Surprising New Poll Numbers Released on Trump’s Performance So Far in the White House

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Three new national polls released on Wednesday indicate President Donald Trump’s approval ratings are edging down slightly since taking over the White House one month ago.

Forty-five percent of voters questioned in a Quinnipiac University survey said they approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president, with 49% disapproving.

That’s down from a 46%-43% approval/disapproval in a Quinnipiac poll conducted in late January, during the president’s first week back in office following his inauguration.

A new national poll from Gallup indicated the president at 45% approval and 51% disapproval, down from 47%-48% approval/disapproval late last month.

And according to a Reuters/Ipsos national survey also released on Wednesday, the president stood at 44% approval and 51% disapproval. Trump registered at 45%-46% approval/disapproval in the previous poll by Reuters/Ipsos, which was conducted late last month during the first week of the president’s second administration. (Read more from “Surprising New Poll Numbers Released on Trump’s Performance So Far in the White House” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Whistleblowers: FBI Weaponization Is Real, And Here’s Proof

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Democrats have cast the Trump administration’s ouster of eight senior FBI leaders as a “purge” and act of “retribution” from a weaponized Justice Department, some likening it to President Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre.”

But former colleagues of the terminated “G-men” say this narrative is backward. FBI officials, past and present, have marshaled significant evidence via whistleblower complaints and testimony indicating that several terminated leaders routinely used their offices for partisan purposes.

These include allegations that at least two of the fired officials, Jeffrey Veltri and Dena Perkins, manipulated the security clearance review process to personally and professionally punish conservatives, Covid-19 vaccine skeptics, and Jan. 6 whistleblowers who reported suspected bureau malfeasance, and retaliated against those who came to the whistleblowers’ defense.

A third, Timothy Dunham, is also alleged to have improperly suspended security clearances.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, read numerous accounts of alleged misconduct perpetrated by these and other officials into the record on Feb. 13 as the committee considered the nomination of Kash Patel for FBI director. (Read more from “Whistleblowers: FBI Weaponization Is Real, And Here’s Proof” HERE)

Trump Administration Vows To Fight Any Schools That Defy Order To End DEI

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The left-wing American education establishment is clutching its pearls at the thought of dropping its push for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology after the Department of Education threatened its federal funding, but the Trump administration is calling its bluff.

“The Department of Education will no longer allow education entities to discriminate on the basis of race,” Department of Education Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor told The Federalist. “This isn’t complicated. When in doubt, every school should consult the SFFA [Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard] legal test contained in the [“Dear Colleague” letter]: if an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates law.”

The Trump administration distributed a “Dear Colleague” letter last Friday telling schools to shut down their DEI programs for training, teaching, and hiring or face the loss of their federal funding. The memo uses the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action from SFFA to set up guidance for schools to shut down their racially discriminatory DEI programs that have “toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon ‘systemic and structural racism’ and advanced discriminatory policies and practices.”

The Department of Education said that additional guidance on implementation is forthcoming.

However, as The Federalist reported, The School Superintendents Association (AASA), which represents the leaders of school districts across the country, sent a memo to its members to ignore the guidance. (Read more from “Trump Administration Vows To Fight Any Schools That Defy Order To End DEI” HERE)

China Condemns Trump’s ‘Tariff Shocks’ at World Trade Organization Meeting

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China’s ambassador to the World Trade Organization (WTO), Li Chenggang, told a closed-door meeting in Geneva on Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s “tariff shocks” could trigger a worldwide recession.

“These ‘tariff shocks’ heighten economic uncertainty, disrupt global trade, and risk domestic inflation, market distortion or even global recession. Worse, the U.S. unilateralism threatens to upend the rules-based multilateral trading system,” Li said.

The WTO, headquartered in Geneva, is governed by a “General Council” that meets regularly with trade ambassadors from all 166 nations. Tuesday’s meeting was the first time since the 2024 U.S. election that growing worldwide trade frictions have been formally addressed by the General Council.

Disputes between the two top economies at the WTO long predate Trump’s arrival. Beijing has accused Washington of breaking rules while Washington says Beijing does not deserve its “developing country” status which entitles it to special treatment under WTO rules.

This last was an allusion to China absurdly classifying itself as a “developing nation” to enjoy preferential treatment at the WTO, despite being one of the world’s largest economies. (Read more from “China Condemns Trump’s ‘Tariff Shocks’ at World Trade Organization Meeting” HERE)

Trump Endorses Sending DOGE Rebate Checks to Taxpayers

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President Trump on Wednesday endorsed sending Americans rebate checks based on a percentage of the savings achieved by the federal government through the Department of Government Efficiency’s cost-cutting measures.

“There’s even under consideration a new concept where we give 20% of the DOGE savings to American citizens and 20% goes to paying down debt because the numbers are incredible,” Mr. Trump said at the Future Investment Institute’s PRIORITY Summit in Miami.

Mr. Trump said by allowing the American people to get in on the action, they will help the federal government identify the fraud, waste and abuse that he was sent to Washington to clean up.

“By doing this Americans will tell us where there’s waste. They’ll be reporting it themselves. They’ll participate in the process of saving money,” he said.

Mr. Trump did not offer any details about the plan, including how many Americans would receive checks or how the process would work. (Read more from “Trump Endorses Sending DOGE Rebate Checks to Taxpayers” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

ABC News Piece on Who’s in Charge Raising Lots of Questions

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Now that President Donald Trump in his second term is really looking to get to the bottom of wasteful spending, with the help of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), ABC News is now asking questions about who is in charge.

