Authored by Rex Widerstrom and Daniel Y. Teng via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Commercial flight paths between Australia and New Zealand have been disrupted after Chinese warships began preparing to fire live ammunition as part of an apparent military exercise.

The three People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) vessels have traversed the Australian coastline for the past week with no indication of their motives, and came within 150 nautical miles (277 kilometres on land) of Sydney on Feb. 19.

Several flight have been re-routed, including Qantas and Emirates aircraft, following advice that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) warships had been “live firing in international waters” on Feb. 21.

“As a precaution, we have advised airlines with flights planned in the area,” an Airservices Australia spokesperson said.

“We are also working together to coordinate advice to operators and pilots.”

Australian and New Zealand Defence Forces have been tracking the flotilla since last week.

The weapons firing is understood to be taking place 346 nautical miles (640 kilometres) off Eden, south of Sydney in New South Wales, according to a Defence Department spokesperson.

In a statement, Air New Zealand said it “has modified flight paths as needed to avoid the area, with no impact on our operations.”

Qantas and its subsidiary Jetstar told RNZ they are working with the Australian government to monitor the situation.

The small fleet called Task Group 107, includes the heavily armed Renhai-class cruiser (named Zunyi), a Jiangkai-class frigate (Hengyang), and the Fuchi-class replenishment vessel Weishanhu.

Australia’s Defence Department Not Officially Notified

The Australian Defence Department said it was not notified of the Chinese fleet’s intent to conduct the activity, and that the only notice came via a verbal radio broadcast to civilian aircraft.

“The process undertaken by the PLAN to inform of the live fire activity was conducted in accordance with applicable international law conventions,” a Defence spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

“However, to minimise disruption to aircraft and vessels, best practice is the establishment of Notice to Airmen or Notice to Mariners [a formal notice to a local authority about potential hazards], which the Australian Defence Force would typically release 24 to 48 hours prior to a live firing activity on the high seas.

“Defence is not aware of a Notice to Airmen or Notice to Mariners for this activity having been submitted or requested by the PLAN.”

Defence said despite moving into firing formation, no weapons were seen or heard to be fired, and the floating firing target was later recovered.

“Defence will continue to monitor the [PLAN] Task Group while it remains in the vicinity of Australia’s maritime approaches.”

Australian Foreign Minister to Discuss With CCP Counterpart

Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong told the ABC that the events would be discussed with Beijing.

“We already have at official level in relation to the notice given and the transparency provided in relation to these exercises, particularly the live fire exercises,” she said.

“Obviously, this is an evolving situation, but it would be normal practice where a task group is engaging in exercises for there to be advice given to vessels and aircraft in the area, and Airservices Australia is doing what it should do, which is to give that advice.

“We are aware of this task group, we are monitoring this task group very closely. It is, as I understand it, operating in international waters.”

Senator Wong is expected to meet with CCP Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Feb. 21, for a scheduled meeting on the sidelines of the G20.

Calls for More Direct Action Against Beijing

Lincoln Parker, former chair of the Liberal Party’s Defence and National Security Policy Branch, called for stronger action.

“Chinese warships brazenly conducting live-fire exercises off Australia’s coast—right between us and New Zealand— forcing flight diversions, is nothing short of incendiary, dangerous, and unacceptable,” he told The Epoch Times.

“China has attacked Australian Navy divers, our planes, and now is firing live ordnance in our waters! What’s next?”

The shadow defence spokesman, Andrew Hastie, said the Labor government needed to be more direct with the CCP leadership.

“The Chinese government has built a blue-water navy to project power into the Pacific region. They are now using gunboat diplomacy to test US allies like Australia,” he said in a statement.

“This latest provocation by the Chinese navy comes after continued weakness from the prime minister.

“Our Australian Defence Force personnel on routine lawful patrols in the region have been targeted by the People’s Liberation Army with dangerous and provocative manoeuvres with flares, chaff, and sonar.”

*  *  *

Speaking of Australians and weapons and whatnot… THIS is a knife…

*  *  *

US Border Czar Tom Homan told Fox News’ Jesse Watters that President Donald Trump intends to dismantle the command and control centers of Mexican drug cartels, vowing to “put them out of business” and “wipe them off the face of the Earth.” These are strong words against cartels that have fueled a drug overdose crisis responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Americans each year.

Watters asked Homan how cartels have adapted in the last 30 days since Trump’s ‘America First’ border policies of placing the military by the thousands on the southern border… 

Homan responded: “Look, they’re going maritime. We knew they would. That’s why Coast Guard patrols increased by three times. So we’re going to shut them down maritime too.”

“We’re going to put them out of business. President Trump does not mess around with criminal terror organizations. These cartels have killed more Americans than every terror organization combined,” the official said. 

He continued: “President Trump will end up wiping the cartels off the face of the Earth – putting them out of business. If you put them out of business – you take their money away – they can’t buy or bribe Mexican officials. Without money, they have no power. 

