Trump Administration 2025: A Bill Can Be Big Or It Can Be Beautiful

[brilokuloj]

Making a thread at this point so that I'm not just sending all this crap to my Discord server lol

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Trump mishandling money

Entire staff at federal agency that funds libraries and museums put on leave

The IMLS is a relatively small federal agency, with around 70 employees, that awards grant funding to museums and libraries across the United States.

This month, President Trump named Keith E. Sonderling — the deputy secretary of labor — the new acting director of IMLS. This followed Trump's previous executive order shrinking seven federal agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

According to a statement from AFGE Local 3403, which represents IMLS workers, the agency's staff was notified by email about being placed on paid administrative leave for up to 90 days, after a "brief meeting between DOGE staff and IMLS leadership." Employees had to turn in government property, and email accounts were disabled.

Happy National Library Week, by the way. There is an online support website and petition for the IMLS.

Opinion | The Tariff Saga Is About One Thing

This isn’t a dig. The president genuinely seems to think of tariffs as fees that foreign countries pay to the United States. “We have massive Financial Deficits with China, the European Union, and many others,” he wrote on his Truth Social website on Sunday. “The only way this problem can be cured is with TARIFFS, which are now bringing Tens of Billions of Dollars into the U.S.A.” Here, you also see his related belief that a trade deficit is an actual absence of funds, akin to a negative balance in a bank account.

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Trump committing crimes

Trump ‘simply floated’ idea of deporting U.S. citizens, White House’s Leavitt says

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that the Trump administration is not sure it is legal to deport U.S. citizens to El Salvador, but that President Donald Trump has “simply floated” the idea for the sake of transparency.

Trump said Sunday that he loves the idea of deporting incarcerated Americans to El Salvador, but that he doesn’t “know what the law says on that.” A reporter had asked Trump about El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s offer to house American prisoners.

State Dept. gives El Salvador a massive upgrade as it disappears U.S. immigrants

In February, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Bukele had offered to jail U.S. citizens in El Salvador, a move that Rubio admitted was likely to hit some legal hurdles — you know, because it’s blatantly illegal to expatriate U.S. citizens to foreign prisons.

When Trump was asked about the idea again last Sunday he responded, “I love that.” He added that he’d be “honored” to send incarcerated Americans to El Salvador, before noting, “I don’t know what the law says on that.”

[brilokuloj]

DOGE says it needs to know the government's most sensitive data, but can't say why

In one order last week blocking DOGE's access to Social Security data, U.S. District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander of Maryland said the government "never identified or articulated even a single reason for which the DOGE Team needs unlimited access to SSA's entire record systems, thereby exposing personal, confidential, sensitive, and private information that millions of Americans entrusted to their government."

"The government has also repeatedly failed to articulate a clear purpose for the unprecedented access it seeks to deeply sensitive information, and why the data it wants access to is necessary for that purpose," said Kristin Woelfel, a lawyer with the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology. "If the government cannot answer those questions, then DOGE has no business accessing that data."

I wonder why?

How DOGE may have improperly used Social Security data to push voter fraud narratives

Gracias said in an April 2 appearance on Fox and Friends that "5-plus million" noncitizens who "came to the country as illegals" received Social Security numbers "through an automatic system" and proceeded to "get into our benefit systems."

"And just because we were curious, we then looked to see if they were on the voter rolls. And we found in a handful of cooperative states that there were thousands of them on the voter rolls and that many of them had voted," Gracias said.

Using Social Security data to imply that noncitizens are breaking the law also could have violated a court order that prevents DOGE staffers from handling sensitive SSA systems.

It's the latest example of concerns among privacy activists that DOGE's sweeping access to personal and financial information of millions of Americans may violate privacy laws and may be used for inappropriate purposes.

Gracias is also not supposed to see or share personally identifiable information, or PII, within agency data, according to earlier court filings.

"Appointee shall not share any Personally Identifiable Information accessed or obtained through the use of SSA systems or work performed for SSA, with any external entity, organization, or agency federal or state," an addendum to his appointment request reads.

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Elon Musk abruptly cut a program for teens with disabilities.

One of these programs, cancelled on Feb. 10, was called Charting My Path for Future Success. It was a research-based effort to help students with disabilities make the sometimes difficult transition from high school into college or the world of work and self-sufficiency.

According to DOGE's "Wall of Receipts," the Charting My Path contract was worth about $43 million and only about $5 million had been spent, creating a "savings" of roughly $38 million.

