Zerohedge

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The White House on Tuesday said that 1 million federal employees responded to a mass email from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) asking them to list five things they had accomplished in the past week.

“We’ve had more than one million workers who have chosen to participate. … I actually participated in it myself. It took me about a minute and a half,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in response to a reporter’s question about the OPM email deadline, describing what was asked in the email as something “very simple” that can be accomplished in a few minutes.

Leavitt confirmed that the email was an idea from Elon Musk and that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which he leads, helped OPM craft the email. She also said that federal workers need to respond to this email unless told otherwise by their agency heads.

However, agency leaders “are responsible for their specific workforce,” Leavitt said. “This is true of the hirings and firings that have taken place.”

The email drew a lawsuit from unions, businesses, veterans, and conservation organizations, arguing Musk had violated the law by threatening mass firings in a social media post referencing the OPM email. Meanwhile, OPM told agencies that employees are not mandated to respond to the email.

Over the weekend, Musk signaled that people who don’t respond to the mass email would be considered to have resigned from their jobs.

Musk wrote on Saturday on social media platform X that “all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” and that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

He later said that the email was designed to determine whether certain employees are even working, adding that he believes fraud is rampant.

“In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks,” he stated.

“In other words, there is outright fraud.”

The OPM sent out its email request afterward.

“Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” the message said.

However, it said nothing about the potential for employees to be fired for noncompliance.

One Million Workers Responded to Musk Email, Leavitt Says

So 2 million govt workers don’t exist/don’t know how to check email/can’t be bothered to write a 5 minute email?

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 25, 2025

Musk on Monday balked at the pushback, saying federal workers “hate even the tiniest amount of accountability” and continued to warn they could be fired.

“Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance,” he wrote on X, which he owns.

“Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”

When asked on Monday about Musk’s comments and the email, President Donald Trump indicated that he was supportive of the effort.

“What he’s doing is saying, ‘Are you actually working?’” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office during a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron. 

“And then, if you don’t answer, like, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired, because a lot of people aren’t answering because they don’t even exist.”

The president said Musk and DOGE have found “hundreds of billions of dollars in fraud,” suggesting that federal paychecks are going to nonexistent employees.

Musk’s posts on X and the OPM email came shortly after Trump wrote on social media on Saturday that he wants Musk to “get more aggressive” in his efforts to downsize the federal workforce and eliminate fraud, abuse, and waste.

On Tuesday Ukraine’s parliament passed a resolution extending the mandate of President Volodymyr Zelensky until martial law is lifted. It comes amid growing pressure from Washington for the country to prepare for and hold a national election.

The vote reached the necessary majority, with 268 members voting in support of the resolution, with no abstentions or votes against, according to a statement by parliament deputy Yaroslav Zheleznyak. Several parliament members were absent, however.

“The Verkhovna Rada once again recalls that the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in free, transparent, democratic elections. His mandate is not called into question by the Ukrainian people or the Verkhovna Rada,” the resolution read, which was intended as clear pushback against Trump. Zelensky’s ‘legitimacy’ is also being declared in the vote.

President Trump shocked allies last week by calling Zelensky a “dictator without elections” who has refused to conform to democratic norms.

Interestingly, there was more resistance when a first-round vote was held Monday – suggesting things aren’t so unanimous. According to a regional source, “The Verkhovna Rada first put the resolution to the vote on Monday, the third anniversary of the start of the war, when it was supported by 218 deputies, short of the required minimum of 226 votes for a vote to pass.”

Zelensky has consistently argue country can’t hold elections as martial law is still in effect, amid growing criticism that he’s conspiring to merely stay in power. His term expired in May 2024, but he recently asserted, “I’m focusing on the survival of our country, and I am doing it really all my term.”

“I’m ready to speak about elections if you want,” he said, claiming that “Ukrainians don’t want, totally don’t want, because they are afraid, because otherwise we will lose the military loan, the war loan, our soldiers will come back home, and Putin will occupy all our territory.”

Elon Musk among others begs to differ. He wrote on X in response to Tuesday’s vote: “Hold an election”.