“We’re not just going to attack in Mexico, the Jalisco cartel. We’re going to attack them in the 43 countries they have operations currently. We’re going to attack them worldwide,” the border emphasized. 

Watters ended with, “That’s a bold statement.” … 

Catching up with the latest ‘America First’ headlines on the border crisis:

• USAF Spy Plane Runs SIGINT Operation Near Cabo As US Preps For Potential Cartel Fight

• USAF Spy Jet Flies Second SIGINT Operation On US Border With Focus On Narco Hub

• Border Czar “Expects” Kinetic Warfare Between US Troops & Mexican Drug Cartels

• CIA Reportedly Flying MQ-9 Spy Drones Over Mexico As Cartel Fight Nears

• Designating Cartels As Terrorists Will Have Huge Consequences, Say Analysts

• US Designates Mexican Cartels As “Foreign Terrorists,” Signaling Financial Warfare Looms

Readers should understand that the disrupt-and-dismantle strategy is broad, targeting not only Mexican cartels but also transnational criminal organizations spanning from Canada to China.

This is what ‘America First’ looks like. It’s time to stop the drug death overdose crisis in America that kills 100,000 per year. 

We must caution that the fight against cartels could get messy, considering the Biden-Harris regime intentionally flooded the nation with thousands of Tren de Aragua terrorists.  

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

Germany’s Bild cited unnamed members of Western security services to sensationally report that Trump is allegedly planning to pull all US troops out of Central Europe in compliance with one of the security guarantee requests that Putin put forth in December 2021 as an attempt to avert the special operation. 

Friedrich Merz, the frontrunner to become Germany’s next Chancellor, shortly thereafter publicly declared that his country must prepare for the possibility that Trump abandons NATO’s Article 5.

He’s unlikely to do either of these things, but American policy towards NATO will certainly change in the coming future, which will likely take the form of what was detailed in the policy brief that was published at the Trump-affiliated Center for Renewing America in February 2023.

Titled “Pivoting the US Away from Europe to a Dormant NATO”, it describes how the US can get the EU to defend Europe while the US focuses on containing China in Asia and was analyzed here last July, which readers should review.

This goal explains why Trump is demanding that all NATO allies spend 5% of GDP on defense and accounts for the nascent Russian-US “New Détente”. Brokering an armistice or peace deal between Russia and Ukraine is meant to free up some of the US’ forces in Central Europe, which includes Germany, for redeployment to Asia. Forcing the Europeans to accept what had practically been their worst nightmare for the past three years should then motivate them to increase defense spending.

New US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth praised Poland as “the model ally on the continent” during his trip to Warsaw earlier this month and Trump sought to make Poland the US’ top ally there during his first term so he probably won’t pull out of there. In fact, “Poland Is Once Again Poised To Become The US’ Top Partner In Europe” for the reasons explained in the preceding hyperlinked analysis, which boil down to restoring its historical geopolitical role as a wedge between Germany and Russia.

The Baltics might not fare the same though since they have nowhere near the same regional significance as Poland does and they could try to provoke a war with Russia in order to drag the US in via NATO. Accordingly, Trump might calculate that it’s better to withdraw some or even all American troops from there while conveying to them that the US won’t come to their aid if they instigate a regional conflict, which could be expressed either behind the scenes or through one of his characteristic pronouncements.

The newfound US-German political tensions could even possibly see the US redeploy some troops from there to Poland, which in the most extreme scenario could result in transferring the headquarters of its European Command from Stuttgart to some Polish city, though it’s too early to say for certain. After all, something as serious as the second-mentioned requires a lot of work, and Trump might also wager that it’s better to keep the headquarters where they’re at in order to not lose more influence in Germany.

In any case, redeploying US troops from Europe to Asia would likely please Russia even if some are transferred from Germany to Poland, especially if Trump makes it clear that NATO members can’t provoke a conflict with Russia and expect America to ride to their rescue via Article 5. Retaining some troops in Europe alongside the integrity of Article 5 amidst the aforesaid conditions could be a pragmatic compromise between the US and Russia’s security interests.

The purpose would be to alleviate their security dilemma that was worsened by NATO’s eastward expansion after the end of the Old Cold War all while maintaining some American military influence on the continent as the US “Pivots (back) to Asia” to more muscularly contain China. The era of Europe freeloading off of the US and its liberal-globalists manipulating it into doing their geopolitical bidding against Russia would end to the benefit of peace-loving people and businessmen on all three sides.

Update (2356ET): Panic has predictably ensued over Elon Musk’s requirement that all federal employees provide a five bullet point summary of what they accomplished last week, due by midnight on Monday (full details below).

While newly minted FBI Director Kash Patel exempted agency employees from the requirement (with much of the intelligence community reportedly set to get the same pass), there’s a lot of upset feds out there.