But those closest to Charting My Path, who would not speak publicly for fear of retribution, say the total contract value was over $45 million and that nearly $20 million – not $5 million – had been spent on research, instructor salaries and more before the contract was terminated.

The Trump administration did not respond to a request to explain its accounting.

On that note, I don't like calling it DOGE any more than I like calling Twitter "X", so I will be simply referring to it as Elon Musk for this kind of coverage. Names carry a lot of weight in how we perceive them.

[brilokuloj]

Reality gets in the way of Elon Musk’s latest misguided boast

Ahead of Election Day 2024, Elon Musk told voters that if Americans elected the Republican ticket, he’d uncover ways to cut “at least $2 trillion” from the federal budget. After Donald Trump’s victory, Musk decided to walk that back — a lot — and told the public that he believed he had a “good shot” at cutting $1 trillion, cutting his original goal in half.

Last week, at a White House cabinet meeting, the president’s top campaign donor added to the pattern, declaring that he and the quasi-governmental DOGE initiative “anticipate” $150 billion in spending cuts — a small fraction of the goal he pitched to voters last fall.

Making matters worse, that figure appears to be wrong, too.

The Times’ report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, added that while the DOGE website claims to have saved $150 billion in federal spending, as of last week, “it has provided receipt-level breakdowns for less than 40 percent of that amount.” (When the Times sought explanations from DOGE and the White House, neither responded. Administration officials also made no effort to substantiate Musk’s claims.)

A companion report noted that the DOGE website has been “riddled with errors, double-counting and other large inaccuracies.”

I feel like you deserve to be able to visualize the scale of how much money is being mismanaged here so I even made you a little chart

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Trump Tells Inner Circle That Musk Will Leave Soon

The president remains pleased with Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency initiative but both men have decided in recent days that it will soon be time for Musk to return to his businesses and take on a supporting role, according to three Trump insiders who were granted anonymity to describe the evolving relationship.

Musk’s looming exit comes as some Trump administration insiders and many outside allies have become frustrated with his unpredictability and increasingly view the billionaire as a political liability, a dynamic that was thrown into stark relief Tuesday when a conservative judge Musk vocally supported lost his bid for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat by 10 points.

It also represents a shift in the Trump-Musk relationship from a month ago, when White House officials and allies were predicting Musk was “here to stay” and that Trump would find a way to blow past the 130-day time limit.

The ‘5 things’ emails are going by the wayside as Musk readies his exit

It is unclear precisely when Musk will leave the government; his status as a special government employee is expected to expire at the end of May. The billionaire is ready to exit because he is tired of fielding what he views as a slew of nasty and unethical attacks from the political left, according to a person familiar with his thinking. He believes his departure will not diminish the power or work of DOGE, his brainchild, the person said, noting that DOGE team members are already established across scores of federal agencies. DOGE stands for the Department of Government Efficiency.

The administration holds up DOGE as an exemplar of how to rapidly reshape ponderous bureaucracies.
“No one can say DOGE has not achieved a historic amount of success. The results speak for themselves,” said a senior White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Mossworm, an entomologist, speaks about the consequences of DOGE interfering with funds

I feel like "trump wants to throw away literal dinosaur fossils" would really turn heads if we actually had a functional opposition party in this country to get messages out, but I guess I'll just have to get a paint pen and write it on my car. fine, I'll do it.

Trump and friends are trying to get rid of IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Science, USA Federal agency). Everyone is on leave/in admin limbo while the DOGE kids do whatever and lock people out of their emails. Already-awarded federal grants (that's how I get paid) for museums and libraries are now being terminated early via executive order. Museums are already closing (to be fair it has been bad for decades) and a lot of large and delicate fossil material will need new homes with space and funding, which almost no one has. It's bad. I don't know what to do except to keep working and occasionally scream into the internet.

Not trying to be a bummer, but this is pretty much the only thing anyone at my job can think about right now. I can only speak for museums, but specimens need periodical tending or they will decay or get lost. Grant funding is how we do everything: it's how temporary workers get paid, how we get access to subscription-based software, and it's how we buy new label paper for cripes' sake. We are still fighting, but everyone is honestly loopy with stress all the time now. People should know what they are destroying.

[brilokuloj]

Got really burnt out on things in May. I'll try to keep up again.

Elon Musk says he's "disappointed" by Trump's "big, beautiful bill" and what it means for DOGE

Elon Musk says he is "disappointed" by the price tag of the domestic policy bill passed by Republicans in the House last week and heavily backed by President Trump. The billionaire who recently stepped back from running the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, made the remark during an exclusive broadcast interview with "CBS Sunday Morning." 

