WND

House Republicans have begun pushing a plan that would take guns and ammunition away from agents of the Internal Revenue Service.

Likely among the most feared agencies, those agents now have thousands of guns and tons of ammunition.

But a congressman has determined that, “The only thing IRS agents should be armed with are calculators.”

A Fox News report explains the plan, called the “Why Does the IRS Need Guns Act,” would disarm the agents and their agency.

It would prohibit the commissioner of the IRS from using funds to buy, receive or store firearms and ammunition, and require the bureau to transfer the arms it already has to the administrator of General Services.

From there, they would go to auctions or sales to licensed dealers, the report said.

And taxpayers actually would benefit from the income from those sales.

The plan comes from U.S. Rep. Barry Moore, R-Ala., who was blunt in his assessment: “The IRS has consistently been weaponized against American citizens, targeted religious organizations, journalists, gun owners, and everyday Americans.

“Arming these agents does not make the American public safer. My legislation, the Why Does the IRS Need Guns Act, would disarm these agents, auction off their guns to Federal Firearms License Owners, and sell their ammunition to the public. The only thing IRS agents should be armed with are calculators.”

Cosponsors included GOP Reps. Harriet Hageman of Wyoming, Mary Miller of Illinois and Clay Higgins of Louisiana.

Moore explained, on social media on Tax Day this year, “Tax Day is a great reminder that it’s time for the IRS to stop wasting our taxpayer dollars stockpiling guns and ammo.”

CNN’s polling analyst, Harry Enten, has dispelled the notion some Democrats have put forth that a huge segment of Americans regret giving Donald Trump their vote in November.

WATCH:

The data is in and 98% of Trump supporters do NOT regret their votes from 2024.

CNN’s Harry Enten DEBUNKS the left’s talking points. pic.twitter.com/0ROcBhM5lR

— Thomas Hern (@ThomasMHern) April 16, 2025

The Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, has suspended almost half a million government credit cards in use by federal officials as of this week, Newsweek reports.

Like a parent canceling the ill-advised gift of a credit card to a teenager, DOGE chief Elon Musk has deactivated credit cards issued to employees of 30 federal agencies.

Since its inception, DOGE has recommended the firing of more than 200,000 federal workers, and 75,000 workers have accepted the Trump administration’s offer to voluntarily resign, notes the Newsweek report.

On Tuesday, DOGE wrote on X that it had deactivated about 470,000 credit cards in its crackdown on federal spending.

“Credit Card Update! The program to audit unused/unneeded credit cards has been expanded to 30 agencies. After 7 weeks, ~470k cards have been de-activated. As a reminder, at the start of the audit, there were ~4.6M active cards/accounts, so still more work to do,” the post said.

Musk added on X Wednesday: “Twice as many credit cards are issued and active than the total number of government employees! Crazy.”

Twice as many credit cards are issued and active than the total number of government employees! Crazy. https://t.co/6Zfr3fyHM8

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 16, 2025

One of the most damaging attacks on Americans’ constitutional rights in recent years actually came from the government itself, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he’s working on President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to “close the book” on the “weaponization” of the bureaucracy’s agenda to “silence, censor, and suppress the free speech of ordinary Americans.”

He’s doing that by eliminating organizations like the Global Engagement Center, a key player that once had a huge role in the censorship industrial complex.

In a commentary posted at the Federalist, he explains:

“Over the past half-decade, bodies like GEC, crafted by our own governing ruling class, nearly destroyed America’s long free speech history. The enemies of speech had new lingo to justify their authoritarian impulse. It was ‘disinformation,’ allegedly pushed by nefarious foreign governments, that was the No. 1 threat to ‘our democracy.’ To protect ‘our democracy,’ this ‘disinformation’ had to be identified and stamped out”

He then explained that GEC got its start in 2011 as the Center for Strategic Counter Terrorism Communications, responsible for advising the government on how to counter narratives from terrorists such as al-Qaida.

Then it strayed, he said.

“In early 2016, the Obama administration renamed CSCC the ‘Global Engagement Center,’ stripping away the explicit focus on international terrorism. Then, after Donald Trump’s historic victory in 2016 but before he took office, GEC’s mission was expanded to cover any and all ‘foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts.’”