A DHS employee emails, re Elon’s latest: “Not answering that email, due with baby in three days and already having to use sick leave because of the stress… I hope they fire me at this point can’t wait to sue them”

— Sam Stein (@samstein) February 23, 2025

Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) lashed out, posting to X, “This is the ultimate dick boss move from Musk – except he isn’t even the boss, he’s just a dick.” (she said on the heels of a coordinated campaign to brand him ‘Co-President Musk’)

To which the White House Rapid Response team replied, “What did you accomplish this week, Tina? Five bullets, please,” and Musk replied with a fire and ‘crying while laughing’ emojis.

🔥😂

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 23, 2025

Indeed, this takes less than 5 mins https://t.co/N9F53zxfbz

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 23, 2025

The Rapid Response team, which posts daily information about the Trump agenda, was happy to oblige.

An incredible week! https://t.co/D3AlfUfdeQ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 23, 2025

Stay tuned for more…

*  *  *

You can support ZeroHedge by purchasing one of these high-quality, sharp, kickass ZeroHedge Multitools which comes with belt pouch. On sale until Monday!

Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back.

* * *

Update (2308ET): New FBI Director Kash Patel sent an email to all agency employees on Saturday night instructing them to “pause any responses” to Elon Musk’s request that all federal employees provide summaries of their accomplishments over the past week or face termination.

“The FBI, through the Office of the Director, is in charge of all of our review processes, and will conduct reviews in accordance with FBI procedures,” reads the note from Patel. “When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, please pause any responses.“

The power struggles begin.

FBI Director Kash Patel tonight has instructed his employees to ignore ⁦@elonmusk⁩’s productivity inquiry, saying, essentially—we will evaluate our own people, thanks. pic.twitter.com/BkisigRPNq

— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) February 23, 2025

Meanwhile, at least one federal employee apparently don’t have time to answer the email – but did have time to complain to a MSM reporter about having to do it.

First off, if this federal employee had time to email a left-wing reporter, surely she had time to email her manager about what she accomplished last week. Also, she took sick leave last week so she can just say that she took the week off from work. Why is this all so dramatic? https://t.co/A2AjlWf2H3

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) February 23, 2025

*  *  *

Elon Musk is ‘running the Twitter playbook on the government,’ after writing in a Saturday post on X that all federal employees will be receiving an email “shortly” requesting to “understand what they got done last week.”

Those who fail to reply “will be taken as a resignation.”

Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week.

Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2025

And there it is (though no mention of the implied resignations for failure to respond):

New: America’s diplomats serving around the world have now received Elon Musk’s email asking them to explain their work, per a diplomatic source. Here it is, subject line: “What did you do last week?” https://t.co/4bOxUGpSF7 pic.twitter.com/3sXspFUB1C

— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) February 22, 2025

When X user ‘The Rabbit Hole’ commented that Musk is “running the Twitter playbook on the government,” Musk replied: “It works.“

It works https://t.co/TFkpHlJa7a

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2025

The post came hours after President Donald Trump encouraged Musk to “get more aggressive” with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), adding “REMEMBER, WE HAVE A COUNTRY TO SAVE.“

So awesome https://t.co/t2yAXh8qFZ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 22, 2025

Musk’s email comes after roughly 77,000 federal employees accepted DOGE’s “Fork in the Road” email offering roughly 8 months of pay in exchange for resigning. After that, DOGE moved to fire thousands of employees across various agencies – mostly those in a probationary period who have been in their jobs for less than one year.

It also comes after the Trump administration scored a legal victory when a judge allowed Musk and crew to continue accessing federal data and arranging for mass layoffs.

Last week, Trump signed an executive order directing agencies to work with DOGE to make “preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force.”

*  *  *

Submitted by Jim Bovard

President Trump issued an executive order last week creating a Make America Healthy Again Commission, to be chaired by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Among other targets, the commission will examine “prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors [SSRIs], antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs.”

Kennedy has been outspoken on the danger of SSRIs, linking them to school shootings and stating that members of his family “had a much worse time getting off of SSRIs than they have getting off of heroin.”

Kennedy’s views mortify the mainstream media. The Washington Post did a hefty piece portraying Kennedy’s commission as more dangerous than any drugs prescribed to children. To discover the absolute truth, the Post turned to the CEO of the American Psychiatric Association, who assured the Post that “psychiatric drugs can be very effective and generally are given to children carefully after front-line treatments such as talk therapy.”

Decades ago, who would have expected an apology for Adderall, Prozac, Zoloft, and similar drugs to sound like a pitch for Kellogg’s breakfast cereals? Prescription drug use is skyrocketing. Antidepressant prescriptions for young Americans aged 12 to 25 increased by 66% between 2016 and 2022.