Hold an election

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 25, 2025

Last week, in addition to calling Zelensky a dictator, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Zelensky “better move fast” to achieve peace with Russia or “he is not going to have a country left.”

On Sunday Zelensky actually floated the possibility of stepping down if it would lead to peace, but appeared to attach it to NATO membership. “I am ready to leave my post if it brings peace. Or exchange it for NATO,” Zelensky said in response to journalists’ questions at a local security summit.

Russia’s Putin has meanwhile said he can’t negotiate directly with Zelensky as he’s ‘illegitimate’ and refuses to hold elections. Putin has also pointed to Zelensky effectively outlawing direct talks with Moscow.

Authored by Milton Ezrati via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

More signs have emerged testifying to the severity of China’s financial woes. Local governments seem to have become so cash-strapped that they have resorted to paying their bills with unfinished and unbought apartments left by the nation’s ongoing property crisis.

This kind of barter constitutes a slide back into the sort of primitive economics usually associated with third-world economies. It speaks to how far China has fallen and how much Beijing needs to do to get back on an acceptable development path.

The origins of these problems are reasonably straightforward and should be familiar to regular readers of this column. Beijing planted the seeds of this mess with years of excessive promotion for residential real estate development. In the early stages of China’s development, this emphasis was appropriate. Still, Beijing continued with easy financing terms and support from local governments for too long after the country had caught up with its housing needs.

Because of Beijing’s lavish support, developers could offer attractive deals to potential homebuyers, driving up purchases, while taking full advantage of the seemingly favorable situation by using debt to finance as much development as possible. At the same time, local governments, flush with revenues from booming land sales, also borrowed heavily to create as attractive a civic environment as possible.

At its height, real estate development in China rose to almost 25 percent of the economy. Since most developed economies seldom dedicate more than 5 percent of their gross domestic product to real estate development, the figure itself speaks to how far matters have gone.

In 2019, as Beijing’s planners began to realize how excessive residential development had become, they abruptly withdrew the earlier support. And since they gave little or no warning of the change, neither developers nor local governments had time to adjust.

Developers showed the damage first. They began to fail. The first signs of the unfolding disaster arrived in 2021 when the huge property developer Evergrande announced that it could not meet the equivalent of some $300 billion in obligations. A number of other such failures followed.

Not surprisingly, construction activity stalled, and so did the pace of homebuying. The financial system suffered from the volume of unpaid debt, especially since, at the same time as the developers were failing, Chinese households that had pre-purchased from property developers could no longer complete their payments and refused to fulfill their mortgage obligations. And because Beijing refused to implement policies to mitigate these financial strains, they only got worse.

As these problems festered, local governments, now denied most of the cash flow from land sales, found themselves unable to meet their obligations on the debts they had incurred during the boom years and also their civic obligations to their populations. Not only were lenders asked to wait, but local governments also held back on payments to contractors for all sorts of services, including utilities, garbage collection, street cleaning, and repair. In some cases, matters got so severe that civic employees—teachers, medical staff, police, and firefighters—had to wait for their pay.

In the absence of cash to pay their bills, developers and local governments have resorted to the only thing they have in abundance to pay their bills: unfinished and unoccupied apartments. Three examples should give a sense of what is happening.

Changji City, China, has discharged the equivalent of $25 million in unpaid gas bills to Xinjiang East Universe Gas with some 260 unfinished apartments in what was originally planned as a luxury housing development.

Shanghai Urban Architecture Design has taken 115 apartments to settle the equivalent of some $10 million it was due.

Police departments in China’s Dejiang, Yuping, and Sinan counties have settled the equivalent of some $10 million owed to a software developer with the transfer of apartments from a failed property developer.

Praise for imagination is due to these people. Still, their resort to what has effectively become a barter economy should give a sense of how severe China’s problems of economics and finance have become. Beijing might have headed these problems off by acting promptly at the first signs of failure, but as it was, the authorities took no action until late 2023, fully two years after Evergrande collapsed.

