Wednesday, March 12, 2025. Msuk loses money, Chump attacks school kids and much more.
For a week and a half, Kayla Somarriba and her husband Jeison Ruiz
Rodriguez noticed suspicious vehicles circling their Spokane Valley
block. Some were marked as federal law enforcement vehicles, others were
clandestine. The couple was getting nervous.
“With everything going on, we’re gonna be paranoid,” Somarriba said.
“You see this serious car, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, what’s going on?’
But it was way too much. It’s one thing to see it once or twice, but it
was just something that we would see almost daily.”
But she did not expect that federal agents would soon pull them over,
break through the windows of their white Chevy Silverado, drag Ruiz
Rodriguez and his brother Cesar from the vehicle and sweep them to a
federal immigration jail in Tacoma after injuring the brothers with a
Taser and a rifle.
The Ruiz Rodriguezes are migrants from Nicaragua; Somarriba was born in Miami.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents have been working in the Inland Northwest
— as they have across the country — with agencies as far-flung as the
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to detain and deport
migrants. It’s part of President Donald Trump’s chaotic effort to rid
the country of immigrants the administration says are here illegally.
Hey, if we spread a rumor that they're Palestinian, you think they'd get media coverage and protests. Or does the White student getting all the attention just prove to be the 1% himself? I guess he'd have to be, right? He went to Columbia, after all. Not an easy school to get into or to afford. But let's drop everything and pretend like we're not being fed by his attorney -- which we are even when they say things like "we came across e-mails . . ." No, you were fed them by his attorney.
And I can't figure out if that woman's inept or not? She certainly created a media storm -- RAH RAH RAH -- but she can't get wifey on camera. Wifey, when she speaks to the press, won't even give her name.
Does no one understand perception management?
You're trying to get attention for your client and his pregnant wife won't reveal her name?
They're may not be anything wrong there but it doesn't look right and it doesn't play right.
What it does do is foster doubt among people following the story as they wonder, "What's this American hiding?"
I have no idea. Maybe it's not really a marriage or it's a common-law marriage? Maybe another man got her pregnant and she's afraid he'll step forward and say this was a green card scam? Maybe the attorney's incompetent? Or maybe the wife or 'wife' is just really dumb and can't get it through her head that if she's trying to help her husband, she needs to be an open book including her name.
What we know at present and she'll speak to sympathetic, pre-selected journalists who agree not to name her.
As a general rule when your clients is attempting to sway in the court of public opinion, you don't let the spouse dictate ground rules for the press.
But, again, the average immigrant that is being harassed and terrorized was not someone wealthy enough to go an ivy league school -- let alone one with a tuition cost where four years undergrad could buy two nice houses in most states.
But keep marching and rallying for your 1%-er while you ignore the actual immigrants in need.
But ignore that, ignore
New Jersey's Emine Emanet and Celal Emanet.as well as so many others. And then wonder, Gaza Freaks, why you're seen as single-issue voters and no one outside of your bubble has any respect for you at all. With you, as with Chump, it's all transactional.
And, ZETEO and others, stop e-mailing your garbage coverage of the 1% to me. Looking at your own stats for streaming doesn't appear you have an audience for the story either. Twelve hours later and you've only got 13,000 streams? But your stuff from yesterday and the day before is all over 150,000 streams -- one over 250,000 streams?
If you don't get it, we believe in equality in this country. That's what fed Occupy Wall Street. So you ignore all the other deportation efforts at your own peril while you rush to pimp the 1% who went to Columbia. It's hypocrisy and people don't generally embrace it. Contact his attorney and let her know she needs to work harder and come up with a different strategy (and a spouse that doesn't have demands from the media before she grants access).
Let's move on.
All are invited. Because that's how it's supposed to be. Elected officials have constituents. Those are their bosses and their party i.d. does not matter. This isn't a campaign stop, this is about members of Congress doing their job. While Jasmine Crockett and others are more than prepared to do their job, the MAGA members of Congress are hiding and scared. See Ava and my "
Media: Some returns work better than others" from Monday for more on that. Hiding away from your constituents doesn't spell re-election. And the all powerful Alien Musk who had MAGA members of Congress so worried because he was going to spend millions and millions in district after district, in state after state, funding challengers? He's still sitting pretty but the big money that he had keeps shrinking and who knows how much he's prepared to lose? Musk isn't very smart but I believe he's smarter than Mike Lindell.