The New York Times reported last year that many young people were left worse off thanks to “mental health interventions.” The Times showcased psychiatric “prevalence inflation” – a vast increase in reported mental illness among teenagers who are encouraged to view normal feelings as grave maladies requiring intervention. Oxford University psychologist Lucy Foulkes observed that school programs are “creating this message that teenagers are vulnerable, they’re likely to have problems, and the solution is to outsource them to a professional.” 

Foulkes explained that “awareness efforts” spur young people “to interpret and report milder forms of distress as mental health problems.” Filing such complaints “leads some individuals to experience a genuine increase in symptoms, because labeling distress as a mental health problem can affect an individual’s self-concept and behavior in a way that is ultimately self-fulfilling.”

Like a New Yorker cartoon from the 1950s, psychiatric diagnoses have become status symbols, propelled by snake oil “social-emotional learning” programs. University of Southern California clinical psychologist Darby Saxbe warns that mental illness labels have “become an identity marker that makes people feel special and unique. That’s a big problem because this modern idea that anxiety is an identity gives people a fixed mindset, telling them this is who they are and will be in the future.” Psychiatric labels can become a ball-and-chain that people drag behind them. Endless classroom presentations on mental health spur “co-rumination” – excessively talking about one’s problems – which evokes memories of first dates from hell.

Hungarian-American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz warned in the last century, “Psychiatrists manufacture mental diagnoses the way the Vatican manufactures saints.” But protests by Szasz and other dissident shrinks did nothing to prevent a sham stampede.

The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) now lists more than 300 mental illnesses, five times as many as it specified in the 1960s. Dr. Allen Frances, writing in Psychology Today, warned that the latest DSM contained “many changes that seem clearly unsafe and scientifically unsound” and is “likely to lead to massive over-diagnosis and harmful over-medication.”

After the DSM redefined autism in the 1990s, the autism rate “quickly multiplied almost 100 fold.” Thanks to another DSM redefinition, the “number of American children and adolescents treated for bipolar disorder increased 40-fold” between 1993 and 2004, the New York Times reported. Psychiatrist Laurent Mottron complained in 2023 that the latest version of the DSM “is full of vague and trivial definitions and ambiguous language that ensures more people fall into various, abnormal categories.”

The DSM provides a road map for federal law. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compels schools and universities to provide “reasonable accommodation” to students who claim to have a disability, physical or mental. Even before the pandemic, up to 25% of students at top colleges were “classified as disabled, largely because of mental-health issues such as depression or anxiety, entitling them to a widening array of special accommodations like longer time to take exams,” the Wall Street Journal reported in 2018. Similar string-pulling occurs for the rigorous entrance exams for New York City’s elite high schools, where “white students…are 10 times as likely as Asian students to have a [disability] designation that allows extra time,” the New York Times reported.

Between 2008 and 2019, the number of undergraduate students diagnosed with anxiety increased by 134%, 106% for depression, 57% for bipolar disorder, 72% for ADHD, 67% for schizophrenia, and 100% for anorexia, according to the National College Health Assessment. Students’ struggles skyrocketed after Covid shutdowns. A Boston University analysis of students on almost 400 campuses in 2022 found that “60% of the respondents met the qualifying criteria for ‘one or more mental health problems, a nearly 50% increase from 2013.’” But awarding endless psychiatric Purple Hearts will do nothing to help college graduates adjust to the challenges of life beyond the classroom.

I recognized that the DSM was becoming unhinged after attending the 1986 annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Washington. Here are some riffs from a Detroit News op-ed I wrote at that time:

The APA served attendees a batch of freshly-ordained mental illnesses, including “premenstrual dysphoric disorder.” The APA says symptoms of this “mental illness” include “irritability,” “marked fatigue,” and “negative evaluation of self.” According to the APA’s definition, a third of all women go crazy once a month.

The second newly ordained mental illness is “self-defeating personality type,” previously known as common or garden-variety masochism. The symptoms for this grade disorder include, “complaints, directly or indirectly, about being unappreciated,” “repeatedly turns down opportunities for pleasure,” and “remains in relationships in which others… take advantage of him or her.” Bring on the Valium!

The third “discovery” was guaranteed to raise the APA’s popularity with trial lawyers. The APA tentatively decided that anyone who persistently fantasizes about or actively forces a non-consenting person to have sex suffers from “paraphilic rapism.” In other words, a person would have to be nuts to rape somebody. As one protester at the APA’s meeting declared, “Sexual assault is a crime – not a mental disorder.” The Committee of Women of the APA said the new category would “provide an instant insanity plea for anyone charged with rape.”

If shrinks only cleaned out people’s wallets, then they would be no more harmful than your average politician. But psychiatrists nowadays routinely rely on mind-numbering drugs and mind-shattering electric shock treatments. Some mental patients are developing Parkinson’s disease symptoms as a result of years of heavy medication. Electric shock “therapy” – aside from being a terrifying experience – sometimes causes permanent memory loss, thus making it harder for a patient to handle reality.