“Contradictory statements about Musk make it unclear who runs DOGE,” read the headline from Monday night, with the article shared over X on early Tuesday morning.

As the article mentioned about Musk and DOGE:

As its influence within the federal government grows daily, one question routinely emerges about the Department of Government Efficiency: Who is in charge?

That answer continues to evade the lawyers tasked with defending President Donald Trump’s administration in court.

…

However, according to Office of Administration Director Joshua Fischer, Musk is neither the administrator nor an employee of DOGE. Instead, Musk is a “non career special government employee” who serves as a senior adviser to the president. The filing compared Musk’s role to that of Anita Dunn, a longtime political adviser who served as a senior adviser to President Joe Biden.

“In his role as senior advisor to the President, Mr. Musk has no greater authority than other senior White House advisors. Like other senior White House advisors, Mr. Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions,” the affidavit said.

(Read more from “ABC News Piece on Who’s in Charge Raising Lots of Questions” HERE)

Education Department Slashes $600 Million In Funding For ‘Social Justice Activism’ Teacher Training

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The U.S. Department of Education announced Monday it cut over $600 million in grants spent on training teachers in “social justice activism,” critical race theory, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology.

The grants were used to fund institutions and nonprofits involved in training teachers on concepts like “anti-racism” and claims about white privilege and white supremacy. The grants also helped fund discriminatory staff recruiting strategies that targeted candidates based on their race.

“It’s hard to overstate how radical these teacher trainings are — we are talking about forcing teachers to talk about their race at work, asking educators to ‘take personal and institutional responsibility for systemic inequities,’ promoting abolitionist teaching practices and defining equity as equal outcomes,” Erika Sanzi, director of outreach for Parents Defending Education, said in a press release. “And not for nothing but all we see are declining outcomes for the students that these trainings purport to help most.”

The Department of Education noted several of the trainings — meant for future classroom teachers — the grants funded, including “Requiring practitioners to take personal and institutional responsibility for systemic inequities (e.g., racism) and critically reassess their own practices,” and “Receiving professional development workshops and equity training on topics such as ‘Building Cultural Competence,’ ‘Dismantling Racial Bias’ and ‘Centering Equity in the Classroom.’” (Read more from “Education Department Slashes $600 Million In Funding For ‘Social Justice Activism’ Teacher Training” HERE)

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U.S. And Russia Take ‘First Step’ With ‘Very Useful’ Ukraine War Talks, Agree Trump-Putin Meeting to Come

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Russia praised the first round of Ukraine war talks with the United States as “very useful”, while the American delegation said both sides had committed to “make sure the process moves forward in a timely and productive manner” and will work towards a Presidential meeting soon.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for the first in-person talks of high-level delegations since Russia invaded Ukraine almost three years ago in 2022. After four and a half hours of talks the meeting broke, with both sides relating they felt it had been productive.

In terms of normalising diplomatic relations between Russia and the U.S., both sides are said to have agreed to return to staffing their embassies in the respective nations.

One of the intended outcomes of the talks was apparently laying the groundwork for an in-person meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin for the actual war-ending negotiation process. No date has been set for that meeting, but it was said work was happening to enable it.

Advisor to President Putin and former Russian ambassador to the U.S., Yury Ushakov, who sat around the table with Rubio and Lavrov, said after leaving the meeting that it was not likely Trump and Putin would meet within the next week but that both wanted to meet eventually. He said: “The delegations of the two countries have a lot of work to do. We are ready for this but it is still difficult to speak about the specific date of the meeting between the two leaders… The issue was discussed. We are working out the terms of this meeting”. (Read more from “U.S. And Russia Take ‘First Step’ With ‘Very Useful’ Ukraine War Talks, Agree Trump-Putin Meeting to Come” HERE)

3 Kids Found Living in ‘Absolute Squalor’ After Mom Abandoned Them 4 Years Ago

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Three children were found living in “absolute squalor” in a Michigan home riddled with mold and human waste after their mother abandoned them and left them to live on their own without soap or toilet paper for at least four years, authorities said.

The 34-year-old mother, who has not been identified as she shares the same name with one of her children, was arrested Friday, the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office said.

Human waste, mold, and garbage piles towering up to four feet tall were found throughout the Pontiac rental home where the children survived on food their mother or a stranger dropped off each week.

The children, a 15-year-old boy, and two girls, ages 12 and 13, had been alone in the home without supervision since either 2020 or 2021, the boy told deputies, according to the sheriff’s office.

Photo credit: Oakland County Sheriff

Deputies found the home in “deplorable shape” when responding to a welfare check requested by their landlord, who was concerned something happened because he had not heard from the mother since December and had not received a rent payment since October.

Photo credit: Oakland County Sheriff

(Read more from “3 Kids Found Living in ‘Absolute Squalor’ After Mom Abandoned Them 4 Years Ago” HERE)

DOGE Discovers $4.7 Trillion of Treasury Payments ‘Almost Impossible’ to Trace

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The Treasury Department sent $4.7 trillion dollars of payments without an identification code that links a Treasury payment to a budget line item, DOGE announced Monday, making the payments “almost impossible” to trace.

DOGE said the identification payment code, called TAS for Treasury Access Symbol, is now required — as of Saturday — to increase the “insight into where money is actually going.”

“Thanks to @USTreasury for the great work,” DOGE posted on X:

. . .

“Major improvement in Treasury payment integrity going live!” Elon Musk posted on X. “This was a combined effort of @DOGE, @USTreasury and @FederalReserve. Nice work by all.” (Read more from “DOGE Discovers $4.7 Trillion of Treasury Payments ‘Almost Impossible’ to Trace” HERE)

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