"I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing," Musk said.

Musk's comments appear to put him at odds with Mr. Trump, who has championed the massive spending package. The legislation — which still needs to pass the Senate — would extend Mr. Trump's signature 2017 tax cuts, boost border security spending, impose work requirements on Medicaid and roll back clean energy tax credits.

The tax provisions of the package, titled the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" after Mr. Trump's name for the bill, would increase the deficit by $3.8 trillion by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

"I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful," Musk told CBS News, "but I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion."

Trump says he and Musk 'had a great relationship. I don't know if we will anymore' : NPR

President Trump on Thursday said he was surprised that his former adviser Elon Musk is scorching the Republican megabill advancing most of Trump's biggest domestic policy priorities, but said he thought Musk was wrong and conflicted in his criticism.

"Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know if we will anymore," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

"He's worn that hat, 'Trump was right about everything' -- and I am right about the great big, beautiful, bill," Trump said.

Social media fighting

Elon Musk and Donald Trump take to their respective social media platforms to bitch about each other:

Elon was “wearing thin,” I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!

Time to drop the really big bomb:

@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.

Have a nice day, DJT!

That's all I can get on this one right now this is honestly really triggering. It's like a nightmare about your parents fighting except it's your entire country

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I have been having a bad time.

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Tariffs

Buying Stuff Online Is About to Get a Lot More Expensive. Here’s Why.

Thanks to another recent executive order and the repeal of a 90-year-old law, however, the stuff you buy online from outside the US is about to get even more expensive starting on August 29.

Among the many provisions in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which passed in July, the de minimis exemption was set to end in July 2027, giving American consumers (and particularly small businesses) time to prepare for a significant cost increase. True to form, however, on July 30, Trump used his emergency presidential powers to fast-track the end of de minimis to August 29, 2025.

If you’re buying anything that’s made or shipped from another country, it will cost more as of the end of this month. If you’ve bought anything from China or Hong Kong in the last few months, you’ll probably have noticed an additional charge for tariffs or duties, and that will soon become the norm for all international shipments.

I learned this through the artist Blockforest, who is having to close US orders.

Trump tells Goldman Sachs CEO to hire a new economist after bank says consumers will pay bulk of tariff costs

Days after Goldman Sachs’ top economists published research claiming price increases stemming from higher tariffs are poised to soon be borne mostly by consumers, President Donald Trump is urging the bank’s CEO, David Solomon, to get a new economist.

“Tariffs have not caused Inflation, or any other problems for America, other than massive amounts of CASH pouring into our Treasury’s coffers,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Tuesday. “David Solomon and Goldman Sachs refuse to give credit where credit is due.”

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SNAP

Independent grocery stores brace for SNAP cuts

The last five years have aged Alabama grocer Jimmy Wright like they were two decades. It started with COVID. And then inflation – including the “great egg debacle,” as Wright called the recent price spike.

Now, he and other grocers are facing a new challenge: cuts to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as food stamps.

SNAP helps lower-income families in the U.S. pay for groceries — which in turn, means business for grocery stores. For many independent grocery stores, SNAP makes up the bulk of their sales.

Similar to hospitals worrying about their financial future due to Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s signature domestic policy bill, SNAP cuts have grocers and their advocates worried.

Many grocers may have to trim their own budgets. For some small stores in impoverished areas with few nearby alternatives for shoppers, the only option could be closing permanently.

I applied for SNAP recently because food costs have tripled in my area. I sat through a half-hour-long phone call just to be told I was already on my wife's SNAP benefits and that it's likely I'll be taken off of it because I don't earn minimum wage (what the fuck kind of logic is that?). This week I received the news that I will be losing my benefits.

I'm sure I'm far from the only one being fucked over.

Veterans could lose work requirement exemption under 'big, beautiful' spending law

Veterans will no longer be exempt from work requirement rules for food stamps under President Trump’s “big, beautiful” spending and tax law, leaving many worried about how they will find employment.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which is the federal aid program formerly known as food stamps, currently allows work exemptions for veterans, but that will soon end under legislation signed into law last month.

“What I’m trying to do is get settled into, you know, stabilize into an apartment. I have the credentials to get a job. So it’s not like I’m not gonna look for a job,” Darryl Chavis, a former Army service member, told Stateline. “I have to work. I’m in transition, and the obstacles don’t make it easy.”

“Nobody even came to help me,” Chavis, who said he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder from his service, told the outlet.