That was a deliberate move, he charged.

“Obama’s man in charge at GEC, Rick Stengel, touted his efforts to protect ‘democracy’ while redefining it so that ‘democracy’ came to mean silencing the part of the electorate he doesn’t like. In 2019, Stengel directly equated President Trump’s campaign with foreign and terrorist propaganda, writing, ‘Trump employed the same techniques of disinformation as the Russians and much the same scare tactics as ISIS.’ That same year, Stengel wrote an entire article about ‘why America needs a hate speech law,’” Rubio charged.

America has paid a price for the leftist ideology.

That agenda created “the hoax that Russian interference, misinformation, and ‘meddling’ is what caused President Trump’s victory in 2016, rather than a winning political message that only he was offering.”

He added, “In 2020, a coronavirus from a Chinese lab swept the globe, and GEC popped up with a report warning that a ‘Russian disinformation apparatus’ was behind public speculation that the virus was an ‘engineered bioweapon’ or that it existed due to ‘research conducted at the Wuhan institute.’ GEC tarred not only specific claims as foreign propaganda but also specific users. It created lists of thousands of accounts that were accused of being foreign propaganda vectors simply for sharing articles or even following certain accounts. These lists were sent to social media companies for ‘review,’ but nobody was fooled — the purpose of this was to pressure private companies in the direction of more censorship and less free speech.”

Further, “GEC was an enthusiastic participant in the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), an infamous group established under constitutionally questionable conditions to monitor ‘disinformation’ about the 2020 election. The EIP pretty much exclusively singled out accounts and narratives associated with President Trump and his supporters and, in fact, directly flagged President Trump’s tweets, along with his family members and friends of the administration,” he said.

GEC even, “when it wasn’t directly nagging social media companies to censor more, the GEC paid private actors to do it for them. With its multimillion-dollar budget, paid for by American taxpayers, GEC funneled grants to organizations around the world dedicated to pushing speech restrictions under the guise of fighting ‘disinformation.’”

The former Florida senator confirmed he chose to publish his piece in the Federalist, because one group funded by taxpayers, the British Global Disinformation Index, “once produced a list of the top 10 ‘riskiest online news outlets’ in a direct bid to drive off their ad revenue and put them out of business. Every one of those 10 sites was on the political right, and The Federalist was among them.”

He cited another group getting State Department dollars, NewsGuard, “a company that rates the reliability of various websites, once again for the purposes of driving traffic and ad revenue away from those rated poorly.”

“NewsGuard claims to be nonpartisan — but its board of advisers has included one Rick Stengel, the very man who built the Global Engagement Center, who says Donald Trump uses ISIS propaganda tactics, and who believes that propagandizing the American people is a good thing.”

He said the Trump administration rejects propaganda, and the belief that information Americans get must be censored.

“The American people don’t need an obscure agency to ‘protect’ them from lies by pressuring X to ban users or trying to put The Federalist out of business.”

He explained one of his projects has been to “liberate American speech by abolishing forever the body formerly known as the Global Engagement Center.”

It was “supposed to be dead already,” he noted. But when Republicans in Congress ordered the end of its funding last year, “Biden State Department simply slapped on a new name. The GEC became the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (R-FIMI) office, with the same roster of employees. With this new name, they hoped to survive the transition to the new administration.”

Not so, he said. “Whatever name it goes by, GEC is dead. It will not return.”

Perhaps sourcing some straightforward talk from his years growing up in the Appalachia, Vice President JD Vance Wednesday unloaded on an X user for her characterization of Trump supporters.

Jesse Singal had posted: “Joining the Trump bandwagon means you either need to be dumb or pretend to be dumb. JD Vance might have mortgaged his morality and his legacy, but he’s not dumb. He doesn’t actually think anyone’s proposing 20 million [deportation] trials. Rather, he knows he has very, very dumb supporters.”

The post was part of a thread critical of President Trump’s effort to deport millions of illegal aliens and the deportation of Salvadoran Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

“I hate this smug, self-assured bullsh**,” responded Vance, referring to the notion of: “I know I’m right, and people must be dumb or immoral to disagree with me.”

