is no small thing that America was founded as one nation under God, because when rights come from God, not the state, they are non-negotiable.

President John F. Kennedy noted in his Inaugural Address, “I am proud of the revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought … the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but the hands of God.”

So, we anticipate quite a birthday party next year and a whole lot of cake and candles.

California Democrats want fire victims to sue oil and gas companies. President Donald Trump wants them to have access to more water.

After surveying the wildfire damage in Los Angeles, Trump issued an executive order to “ensure adequate water resources in Southern California.” He cited the problems with fire hydrants running dry and empty reservoirs. He directed the Bureau of Reclamation to “deliver more water and produce additional hydropower” to high-need communities.

That may seem impossible. California has been battling drought for years. In 2022, Scientific American declared the Southwest’s mega-drought was “the driest 22-year period in at least 1,200 years.” The U.S. Drought Monitor says two-thirds of California is either “abnormally dry” or experiencing a drought. The Colorado River is running low. Just look at Lake Mead’s bathtub ring.

It seems obvious that California doesn’t have enough water because there simply isn’t enough water available. Telling the federal government to increase water deliveries is just wishful thinking by Trump. Even California isn’t dumb enough to dump trillions of gallons of fresh water into the ocean. Right?

Nope.

Several decades ago, the federal government and California built pumps to send water from Northern California to Southern California. That was smart. Southern California needed more water to support its farmland and growing population. But diverting the water changed conditions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

That shouldn’t be a surprise. Changes to nature are natural. Beavers dam up rivers without running an environmental impact assessment. Earthquakes don’t seek bureaucratic permission before literally shifting the earth’s surface. Wildfires don’t put themselves out over concerns that they’re causing global warming.

Every act of civilization changes the way things once were. Without those interventions, some part of nature would kill you. That’s an easy reality to forget because our forefathers spent generations successfully subduing much of the natural world. It takes extra water to support farmland and tens of millions of people living in a desert region.

Reducing the flow of freshwater has reportedly been tough on the Delta smelt, a small fish that lives in the region. It’s a relatively weak swimmer and depends on the mixing of saltwater and fresh water. In 2009, California declared the fish endangered under the California Endangered Species Act.

To help the fish, California scaled back how much water it sent to Southern California. “Since 2008, 1.4 trillion gallons of water has been flushed into the San Francisco Bay to protect the Delta smelt, an endangered species of fish, from water pumps,” the San Diego Union-Tribune wrote in 2015. Further, environmental uses of water accounted “for more than 50 percent of the state’s flows.”

That waste has continued. In January 2023, massive storms hit the state. They dumped trillions of gallons of water, but 94% of it drained into the ocean. Part of the problem was that California didn’t have the infrastructure to capture more of it. But officials also turned down those pumps to protect the Delta smelt.

Rather than changing course, California Democrats want to deflect blame. Democrat state Sen. Scott Wiener proposed a bill that would allow fire victims and insurance companies to sue fossil fuel companies for damages.

“From last year’s floods to the fires in L.A., we know that the fossil fuel industry bears ultimate responsibility for fueling these disasters,” Wiener wrote on X.

It’d be more effective to allow fire victims to sue the politicians who sent water into the ocean and mismanaged California’s forests.

Barack Obama couldn’t heal the planet, but if Trump can navigate the inevitable legal hurdles, he could give Californians more water.

JERUSALEM – The foreign ministers of five Arab states, as well as a senior Palestinian official sent a joint letter to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, urging the Trump administration to back a two-state solution to the more-than-a-century old Israel-Palestinian conflict, while strongly rejecting President Donald Trump’s suggestion Gaza’s population should be resettled – either temporarily or permanently – elsewhere in the Middle East ahead of the Strip’s reconstruction.

“Palestinians do not want to leave their land. We support their position unequivocally,” wrote the foreign ministers of Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, as well as Palestinian Authority presidential adviser Hussein al-Sheikh.

Trump lit the touch paper after recent several recent pronouncements indicated his favoring resettlement of some 1.5 million Gazans, with Jordan and Egypt appearing most prominently in his thinking. On the question of whether this would be a temporary or permanent solution, the president prevaricated somewhat, merely answering journalists with a “could be either.”

US officials defend Trump’s plan to relocate Gazans: He thinks it’s ‘inhumane’ to keep them there during long reconstruction https://t.co/ObvFFdTZW3

— The Times of Israel (@TimesofIsrael) February 4, 2025

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi declared Palestinian displacement “can never be tolerated or allowed,” citing national security concerns. Jordan, where Palestinians already make up over 70% of the population under Hashemite royal rule, took an equally firm stance.

“Jordan’s rejection of any displacement of Palestinians is firm and unwavering,” stated Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi. “Jordan is for Jordanians, and Palestine is for Palestinians.” The fact this seems a distinction without much of a difference would not be lost on the foreign minister, or the Hashemite royal family, whose grip on power seems increasingly fragile.