Facing weeks of negative headlines and growing pressure from within the Trump administration,
the U.S. DOGE Service is racing to finish the first phase of its
assignment — slashing the federal bureaucracy — and move on to what the
team hopes will be seen as more constructive work: creating sleek tools
for navigating government services.
Throughout
DOGE, the need to find and champion positive achievements is seen as
urgent, according to two people familiar with the group’s internal
workings. One key ally, General Services Administration official and
former Tesla employee Thomas Shedd, told his staff during a meeting last
week that “I need wins to defend,” according to audio obtained by The
Washington Post.
Using a Silicon Valley phrase
for putting new products in the hands of users, Shedd urged staff to
“remain focused on the reason you came to the government and this team
to begin with, which is to deliver value and ship.”
Chump's
people think they can crisis manage this. They're that stupid. An
unpopular program of questionable legality was always going to be a hard
sale. Though Chump's been unable to fill any post with someone
qualified, let's pretend for a moment that the person heading DOGE was
qualified. That still wouldn't have helped Alien Musk. The alien is
not an American. As Lawrence O'Donnell observed Monday night when Alien
was attacking a US citizen -- Senator Mark Kelly -- Alien doesn't know
this country.
He
was born and raised in South Africa. Scared of life there after
apartheid was due to fall, Alien ran to Canada. He doesn't know the
US. He is not part of the US. Alien is an alien to Americans and
that's before you get into his creepy parentage (14 children), before
you get into that weird voice (he speaks as though he has a hot potato
on his tongue), that weird face, etc, etc.
Chump
could have put Peyton Manning in charge and Americans would still have
problems with their sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, fathers and
mothers being fired. The Social Security office in Shreveport? When
those people are threatened with job losses (and they are across the
US), Chump and Alien's pretense that this is about DC and cleaning the
sewer just don't fly. But when you put Alien in charge, you've got an
even bigger problem and, no, this really is beyond crisis management.
Elon
Musk said Monday running his businesses, like Tesla and SpaceX, while
also taking on a major government overhaul effort has not been easy.
[. . .]
His
comment came as Tesla stock declined 15% on Monday, its largest
single-day drop since 2020. The stock is down 55% from a high in
December, causing concern among investors.
Tesla's stock fell by 15 percent on Monday, losing $16 billion in one day and becoming the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500 this year.
Musk shrugged off the loss, as well as a slew of other negative news reports, in a Fox Business Network interview.
Musk
is a failure. But let's go back to our Shreveport example for a
moment. You're killing jobs in cities around the country. Shreveport
isn't even the capital of the state of Louisiana -- Baton Rouge
is. But in those areas, people are feeling the panic and the worry and
some have already lost jobs. Now that's widespread in cities in every
state -- cities plural. And now things are about to get worse -- we're
going to see people in cities and in towns suffering because of Chump
and that Musky alien.
Kelly Rissman (INDEPENDENT) reports:
The
Department of Agriculture has slashed over $1 billion in funding aimed
at helping schools and food banks purchase from local farmers, according
to a nonprofit.
“Multiple states” were recently notified of these cuts, the nonprofit School Nutrition Association said in a statement Tuesday.
“With
research showing school meals are the healthiest meals Americans eat,
Congress needs to invest in underfunded school meal programs rather than
cut services critical to student achievement and health,” said the
group’s president Shannon Gleave. “These proposals would cause millions
of children to lose access to free school meals at a time when working
families are struggling with rising food costs. Meanwhile, short-staffed
school nutrition teams, striving to improve menus and expand
scratch-cooking, would be saddled with time-consuming and costly
paperwork created by new government inefficiencies.”
An
estimated $660 million in funds through the Local Food for Schools
program for 2025 will no longer be available to support childcare
institutions and schools, the group added.