We have new mental illnesses not because of new breakthroughs in understanding the mind, but because psychiatrists want more money and more power over the rest of us. Shrinks generally have a poor batting average for curing known mental problems – but that has not stopped them from creating new “illnesses” that supposedly they alone can treat. But a con artist with an MD is still a con artist.

My carping did nothing to slow the white-coated hucksters. In 2019, the American Psychological Association officially designated traditional masculinity as a de facto mental illness. Their new guidelines specifically state that “stoicism” and other traits are “on the whole, harmful.” Did Marcus Aurelius spin in his grave? Apparently, instead of toughing out challenges, people are supposed to spend their lives whimpering to shrinks and getting appropriately drugged. At least prior to the current administration, the Food and Drug Administration has been a shill for Big Pharma and is unlikely to expose or admit the long-term harm from drugs that can partially numb minds.

Psychiatrists have helped some individuals better understand themselves and deal more deftly with everyday reality. But bogus mental illnesses have turned millions of healthy Americans into “mental patients,” according to Dr. Allen Frances. 

But this peril also profoundly endangers freedom. The profusion of new diagnostic labels encourages people to view themselves as psychologically fragile. Actually, the Americans with Disabilities Act rewards people who demand “reasonable accommodations” (extra time for tests, no deadlines, etc.) because they are depressed or anxious. Those incentives create a downward politico-psychological spiral.

Kennedy’s commission will report to Trump within 100 days on the “potential over-utilization of medication” and other unrecognized health perils in America. Hopefully, the commission will deliver a stunning, well-documented report that will help people recognize how psychiatrists have concocted labels that have left millions of Americans at their mercy. 

The final six living hostages who were still in Hamas captivity have been released on Saturday, as part of the final hostage/prisoner exchange closing out phase one of the Israel-Hamas truce deal.

They are Tal Shoham, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert, Eliya Cohen, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, and this marks the largest single day of releases of this current ceasefire deal. There are four more deceased hostages whose bodies are expected to be handed over Saturday. 

The men were released in two different locations, all looking frail, apparently having suffered significant weight loss.

Two of the Israeli men had already been captive in Gaza long before the events of Oct.7. They’ve been freed after a full decade, shockingly enough:

Shoham, Shem Tov, Wenkert and Cohen were all taken captive on October 7, 2023 during the Hamas-led attacks and massacres, and had been held as hostages in Gaza for over 500 days.

Mengistu and al-Sayed both entered Gaza on their own accord in 2014 and 2015, respectively, and had been held captive by terror groups in Gaza for around a decade each.

There are reports that the agreed to release of Palestinians prisoners from the Israeli side was delayed, but is now being facilitated.

It is a huge release this time – involving the transfer of 491 Palestinian detainees. The Red Cross is conducting pre-departure interviews and medical assessments, and are in contact with relatives.

Whether the ceasefire continues to hold into a second phase remains an open question. Each side has accused the other of violating the terms of the truce over the last month. 

Spokesman for Hamas’ political bureau Basem Naim has described, “Unfortunately, Netanyahu and his government have been rejecting to engage with the second phase while only one week is left from the first phase. We believe that again, these are dirty games from the right-wing government to sabotage and undermine the deal and to send a message of willingness to go back to war.”

At least one of the captives who had long been held by Hamas was mentally unwell when he was taken hostage:

Avera Mengistu was born in Ethiopia in 1986. At 5 he & his family were rescued and brought to @Israel in Operation Solomon. Mentally unwell, he crossed into Gaza in 2014 and was taken hostage by Hamas, who refused to give a sign of life for 8 years. Today he is back in Israel. pic.twitter.com/rCoFwiIRJm

— Pamela Paresky🎗️(Habits of a Free Mind) (@PamelaParesky) February 22, 2025

“Over 100 Palestinians have been killed in the first phase, much of the agreed humanitarian aid was not allowed into Gaza, and the withdrawal from the Netzarim Corridor was postponed,” Naim said.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

There are two portals of money in every institution: money coming in and money going out. Keeping track of that in both directions is the key to operations. The final number can reveal profits or losses, surpluses or deficits. Regardless, the accounting books are the beating heart of every institution.

Accounting means accountability, holding people to account for their work.

This is why the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), formed by Elon Musk with a business-based mindset, sets its sights on two primary institutions in the federal government: the U.S. Treasury payment systems and the revenue agency. That is where the money goes out and where the money comes in.

Tying these together and tracing the funds with normal accounting standards is the key to eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. This is all about verifying what is true. It’s not enough just to look at printouts of Congressional budgets or long spreadsheets published by some other agency. The only way to discern what is absolutely true is to go to the source.

The penetration of both ends of this have generated astonishing results, among which that many millions of Social Security recipients are apparently not alive. Or maybe they are and this is just a recordkeeping error. They are going to find out one way or another.