BREAKING: President Trump Proposes Moving Gazans To New Piece Of Land, Possibly In Jordan And Egypt; Says Gaza Is A Demolition Zone pic.twitter.com/VeVYOYXyeh

— Shelley G (@ShelleyGldschmt) February 4, 2025

The five Arab nations, plus the Palestinian authority officials, emphasized Palestinians themselves must lead Gaza’s reconstruction with international support. The United Nations joined the opposition, with its spokesperson warning against forced displacement. Several European nations, including Germany, France, and Spain, have also criticized the proposal.

This point is worth dwelling on for a moment. Gaza has had tens of billions of dollars poured into it so Hamas could effectively do one of three things; purchase weapons, create the labyrinthine underground city in which Israeli hostages have been held, and siphon off huge amounts of the money to enrich themselves.

It seems clear President Trump would prefer not to see a repeat of the last 15 months of war between Hamas and Israel, but if this is to be avoided the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group cannot – as some U.S. officials have intimated – be allowed to run the Gaza Strip.

Similarly, Trump’s request for Arab states to take in displaced Palestinians almost seems humane if the alternative is nearly 2 million people living in squalor until the purported decade-and-a-half reconstruction can be undertaken. For nearly 80 years, Arab states have deliberately tried to make the Palestinians Israel’s problem. Perhaps it’s time to hold them to account and make sure they have some skin in the game.

The regime they’ve propped up – especially Qatar – perpetrated an unforgivable slaughter on the communities of southern Israel and now they expect them to be rewarded with a state because none of these countries actually want the Palestinians on their soil. And the 22 member state Arab League warned it could “trigger instability and derail peace prospects.” This is the epitome of chutzpah.

The diplomats urged the U.S. to oppose any “unilateral measures that undermine the viability of the two-state solution,” continuing, “it is imperative Israel does not annex any Palestinian land.”

On Monday, Trump made further headlines when speaking from the Oval Office he deflected a question about Israel’s annexation of Judea and Samaria. He said he wasn’t going to talk about it, but did note Israel was a “pretty small piece of land,” when compared to the rest of the Middle East.

Trying to guess what is in the mind of President Trump is an exercise in futility; and given his previously fractious relationship with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there is no guarantee of what he will do next. He has a precarious balancing act to manage.

It seems likely he wants to reanimate the Saudi-Israel normalization deal, which seemed so tantalizingly close at the end of his first term, but having viewed the raw footage of the Oct. 7 massacre, he might baulk at rewarding the Palestinians with a state of their own.

In a report that has left critics of Washington’s Deep State radicalism gasping, it has been confirmed that the FBI used 5,000 agents – of its 13,000 total – to go after J6ers and President Donald Trump.

5,000 FBI agents to investigate misdemeanor trespass. This is a total disgrace. It’s hard to see why the FBI should continue to exist at all. pic.twitter.com/0khG1FvKz8

— Cernovich (@Cernovich) February 4, 2025

BREAKING: The FBI just provided President Trump’s Justice Department the names of 5,000 agents & officials who worked on the January 6th cases and Jack Smith’s hoaxes.

That means Kash Patel will be firing thousands.

I am speechless. pic.twitter.com/X3hga6AbGa

— George (@BehizyTweets) February 4, 2025

That is an insane misallocation of resources! https://t.co/uQEPtGA1oJ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2025

The Gateway Pundit commented, “The FBI officials who worked on the J6 cases and Trump investigations were identified by a case management system.”

And it cited NBC’s Ken Dilanian who explained an internal FBI document obtained by NBC shows that executives use the FBI’s Sentinel case file management system to identify agents and employees who worked on January 6 cases. “The document says there were around 2,400 investigations in total. The document says the search of case files was used to generate a list of names who then received a survey asking them exactly what they did on these cases,” the report said.

The report said it’s now that FBI agents are “in fear of being outed, demoted or denied promotions in the future.”

Politico reported that FBI agents already have gone to court to try to keep their involvement in the cases a secret.

They claim, “Plaintiffs legitimately fear that the information being compiled will be accessed by persons who are not authorized to have access to it. Plaintiffs further assert that even if they are not targeted for termination, they may face other retaliatory acts such as demotion, denial of job opportunities or denial of promotions in the future.”

They are complaining that they fear the list of agents who prosecuted Capitol trespassers with sometimes years-long jail terms, and who tried to put Trump in jail before his election, “will be used as part of a retaliation campaign.”

The report also noted what is not surprising: That ex-chief Andrew McCabe claims the bureau is in “utter disarray.”

BREAKING: Anonymous FBI officials just filed a class action lawsuit against President Trump’s DOJ to prevent the identification of agents who worked on January 6th cases & Jack Smith’s failed witchhunts.

They know they’re getting fired. pic.twitter.com/pY3CcG0mio

— George (@BehizyTweets) February 4, 2025