Monty
May 31, 2025, 8:06am
5336
Golden the Ship Dome Was–Oh! Oh! Oh!
Lest anyone thinks the Second Felonial Era is a model of internal communication and coordinated government:
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the gutting of a Pentagon office shortly after it disclosed that it would be overseeing the testing of President Donald Trump ’s Golden Dome missile defense system and the programs associated with the massive, multi-billion dollar project, multiple officials familiar with the matter told CNN.
At the end of April, the little known Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation drafted and disseminated a memo to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and other DoD offices that put Golden Dome on its oversight list, in line with DoD instructions and laws requiring that a major defense acquisition program be tested before being fielded, the officials said.
Days later, Elon Musk ’s Department of Government Efficiency asked the office for a meeting. Musk’s company, SpaceX, is among the companies vying for a role in developing Golden Dome.
DOGE representatives asked DOT&E officials more about what they did and their plans for this year, officials said, and seemed surprised that much of the office’s work was required by law. But there were no outward signs that the office was on the chopping block.
On Wednesday, though, DOT&E employees were abruptly summoned to a meeting at the Pentagon and told that the office would be cut to just 30 people, down from over 100, the officials told CNN. Contractors would also no longer be assigned to support the office, per the new guidance.
A defense official told CNN that they believe the administration was concerned about DOT&E conducting independent oversight of Golden Dome, and the problems it might uncover in the process.
“This administration only wants wins. They don’t want bad news and they’re getting bad news on all sorts of fronts,” the official said. “DOT&E is an honest broker of information. We report the truth and that’s all we do.”
This administration doesn’t understand the meaning of words. But it sure knows how to show you their cruelty.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration on Thursday formally notified Congress of its plans for a major overhaul of the State Department, which will cut thousands of jobs, refocus the agency’s human rights bureau on “Western values” and reorient the refugee bureau toward returning migrants to their countries of origin.
Being a refugee in America today is like calling the fire department and Montag’s coworkers show up.
What else is in that article?
The role of a top official for civilian security, democracy, and human rights will be eliminated, along with the offices that monitored war crimes and conflicts around the world.
A new Senate-confirmed role of under secretary for foreign assistance and humanitarian affairs will oversee the new Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, which is to be reorganized to “ground the Department’s values-based diplomacy in traditional Western conceptions of core freedoms” and headed by a deputy assistant secretary for “Democracy and Western Values.”
The new under secretary position will “ensure efficiency and oversight in the delivery of foreign assistance in a post-USAID era,” a summary of the notification said.
Ah, we’ve seen this before, haven’t we? The felon creates a problem, then others have to fix it. But wait, there’s more. He’s trying to fix a problem that simply doesn’t exist.
Apparently the clusterfuck is a lot like WWE.
Elon Musk suffered a violent outburst during a shouting match in the Oval Office, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon has revealed.
Bannon told the Daily Mail
“Scott Bessent called him out and said, ‘You promised us a trillion dollars (in cuts), and now you’re at like $100 billion, and nobody can find anything, what are you doing?’” Bannon said. “And that’s when Elon got physical. It’s a sore subject with him.”
“It wasn’t an argument, it was a physical confrontation. Elon basically shoved him,” Bannon added.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the April confrontation on Friday—Musk’s final day as a special advisor to President Donald Trump.
“It’s no secret President Trump has put together a team of people who are incredibly passionate about the issues impacting our country,” she said in a statement to the Daily Mail . “Disagreements are a normal part of any healthy policy process, and, ultimately, everyone knows they serve at the pleasure of President Trump.”
The revelation comes on the heels of a bombshell New York Times
The confrontation was initially reported in April, but details about its physical nature have only now come to light.
“It was two billionaire, middle-aged men thinking it was WWE in the hall of the West Wing,” a witness told Axios when the incident first emerged.
Yet another court order ignored, yet another migrant deported in violation of said order.
The Trump administration has admitted that it improperly deported another immigrant in violation of a court order — the fourth known case in which the administration deported someone erroneously or in breach of specific legal requirements.
Jordin Melgar-Salmeron, an undocumented immigrant from El Salvador, had been in immigration detention since 2022 while deportation proceedings against him were pending. But on May 7, shortly after a federal appeals court ordered the government to keep him in the United States, immigration authorities deported him back to his native country.
Matthew Borowski, a lawyer for Melgar-Salmeron, told POLITICO that he intends to ask the court to order the government to return his client from El Salvador and to hold government officials in contempt.
I think it’s about time to replace the stars on the flag with bananas. All of this is banana republic stuff.