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The death of information

Reddit will block the Internet Archive

The Wayback Machine will no longer be able to crawl post detail pages, comments, or profiles; instead, it will only be able to index the Reddit.com homepage, which effectively means Internet Archive will only be able to archive insights into which news headlines and posts were most popular on a given day.

Trump administration calls for 'comprehensive review' of Smithsonian

"Within 120 days, museums should begin implementing content corrections where necessary, replacing divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate, and constructive descriptions across placards, wall didactics, digital displays, and other public-facing materials," the letter states.

At least one Smithsonian museum has already made moves to correct public-facing content. Earlier this month, its National Museum of American History removed references to Trump's two first-term impeachments from an exhibit following a review. The museum later updated the exhibit with an edited version.

Trump's March executive order "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History" directly criticized The Smithsonian for coming "under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology" and for promoting "narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive."

In May, Trump claimed he was firing Kim Sajet, the director of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery. She later resigned of her own accord.

In late July, artist Amy Sherald canceled an upcoming exhibition of her work at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery after a dispute over her painting of a transgender woman with pink hair and a blue gown, holding a torch, Statue of Liberty-style.

'Everyone Is So Scared': Inside The Smithsonian As Trump Attacks Art, History

“Everyone is so scared,” said one longtime Smithsonian worker who requested anonymity to protect their job.

“It’s an impossible position to put us in,” they said. “We can’t be political with our content, but they have politicized everything. We need to prove we’re not partisan by following this very partisan directive. What are we supposed to do? It’s like up is down. It’s maddening.”

How PBS, NPR lost funding -- and bipartisan support -- under Trump

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have passed legislation on a narrow, party-line basis to eliminate all federal funding for public broadcasting for the next two years. That's $1.1 billion previously approved by the Republican-led Congress and President Trump. The reversal is notionally due to the need to cut funds to help pay for new Republican priorities, including an expansion of immigration enforcement and extension of Trump's prior tax cuts.

Yet Trump had campaigned on retribution and made the news media a core element of his grievance. Public broadcasting has offered a ready target, given the government funding, and he has repeatedly claimed NPR and PBS demonstrate ideological bias.

Companies don't want to fight with Trump. That may be reshaping the economy

Corporate America doesn't want to fight with President Trump in public. But as a result, it's ceding him an unprecedented amount of control over the shape — and future — of U.S. business.

In the past week, the president has turned up the heat on big companies and their CEOs to an extent that is unprecedented even by Trump's norms-shattering standards. He has publicly attacked companies and their executives throughout his political career — but now he's demanding firings of executives who aren't even household names, such as a corporate economist at Goldman Sachs.

During his first term, many in corporate America openly criticized Trump over policies including his ban on immigrants from some Muslim-majority countries, or they sought to distance themselves from his most controversial statements, like his response after violence erupted at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. But now most businesses are trying to avoid getting drawn into anything seen as "political" — aside from actively courting the president's approval.

[brilokuloj]

After meeting Putin, Trump changes his position on the need for a ceasefire

When President Trump was flying to Alaska for his summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Trump said the main goal was a ceasefire. He said he'd be disappointed if it didn't happen, and warned of "severe consequences."

But shortly after meeting Putin, Trump reversed himself and said a ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war wasn't critical.

Trump expands 'woke' criticism from Smithsonian to other museums

President Trump expanded his criticism of the Smithsonian Institution to include other museums in a long social media post on Tuesday.

"The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of "WOKE," he wrote.

The post emphasized his ongoing displeasure with the Smithsonian, describing it as "OUT OF CONTROL" and suggesting that museums around the country may face similar scrutiny.

"President Trump will explore all options and avenues to get the Woke out of the Smithsonian and hold them accountable," the White House said in a statement to NPR. "He will start with the Smithsonian and then go from there."

Trump wants to stop states from voting by mail and using voting machines

President Trump announced Monday on his social media site that he plans to "lead a movement" to get rid of mail-in ballots and voting machines in the country ahead of next year's midterm elections.

Part of his plan, he wrote, includes signing an executive order that would bar states from using mail ballots and potentially some voting machines. He said — without evidence — that voting machines are "highly inaccurate," as well as more expensive than watermarked paper ballots.

Barbara Smith Warner, executive director of the National Vote at Home Institute, which advocates for wide use of mail-in voting, said it would be nearly impossible to actually get rid of mail-in voting in such a short timeframe. But she said she believes the larger effort here is to "destabilize" next year's elections.

"Efforts to eliminate this are ignoring the facts and really are just trying to undermine confidence in our elections overall," she said. "This is yet another power grab of federal overreach into the states' rights to run their own election."