The most shocking revelation from the very limited look at the U.S. Treasury books that judges have permitted DOGE concerns proper tagging of expenditures. They have documented that $4.7 trillion in government spending is not tagged with what’s called a Treasury Access Symbol (TAS) that ties the spending to a Congressional authorization.

Those are huge numbers. Maybe all these expenditures are legitimate and authorized. Or maybe not. Without the TAS tag, there is no way to know. That change in the books has now been made mandatory so that at least we have the beginnings of a valid and verifiable system of accounting in government.

One does wonder. Every year, Congress debates the budget and there is horse trading all around with every politician fighting for a share of the loot. They estimate revenues. They forecast deficits and debts. After a version is produced that includes both the House and Senate, the final result is sent to the President for a signature.

From there, we’ve always just assumed that the deeper machinery of the bureaucracy takes it from there. But what if there is no real and necessary relationship between what Congress authorizes and what the President approves and what actually happens on the expenditure and revenue side? This seems to be the situation.

How long has this gone on? Five former Secretaries of the Treasury have said that it has been almost 80 years since elected officials and their appointees have had access to the payment systems. They have been controlled for all living memory by a small group of civil servants who have long walled themselves off from the electorate. This is a stunning realization, one of many that has been unearthed by the forensics being undertaken by DOGE. It remains entirely possible that once this group of appointed outsiders have completed their work, which is in two years, the budget will be balanced even with lower taxes.

That might sound crazy but it is entirely possible.

To be sure, many administrations have come and gone that swore to get to the bottom of the budget problem, to eliminate waste and fraud and make sure that the government is a better steward of public resources. But think about it. If they never really had certifiable access to the real-time sources of collecting and spending, what good could they actually do? This time does seem to be different.

It fascinates me that the real battles of our time really do come down to something as granular and seemingly mundane as accounting. One hundred years ago, a big debate broke out within economics and political science over accounting and its role. This debate spoke directly to the issue of economic systems and which would be best for society.

The socialists in those days said that they would implement their vision with collective ownership of the means of production and the assignment of experts at the top to direct the use of resources. Economist Ludwig von Mises in 1920 made the salient point. He said that with collective ownership, there would be no operational markets for capital goods and thus no market prices for them.

Market prices are essential for calculating profit and loss through means of double-entry bookkeeping. Without that, even the smartest central planning would lack access to data concerning the wisest use of scarce resources. They would have no idea what consumers valued relative to other options and no idea what kinds of materials were available to meet those needs.

For this reason, Mises said, socialism would institutionalize economic irrationality. Creating an actual economy—meaning an environment in which resources were deployed to their most socially optimal ends—would be impossible. The unfolding of events in Russia proved his point. The experience of socialism in every country would always end up the same: despots at the top squandering resources until the whole society sank into desperate poverty.

Mises concluded from his deductions that the only real system that allows for rational economizing is the market economy with private property in the capital-good sectors. His argument was shocking, and debated for 20 years following, simply because he was bringing cold hard truths to a subject that had been dominated for far too long by airy philosophy that had nothing to do with the realities of the material world.

Similarly, government has always had an accounting problem. It does not know what to charge for goods and services and its decisions about revenue were ultimately arbitrary. The larger the government budget, the more irrationality itself is baked into economic structures. That is a given.

That said, there at least should be some attempt to keep track by creating a web of relationships between what is approved, where the money comes from, and how it is used. This is just normal bookkeeping, without which fraudsters and corruption run rampant.

It truly boggles the mind that fully $4.7 trillion in federal expenditures have routinely taken place without any real obligation to attach that spending to an authorized source. It makes one wonder if all the debates about the budget and all the voting and signing ceremonies have been nothing but theater for generations.

What also intrigues me about this line of thinking and work is how, in the end, this is not really about big ideological and philosophical debates about the purposes and scope of government. This is really about something very simple: how the nation goes about balancing its checkbook. Until we get that part right, all the rest of the debates are so much hot air.

No matter your political outlook, you should be grateful that DOGE seems finally to be setting things right in the operations of government. There absolutely must be a standard of compliance with accounting practices that every single business, nonprofit, or household has to use in order to maintain economic viability. After DOGE does its work, government should continue to practice the precedent established in these days, weeks, and months.

The whole reason for accounting and careful audits is to verify what is true and thus enhance public trust in their own government. Again, we can argue all day about what the government should and should not do, but until we know for certain what is actually going on, such debates mean nothing.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times,

Moscow is working to arrange a face-to-face meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov announced on Feb. 22.

In remarks he shared with Russian state media, Ryabkov indicated that efforts to arrange the meeting have begun in earnest but will require “the most intensive preparatory work.”

The Russian official said U.S. and Russian envoys could meet “within the next two weeks” to lay the groundwork for the eventual talks between the two leaders.

If Washington and Moscow can arrange for the two leaders to meet, it will mark the first time that a U.S. president and a Russian president met directly since June 2021, when Putin met with then-U.S. President Joe Biden in Geneva, Switzerland.

