The Trump administration has started to have a real effect on the size and scope of government, thanks to its focus on wasteful and fraudulent spending doled out to non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The more the administration uncovers, the worse it looks for the institutions of the Swamp — and the better the approval polls look for Trump. Like turning over a rock to see what creepy-crawlies live under there, the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) had all sorts of unintended consequences that revealed the seedy nature of federal funding. Now, between Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the Department of Justice, we’ve begun to see real investigations into where our taxpayer money goes. Via the sunlight of laptop-powered financial reconstructions and the weight of future prosecutions, we may very well see permanent changes to the way the federal government operates. (RELATED: Trump Should Shutter USAID — Development Economics Is a Hotbed for Corruption) In fact, the preliminary budget numbers show that the monthly deficits have unexpectedly fallen. The course has come into focus: The only way to achieve the original goals of the Tea Party and other historical reform movements is to expose the rot, eliminate the bureaucracies, prosecute those responsible for the fraud, and show American citizens just how badly their confiscated taxpayer funds have been wasted. Only then can the political will build to tear down the bloated federal government and return it to its constitutional restraints. (RELATED: DOGE Confirms That Social Security Is a Fine Mess.) The Trump administration has found itself on the cusp of a seminal change in the relationship between America’s citizens and their government. This is how Trump has begun to have a real effect on the permanent structure of the federal government. Neither Liberals nor Conservatives Recognize the Pattern For decades now, fiscal conservatives, budget hawks, Tea Party upstarts, and free market enthusiasts have called on Congress to utilize its power of the purse as assigned in the Constitution. Many have failed to realize that line of attack was a waste of energy. Both political parties have spent decades failing to pass proper budgets, shying away from proper oversight of the federal leviathan, and hoping no voters would notice. It’s largely worked, as they continue to enjoy a reelection rate above 90 percent despite approval ratings in the toilet. In short, Congress has utterly failed its oversight role over the federal agencies, in direct proportion to the extent to which members have worked out the grift to stay in office into perpetuity. That has been the rule whether Republicans or Democrats held the majority. Thus, President Trump’s attack on the Swamp lands in ways wholly unfamiliar — and threatening. Instead of politely asking the institutions to oversee the other institutions in an orderly and collegial manner, Trump has put disruptors in charge of the offending institutions and told them to feel free to upset the status quo. He’s replaced fleets of low-level staffers and white-collar professionals with teenage coders and Elon Musk, often referred to as the Bart Simpson of billionaires. Trump has approached it from the opposite direction of what many reformers have tried over the years. The mission of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) mirrors that of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, EPA Chief Lee Zeldin, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Education Secretary Linda McMahon, and the other agency heads he’s installed. That mission is to attack the problem of rotten, cancer-ridden bureaucracy and its associated waste, fraud, and anti-American spending from the opposite direction. Instead of drafting white papers and binders full of reports, and even audits (which, let’s be honest, have never been conducted), the Trump administration has sent armies of hackers into the soft underbelly of the government. Disruptors like this stand out in history precisely because they upset the status quo. Almost always, that status quo needed disruption. Whether it be Henry Ford and the assembly line, Travis Kalanick and Uber, or Elon Musk and… well… everything, an existing order of things did not stand a chance of stopping someone’s vision of success. Trump doesn’t care if his fleet of disruptors upset the established order of things in The Swamp. In fact, he uses it to his advantage. His actions are so bold, bordering on outrageous, it serves to smoke out his opposition and makes them take a side. He’s gotten results few could have imagined — and his approval poll numbers have stayed consistently higher than in his first term. Money Laundering Exposed Hardly a day has gone by without some massive revelation of abusive spending of federal tax dollars. DOGE was just the start. USAID was the tip of the iceberg. Laying the groundwork to dismantle the Department of Education sent shockwaves through the D.C. establishment. So did Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s reforms at the Pentagon. Because we can’t keep track of that kind of money, it often ends up going to questionable organizations, like Stacey Abrams getting a whopping $2 billion for her brand-new non-profit she formed in 2024 to take advantage of the Biden administration. (READ MORE: The Green Grift: How Power Forward Communities’ $2 Billion Boondoggle Misses the Mark) EXPOSED: Stacey Abrams-linked group, Power Forward Communities, was given $2 billion in taxpayer money and only generated a dismal $100 in revenue in its first three months of operation. The waste and abuse must stop! pic.twitter.com/b3E0uOA50z — Steve Cortes (@CortesSteve) February 20, 2025 In another suspicious example, one user on X pointed out that David Hogg’s anti-gun group faced a funding crisis after Trump shuttered USAID. USAID: David Hogg’s gun control group had a drastic collapse in donations via ActBlue immediately following Trump’s closure of USAID. As a result, March for Our Lives has had to layoff almost all of its staff. h/t @gunpolicy pic.twitter.com/03tHOWv5Bd — @amuse (@amuse) April 13, 2025 These are just two of the small but most egregious examples of trillions of dollars wasted over a few decades. The amount of waste, fraud, and abuse that has begun to emerge from unaudited Social Security, Medicaid, all forms of welfare, and defense spending is several orders of magnitude greater than that. What happens when we start to shut down the federal money laundering operations? The spending will start to fix itself, despite a lack of action by Congress. In fact, just over 100 days in, it already has. The budget deficit — the gap between tax revenues and federal spending — dropped to a five-year low in March. The monthly spending deficit was half what it was in February, with only the preliminary results from the most rudimentary cuts to wasteful and fraudulent spending enacted. Projected out for a full year, just those preliminary savings would add up to a hair under $1.9 trillion in savings. That doesn’t get the United States out of debt — yet. We still have to pay off almost $37 trillion we’ve borrowed in deficit spending, and we still run deficits every month. But not only is this a good start, this is the momentum we need to build to encourage the rest of the federal government to start tightening its belt — and the impetus for Congress to finally step in and do something fiscally responsible. In short, the executive branch will lead the Legislative branch back to its core function and show it how to disrupt even more. Shutting Down the Parallel Government Watchdogs and whistleblowers have long suspected a potentially illegal connection between murky federal outlays and leftist fundraising groups. BREAKING: The Federal Election Commission has opened an investigation into Rep. Jasmine Crockett regarding contributions linked to ActBlue. — The General (@GeneralMCNews) April 11, 2025 That explains House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) investigating the Democratic fundraising group ActBlue. In a report, the Oversight Committee said, “ActBlue made its fraud-prevention rules ‘more lenient’ twice in 2024 — even though there is extensive fraud on the platform, including from foreign sources.” The committee has sent a letter to the CEO of ActBlue requesting more information. (RELATED: ActBlue Probes May Shut Down DNC Money Laundry) ActBlue has faced allegations for years that they employ “Smurfs” — unsuspecting donors with hundreds or thousands of small dollar donations in their name, that they never authorized or made. The suspected scheme works by attributing illegal donations to legal donors on record with ActBlue to give the donations the veneer of legitimacy. Smurfing may be just one aspect of illegal money laundering by ActBlue. One X user diagrammed a potential pathway for foreign donations laundered via ActBlue and USAID: The Alleged ActBlue-USAID Money Laundering Scheme A grave accusation has emerged: the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is purportedly directing substantial funds to dubious foreign governments. These nations, in a calculated maneuver, are said to redirect the money back to the United States through the use of gift cards, channeling the funds to ActBlue, a prominent Democratic fundraising platform. ActBlue then allegedly allocates these resources to support Democratic political campaigns. If true, this represents a staggering breach of integrity — an audacious fraud perpetrated on an immense scale. At the end of April, President Trump signed a presidential memorandum to crack down foreign “straw donors” — instructing federal agencies to take action on potentially illegal foreign donations via ActBlue. The memo instructed the Department of Justice to open an investigation. If the federal government had a better handle on where its money went, it would make it that much harder to pull off these schemes. But bad actors in the bureaucracies have gotten away with it for so long, they clearly thought they’d never get caught. Jennica Pounds, a.k.a. DataRepublican on X, has spent months tracking federal spending and abuses by the government. She recently posted, “Over the last few months, we’ve come to a realization that should have landed much harder: NGOs weren’t just adjacent to government, they were the parallel government … NGOs operate outside the chain of command. They answer to no electorate, no oversight, no public mandate. They can push any agenda they choose without accountability.” As she put it at the end of her long post, “If you wanted to carry out a bloodless coup, this is exactly how you do it.” No need to pass new laws, or subvert the constitution, or organize an armed resistance. Just set up a parallel government and fund it with tax dollars. Almost as if then-candidate Barack Obama’s hopes have all come true: “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” Or, as Glenn Harlan Reynolds put it in a recent op-ed, “as we’ve learned recently … many ‘non-governmental’ entities are really just fronts for government activities that Americans would never stand for if Washington attempted them directly.” He lists several examples, including the Biden border invasion, the push for “trans rights,” global warming hysteria, and all the other things Americans never voted for that somehow get paid by our government. “An NGO that can’t function without government money,” he concludes, “is anything but ‘non-governmental.’” A Leaner, More Responsive Government It turns out this was the way it had to be. Those who have worked for and dreamed of government reform for decades have come to realize working within the system couldn’t possibly work. Any such effort was doomed to failure. The rot was just too widespread, the problem just too big, the resistance to reform too intractable. Congress clearly lacks the intestinal fortitude to engage in boring oversight that relies on forensic accountants and audits that nobody will read and won’t generate headlines. Those things won’t generate press conferences and grandstanding. What does generate endless opportunities to find a camera? Prosecutions. Once the bad actors throughout our government start getting hauled in front of congressional hearings or deposed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, ambitious government reformers will have all sorts of opportunities to get their lighting just right, hold press conferences, and appear on cable news. If We The People get lucky this time around, we may just see collegiality go out the window in favor of prosecutions and permanent structural change in our government. Jeff Reynolds is Senior Editor for Restoration News. READ MORE from Jeff Reynolds: How Does an Entire Continent Fail? Americans Want a Government Free of Waste, Fraud, and Abuse The post The Trump Administration Sets Its Sights on the Parallel Government appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

One of the cardinal electors who has been widely speculated as one of the most likely successors to the Chair of St. Peter spoke with the press on Tuesday regarding what he believes should be the “defining characteristic” of the future pontiff. (RELATED: Early Indications of Cardinals’ Priorities Begin to Emerge) That characteristic? Holiness. “I always say, we need what the world cannot give us: holiness,” said Swedish Cardinal Anders Arborelius. “Of course,” he continued, “that means so much, but if we put it into one word, I would say that the world can give us so much, but it cannot give us God’s holiness.” Arborelius’s comments came in an interview with OSV News. The archbishop of Stockholm elaborated: “That’s what people really need in a time like this — that we find someone who can help them be freed from sin, from hatred, from violence, to bring about reconciliation and a deeper encounter.” If you were looking for a cardinal with a reputation for holiness, you would perhaps look first to Arborelius himself. Arborelius, 75, is a member of the Order of the Discalced Carmelite Fathers, and he recently stated that he had arranged with Pope Francis that he would soon be able to resign from his role as bishop of Stockholm and return to Norraby Carmelite Monastery, which is located near Rydebäck, Sweden. “So now I’m hanging a little loose,” he told the Swedish media outlet Sveriges Television following the pope’s death. Arborelius previously spent 27 years living in a monastery. Arborelius has been discussed as one of the most likely men to be elected as the next pope by both the New York Times and France’s Le Figaro, but he has repeatedly shut down this speculation. In an interview with OSV News in 2024, he came across as baffled and exasperated by the chatter: “I was very stupefied, and of course, it’s always a bit annoying when they start … Here in Sweden, people always love [saying], ‘Oh, you’re the next pope.’ So it’s a bit annoying but I tried to calm them down in a sense because it’s part of the business that people speculate about that.” In that same interview, Arborelius expressed hope that he would soon be able to “return to contemplative life.” Arborelius is distinguished by his ability to speak many languages. He speaks English at a native level (somewhat of a rarity among the cardinals), his native Swedish, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch, and German. In 2020, Arborelius published an English-language book, Carmelite Spirituality: The Way of Carmelite Prayer and Contemplation. The book showcases Arborelius’s rich spirituality, as he calls on his readers to enter into a deep prayer life with the Lord. In the book, he writes: “We have to adore Him with our entire being. Our poor little thoughts can never grasp Him, but our heart has an enormous capacity to come close to Him and be united with Him.” This life of prayer, Arborelius asserts in the book, should never cease. “Every Christian,” he writes, “is invited to live in a constant union of love with Christ and, thus, in constant prayer.” Cardinal Arborelius’s book suggests that, if elected pope, his primary goal would be to ignite a spiritual renewal. In his role as bishop of Stockholm, a position he has held since 1998, Arborelius has drawn respect for his strong pastoral leadership, particularly for how he has united believers of the various ethnic groups that make up Sweden’s Catholic population; his fidelity to Church teaching; and his reputation as a man of prayer. In his interview on Tuesday with OSV News, Arborelius listed several other qualities