A Biden-appointed Judge on Thursday blocked parts of two executive orders issued by President Trump banning or restricting various forms of ‘gender-affirming care’ – or as one of the executive orders is titled “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”

US District Judge Brendan Hurson of Baltimore ruled that a group of transgender teens and LGBTQ organizations that sued were likely to prevail on all of their claims that the EOs are without authority and amount to illegal and unconstitutional discrimination.

“Stopping care in the middle of receiving it, any care, really, casts doubt on whether in fact the goals are to protect the recipients of the care,” said Hurson.

Under Hurson’s ruling, various federal agencies are now temporarily prohibited from withholding or conditioning funding based on whether a health care facility provides ‘gender-affirming’ care anywhere in the country.

In addition to the transgender teens, two organizations – PFLAG and GLMA – claimed that hospitals across the country have quickly moved to cancel appointments after Trump’s two executive orders, which the administration deemed a crackdown on “gender ideology.”

The first order which Trump signed on day one states that “federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology,” while another signed on Jan. 28 directs agencies to ensure that any institution receiving federal funds does not provide gender-transition treatments for individuals up to the age of 19.

“That order had immediate consequences,” ACLU lawyer Joshua Block said during Thursday’s hearing, The Hill reports.

The DOJ contested the lawsuit, insisting that the case was premature and required additional guidance. Judge Hurson rejected those arguments, calling their position “disingenuous.”

“When there’s smoke coming out of your house, you don’t know what room it’s in, but you don’t wait to call 911 until you know the exact location of the fire,” said Hurson, adding “These plaintiffs have received phone calls stopping their care.”

The ruling is the latest in a series of court orders across the country in recent days blocking Trump’s actions – including orders restricting birthright citizenship, and another which restricts transgender prison inmates from living in women’s facilities.

Another Thursday lawsuit from a group of government employees sought to block Musk and DOGE from accessing sensitive data and removing federal employees until “Musk is properly appointed pursuant to the U.S. constitution.”

Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClearPolitics,

President Trump is slapping America in the face. If we’re lucky, it will revive our sleepwalking nation.

While cramming more action into a few hundred hours than FDR could in 100 days, he has diverted our somnambulant gaze from the shiny objects both parties have used to distract us from their failure to address our nation’s aching challenges. As he awakens us to fundamental problems of governance, Trump has even managed to make math great again.

The last few weeks have made clear that we’ve spent far too long talking about the wrong things in the wrong way. Instead of seeing the federal government for what it chiefly is – the world’s largest business, spending more than $6 trillion every year – we have turned it into a debating society for emotionally charged claims about woke culture and populism. Both parties have been happy to expend much of their energy demonizing the other because they saw partisan anger as a pathway to power – and because it is much easier to grandstand on inflammatory talking points than to make the hard choices required to smoothly operate such a massive entity. As a result, we became like farmers arguing over the best use of their land while their crops were withering.

That is how our unsustainable national debt has reached $36.5 trillion, gravely threatening our future. The current convulsions in Europe are offering a preview of what happens when nations run out of money.

What Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency are making clear is that as much as our perilous financial situation has been bandied about, we have spent little time actually digging into the numbers behind it.

Old habits die hard, and Trump and Musk have continued to play the culture war card because that still seems the best way to get people’s attention. So their recent focus on USAID spending has highlighted the multi-million-dollar grants to LGBTQ+ groups in Guatemala and Serbia and the $47,000 earmarked for a transgender opera in Colombia. Such line-by-line scrutiny is important, but DOGE’s more meaningful work is exposing the shocking lack of oversight and accountability regarding far larger piles of government spending. On Saturday, for example, Musk sent out this Tweet:

“To be clear, what the @DOGE team and @USTreasury have jointly agreed makes sense is the following:

• Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible.
• All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING!”

Heads would roll and prison terms contemplated if this were happening in the private sector. But it’s government, so it’s been met with a shrug. How else to explain the fact that the Pentagon, which has a budget of $824 billion, has failed seven consecutive audits – though its leaders promise it will achieve its first clean audit by 2028. Try telling that to the IRS agent auditing your personal return.

Or consider the recent finding from Open the Books that “Congress allocated at least $516 billion for federal programs with expired authorizations in fiscal year 2024.” The watchdog group reported that this may only be the tip of the iceberg: “Congress funded 1,264 ‘zombie’ programs this year, the CBO found. Half of them expired at least 10 years ago, and one has not been authorized since 1980. Analysts were only able to find dollar amounts for 491 of the programs, totaling $516 billion. It is unknown how much funding the other 773 programs received.”

No doubt many of these programs – such as the $38.4 billion Foreign Relations Authorization Act, which expired in 2003 – would be reauthorized if Congress did its job. But the laxity surrounding the budget-making process is scandalous. Along those lines, the National Institutes of Health recently placed a 15% cap on “indirects,” which is the amount of grant money that could be spent for any purpose apart from the funded work. Last year, $9 billion of the $35 billion the agency awarded for research went to such overhead expenses, mostly at universities. At some leading institutions – including Harvard, Yale, and Johns Hopkins – more than 60% of research funding appears to have gone to such costs. NIH says its new policy will save $4 billion per year.

Here’s the kicker: All of this has been going on in plain sight. Almost nobody thought to pay any attention to it. Journalists share much of the blame for this failure. Like the politicians we cover, we found it a lot easier to seize on hot-button social issues; it’s hard to make numbers sound sexy. We’ve long believed that readers know these issues are important, but they aren’t too interested in reading about them. We’ve viewed government inefficiency as the antithesis of news, a classic dog-bites-man story.

Trump and Musk have upended all of that. Their relentless pursuit of transparency and accountability has made math sexy again. The steady stream of figures being released on X through accounts such as @DOGE and @DataRepublican (small r) is the greatest show on earth right now as they lift the veil on massive problems. Their work evokes the old hymn, I once “was blind, but now I see.”

This story is only beginning to unfold. Finally figuring out what we are spending our money on is only the start of a difficult conversation. While many conservatives are broad-brushing government outlays as examples of fraud, waste, and abuse, the truth is that most of it simply reflects priorities they don’t share. What’s more, for all the good they are doing, Trump and Musk are still ignoring the fundamental fiscal challenge hiding in plain sight: the cost of entitlements that are devouring most of the federal budget.

Still, as they rouse Washington and the American people from a long slumber in which we ignored the failure of our leaders to run the government with a modicum of efficiency, we can be thankful that they have made being “woke” great again.

J. Peder Zane is a RealClearInvestigations editor and columnist. He previously worked as a book review editor and book columnist for the News & Observer (Raleigh), where his writing won several national honors. Zane has also worked at the New York Times and taught writing at Duke University and Saint Augustine’s University.

Authored by Aldgra Fredly via The Epoch Times,

A federal judge in Massachusetts on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship for children born to illegal immigrants, marking the fourth time the policy was blocked by a judge.

In a 31-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin stated that two lawsuits—one filed by 18 states and the District of Columbia and the other by nonprofit organizations—are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims that implementing the order would cause irreparable harm. The plaintiffs have argued that the order violates the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment.

“The record before the court establishes that children born without a recognized or lawful status face barriers to accessing critical health care, among other services, along with the threat of removal to countries they have never lived in and possible family separation. That is irreparable harm,” Sorokin stated.

“It is difficult to imagine a government or public interest that could outweigh the harms established by the plaintiffs here.”

Sorokin said that the Trump administration appeared to have “no legitimate interest” in enforcing the order and said it did not demonstrate how continuing birthright citizenship would harm the public.

According to the ruling, the administration’s stance that birthright citizenship requires the mutual consent of both the individual and the nation would disregard the 14th Amendment’s original purpose, which was “to recognize as birthright citizens the children of enslaved persons who did not enter the country consensually, but were brought to our shores in chains.”

“Simply put, the Amendment is the Nation’s consent to accept and protect as citizens those born here, subject to the few narrow exceptions recognized at the time of enactment, none of which are at issue here,” Sorokin stated.