Such a meeting would also mark the first in-person between the leaders of the United States and Russia since Moscow’s troops marched on Ukraine three years ago.

The Ukraine conflict has strained already contentious U.S.–Russia relations. The United States has been Ukraine’s foremost supporter, providing the most funding for Ukraine-related assistance of any country that has supported Kyiv throughout the conflict.

The Trump administration has sought to pair negotiations for a peace settlement in the Ukraine conflict with a broader effort to improve U.S.–Russia relations.

A U.S. delegation comprised of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House national security adviser Mike Waltz, and special presidential envoy Steve Witkoff met with a Russian delegation in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Feb. 18 as part of the ongoing Trump administration efforts to reestablish regular dialogue with Moscow.

Following the Riyadh meeting, Rubio announced both delegations had agreed to appoint high-level teams to work together to settle the Ukraine conflict. Rubio also said the two delegations agreed to establish a mechanism to address strains in U.S.–Russia relations and lay the groundwork for possible future cooperation between the two countries on areas of shared geopolitical and economic interests.

In his remarks to the press after the Riyadh meeting, Rubio said cooperation between the United States and Russia on geopolitical and economic issues would be contingent on a successful and enduring peace settlement in the Ukraine conflict.

In a Feb. 20 interview, journalist Catherine Herridge asked Rubio what the potential timeline is for a sit-down meeting between Trump and Putin. Rubio responded: 

“There isn’t going to be a meeting until we know what the meeting is going to be about.

“I think when that meeting happens will largely depend on whether we can make any progress on ending the war in Ukraine, and if we can, and that meeting is what seals the deal.”

While the Trump administration has tried to open up lines of communication with Moscow, it has also had to contend with frustration from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump and Zelenskyy traded barbs this week, with Trump calling Zelenskyy a dictator and Zelenskyy accusing Trump of being swayed by Russian disinformation.

At a White House press availability on Feb. 21, Trump faced questions about his comment that Zelenskyy was a dictator and whether he should apply the same label against Putin. Trump didn’t directly answer the question but instead said Putin and Zelenskyy should eventually engage with one another more directly as part of the effort to reach a peace settlement.

“I think that President Putin and President Zelenskyy are going to have to get together because, you know what, we want to stop killing millions of people,” Trump said.

Twice during his remarks on Friday, Trump denied reports that he plans to travel to Moscow to meet with Putin on May 9.

Authored by Eric Lendrum via American Greatness,

On Thursday, a federal judge ruled that the Trump Administration can proceed with plans to carry out mass firings of federal employees.

As reported by The Hill, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who was appointed by Barack Obama, ruled that the labor unions which filed the lawsuit against the government layoffs had to take their case before the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) rather than a federal court.

“The first month of President Trump’s second administration has been defined by an onslaught of executive actions that have caused, some say by design, disruption and even chaos in widespread quarters of American society,” said Judge Cooper.

“Affected citizens and their advocates have challenged many of these actions on an emergency basis in this Court and others across the country. Certain of the President’s actions have been temporarily halted; others have been permitted to proceed, at least for the time being. These mixed results should surprise no one.”

Following through on another campaign promise, President Donald Trump has been firing thousands of federal workers, across all agencies, in an effort to shrink the size of the federal bureaucracy.

To this end, President Trump also offered an unprecedented buyout offer, known as the “Fork in the Road” initiative, granting up to 8 months of paid vacation to all federal employees who submitted their immediate resignation. 

Over 75,000 employees accepted the offer before its expiration deadline. 

Several attempts to block the buyout offer ultimately failed in court.

The most recent case, which led to Judge Cooper’s ruling, was brought by a coalition of labor unions representing federal workers, including the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW), the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), and the United Auto Workers (UAW).

Judge Cooper ultimately did not rule on the validity of the unions’ argument, which claimed that the executive branch’s actions are in violation of the separation of powers, but instead told the unions to make their case in a different setting.

“The Court acknowledges that district court review of these sweeping executive actions may be more expedient,” the judge wrote.

“But NTEU provides no reason why it could not seek relief from the FLRA on behalf of a class of plaintiffs and admits that it would ask other agencies to follow an administrative judge’s ruling in its favor.”

The first month of Donald Trump’s second term has been a hurricane of activity, with Elon Musk’s DOGE pursuing a scorched earth policy on government waste.  Despite continuing disruptions by Democrats and activist judges the audits of federal government agencies continue.  Trump’s executive orders are likely designed to catch the bureaucracy off guard so they don’t have time to hide their mismanagement.  However, in all that beautiful mayhem many in the public are confused as to what cuts have actually been made.

Establishment economists are predicting a recession for the Washington DC area due to the mass layoffs (which is not necessarily a bad thing).  The concern over recession within the financial media helps to illustrate how real the cuts are and how worried the progressives have become.  Some argue that conservative employees will be caught up in the cleansing along with their leftist counterparts, however, looking at the voting record of the population of DC it’s not much of a threat. 