The
impact of these cuts will vary by state, depending on their reliance on
the LFS program. States that had integrated these funds into their
operational plans for school meal programs and food banks will face
significant challenges.
According to USDA, the following states have signed with USDA on the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program:
Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New York
North Carolina
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming
Check
my math, but I'm counting forty-two states. Co-presidents Chump and
Musk are cutting off food to children. How do you think that plays with
parents and grandparents. Musk doesn't know anything, he's an idiot
from another country. But Chump doesn't even grasp how this hurts him?
Louisiana is one of the most poverty stricken states in the country. Three years ago,
official state records showed
the poverty rate to be 18.6% with 829,565 people living in or below
poverty and 255,159 of those were children. USAID cuts are awful. But
Chump could hope there that most people wouldn't realize what was going
on since it impacted populations outside of America -- largely outside
of America, when you're attacking USAID, you're also attacking Americans
working with USAID. But this is Chump preparing to starve children in
this country -- children of voters.
USDA cancels $1B in local food purchasing for schools, food banks l POLITICO www.politico.com/news/2025/03...
[image or embed]
— DJ Fusion [FuseBox Radio/The Futon Dun] (@fuseboxradio.bsky.social) March 12, 2025 at 6:13 AM
The article you cited also starts with: "The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has eliminated over $1 billion in funding that help bring local food to schools and food banks.
The move, part of broader federal spending reductions, could impact millions of students and families nationwide."
— Soccer_Rabbi, Mark Asher Goodman (@rabbimarkasherg.bsky.social) March 12, 2025 at 6:05 AM
USDA has just cancelled $1 BILLION in funding for schools & food banks to purchase food from local farms and ranchers. Trump & Musk have launched an all out attack on schools, children, child care programs, agriculture industry & local farmers all at once.
www.politico.com/news/2025/03...
[image or embed]
— nyahrose3.bsky.social (@nyahrose3.bsky.social) March 12, 2025 at 5:55 AM
Still more catastrophic news piled on the local farmers who strongly voted for Trump, and for students from low-income families (who also heavily voted for Trump).
π° USDA cancels $1 billion in funding for schools and food banks to buy food from local suppliers
www.cbsnews.com/news/usda-ca...
[image or embed]
— π αIGαΌTα―αITEα π (@nightwriter.bsky.social) March 12, 2025 at 4:33 AM
Q: USDA cancels $1 billion in local food purchasing for schools and food banks. How do you justify that?
Trump’s Agriculture Secretary: That program was not essential and damn Biden for pushing more and more spending on food banks and kids lunches!
[image or embed]
— Jamie Schler (@lifesafeast.bsky.social) March 12, 2025 at 1:46 AM
BLUESKY users are covering the topic.
Let's wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:
“As Secretary of the Navy,
you could make programmatic decisions that would increase DoD’s reliance
on companies in which you are invested. To mitigate that conflict, you
should divest your holdings in defense contractors.”
Text of Letter (PDF)
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote to Mr.
John Phelan, nominee to be Secretary of the Navy, with concerns
regarding his “serious conflicts of interest,” given his financial
investments in defense contractors. To address her concerns, Senator
Warren asked Mr. Phelan to make a number of commitments related to his
conflicts of interest ahead of the committee vote on his nomination.
As Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Phelan could make programmatic
decisions that would increase the Department of Defense’s (DoD) reliance
on companies in which he is invested or with which he has close
relationships. These ties to various defense contractors, including Dell
Technologies, Palantir, and Red Call Partners, raise serious concerns
about his potential biases in making programmatic decisions for the
military.
Mr. Phelan has investments worth over $50 million in Dell Technologies, which has a $2.5 billion contract to
provide software services to the U.S. Navy, alongside other lucrative
DoD contracts. Since January 2024 alone, he has earned over $5 million
in capital gains and dividends from that investment. Mr. Phelan also has
investments in other defense contractors, like National Resilience, a biomanufacturing company that has a $410 million DoD contract, and Woolpert, which provides school construction services for DoD.