“The Fourteenth Amendment says nothing of the birthright citizen’s parents, and efforts to import such considerations at the time of enactment and when the Supreme Court construed the text were rejected. This Court is likewise bound to reject such theories now.”

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, along with 13 other attorneys general, issued a joint statement welcoming the ruling, stating that it showed the president is not in the position to “rewrite the Constitution.”

Lawyers for Civil Rights, representing the nonprofit organizations and an expectant mother whose children would be affected by Trump’s order, said the plaintiffs are gratified by the court’s decision.

“Birthright citizenship is a sacred right granted by our Constitution,” Oren Sellstrom, litigation director for Lawyers for Civil Rights, said in a statement.

Trump’s order on birthright citizenship, issued on Jan. 20, stated that the 14th Amendment’s citizenship clause does not extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States.

According to the executive order, the citizenship clause has “always excluded from birthright citizenship persons who were born in the United States but not ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’.”

The phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the clause excludes an individual if that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the country and the individual’s father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of his or her birth, Trump’s order states.

The order also states that U.S. citizenship does not apply to an individual whose father was neither a citizen nor a lawful permanent resident at the time of their birth, and whose mother’s presence in the country was lawful but temporary at the time of their birth.

At least nine lawsuits have been filed challenging the new policy, which was initially slated to take effect on Feb. 19. Federal judges in New Hampshire, Washington, and Maryland have also issued preliminary injunctions preventing the Trump administration from denying birthright citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants.

The Epoch Times reached out to the White House for comment but did not receive a reply by publication time.

A new poll reveals that former Vice President Kamala Harris would be the Democratic frontrunner for governor of California if she were to enter the state’s 2026 race to replace term-limited Gov. Gavin Newsom (D).

In a hypothetical gubernatorial bid, nearly 6 in 10 Democratic primary voters in California – 57%, would vote for Harris, according to the survey by Emerson College Polling/Inside California Politics/The Hill.

In a distant second place at 9% support was former Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), who left the House to run for Senate last year, only to lose.

Former speaker of the California State Assembly Antonio Villaraigosa (D) and current Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalaki (D) tied for third at 4% each. Another 17% were undecided.

With Newsom leaving office next year, speculation has swirled over whether Harris might throw her hat in the ring – with some seeing Newsom’s vacancy as an opportunity for her to fill his seat. As a former state AG and state Senator, Harris has a long history in the Golden State.

That said, last Friday she deflected when asked about a possible gubernatorial bid to replace Newsom.

“I have been home for two weeks and three days. My plans are to be in touch with my community, to be in touch with the leaders and figure out what I can do to support them,” Harris told reporters after visiting wildfire-ravaged areas of Southern California.

“I am here and would be here regardless of the office I hold, because it is the right thing to do, which is to show up in your community and thank the folks who are on the ground.”

Authored by Justin Logan via Cato Inst/AntiWar,

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a terrific, bracing speech yesterday to the Ukraine Defense Contact Group that deserves praise.

For more than two years, European capitals have been encouraging maximalism regarding the Ukraine war, and more generally encouraging the doddering US president’s romantic ideas about the transatlantic relationship.

It all came crashing down today.

Hegseth made clear, inter alia, that,

1. “NATO membership for Ukraine is [not] a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement”;
2. “as part of any [postwar] security guarantee, there will not be US troops deployed to Ukraine”;
3. a return to Ukraine’s 1991 borders, an official Ukrainian war aim, is “an unrealistic objective”;
4. “stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe”; and that,
5. “the United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency.”

For too long, US policy on Europe has been driven by airy romanticism, not by a cold, hard assessment of the strategic environment.

As Joshua Shifrinson and I wrote in Foreign Affairs last year:

With no candidate for European hegemony lurking, there is no longer any need for the United States to take the dominant role in the region… U.S. policy does not need to aim at formal withdrawal from or continued membership in NATO; it simply needs to make clear that Washington’s tenure as Europe’s pacifier is coming to an end, and if European defense planners feel that leaves a hole to fill, they must fill it themselves. 

Hegseth’s speech suggests the Trump administration agrees. The division of labor in the transatlantic relationship needs to change now.

In this single passage, JD Vance makes manifest the core lie driving US/EU foreign policy for decades: we claim everything we do is for “advancing democracy” when the goal is often the exact opposite.

Never imagined a senior US official saying this:pic.twitter.com/xHxhRAS611

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 14, 2025

Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Hegseth both have important speeches to come during the remainder of this trip. We should hope for similar themes to be raised – and for policy to follow.

Internet search trends in the Washington, DC, metro area have been nothing short of stunning in recent weeks, reflecting what appears to be growing panic within the federal bureaucracy as President Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) root out corruption in non-governmental organizations (NGO) and federal agencies. 

Earlier this week, internet search trends for “Criminal Defense Lawyer” and “RICO Laws” went viral on X, fueling speculation that Washington’s political elites were in panic mode. The searches coincided with DOGE’s efforts to neuter USAID’s funding of NGOs that propped up a shadow government, as well as begin cutting tens of thousands of workers from various federal agencies.

DC Internet Searches For “Criminal Defense Lawyer” & “RICO Law” Erupt As DOGE Drains Swamp https://t.co/4ytzi4YcgV

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 13, 2025

Now, more suspicious search trends have erupted among DC residents as DOGE efforts went into beast mode at the end of the week. 

“Washington DC searches soar for “Swiss bank” (yellow), “offshore bank” (green), “wire money” (red) and “IBAN” (blue),” WikiLeaks wrote on X late Thursday. 

Washington DC searches soar for “Swiss bank” (yellow), “offshore bank” (green), “wire money” (red) and “IBAN” (blue) pic.twitter.com/OBEg0hW8g0

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 13, 2025

Search terms “Wipe” (blue) and “Erase” (red) also moved higher in recent weeks. Wipe hard drives?

Washington DC searches soar for “wipe” (blue) and “erase” (red) according to Google trends data. pic.twitter.com/WTbK1C1zxy

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 14, 2025

Well, yes, the search term “wipe hard drive” across the DC metro has gone absolutely parabolic.

And “BleachBit” too! 

Searches for “lawyers” have jumped. 

Washington DC searches for “lawyer’ have increased 400% (data from Google trends) pic.twitter.com/CxeSJ0VKgG

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 13, 2025

“Statute of limitations” also soared. 

Washington DC searches for “statute of limitations” soar (data from Google trends) pic.twitter.com/OkNKHEQsXa

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 14, 2025

Why on Earth would DC residents panic-search keywords that suggest they are trying to cover up a crime?

Well, just take a look at this!

“Gold Bars Off The Titanic”: After Trump Victory, Biden EPA Scrambled To Funnel $20 Billion Taxpayer Funds Into ‘Green’ NGOs https://t.co/I9JuIFOQhr

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 13, 2025

The accountability sheriff: Trump & DOGE are in town – and the Deep State criminals who have been misappropriating taxpayer funds for years are in panic mode. 

Hence this…

BREAKING 🚨 There will be an announcement on Rep. Robert Garcia after he thre*tened Weapons to be used against Elon Musk for saving America

Democrats are the Party of Vio*lence

HE NEEDS TO BE CHARGED pic.twitter.com/fN1Lw1UYQz

— MAGA Voice (@MAGAVoice) February 13, 2025

Now DOGE’s “Big Balls” member, Edward Coristine, now listed as a “senior adviser” at the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Technology, should focus efforts on those outbound ACH transfers >$1 million in the past few months…

It would be awful if someone – say Big Balls – audited all the outbound ACH transfers >$1MM in the past month https://t.co/2UEC8VEUoc

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 14, 2025

. . . 

Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Linda Sun, former deputy chief of staff to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, and Sun’s husband, Chris Hu, are facing additional charges in a case that alleges they acted as agents of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Sun and Hu were arrested and charged in September 2024 in a case that is part of the Department of Justice’s broader effort to root out communist China’s secret agents, who U.S. officials say are covertly advancing the CCP’s interests and targeting Chinese dissidents on U.S. soil in an effort known as transnational repression.

On Feb. 11, Sun and Hu pleaded not guilty at a hearing in Brooklyn federal court, prosecutors said, adding that the money laundering charge against the two had been amended to include additional legal statutes.

Hu also pleaded not guilty to three additional money laundering counts, according to prosecutors.

A superseding indictment filed on Feb. 4 didn’t provide more details other than saying that Hu’s charges were connected to three separate financial transactions totaling $1.5 million in 2020.

A spokesperson for federal prosecutors declined to comment beyond what was stated in the superseding indictment.

Jarrod Schaeffer, one of Sun’s attorneys, said the revised indictment also does not “remedy critical errors identified in the prior indictment.”

Sun and Hu remain free on bond and are scheduled to return to court on April 23.

Last year, Sun was charged with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), visa fraud, alien smuggling, and money laundering conspiracy. Hu was charged with money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, and misuse of means of identification.

Sun, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in China, worked for the New York state government under Hochul and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo for about 15 years. During her political career, she held various posts, including deputy superintendent for intergovernmental affairs, chief diversity officer at the state’s Department of Financial Services, deputy chief diversity officer and director of Asian American Affairs for the state’s Executive Chamber, and director of external affairs for Global NY at Empire State Development.

Prosecutors alleged that Sun engaged in “numerous political activities in the interests of the PRC and the CCP,” such as preventing representatives of Taiwan’s government from having access to high-level state officials and changing the governors’ messaging to remove references to Taiwan and human rights abuses in China’s far-western region of Xinjiang.

In return, Hu received assistance for his various business activities in China, according to prosecutors.

Additionally, prosecutors said the financial arrangement with CCP officials helped Sun and Hu buy a $3.6 million home on Long Island, a $1.9 million condominium in Hawaii, and luxury automobiles, including a 2024 Ferrari.

In November 2024, Sun’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the charges, arguing that their client had been unfairly targeted.

“In the government’s view, Ms. Sun and her family simply have too much and so there must be a nefarious reason,” the filing reads.

“Sputtering about state ethics rules and undisclosed gifts, the government eventually reached the conclusion that when a woman of Chinese heritage allegedly receives unreported gifts from other Chinese individuals, she must be bought and paid for by China.”

Prosecutors, in their written response in December 2024, called the motion to dismiss the charges premature, saying that the initial indictment provides “ample factual details” to support their claims.

Prosecutors dismissed Sun’s argument that the FARA charge should be dismissed.

“Sun argues that unless the Indictment cites verbatim taskings from the PRC government or the CCP, pretrial dismissal of the FARA charges is appropriate. Sun is mistaken,” the filing reads.

“A rational juror could find beyond a reasonable doubt that Sun acted to advance the interests of the PRC government and CCP and that her acts were taken at the behest of one or more foreign principals. Thus, the factual allegations of the Indictment are sufficient to support the government’s charge that Sun acted on behalf of the PRC government or the CCP.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Authored by Debra Heine via American Greatness,

In his first major speech on the international stage, Vice President JD Vance criticized European leaders for allowing mass migration and extreme laws censoring speech, remarking that he worries more about Europe’s  “threats from within” than from external threats like Russia and China.

“While the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine … the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor,” said Vance.

“What I worry about is the threat from within – the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.”

Vice President JD Vance says there is “no room for firewalls” in Munich ahead of German elections where political parties have vowed to not work with AfD even though millions will vote for the anti-immigration party.pic.twitter.com/tJ44bTyaCz

— The American Conservative (@amconmag) February 14, 2025

The vice president’s confrontational remarks at the Munich Security Conference apparently surprised many officials who were expecting him to focus his remarks on Ukraine and Russia.

Instead, Vance called them out for embracing authoritarian policies and using “ugly Soviet era words like misinformation and disinformation” to enact laws marginalizing populist voters.

As an example of Europe’s draconian attacks on on free speech, the veep cited a recent egregious case in Great Britain:  “A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith Conner, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an Army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own,” Vance recounted. “After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son.”

Vance said the man was “found guilty of breaking the government’s new buffer zone law which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions” that could influence a woman’s decision to have an abortion within 200 yards of an abortion clinic. The man ended up having to “pay thousands of pounds to the prosecution” for praying.

In an even more extreme example of government overreach, Vance noted that Scottish officials recently distributed letters to citizens who reside within so-called safe access zones, “warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law.”

Vance noted with disgust that the Scottish officials even encouraged citizens to report on anyone guilty of committing “thought crimes.”

“In Britain, and across Europe, I fear free speech is in retreat,” the vice president lamented.

JD Vance warns Europe against censorship during Munich Security Conference

“I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warned citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be ‘hateful content.’

Or to… pic.twitter.com/5vC8kNeCv5

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) February 14, 2025

Vance also denounced Romania’s recent cancellation of presidential election results over accusations of Russian disinformation. “If your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with,” he said. “I’d ask my European friends to have some perspective.”

“Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There’s no room for firewalls,” he added.

Vance also touched on pressing issue of mass migration in Europe, which has dramatically changed demographics in European cities and led to increases in both crime and terrorism.

“We know this situation didn’t materialize in a vacuum, it’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent and others across the world over the span of a decade,” he said.

The vice president highlighted the Thursday attack in Munich where an Afghan national drove a car into a crowd, injuring at least 30 people, and yelled “Allahu Akbar” when he was detained.

“We saw the horrors wrought by these decisions yesterday in this very city,” Vance said, offering his condolences to the victims.

“It’s a terrible story but it’s one we’ve heard way too many times in Europe and unfortunately way too many times in the United States, as well, he said. “An asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid twenties, already known to police, rams a car into a crowd and shatters a community.”

“How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction?” Vance asked. “No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants,” he added, pointing out that voters in Great Britain did vote for Brexit and have repeatedly voted against “out of control migration.”

According to the Financial Times, “European officials in Munich were horrified at what they saw as Vance’s unfair and untrue claims.”

Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius furiously objected to Vance’s characterization of European policies,  the far-left paper reported.

“I had a speech I prepared today,” Pistorius said. “It was supposed to be about security in Europe. But I cannot start in the way I originally intended . . . This democracy was called into question by the US vice-president.”

JUST IN: German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius starts whining about JD Vance’s speech, says it was “not acceptable.”

Looks like Vance’s speech was a success.

The whining came after Vance ripped European nations for criminalizing free speech and acting like tyrants.

“If I… pic.twitter.com/zM9DBo7V3M

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 14, 2025

The German defense minister added: “He compares the condition of Europe with what is happening in autocracies. This is not acceptable.”

Kaja Kallas, the EU’s chief diplomat, characterized Vance’s remarks as “lecturing”.

“I think we can deal with our own domestic issues,” Kallas told the FT.

“It was mad, totally mad,” a senior European diplomat fumed. “And very dangerous.”

Another senior EU diplomat complained that the vice president “lectured us, he humiliated us.”

“Some officials compared the speech with Vladimir Putin’s address at the same event in 2007, where the Russian president warned that Nato expansion risked conflict with Moscow,” FT reported.

“The mood in the room was exactly like the Putin 2007 speech,” the diplomat told FT. “It was outrageous.”

Watch Vance’s entire speech below:

The full speech of U.S. Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference.#USA #Europe #JDVance #Munich #MunichSecurityConference pic.twitter.com/9ONhYMSVtc

— Ulfh3dnar (@Ulfh3dnar_) February 14, 2025

How is that two massive ships, one a US Navy Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, crash into each other on the open waters of the Mediterranean? That’s what Pentagon investigators will be looking at in the wake of Wednesday’s incident off Egypt.

The USS Harry S. Truman and the Panamanian-flagged merchant vessel Besiktas-M collided at around noon local time on Wednesday. On Friday the first photo emerged of damage to the US carrier, and it looks extensive.

Update: Damage to the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier involved in a collision with a merchant ship off the coast of Egypt less than two weeks after launching airstrikes against ISIS in Somalia https://t.co/hlvoJ1DKn2 pic.twitter.com/ZiR219Zek6

— Lucas Tomlinson (@LucasFoxNews) February 14, 2025

The vessels collided near Port Said, but there were no injuries reported on either ship. No injuries or flooding on the aircraft carrier were reported, and its propulsion plants “are unaffected and in a safe and stable condition,” the Navy’s 6th Fleet said.