Over 92% of the district voted for Kamala Harris in 2024.  Only one Republican candidate has ever won more than 20% of the DC vote (Richard Nixon in 1972).  The town is crawling with leftists, many of them working within the bowels of the government.  No tears should be shed over rising unemployment in Washington.

The federal government employs 3 million civilian workers today – A massive number.  The last time the government had this many employees was in 1994.  The foundation for ever growing government was established in 1933 under Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal”; social programs and debt spending became the norm.  The national debt grew by 50% in only three years after the New Deal was passed and, contrary to the propaganda, it accomplished little in the way of solving the problems at the root of the Great Depression. 

Trump’s federal cuts, if he follows through as he has promised, could mean the smallest federal government apparatus in almost a century.  Here is a list of agencies that have received pink slips so far…

USAID

Trump now has the legal go-ahead to gut USAID.  The organization has at least 10,000 employees and most of them will be fired in the coming weeks.  So far 2000 are being put on leave while others are being reviewed to determine if they are essential.  It is expected that Trump will ultimately keep less than 300.  

Deferred Resignations

The White House offered a “deferred resignation” proposal in exchange for financial incentives to almost all federal employees who opted to leave their jobs by February 6th.  But a federal judge blocked Trump’s plan, wanting to hear arguments from the administration and the labor unions.  According to the Office of Personnel Management, about 75,000 federal employees had accepted the offer.

Probationary Employee Layoffs

Federal workers with less than one year on the job are subject to immediate layoffs.  All agencies have been ordered to fire such employees, meaning up to 220,000 are let go.  Many of these probationary workers are included in the general cuts for institutions like the Department of Defense.

IRS

Trump is moving ahead with layoffs within the IRS.  The agency employs at least 100,000 people and Trump’s cuts only affect 6000 of them.  However, questions are swirling over Trump’s intentions to eliminate the IRS entirely, a move which most Americans would welcome.   

Department of Homeland Security and TSA

The DHS has executed only 400 layoffs so far, all of them considered “non-mission critical” personnel.

FAA

The FAA has fired 400 staff according to the union representing the employees.  DOGE has also been ordered to further investigate and streamline the efficiency of the agency.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

100 workers have been fired from the CFPB.

Department of Education

The battle over the Dept. of Education is ongoing.  No measurable layoffs have been executed yet, but Trump says he intends on removing the agency entirely, which would mean 4400 worker layoffs.

Department of Energy

The department famous under the Biden Administration for hiring a trans activist official that liked to steal women’s luggage from airports.  Approximately 2000 personnel have been fired so far.

Department of Health and Human Services

Thousands of probationary employees were cut from the HHS and NIH along with 700 employees fired from the CDC.

Department of Land Management

At least 2300 employees have been let go including 800 from BLM and 1000 from the National Park Service.

EPA

Around 500 staff have been terminated from the EPA after an efficiency review, including the entire staff of the EPA’s Diversity and Inclusion office.

Small Business Administration

720 SBA employees were fired, including hundreds of probationary workers. 

US Forest Service

Around 3400 employees have been terminated from the Forest Service, at least 10% of the total staff.  Much griping has been made in the media about these job losses, though many of them involved positions in “climate change education” and DEI initiatives.  The layoffs do not include firefighters, law enforcement officers, bridge inspectors or meteorologists.

Inspectors General

Each of the federal government’s largest agencies has its own independent inspector general who is supposed to conduct objective audits, prevent fraud and promote efficiency.  Trump has fired at least 17 of them and it’s understandable why.  With the amount of fraud and waste DOGE has found so far, it’s difficult to justify their continued employment.  What a surprise, the bureaucrats policing the bureaucrats doesn’t work.

Department of Justice

Trump is firing all Biden era attorneys from the DOJ, including those that hounded him over the last four years.  The Justice Department said last month that it had fired more than a dozen employees who worked on criminal prosecutions of Trump by special counsel Jack Smith’s team.

State Department

A large number of senior career diplomats who served in politically appointed leadership positions, as well as in lower-level posts at the State Department, left their jobs at the demand of the new administration.  It was not immediately clear how many nonpolitical appointees were being asked to leave.

DOGE’s Window Of Opportunity

Given that Trump has faced ongoing legal challenges on his crusade to reduce the size of government, the level of cuts is still extensive.  DOGE is a limited program that ends in 18 months, just in time for Mid-Term elections where Trump will need to solidify the conservative control of the Congress and Senate while also booting out those pesky deep state Neo-Cons still haunting the the halls.  Whatever layoffs they plan to enforce will all be done in the next year.

This means the whirlwind will continue. Legal opposition will likely wane as it becomes clear to Democrats that there’s nothing they can do to stop the policies that the American people voted for.  It will be interesting to see what the federal government looks like in 2026.