What they have done since has done little to arrest a crisis that has had so much time to build in the interim.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie is teasing a potential run for Mitch McConnell’s Senate seat in 2026, and a Jewish Republican group is already threatening to unleash “unlimited” spending to thwart any such bid, given his frequent opposition to legislation pushed by the pro-Israel lobby. 

On Thursday, Massie posted a poll on X, asking if he should stay in the House, run for Senate in 2026, or run for governor in 2027. A Senate campaign was the choice of 67% of the respondents.

If you were me, would you:

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) February 20, 2025

The libertarian-minded Massie opposes all foreign aid. At his own political peril, he dares to make no exception for the State of Israel, which is among the world’s richest countries. He has also voted against legislation that would infringe on free speech by, for example, punishing colleges that allow students and professors to say the wrong things about Israel.

Add it all up — and stir in the fact that he’s a member of a party whose legislators almost universally toe the pro-Israel line — and Massie is likely the House representative the pro-Israel lobby would most like to eliminate. The idea of him ascending to the Senate has pro-Israel forces racing to DEFCON1. 

“If Tom Massie chooses to enter the race for US Senate in Kentucky, the RJC campaign budget to ensure he is defeated will be unlimited,” warned Republican Jewish Coalition CEO Matt Brooks in a statement to Jewish Insider. The Republican Jewish Coalition has tried to defeat Massie before. In 2020, the RJC backed Republican Todd McMurtry in challenging Massie in the GOP primary — only to see Massie trounce McMurtry in an 81% to 19% rout. 

So intense is their opposition to Massie that last year, pro-Israel forces starting preemptively spending money to weaken Massie’s Senate prospects. Despite the fact that Massie faced no viable GOP opponent nor any Democrat opponent at all, the intentionally-vaguely-named United Democracy Project — the independent campaign-spending arm of the mighty American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) — said it would spend $300,000 on ads on Fox television affiliates in Kentucky. “We are trying to shine a light on the radical anti-Israel record of Tom Massie,” said spokesman Patrick Dorton. “We want every single voter in the state of Kentucky to know about his anti-Israel actions.”  Here’s their over-the-top ad: 

https://t.co/hEJYFaBcPp pic.twitter.com/yoIdIg0pEX

— United Democracy Project (@UnitedDemocProj) May 9, 2024

In a direct challenge to the Israel lobby, Massie has pushed for the Department of Justice to compel AIPAC and its associates to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a law that requires individuals and organizations that work to advance the policies of foreign governments to disclose their relationships, actions and compensation. 

Thomas Massie has publicly stated that every Republican member of Congress, except himself, has an “AIPAC babysitter” to ensure they vote in line with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s interests. pic.twitter.com/VHTWSRm8rZ

— Radical Subtard (@magasubtard) January 3, 2025

If Massie does run for Senate, spending by the RJC and other pro-Israel groups on the race could make it an extraordinarily pricy race. That dynamic was on display in the 2024 cycle: AIPAC successfully targeted incumbent Democratic New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman, and poured an astonishing $14 million into the race — helping to make it the most expensive House primary contest ever.   

Within hours of Mitch McConnell’s announcement that he would not run for re-election in 2026, former Kentucky attorney-general Daniel Cameron formally declared his candidacy. McConnell is considered a mentor to Cameron, making Cameron the establishment-designated heir apparent. Undeclared candidates who’ve signaled a strong interest in the seat include Kentucky Rep. Andy Barr and waste-and-recycling businessman Nate Morris. Last week at CPAC, Morris condemned both Cameron and Barr for “refus[ing] to call out Mitch McConnell for the sabotage of President Trump’s agenda.”   

Ma’am, you voted to send those bombs to Israel. https://t.co/N1g1bG7goE

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) May 28, 2024

In a Monday interview with Ann Coulter, Massie used his characteristic dry wit to express a middling appetite for a Senate seat:

“It’s the the same circus with different monkeys…Here’s the good news: I’m not even in the race for Senate and the only poll that’s been released shows me in second place.” 