“It’s an easy way to go through life, because then you never have to think seriously about why your worldview is a justification for the mass invasion of the country my ancestors built with their bare hands.”

A federal judge is threatening President Donald Trump and his administration with criminal contempt charges for removing illegal aliens, those who also were described as members of violent criminal gangs, from America.

The judge had ordered several jetliners carrying the deportees, apparently already in flight, to turn around and bring the criminals back to America, and the administration didn’t, as it explained the flights already were in international airspace and the judge had no authority for his order.

Now the judge, James Boasberg, who is well known for his open antagonism for the president, has unleashed his ire.

#BREAKING: Activist Judge Boasberg has “found cause” to hold Trump officials in CRIMINAL CONTEMPT for not “turning around the planes” carrying illegal deportees

He says they can clear the contempt by RETURNING illegal gang members to the United States

LMAO! NOT HAPPENING! pic.twitter.com/fDUWVZR1ik

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) April 16, 2025

He claims to have decided there was “cause” to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt for refusing to follow his political ideology.

Boasberg now alleges the administration can “clear” the contempt by following his latest strategy to accommodate illegals, likely members of criminal gangs.

The judge said, “Given the finding of probable cause for contempt set forth in the accompanying memorandum opinion, the court orders that; {1) if defendants opt to purge their contempt, they shall file by April 23, 2025, a declaration explaining the steps they have taken and will take to do so, and (2) if defendants opt not to purge their contempt, they shall instead file by April 23, 2025, declaration{s} identifying the individual{s} who, with knowledge of the court’s classwide temporary restraining order, made the decision not to halt the transfer of class members out of U.S. custody on March 15 and 16, 2025.”

The demand for “steps” suggests that the judge is insisting the criminals be brought back to the United States, a move that the president of El Salvador where they now are imprisoned has said, in another similar high-profile case, won’t happen.

The judge, in his opinion, said he had decided that the administration’s actions were a “willful disregard” for the court.

Of course, the judge has no resources to enforce his “contempt” campaign.

Fox News reported, “The Justice Department could then request that the contempt be prosecuted by an attorney for the government and, should they decline to prosecute the matter, could ‘appoint another attorney to prosecute the contempt.’”

Watch the latest video at foxnews.com

Amidst ongoing cuts to questionable federal programs through DOGE, the State Department is planning significant budget cuts – possibly even half of its current expenses.

And many of those cuts have to do with eliminating U.S. funding of globalist organizations like the United Nations and NATO.

According to a diplomatic source talking to Fox News, the administration has a plan to end funding for more than 20 international organizations.

The U.S. contributed around $13 billion to the United Nations in 2023 and around $3.5 billion to NATO. The source with a copy of the proposal says it calls for allocating $2 billion for “America First” priorities. Those funds could be used in support of “specific partners” like India and Jordan, according to the document, or broader priorities, like the South Pacific Tuna Treaty.

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce stressed Tuesday, “There is no final plan, final budget.” The proposed plan represents a $27 billion cut, nearly half of the State Department’s current budget.

Bruce said, “Throughout the history of the United States, everyone has a budget plan and everyone has ideas for budgets. And every president has a budget plan and sends it to Congress. And then Congress either accepts it or they have their own ideas, which happens more often than not.”

According to the Fox report, the foreign service travel budget and benefits would be scaled back under the plan, and the Fulbright scholarship program would be eliminated.

The document calls for a 2% reduction in diplomatic security, cuts to the inspector general’s office and the closure of smaller embassies in countries such as the Maldives, Malta, Luxembourg and the Central African Republic.

The budget proposal is in early stages, with several layers of approval needed before its finalization.

Popular talk show host Tucker Carlson has revealed that even though he knew President Donald Trump, his proposals for tariffs on the world jolted him, and he’s also talked about the details of his departure from Fox News.

He now has his own company and his interviews with a wide range of personalities, posted on social media, are incredibly popular.

He was interviewed by the Daily Signal, which has posted two videos on YouTube.