The nominee also founded MSD
Acquisition Corp., which has promoted Phelan’s “extensive and deep
relationships” with Palantir and other companies in which he has
invested. From his Palantir stock alone, Mr. Phelan recently earned over $5 million in capital gains.
“Even if you have sold your Palantir investments, your relationship
with the company could still bias your decision-making toward assisting
Palantir in its current push for more DoD contracts,” said Senator Warren.
Mr. Phelan also holds a multi-million-dollar stake in Red Cell
Partners, a venture capital firm that is heavily invested in defense
technology, has contracts with DoD, and has a history of hiring former senior defense officials, including former Defense Secretary Mark Esper. Red Cell aims to increase DoD’s
reliance on artificial intelligence (AI), and Phelan’s Red Cell assets
include investments in multiple defense-tech AI companies.
Senator Warren urged the nominee to divest any remaining defense
contractor investments before taking office and not repurchase stock in
these contractors while serving as the Secretary of the Navy. She also
asked him to recuse himself from particular matters involving his former
clients and employers for four years after serving in the Navy role,
as many Biden appointees did.
Lastly, Senator Warren asked Mr. Phelan to commit not to lobby DoD or
work for companies that do business with DoD for four years after
leaving office.
“The rampant revolving door of former government leaders lobbying the
agencies they once led, while their government relationships remain
fresh, erodes Americans’ faith in the federal government…By making these
commitments, you would increase Americans’ trust in your ability to
serve the public interest during your time at DoD — rather than the
special interests of political allies and private sector companies,” concluded Senator Warren.
Senator Warren has sought to protect servicemembers and national
security by pushing defense nominees to resolve their conflicts of
interest:
- In March 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote to Deputy Defense
Secretary Nominee Stephen Feinberg, urging him to recuse himself from
all matters related to Ligado Networks, which has a pending $39 billion
lawsuit against the Department of Defense (DoD) over highly sought-after
telecommunications spectrum space that the military has said is
“essential for its various satellite communications, radars and
navigation systems” usage.
- In March 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote to Mr. Emil Michael,
nominee for Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering,
with concern over his history of inappropriate behavior at work, his
attacks on journalists and public accountability, and his ties to
technology companies that may seek contracts with the Department of
Defense.
- In February 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote to Mr. Stephen Feinberg,
nominee for Deputy Secretary of the Department of Defense, ahead of his
confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee,
pressing him to explain his “serious conflicts of interest” and his
track record of mismanagement.
- In January 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote to Mr. Michael Duffey,
nominee for Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment
of the Department of Defense, ahead of his confirmation hearing, with
serious concerns about his record, which include violating the law,
disregarding congressional authority, and his involvement in Project
2025.
- In January 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote to Mr. Pete Hegseth,
nominee for Secretary of the Department of Defense, regarding his
ethics conflicts ahead of the Senate’s consideration of his nomination.
Mr. Hegseth’s household’s ownership of stock in several defense
contractors and his unwillingness to commit to post-employment
restrictions he previously advocated for at his confirmation hearing
were particularly troubling for the role of Secretary of Defense.
- In March 2024, Senator Elizabeth Warren secured ethics commitments from
Douglas Schmidt, ahead of his confirmation to be the Director of
Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) for the Department of
Defense.
- In June 2023, Senator Elizabeth Warren and representative Andy Kim reintroduced the Department of Defense Ethics and Anti-Corruption Act,
to limit the influence of contractors on the military, constrain
foreign influence on retired senior military officers, and assert
greater transparency over contractors and their interaction with DoD.
- In July 2021, Senator Elizabeth Warren secured agreements to four-year recusals from
former clients’ and employers’ party matters from then-Secretary of the
Air Force Frank Kendall and then-USD(R&E) Heidi Shyu.
- In January 2021, Senator Elizabeth Warren secured a commitment from
General Lloyd Austin III, then-nominee for Secretary of Defense, to
extend his recusal from Raytheon Technologies for four years and to not
seek a position on the board of a defense contractor or become a
lobbyist after his government service.
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The following sites updated:
