Hello, and welcome back. Just returned from a gathering of Illuminati business leaders, and the craziest part is they have no idea what’s going to happen next and they’re just reading TGIF and X like you and me. Make the Illuminati Great Again! Oh, but they did tell me “Jeffrey Epstein is an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh,” isn’t that crazy?
Also: To anyone reading this, come work for us. Please! We added three exciting opportunities here—you too can one day join the ranks of Free Pressers who get bullied in this sacred column.
→ Updates from DOGE: President Musk and his merry band of technocrats continue to play Operation with the federal government, to much shock and awe. Musk is looking at basic systems like government credit cards, and it turns out there are more open credit cards than there are federal workers (4.6 million active credit cards to about 3 million federal employees). He continues to cut various programs that really did turn out to be huge scams, but as the DOGE boys move fast, they also break so very many things. Because they are using search terms to find the easiest-to-cut, silliest government programs. But some words have woke and non-woke meanings. Woe betide the researchers studying ecological diversity. Woe be the fools who thought they could abbreviate point-of-care as POC or any words that contain the letters D, E, or I. There are some hilarious and dark stories about all the totally apolitical programs caught in the keyword dragnet, and yes, ecological diversity and point-of-care healthcare services really are among them. So too is an image of the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay, which was flagged for removal from the DoD website even though it dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, which you think would get Enola a little respect. I’m impacted personally, as my research on the faggot case moth hangs in the balance. And my 15 government-issued credit cards.
In other dismantling news, Trump plans to cut 80,000 jobs from Veterans Affairs. Seems fine. And the Department of Education is probably going to shut down. Education Secretary Linda McMahon sent out a cryptic memo saying: “This is our opportunity to perform one final, unforgettable public service to future generations of students.” It’s like she’s teeing up a cage match between two ring girls. I won’t miss the Department of Education. But for every two good cuts, there is a scam cut: Trump’s planning to chop the IRS in half. Defunding the tax cops does not help our deficit, but it does help Trump’s donors, since a hobbled and weak IRS can’t spend time unraveling their complex tax schemes. In other notes, this is my wake-up call: Gotta get myself a tax scheme! It must include offshore accounts and very complicated inheritance structures that ensure if my children don’t conduct themselves how I like, it all goes to Lachlan Murdoch. Soon, you’ll be able to subscribe to The Free Press only by mailing in cash. Why? No reason.
There are limiting factors, it turns out, to the blows of the DOGE hammer. The Supreme Court has intervened to save USAID funding, saying the $1.9 billion must be disbursed. How? John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett broke ranks with their fellow conservative court appointees. Strange, because as a good liberal, I was told for years that ACB was a right-wing extremist handmaiden in a cult (i.e., goes to church. Okay fine, she did technically hold the title of “handmaid,” but whatever guys, Christianity has a lot going on).
And Trump reassured his cabinet on Thursday that they all have the final say on firings, not Musk. Musk was in the room staring them all down, boring his eyes into theirs, but hey, Trump said that Mom said we can have the remote for the next 30 minutes. Now there will be biweekly DOGE meetings. Musk has to placate the Trump cabinet like they are women in his Mars Population Creation compound. Fine, he will have biweekly meetings and listen to their concerns. Then it’s back to DOGEing with the boys.
→ Dem messaging is synced and maybe scary: Some 22 Democratic senators this week put out coordinated videos in response to Trump, with all of them reading from the same script straight to camera. Each video starts with a Trump clip about inflation and then the senator comes on camera to say: “Sh*t that ain’t true: That’s what you just saw.” I think it was meant to be a show of force, like we are all in this together, and we’re willing to swear. It’s like Beto “F-Bomb” O’Rourke is making the playbook over there. The videos didn’t work for me, and the effect of them all speaking the same lines is a little creepy, but maybe for someone else it would work. I’m not going to yuck your yum. Hakeem Jeffries posted a video standing alone, wearing sunglasses in front of the Capitol, to say: “The American people are with us.” The wind whipping around him, the scene forlorn, he repeated, “The American people are with us.”
And in one more sign that the Dem establishment is trying to hold on to power, Roger Lau, an establishment Dem behind Elizabeth Warren’s wildly successful campaign, has been promoted to DNC executive director. Finally, Hasan Piker, the hugely popular leftist streamer who is being held up as the future of the Dems, called for the murder of Florida senator Rick Scott, saying: “If you cared about Medicare fraud or Medicaid fraud, you would kill Rick Scott.” So that’s where rhetoric on the left is these days.
→ It’s not all bad news: Gavin Newsom is doing some great disavowing of kooky radicals on his podcast. Readers of this column know I have a soft spot for California’s slick governor, who is always promising that this year is the year we build that housing for the homeless, even though every year is just the year the money is spent but no houses emerge. Anyway, he had conservative pundit Charlie Kirk on his podcast and Gavin revealed his new, moderate turn. First, he agreed that biological men should not compete in women’s sports: “It’s an issue of fairness—it’s deeply unfair,” Newsom said. What’s that I hear in the distance? “Hail to the Chief”? Camelot 2.0? Hell yes, Gavers!