In the first, Carlson commented on the tariffs, which Trump has used to try to bring the world’s trade into balance for the United States, which long has allowed other countries access to its markets while paying often steep prices for having its products in other markets.

Carlson said Trump is wanting to negotiate those charges.

“I mean, the question is: Who needs the other more? Does the U.S. need China more or China need the U.S.? I can’t answer that,” Carlson explained to the Daily Signal.

Trump’s tariffs went into effect earlier this month, and then the president granted a 90-day pause for most nations while negotiations were under way. The White House has said 75 nations had approached the U.S. about making deals, and some of those agreements could be announced soon.

At the same time, Trump raised tariffs on Chinese products to 125%, which the Communist regime promptly matched for U.S goods.

“The deal has been for the past 30 years: We’ll buy your underpriced consumer goods; you buy our overpriced debt. And you know, in some ways that’s worked great. In other ways, it hasn’t worked at all,” Carlson said.

He said the initial tariff announcement from Trump was a “shock.”

But he confirmed there needs to be at least some “disengagement” from China.

“You have to be able to build a jet engine exclusively in the United States and not rely on supply chains 10,000 miles long or on countries that are hostile to you. I mean, that’s crazy. It’s just basic stuff. And we have the resources to do that,” he said.

In the second part, Carlson said he wasn’t bothered when his show was canceled by Fox.

“I got fired from Fox for saying things they didn’t like. … That’s all right, you know. It’s not my company. I wasn’t one of those people like, ‘You can’t fire me.’ It’s like, of course you can fire me!”

He said his working relationship with the network was that its officials couldn’t give him instructions, and he was getting good ratings.

“‘If you don’t like what I say, you can take me off the air, but you’re not going to control my show, just fire me.’ … And that seemed like that had always been our deal,” he said.

He said he could have retired at that point, to pursue his passions for trout fishing, bird hunting and carpentry, but he loves “talking to people. I like learning – that sounds like B.S., but it’s actually fully sincere. And I love that more than I love money … .”

After 30 years in cable news, Carlson said: “I liked everyone I worked for, including the people who fired me.”

Democrats lost, catastrophically, during the 2024 election. They lost the White House by landslides in both the popular and Electoral College vote. They lost the Senate, they failed to capture the House.

And that was the result after polling showed the Republican party with a single-point advantage among voters.

Now that advantage is up to five points.

That’s from polling by NatpolitanNews, which explained, “In March, 46% of voters considered themselves Republicans or leaned Republican, while 41% considered themselves Democrats or leaned Democrat.

“These totals, derived from interviews with 9,300 Registered Voters during the month of March, have remained steady for the first quarter of 2025,” it said.

Further, “Fifty-one percent (51%) of men said they were Republicans or leaned Republican while 38% said the opposite (down 4 points from February). Among women, the numbers were little changed with 46% Democrat/lean Democrat and 41% Republican/lean Republican. While the Republicans gained ground since October, those gains have leveled off as the Trump administration approaches its first 100 days in office.”

The Washington Examiner explained it was only two years ago that Gallup confirmed “more Americans identified as Republicans than Democrats for the first time in over three decades.”

Now that trend has grown “as the GOP has won over more support from Hispanic and black voters,” the report said.

The report said Gallup’s results of 10,000 found 45% identified as Republicans and 44% as Democrats.

The report also noted that partisan IDs tend to “be fickle.”

“While it’s hard for people in the political world to accept, party ID is fluid. During a campaign season, people who think of themselves as independent tend to align with a party — or at least lean toward a party. That’s why the number of Republicans goes up with a Trump victory,” explained pollster Scott Rasmussen.

But the report explained, “The trend to the GOP appears real and partly due to its focus on working-class voters while Democrats embrace elites. Rasmussen said that change has helped the Republicans win over key minorities.”

Rasmussen said there is a “long-term shift” that is happening.

“It’s often talked about as Republicans becoming the working-class party. While not entirely accurate, the shifting party coalitions are helping the GOP. The working class shift is helping R’s make preliminary inroads into the black community and strong gains among Hispanic voters,” he said.

He also cited the “extreme” views of Democrats, pointing out it is hard for voters to align with those perspectives.