Massie was likely referring to a December poll that showed him with 16% support, second to Cameron’s 32% but ahead of Barr’s 10%. In the same interview, Massie said he consulted Grok about his choice: The X AI engine said a 2027 bid for Kentucky governor would be his best move. That may be best for Massie and his fellow Kentuckians, but it would remove one of the few truly principled voices from the federal legislature — one who heeds George Washington’s warning to avoid “passionate attachments” to any foreign countries, a failing that “facilitat[es] the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists.”

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Department of Education launched an investigation into the Maine Department of Education over its approval of male participation in women’s sporting events.

The investigation is being initiated by the federal department’s Office for Civil Rights “amid allegations that it continues to allow male athletes to compete in girls’ interscholastic athletics and that it has denied female athletes female-only intimate facilities,” the department said in a Feb. 21 statement. These actions are in violation of “federal anti-discrimination law.”

The Office for Civil Rights is also investigating Maine School Administrative District 51 following reports that a school under its jurisdiction, Greely High School, “is continuing to allow at least one male student to compete in girls’ categories.”

The investigation was begun after President Donald Trump said in remarks during the Feb. 20 Republican Governors Association Dinner that Maine risks losing federal funding if the state continues to allow males to take part in female sporting events.

“I heard men are still playing in Maine,” Trump said. 

“I hate to tell you this, but we’re not going to give any federal money. They’re still saying we want men to play in women’s sports, and I cannot believe they’re doing that. So we’re not going to give them any federal funding—none whatsoever until they clean that up.”

On Feb. 21, Maine Gov. Janet Mills issued a response to Trump’s statement, saying the state “will not be intimidated by the President’s threats.”

If Trump does pull back funding, her administration and the attorney general “will take all appropriate and necessary legal action to restore that funding,” Mills said.

The U.S. Department of Education clarified that no state law can override federal anti-discrimination laws and that Maine’s Education Department and its schools are subject to Title IX regulations. Title IX prohibits discrimination in education on the basis of sex. It established the foundation for women’s athletic programs.

“Maine would have you believe that it has no choice in how it treats women and girls in athletics – that is, that it must follow its state laws and allow male athletes to compete against women and girls,” Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education, said.

“Let me be clear: If Maine wants to continue to receive federal funds from the Education Department, it has to follow Title IX. If it wants to forgo federal funds and continue to trample the rights of its young female athletes, that, too, is its choice. [The Office for Civil Rights] will do everything in its power to ensure taxpayers are not funding blatant civil rights violators.”

Earlier this month, the department announced an investigation of the California Interscholastic Federation and the Minnesota State High School League after they publicly announced plans that could potentially allow male athletes to compete in female sports and also use women’s intimate facilities.

Protecting Female Sports

On Feb. 5, Trump signed an executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” that aims to protect women’s sporting events.

Many educational institutions and athletic associations have allowed men to take part in women’s sports in recent years, which the order called “demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls,” and added that such actions deny “women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports.”

The order made it the policy of the United States to “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities” and to “oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports.”

On Feb. 6, the board of governors of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) voted to update the association’s “transgender student-athlete participation policy” following the Trump executive order.

The new NCAA rules restrict “competition in women’s sports to student-athletes assigned female at birth only.” The NCAA is made up of 1,100 universities and colleges across 50 states, enrolling more than 530,000 student-athletes.

Candice Jackson, deputy general counsel at the U.S. Department of Education, said the NCAA “has correctly changed its tune on its discriminatory practices against female athletes.”

The White House on Tuesday announced that it’s taking control of which news outlets are allowed into the press pool, and will no longer allow the White House Correspondents’ Association to act as gatekeepers. The move paves the way for independent outlets to participate in the press pool – a small group of reporters that travel with and cover the president’s daily activities.

“It’s beyond time the White House press pool reflects the media habits of the American people in 2025,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who added that the goal is to give new or alternative media companies greater access to the administration, while continuing to allow certain “legacy” outlets to be in rotation.