that the future pontiff should have. He called for “someone with a conscience,” saying, “If we want to have a world with peace and justice, we need someone to guide us.” Arborelius further stated that Catholics “want to see that aspect of mercy, love, concern and interest in people; that [the pope] is concerned about and wants to meet people.” Arborelius also warned against ideological division or politicizing the college of cardinals. It is dangerous, he asserted, for Catholics to “always have political glasses on when they look upon the church and want a pope who follows their own political agenda.” Cardinal Arborelius is not the only cardinal calling for a holy pope. On Tuesday, Cardinal John Ribat of Papua New Guinea, age 68, told reporters that seeking a holy pope should be a top priority. “Personal holiness is very important for the next pope,” Ribat said. He also stated that the next pope should be a man who can unite Catholics: “He must be someone open and controlling — not in a bad way, but in a way that keeps us all together, journeying together in unity.” While Cardinal Arborelius is publicly calling for a holy pontiff, it is unlikely, given his stated desire to return to contemplative life in his monastery, that he will put forward himself as someone who meets that criterion. Moreover, he seems to be one of the less likely candidates among the speculated-upon papabili, given the smallness of his flock in Sweden and his less-assertive nature. But I would suggest that Cardinal Arborelius offers a timely reminder of the Church’s spiritual nature — wisdom, especially relevant as the College of Cardinals seeks the guidance of the Holy Spirit in choosing the next pope. “[M]any Christians,” he writes in Carmelite Spirituality, “have lost this mystical insight into the true reality of the Church. They tend to look upon the Church as they would look upon any other human organization and, thus, forget that the Church is always a mystery of love, the Bride of Christ.” READ MORE from Ellie Gardey Holmes: Early Indications of Cardinals’ Priorities Begin to Emerge Who Are the Potential Replacements for Pope Francis? The Spectator P.M. Ep. 133: The Next Pope and the Future of the Church The post <i>Papabile</i> Stresses Need for a Holy Pope appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

It began with ambition, audacity, and a carefully scripted lie. On April 10, 2025, in a quiet courtroom in Missouri, Mercy Ojedeji — a 24-year-old Nigerian national — admitted orchestrating an extraordinary deception. Equipped with forged transcripts, fabricated recommendation letters, and counterfeit language-test results, he infiltrated the University of Missouri’s prestigious chemistry Ph.D. program, securing not only an F-1 student visa but also a generous stipend of nearly $49,000 and a full tuition waiver. There was just one minor detail Ojedeji omitted: He never intended to set foot in a classroom. Within months, he had vanished from the campus, re-emerging briefly to fraudulently obtain a Missouri driver’s license — remarkably, using the very documents immigration authorities had invalidated. Federal investigators eventually connected him to a sprawling million-dollar romance fraud ring, exposing how effortlessly America’s immigration system could be weaponized. Yet Mercy’s bold scheme was hardly an isolated anomaly. Months earlier, authorities dismantled an elaborate “pay-to-stay” operation in Los Angeles, where three shadowy entrepreneurs had established ghost universities — Prodee University and the American College of Forensic Studies — to generate around $6 million annually from tuition fees for classes that never existed. These fake institutions sold immigration status rather than education, exploiting America’s trust-based immigration system with ruthless precision. Even more brazenly, immigration officials themselves entered murky waters, launching the fictitious “University of Farmington” in Michigan — a sting operation attracting nearly 600 foreign nationals, who collectively paid millions in tuition to a university that existed only in the imagination of federal agents. The resulting scandal, culminating in over 160 arrests, forced authorities to defend themselves in court after a federal appeals judge permitted the affected students to sue for breach of trust. This phenomenon of academic fraud is hardly unique to America. In Canada, an astonishing 50,000 international students failed to report to their colleges in March and April of 2024 alone. Indian nationals accounted for nearly 20,000 of these “ghost students,” sparking an ongoing immigration-fraud investigation and exposing how lax verification processes have created massive vulnerabilities. (RELATED: Canada’s Reckless Immigration Policies) In response, Canada’s immigration authorities have been forced to investigate over 9,000 suspected fraud cases monthly, rejecting thousands of applications and imposing permanent immigration bans on those caught abusing the system. Additionally, in 2024 alone, Canadian officials flagged over 10,000 acceptance letters as potentially fake, prompting urgent upgrades to verification protocols. The United Kingdom’s experience echoes similarly troubling patterns. In April 2025, three immigration agents operating out of Ahmedabad were arrested for scamming multiple clients out of approximately ₹86.20 lakh (around £85,000), by providing fraudulent U.K. work and student visas. Forged Certificates of Acceptance for Studies (CAS) and fake Certificates of Sponsorship (COS) were just the latest tools used by these visa agents exploiting desperate migrants. Meanwhile, closer to home, a recent audit at the University of Glasgow revealed serious compliance issues regarding attendance tracking for international students, prompting the university to deploy digital surveillance apps to satisfy U.K. Visas and Immigration’s (UKVI) stringent sponsorship requirements. Each of these cases forms a clear and disturbing narrative: student visas, designed as gateways for global talent and intellectual exchange, have devolved into shadowy backdoors for fraud and exploitation. Whether it’s Mercy Ojedeji’s audacious deception in Missouri, phantom institutions in Los Angeles, vanished students in Canada, or fraudulent advisors exploiting hopeful migrants in Britain, the thread is unmistakable — trust without verification inevitably breeds deceit. This crisis isn’t merely administrative; it’s existential. Student visas were intended as bridges to opportunity, not invitations for fraud. Institutions have failed to distinguish between genuine aspiration and calculated manipulation, allowing criminals to exploit generous immigration policies and lax oversight. Authentic audits, real enforcement, and severe consequences for deception are no longer optional; they are critical. When degrees and visas become commodities bought in a marketplace of lies, the cost isn’t simply reputational — it undermines the very concept of immigration itself. Degrees of deception inevitably lead to degrees of defeat, and no nation can sustain its generosity when its kindness becomes its greatest vulnerability. READ MORE from Kevin Cohen: Trump’s Cash-for-Departure Plan: A New Approach to Immigration? A Texas City’s Quiet Claim to Islamic Territory The Appalling Tunnels Beneath Our Universities The post How Student Visas Became the New Trojan Horse for Immigration Fraud appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

by Daisy Luther, The Organic Prepper: We recently looked into the economic crisis that’s bearing down on us fast and discussed the factors at play to cause problems for consumers. Now, let’s discuss what we can do about it the looming retail scarcity. It would be easy to say “just stock up on everything” but many of […]

by Mike Adams, SHTF Plan: As this research article reveals, the U.S. government has routinely unleashed bioweapons on its own people. It has weaponized medicine, dropped aerosolized bioweapons on civilian populations in the USA and subjected American civilians—especially Black and marginalized populations—to horrific medical torture under the guise of “science.” From forced sterilization to aerosolized biowarfare attacks, history exposes a government that […]

April 29, 2025, reports that an Erie man, identified as a member of the Iron Wings Motorcycle Club, was charged with assault and is currently jailed in connection to a separate case. Specifically Assault Charges: The individual faces charges related to an assault incident in Erie, Pennsylvania. The details of the assault, such as the date, location, or victim, are not fully specified in the available information, but it is significant enough to warrant criminal charges. Separate Case: While charged for the assault, the man is being held in jail due to another unrelated legal matter. The nature of this second case is not detailed in the provided context, but it indicates ongoing legal troubles for the individual. Iron Wings Motorcycle Club: The suspect’s affiliation with the Iron Wings MC, a known “outlaw” motorcycle club in Erie with a history of violent incidents, is highlighted. The club has been linked to prior conflicts, including a 2015 shootout and a 2021 kidnapping case involving rival motorcycle clubs. This case adds to the Iron Wings MC’s record of legal and violent incidents in the Erie area. For more specific details, such as the suspect’s name or the exact nature of the charges, further access to the full article or local court records would be neede March 2025 Raids: Erie police and ATF agents raided multiple locations, including the Iron Wings MC clubhouse on East Avenue, as part of an investigation into robbery and assault cases. Witnesses noted a heavy police presence, and a door was removed from the clubhouse, but there’s no indication of a prolonged standoff or armed confrontation. The authorities did not comment on the specifics of their presence at the clubhouse. Purpose: The raids were part of an investigation into an aggravated assault and robbery that took place at an unspecified Erie club in January 2024. Erie County Chief Deputy District Attorney Jeremy Lightner confirmed that the District Attorney’s Office authorized charges against multiple individuals, though the exact details of the incident remained under seal. Erie Police Chief Dan Spizarny noted that the investigation was ongoing, with the possibility of additional charges. 00:00 MASSIVE RAIDS ON IRON WINGS MOTORCYCLE CLUB 00:22 Alleged Member of Iron Wings MC 02:38 One of the raids on clubhouse in March of 2025 04:18 DA Authorized charges against multiple people 06:15 Wondering what the next move is 08:01 Very important to contact us. Power & Betrayal-Outlaw Motorcycle Club Life By James Hollywood Macecari MASSIVE RAIDS ON IRON WINGS MOTORCYCLE CLUB (POSSIBLE RICO?) Motorcycle Riding: A Path to Better Mental Health MOTORCYCLE CLUB SHOOTOUT 2 DEAD (IT’S JUST THE BEGINNING) Deadly shooting (2 Dead) at Forest Park motorcycle club If you didn’t know already Harley-Davidson is in trouble.