"I have to reconcile it this way, if a group like the KKK were doing some sort of valuable research, should the feds help fund that?"

Ridiculous analogy. Terrorist groups aren't the ones doing the research at these colleges, but then you know that.

Every senior citizens' nightmare, and if the DOGE bros have theire way, I expect will hear more stories like this:

Johnson is 82 and still kicking. Yet sometime last month, someone or something led Social Security to both tag him as dead and start clawing back his benefits.

Johnson's strange trip through the netherworld began in February, when a letter from his bank arrived addressed to his wife, Pam.

"We recently received notification of LEONARD A. JOHNSON's passing," it began. "We offer our sincerest condolences ... "

At first she figured it was a scam--her husband, after all, was sitting right there. But then the bank got to the point.

"We know this is a difficult time, and we're here to help," the bank wrote. "We received a request from Social Security Administration to return benefits paid to LEONARD A. JOHNSON's account after their passing."

"There's nothing you need to do--we've deducted the funds from LEONARD A. JOHNSON's account."

Uh oh. It itemized how $5,201 had been stricken from their bank account, on the grounds that Ned wasn't justified to get those benefits--because he was dead. That was for payments he'd received in December and January.

Ned found that his February Social Security check hadn't been paid, and he's yet to receive his March check, either. His Medicare insurance had been canceled. . . .

What followed was a nearly three-week battle to resurrect himself. He called Social Security two or three times a day for two weeks, with each call put on hold and then eventually disconnected. Finally someone answered and gave him an appointment for March 13. Then he got a call delaying that to March 24.

In a huff, he went to the office on the ninth floor of the Henry Jackson Federal Building downtown. It's one of the buildings proposed to be closed under what the AP called "a frenetic and error-riddled push by Elon Musk's budget-cutting advisers."

Sounds like Gestapo tactics and for what reason?

FTA:

Schmidt had been visiting Luxembourg and flew back to the U.S. on Friday. His partner had gone to pick him up at Logan Airport, and waited four hours before calling authorities.

"It was just said that his green card was flagged," said Astrid Senior, his mother. She said she didn't hear from her son directly until Tuesday, when she learned he'd been hospitalized.

Senior described Schmidt being "violently interrogated" at Logan Airport for hours, and being stripped naked, put in a cold shower by two officials, and being put back onto a chair.

She said Schmidt told her immigration agents pressured him to give up his green card. She said he was placed on a mat in a bright room with other people at the airport, with little food or water, suffered sleep deprivation, and was denied access to his medication for anxiety and depression.

"He hardly got anything to drink. And then he wasn't feeling very well and he collapsed," said Senior.

He was transported by ambulance to Mass General Hospital. He didn't know it at the time, but he also had influenza.

There was a rumor that the sad sacks who went to Boaz's Konservative Kry Klub shared their passwords with each other.
BullBringer has stated there are a few different people who access that username.
#19 | Posted by ClownShack

Yes, Eberly confirmed that to be the case with the Bellringer handle at least.

This is a ridiculous assertion, what does "fail" even mean? You're basically saying Trump wants to fail himself out of a job.
Preposterous, no wonder no one takes you guys/gals seriously. Just lies upon hoaxes with "anon" sources.
#18 | Posted by oneironaut

He wants most of the federal government to fail, which will in turn will justify all the cuts he is making. He doesn't want the defense dept or homeland security to fail, but everything else that can be privatized and/or turned over to the states he doesn't care if it fails.

Gotta keep in mind that, unlike pretty much every other prez in hisotry, Trump wants the economy to fail. It assists him in manipulating the stock market and profiting from shorting it.
#4 | Posted by censored

Trump also wants the government to fail. Hello? That way he can justify all the cuts and executive orders he has already written as well as the ones he has ready to go the moment he is able to declare even more emergency orders that will give him unlimited and unfettered power over just about everything and in such a way that not even the courts will be able to stop him.

President Trump is testing the limits of emergency powers--again

Goitein, of the Brennan Center, says determining those limits is crucial. "There are powers that are available in a national emergency that are far more potent, including powers to shut down communications facilities, to control domestic transportation, to freeze Americans' assets without any due process or any judicial [approval]," she says. "So this question of 'What are the limits on a president's ability to abuse emergency powers?' is an absolutely crucial one for not just our individual liberties but for our democracy."

The question is how emergency powers are used--and for how long and with what limits.

Scheppele has studied how democracies, like Hungary, can turn toward autocracy. For her, the key question about the use of emergency powers is not whether they are legal--because lawful powers can be abused, she notes.

"The question is, does it move the president toward using powers that make it very difficult for powers ever to be taken out of his hands?" she says. "Autocracy is really about the executive capturing power and not letting it go."

With that in mind, she's watching to see whether declaring emergencies becomes a routine way for the Trump administration to push through policies over the objections of Congress or the public, sidelining the debates, compromises and checks and balances baked into democracy.

I called Gillibrand and Schumer on Wed. and asked them to vote no on the Republican budget. I had one qualm, however: how would the shutdown affect the court cases being brought against Trump, Musk and OMP, some of which are starting to bear fruit? Two of my favorite online pundits have been weighing in on the topic: Josh Marshall and Marcy Wheeler.

Here are their latest takes, both of which are worth considering, IMO:

Looking Squarely at a Shutdown

It's hard to write clearly when you're being flooded with new information. But here goes. I've heard people arguing the "yes' on cloture" argument, essentially saying, "don't assume you can shut DOGE down, undo the damage. It's not a silver bullet." I can only speak for myself, but if anyone is thinking, based on the arguments I've made, that this is a silver bullet and if Democrats just do this we can shut this whole thing down, I haven't been clear. I will further say that while the things I've written over the last week or so make it pretty clear where I stand on this, I have several times over the last week had a hard think with myself: are you sure you're right about this? I'm not sure I'd say this is a close call. But it's a hard call, for me at least. Both options hold out possibilities of calamity and destruction I've never seriously contemplated before. That is simply where we are. I wish we weren't here. But we are here.

Everyone who voted for Trump is expecting him to carve out a special exception for them. This includes veterans, farmers, federal workers, the billionaires who endorsed him, red state voters, red district voters in swing or blue states. For the most part, they still don't care who he hurts as long as it's not them.