“Legacy outlets who have participated in the press pool for decades will still be allowed to join … but we will also be offering the privilege to well-deserving outlets, who have never been allowed to share in this awesome responsibility,” she said.

🚨 @PressSec announces changes to the “press pool” that covers President Trump:

“For decades, a group of D.C.-based journalists — the @WHCA — has long dictated which journalists get to ask questions of @POTUS in these most intimate spaces. Not anymore.” pic.twitter.com/fHd5Wkm3nE

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 25, 2025

The move comes after a federal judge denied a request by the Associated Press (AP) to force the White House to allow it access to the Oval Office and Air Force One.

In fact, the judge – Trevor McFadden, slammed AP in his ruling – suggesting they have no constitutional right to “special media access.”

“It feels a little odd that the White House is bound by certain decisions that this private organization is making,” said McFadden.

According to Eugene Daniels, president of the WHCA and Politico reporter, slammed the move – telling Axios that it “suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president.”

You mean like this?

I’m old enough to remember when the Biden White House revoked 442 reporters’ press credentials

…and the WHCA responded with an “officially noncommittal stance” pic.twitter.com/y5F23BI1zd

— John Hasson (@SonofHas) February 25, 2025

According to the aggrieved Daniels, the move “tears at the independence of a free press in the United States,” adding “In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.”

The NY Times was also triggered by the move – calling it “the latest in a string of aggressive efforts by the Trump administration to erode the access and influence of major news organizations that cover the White House.”

Cry harder…

One White House adviser told Axios: “The AP and the White House Correspondents Association wanted to f–k around. Now it’s finding out time.”

Excellent decision. The WHCA assignments in the briefing room and gate keeping in the press pool dramatically restrict access to irrelevant legacy media outlets and dramatically skew the type of questions to be asked in limited press availabilities with the President https://t.co/rok4czYhKv

— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) February 25, 2025

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Authored by Frank Fang and Eva Fu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Lawmakers have raised concerns about the New Jersey Turnpike Authority’s decision to award an 11-year E-ZPass contract to a Singaporean-owned company over its alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

“This is an issue that transcends politics, where we’re truly concerned for the deal and whether or not we can have safeguards to make sure that we were being properly protected,” state Sen. Joe Pennacchio, a Republican from Morris County, told The Epoch Times on Feb. 22.

In September 2024, the Turnpike Authority awarded the E-ZPass customer service operations to Nashville-based TransCore for $1.73 billion. TransCore beat out Conduent, based in Newark, New Jersey, and its more competitive bid of $1.48 billion. TransCore’s parent company, Singapore Technologies Engineering (STE), is owned by Temasek Holdings, which is wholly owned by Singapore’s government.

Earlier this month, Pennacchio wrote a letter to New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy asking him to use his executive power to void the contract. He explained that Fu Chengyu—a former chairman of China’s state-owned oil companies and a high-ranking CCP member with ties to China’s influence network, the United Front Work Department—was a member of Temasek’s board of directors until recently.

“You have a foreign entity with a former member of the CCP who used to be on the board,” Pennacchio said. “So, I mean, that should be red flags.

“So that’s where we’re dependent on our own government to make sure that these deals that are going to happen are properly vetted, and they’ve gone through the proper circles of national defense, of Homeland Security, and … the Treasury Department, making sure that our financial secrets are kept secret, not shared with other people.”

The senator said the E-ZPass system collects personal information such as driver’s license information, credit card numbers, and banking information, and can also track the movements of cargo and people.

Pennacchio questioned whether the deal was properly vetted during the Biden administration. He said he had received a response from Murphy directing him to reach out to the Turnpike Authority, but noted that the port agency had not conducted the vetting.

“The only thing that I was able to find through one of the news articles was that the U.S. Treasury Department vetted the company,” he said.

According to Pennacchio, it is important to make sure that Temasek will not use the collected personal information for nefarious means.

“We should have at least the Trump administration perhaps taking a second look and making sure that they’re comfortable … that these people won’t share that information, and that there are no Chinese military or Chinese government ties to this organization,” he said.

Bipartisan Concern

The New Jersey E-ZPass is accepted by the transportation authorities of several regions, including the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the South Jersey Transportation Authority, the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission, and the Burlington County Bridge Commission.

The issue has drawn scrutiny from New Jersey lawmakers.

“China keeps trying to steal Americans’ data,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) wrote on social media platform X on Feb. 7. “Their newest target: Jersey families. We cannot allow our personal information and whereabouts to get into the hands of our number one adversary.”

Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) sent a letter to the Turnpike Authority’s Board of Commissioners on Feb. 5, calling their decision to award the contract to TransCore “misguided.”

“Handing over critical infrastructure operations to a company tied to China is reckless and unnecessary when American-based companies are fully capable of handling these services,” Van Drew said in a statement at the time. “The New Jersey Turnpike Authority must reconsider this contract immediately and put American interests first.”

In a Feb. 11 letter to Van Drew, TransCore stated that it “delivers the most secure toll systems” in the United States, given that its national security agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice would ensure that data collected by its tolling systems would not be accessible to or shared with any foreign entity or affiliate, including STE.

“There is no connection between TransCore, or its parent company ST Engineering (STE), with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP),” TransCore wrote. “Temasek, as a shareholder of STE, has no director appointed to the STE Board and has no role in STE’s business operations.”

Newark’s Conduent, which had the E-ZPass contract for eight years, filed a protest with the Turnpike Authority in October 2024.

“There is no justification for awarding TransCore a contract that is over $251 million more than what Conduent offered,” the appeal document stated.

In response to The Epoch Times’ inquiry, Sean Collins, vice president of external communications and analyst and adviser relations at Conduent, stated that in TransCore’s letter to Van Drew, the company failed to address Temasek’s role or mention that a high-ranking CCP member was a former chairman.

“The response portrayed Temasek as merely one of many shareholders, rather than acknowledging it as the majority and controlling shareholder that consented to Singapore Technologies’ acquisition of TransCore,” Collins said. “Importantly, TransCore failed to comply with the statutorily required ownership disclosure requirement in its proposal.

“Conduent’s proposal also provides for immediate implementation of AI-powered customer experience technologies, high-quality services, and more customer service agents—all without the substantial risks and delays of converting to a new vendor.”

The iPhone’s voice-to-text feature appears to be suffering from a bad case of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

If a user repeatedly says “racist,” the next word generated is “Trump.” We independently verified this anti-Trump behavior, which seems to reflect far-left subliminal propaganda.

‘SIRI’OUS PROBLEM: iPhone’s voice-to-text feature is sparking controversy after a viral TikTok video showed a user speaking the word “racist,” which sometimes appeared as “Trump” before switching back to “racist.” pic.twitter.com/bC3mAeS9kM

— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 25, 2025

“We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers Dictation, and we are rolling out a fix as soon as possible,” an Apple spokesperson told Fox News Digital.

JUST IN: Apple says it is “addressing the issue” as iPhone’s voice-to-text feature periodically shows “Trump” whenever a user says “racist.”

“We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers Dictation, and we are rolling out a fix as soon as possible,” an… pic.twitter.com/UVQfzLOKu0

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) February 25, 2025

Similar subliminal propaganda was pushed by Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant ahead of the U.S. presidential elections last fall…

Amazon Admits Alexa’s Wildly-Biased Treatment Of Trump, Harris Questions Was ‘Error’ https://t.co/oCbodR2cY1

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 4, 2024

Earlier today, Apple shareholders rejected eliminating toxic DEI policies despite a widespread rollback across corporate America, the federal government, and the military.

Apple did not specify a timeframe for the dictation feature fix but indicated it would be implemented as soon as possible.

Isn’t it fascinating how technology sometimes mirrors the unconscious biases of its creators? Parts of Silicon Valley still seem out of touch, failing to recognize that the Overton Window shifted about a year ago.

Not all is bad with Apple…

Apple Goes MAGA: $500 Billion Investment Plan In America, 20,000 New Jobs https://t.co/zcAYiGKn50

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 24, 2025. . .

It’s time for Trump to have another talk with Cook.  

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

I was incredibly stoked to have my friend and Substack compatriot Matt Taibbi on today for an hourlong chat about the mainstream media’s implosion, the new administration, spending cuts and the unique opportunity this administration has to shatter the Orwellian path the nation has been put on by the establishment and legacy media.

Few voices in journalism today have been as incisive and unfiltered as Matt Taibbi’s. Once a staple of Rolling Stone, Taibbi has become one of the most vocal critics of mainstream media, corporate influence, and the failures of American journalism.

Now, as one of the leading voices on Substack, he has watched firsthand as the landscape of media and politics undergoes tectonic shifts.

The Exodus to Substack: “A Universe is Healing” Moment

The conversation opened with an amusing yet telling observation: Jim Acosta, once a CNN mainstay and vocal critic of independent platforms, had landed on Substack after his unceremonious departure from CNN. Taibbi couldn’t help but note the irony.

“Most of us who came to Substack early came here either because we were purged from mainstream media organizations, or in my case, I just sort of read the writing on the wall and felt like it was going to be a better move for me career-wise,” he said.

Acosta’s arrival, along with other legacy media figures like Jennifer Rubin and Norm Eisen, signals a broader shift, he said. Once dismissive of independent platforms as “grifters and losers,” these same journalists are now scrambling to find an audience in a media world that no longer guarantees them a corporate paycheck.

“I mean, I won’t be surprised to see Joy Reid here in a few weeks,” Taibbi quipped during our hourlong chat. 

He pointed to the collapse of audience trust in legacy institutions as a driving force behind this exodus. The public, he argues, has woken up to the reality that mainstream news is not about truth but about feeding an audience what it wants to hear—an “audience optimization model.”

“They got away from this idea that we’ve got to be right. Even if we’re going to be slanted, we can’t screw things up. And so what they’re doing now—they’re seeing their numbers plummet, and their first instinct is, well, let’s just get rid of the people who have the worst numbers.”

But as he noted, firing low-rated hosts doesn’t fix the deeper problem: they have no plan to win back public trust.

The Death Spiral of Corporate Media

As legacy media layoffs pile up and the industry scrambles for solutions, Taibbi remains skeptical that any major course correction is coming.

“What you see right now is almost complete paralysis at these big media organizations. They really don’t know what to do.”

Rather than reassessing their flawed model, major networks are doubling down, attempting to “optimize” their content for the dwindling loyal audience they still have.

“They’re not coming up with a new ethos for how to cover things. They’re seeing their numbers collapse, and their first instinct is to just fire the people who have the highest negatives when they do their surveys. But they don’t have a replacement strategy.”

The case of Joy Reid’s firing at MSNBC underscored the point. The network, rather than innovating, was resorting to desperate measures like bringing back Rachel Maddow for more frequent programming.

The Establishment’s Unraveling: Government, the Fed, and the Demand for Transparency

Beyond the world of media, Taibbi turned his attention to the broader collapse of public trust in American institutions. Whether it’s government secrecy, corporate corruption, or Federal Reserve manipulation, he sees a reckoning on the horizon.

We talked the renewed push to audit both the Federal Reserve and Fort Knox.

“It’s fascinating,” Taibbi said. “I mean, first of all, the auditing of Fort Knox idea, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have floated that if they hadn’t already taken a look.”

If there’s something to uncover, he suggested, it might be far more unsettling than the public expects.

Meanwhile, calls for a full-scale audit of the Federal Reserve have been intensifying. While previous attempts, such as those led by Ron Paul, fell short, Taibbi sees a growing public appetite for holding the central bank accountable.

“The Fed has very strict trading rules, I’m sure, for a reason,” I said to Matt, referring to recent scandals involving top Fed officials engaging in unethical trading. “But the Fed-controlled macroeconomic universe is so vast now that just a sneeze from one of these guys moves the market by quadrillions of dollars.”

We talked about the controversy back in 2022 about Raphael Bostic, the Atlanta Fed president caught violating trading rules and trading S&P futures.