However, the Truman did clearly sustain severe damage, statements indicated:

The Truman was approaching the Suez Canal to go from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, a Navy official told CBS News. There’s no assessment at this time which vessel was at fault, the official said.

The Truman sustained some damage above the waterline, the official said. It wasn’t clear if it will be going in for repairs. The ship remained in the Mediterranean.

Naval News provides some new details Friday as follows, based also on analysis of the photograph:

The incident occurred at 11:46 p.m. local time on February 12th near Port Said, Egypt, at the northern end of the Suez Canal. The bulk of visible damage occurred on the starboard side aft of elevator 3, damaging the underside of a sponson with a .50 caliber machine gun.

The aircraft elevator adjacent to the damaged portion appears undamaged. According to the U.S. Navy, the incident did not cause any flooding or injuries onboard the Truman.

Location of the damage:

The carrier deployed to the Mediterranean and Mideast region starting in September and has reportedly been conducting ‘counter-ISIS’ missions, including Trump-ordered strikes on Somalia on Feb.1st. As of late last week it was in a Greek port.

By all accounts this is pretty embarrassing for the US Navy, also given that the merchant bulk carrier is a huge ship. Again, how does this happen?

Via Open The Books,

Elon Musk reported that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) spent $59 million last week alone – all on immigrants in New York City. Part of that was for housing, including luxury properties like The Row and The Watson, meant for tourists headed to see the marquees of Broadway. (Later the feds clawed back $80M from the city).

Open the Books previously reported that FEMA had an enormous $8 billion shortfall in its Disaster Relief Fund following the catastrophic damage of Hurricane Helene.

Well, FEMA is not the only agency that’s been spending gobs of taxpayer dollars on the immigration crisis. Programs span various agencies.

Included is the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), housed inside the Department of Health and Human Services subagency called the Administration for Children and Families.

ORR has spent over $22.6 BILLION since 2020 on grants to nonprofits providing everything from help accessing Medicaid to help building credit, help with home and auto loans, and cash assistance. Yes, cold hard cash!

WHAT IS ORR?

While Department of Homeland Security is often thought of as the main agency in charge of migration policy and spending in the United States, ORR spends tens of billions a year setting up refugees in the United States. Programmatic activities had a focus on, but were not exclusive to, unaccompanied children.

As Open the Books previously reported, one ORR program helped participants save for car and home purchases, another gave out business and personal loans to help them build credit. Another program helped with “legal assistance,” “cultural orientation,” and “emergency housing support.”

These acted as giant magnets for those seeking to cross the border and claim asylum.

As spending from ORR exploded, Open the Books also identified instances where the agency was expanding the scope of criteria for individuals eligible for its funding. For example, in its 2023 Congressional Budget Justification, the agency suggested the following changes to expand its mandate:

• Advocating that “Special Immigrant Juvenile Minors” within the “Unaccompanied Refugee Minor” (URM) program access the same benefits as refugees, which include access to Medicaid and the same foster care services as American children.

• Expanding legal assistance to Ukrainian and Afghan children and other URM-designated youth to legal assistance ensuring permanent residency.

• Giving cash assistance to full-time college or technical school student refugees.

• Removing the need for refugees to obtain economic self-sufficiency “as quickly as possible.”

Total amount of new grants awarded by ORR, from FY 2020-2024

2020: $2,682,493,224.22
2021: $2,352,120,351.54
2022: $3,378,055,499.50
2023: $10,035,487,466.68
2024: $4,207,541,746.00

UNACCOMPANIED CHILDREN

ORR came under increased scrutiny in 2023 after the New York Times reported 85,000 unaccompanied children lost after being sent to agency-approved “sponsors.” Then-ORR Director Robin Dunn Marcos said in a related Congressional hearing that she did not believe the vetting system was inadequate and would not affirm if the 85,000 figure is accurate.

Tom Homan, a former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the first Trump administration, and now President Trump’s “Border Czar,” estimates the number of missing unaccompanied children to be around 300,000. One of his mandates is finding these children and ensuring their safety.