I asked, “First question: why do Fed governors need to be trading S&P futures in the first place? Buy a fucking index fund. You don’t need to be in the fucking futures market moving 1,000 lots.”

The Public’s Demand for Disclosure: A Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity?

The conversation eventually turned to what he sees as an unprecedented moment in history—a rare window where the public is demanding accountability like never before.

“I don’t think in our lifetimes there’s ever going to be an opportunity to get some of that stuff out there like there is right now,” he said, referring to transparency efforts across media, government, and finance.

I noted: “If we make the public aware of exactly where all this money is going… people are going to be forced to look back on it—including the nefarious actors—and say, ‘Hey, we were a little sloppy last time. We need to clean it up a little bit.’ And sadly, I feel like that’s the best we can hope for.”

Still, he’s not optimistic that change will come easily.

“They’ve forgotten that information doesn’t belong to them,” he said of government bureaucracies withholding classified material. “There isn’t some separate group of people who have a particularized interest in keeping that secret that supersedes ours. That’s just a fictitious thing they’ve convinced us to believe.”

Whether it’s long-classified JFK files, hidden financial records, or revelations about the intelligence community’s past actions, Taibbi sees no justification for keeping the public in the dark.“They better release everything,” he warned. “People are going to get impatient.”

What Comes Next?

As the interview wound down, one thing was clear—whether in media, government, or finance, the establishment is fighting to hold onto its crumbling authority. But with every desperate move they make, they only accelerate their own demise.

This conversation was another reminder of why independent voices are more crucial than ever. In a world where media giants crumble and governments fight tooth and nail to keep secrets, the truth has never been more important.

Taibbi sees the current moment as a unique chance to shake things up. The collapse of mainstream media, the discrediting of political elites, and the exposure of financial corruption all point to a rare opportunity to rewire the system. Whether that happens, though, depends on whether the public stays engaged.

“The public is not going to accept the buildup that we had again,” he said. “At least that’s what I’m hoping.”

For now, Substack and independent platforms are filling the void left by a media industry that has abandoned journalism in favor of narrative control. As for the institutions that have held power for decades?

Their reckoning may only just be beginning. (WATCH THE FULL HOUR-LONG VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH MATT TAIBBI HERE)

 

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The federal agency responsible for overseeing government-owned buildings has directed all properties under its management to shut down electric vehicle charging stations.

Bloomberg reported that the General Services Administration, which oversees hundreds of EV chargers nationwide at federal buildings—currently operating 8,000 plugs with plans to expand rapidly in the coming years—recently sent an email outlining the plan to shut down the chargers. The Verge first reported the development last week.

“As GSA has worked to align with the current administration, we have received direction that all GSA-owned charging stations are not mission-critical,” the email reads, adding, “Neither Government Owned Vehicles nor Privately Owned Vehicles will be able to charge at these charging stations once they’re out of service.” 

Colorado Public Radio reported last week that GSA’s Denver office will begin turning off charges at federal buildings in the coming weeks. 

A source told The Verge that, in addition to shutting EV charging stations, the GSA will also begin offloading the EVs it purchased under the Biden administration. 

The Verge noted, “Former President Joe Biden’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, included $975 million for the GSA to upgrade federal buildings across the country” with EV chargers. The goal was to achieve net zero by 2045. 

The Trump administration has stated in an executive order to “terminate” the Green New Deal … and for all agencies to pause “the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (Public Law 117-169) or the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Public Law 117-58), including but not limited to funds for electric vehicle charging stations made available through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program and the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program…” 

This month, the Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration ended a $5 billion program that helped states build EV charging stations along US highways. 

We feel this is a smart move that stops the inefficient federal government from expanding its EV charging infrastructure plan. GSA’s chargers were likely costing taxpayers a fortune without any clear ROI. 

Last month, Goldman’s Thomas Evans told clients that its trading desk views Trump’s actions as “bearish for the US EV market specifically.”

If the marketplace needs chargers – let the private sector do the buildout – not corrupt DC swamp.