CLOSE TIES WITH TOP GRANTEE

Notably, two of ORR’s top grantees were also the former employers of Dunn Marcos: The International Rescue Committee (IRC), where Dunn Marcos spent 23 years, including eight as Senior Director for Resettlement, Asylum, and Integration; and Church World Service, where she spent four years.

Given the astounding increase in funding both nonprofits received from ORR, Open the Books asked the agency if Dunn Marcos was involved in decisions regarding her former employers, particularly IRC.

We were told by an ACF spokesperson: “Consistent with the Ethics Pledge, Robin Dunn Marcos is recused from participating in particular matters involving specific parties in which IRC is or represents a party. That recusal obligation lasts for two years from her date of appointment, which was September 11, 2022.”

IRC was awarded grants worth $598 million since 2020, over half of which ($336,915,216) came between 2023 and 2024. $112 million of it was discretionary grants, making IRC the top awardee during that period.

Church World Services was awarded grants worth $355 million in that same time since 2020.

SIDENOTE: In 2023, IRC received funding for the first time from ORR’s Unaccompanied Children program: $13,005,424 for “home studies and post-release services”

But even before then, the nonprofit worked in some capacity with unaccompanied children.

According to one article “IRC Los Angeles…[provides] assistance with school enrollment, acquiring state medical insurance, and obtaining pro bono legal services from local partner organizations.”

As spending at ORR swelled to new heights, IRC benefitted handsomely. The organization received over $235 million in spending in FY 2023 compared to $22 million in FY 2021.

FAILURE OF TRANSPARENCY

While it would be nice if taxpayers could take ORR at their word that Dunn Marcos was recused, Open the Books filed a Freedom of Information Act request for any emails she exchanged with anyone working IRC. This request was made in May 2023. We still have not received a response.

According to the most recently available FOIA Report from HHS (2023), ORR’s parent agency, the Administration for Children and Families, has a median wait time of 1,065 days for pending simple requests. For comparison, the Centers for Disease Control wait time is 22 days. Both agencies have roughly the same number of full-time FOIA staff (ACF has 21 compared to CDC’s 25). At the end of the 2023 fiscal year, ACF had 913 backlogged requests compared to CDC’s 186.

We reached out to ACF as to why this agency has unique issues filling FOIA requests, and what reforms could make it more effective. We did not receive a response.

LEADERSHIP CHANGE

As of February 2025, it may be little surprise that Robin Dunn Marcos’ email now returns an automated response indicating she is no longer at the agency. Colleagues are instructed to contact Marcela Ruiz, the ORR “Principal Deputy Director.” Ruiz did respond to an email but indicated questions should be directed to the ACF media team.

Very little can be learned about Ruiz from the ACF and ORR websites, but her posture towards her work can be approximated by her background. Ruiz’s previous work is in immigration policy and advocacy; before joining ORR in March 2024, she was Director of the Office of Equity at California’s Department of Social Services. In one of her presentations from 2021 she advocates for “implicit bias training,” a “racial equity working group,” and “listening sessions and affinity groups” for her department. Yes, this is more of the DEI worldview that has taken root in every nook and cranny of government over the past decade.

News reports indicate veteran Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Mellissa Harper has been tapped to lead the Office of Refugee Resettlement, on detail from her position at ICE. Reports indicate Harper may be the first director of ORR to come from ICE. It is unclear if Ruiz is still serving as the ORR director’s deputy.

We reached out to the ACF media team with questions about Ruiz’s current work and have not received a response.

CONCLUSION

While Dunn Marcos may have disappeared from ORR, our questions remain over whether certain nonprofit organizations received special treatment amid the billions in grants furnished by the government office. What’s clear is that ORR has funded a constellation of NGO’s deployed in border states and nationwide, who give out aid designed to attract even more migrants.

Like FEMA, DOGE ought to take an exhaustive look at the Office of Refugee Resettlement and determine what is life-saving aid, and what funding simply prolongs the border crisis by attracting more migrants.

And like too many agencies across the federal government, ORR’s parent agency needs to live up to the transparency moment and give taxpayers answers – way sooner than a thousand days.