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Senate votes to confirm Kash Patel as Trump’s FBI director

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By Calvin Freiburger

Former Justice Department attorney and outspoken MAGA champion Kash Patel was confirmed as America’s next FBI director in a narrow 51-49 vote on Thursday, with a mandate to root out weaponization of the federal government against conservatives.

The Republican-controlled U.S. Senate voted 51-49 Thursday to confirm Kash Patel as President Donald Trump’s Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), betting on a staunch MAGA loyalist to uproot “weaponization” of federal law enforcement against conservatives.

Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine were the only Republicans to vote against Patel. Retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a longtime GOP leader in the chamber who had a tumultuous relationship with Trump, surprised observers by voting yes.

A former Justice Department and House Republican attorney, Patel first gained notoriety in 2018 as the author of a memo in former Rep. Devin Nunes’ (R-CA) investigation of the Russian collusion allegations against Trump, which found serious defects and misconduct in Democrats’ case against Trump and how they built it. Patel went on to join the first Trump administration as Trump’s senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council, then senior adviser for Trump’s directors of national intelligence, then finally chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller.

Since the end of Trump’s first term, Patel established himself as one of Trump’s most aggressive advocates, arguing that he would be the best man to investigate and prosecute Biden officials as well as their allies in the media, and building a MAGA audience of his own through regular appearances on Steve Bannon’s podcast, his own branded merchandise, and a series of children’s books retelling Trump’s battles with Democrats as fairy tales.

Patel was seen as one of Trump’s nominees less certain to win Senate GOP support, given his fiery post-2020 persona and associations. However, while former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) withdrew his attorney general nomination over internal party resistance, a majority of Senate Republicans ultimately fell in line behind Trump’s choices of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of Health & Human Services (HHS) and Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence.

During his confirmation hearings, Patel promised, “I will fully utilize, if confirmed, the investigative powers of the FBI to give you the information you require and also to hold those accountable who violated the sacred trust placed in the FBI,” including by targeting religious Americans for their peaceful moral and political views under the Biden administration.

“Parents who have the courage to ensure that their children are taught what they feel is right and those who have the courage of their convictions to go to houses of worship, in my book, will never be treated as domestic terrorists,” he added.

As FBI director, Patel will be working closely with Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has similarly pledged to de-weaponize federal law enforcement.

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Elon Musk, DOGE officials reveal ‘astonishing’ government waste, fraud in viral interview

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By Doug Mainwaring

Elon Musk said that ‘the sheer amount of waste and fraud’ in federal agencies, is ‘astonishing’ and that DOGE is cutting ‘$4 billion a day’ in misused taxpayer funds.

In a remarkable Fox News interview, Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) founder Elon Musk and top officials of the DOGE team offered stunning, often infuriating, insights into how the federal government functions.

The interview, which has garnered well over 10 million online views on X in less than 24 hours, provided one extreme example after another of government mismanagement, excess, waste, and fraud while simultaneously promising a future where the D.C. Leviathan is tamed and restored to its proper, efficient role.

The new Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), former U.S. House Rep. Dan Bishop, averred that the DOGE A-Team interview was the “most amazing and significant half-hour in TV history.” 

Musk was joined by DOGE team members Steve Davis, Joe Gebbia, Aram Moghaddassi, Brad Smith, Anthony Armstrong, Tom Krause, and Tyler Hassen – all successful businessmen and entrepreneurs in their own rights – to describe the widespread systemic weaknesses and failures at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Social Security Administration (SSA), and more.  

Fox host Bret Baier described the group as “Silicon Valley colliding with government.”

“This is a revolution. And I think it might be the biggest revolution in government since the original revolution,” said Musk during the discussion.  

“But at the end of the day, America’s going to be in much better shape,” he promised.

“America will be solvent. The critical programs that people depend upon will work, and it’s going to be a fantastic future.” 

Musk said that the most stunning thing he’s discovered during the early phases of DOGE is “the sheer amount of waste and fraud in government. It is astonishing. It’s mind-blowing.”

Musk cited the example of a simple 10-question National Park online survey for which the government was charged nearly $1 billion and which in the end served no purpose.

“I think we will accomplish most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within [130 days],” he predicted. “Our goal is to reduce the waste and fraud by $4 billion a day, every day, seven days a week. And so far, we are succeeding.”

Billionaire Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, is working to digitize the retirement process for government employees, which is currently stuck using 1950s technology, housed in a Pennsylvania cave.

“It’s an injustice to civil servants who are subjected to these processes that are older than the age of half the people watching the show tonight,” said Gebbia. “We really believe that the government can have an Apple store-like experience, beautifully designed, great user experience, modern systems.”  

“The retirement process is all by paper, literally, with people carrying paper and manila envelopes into this gigantic mine,” added Musk, limiting the number of federal employees who can retire to no more than 8,000 per month.

Gebbia expects to have the antiquated system updated and overhauled in a matter of months.  

“The two improvements that we’re trying to make to Social Security are helping people that legitimately get benefits protect them from fraud that they experience every day on a routine basis and also make the experience better,” said DOGE software engineer Aram Moghaddassi.

He offered an amazing statistic: “When you want to change your (direct deposit) bank account, you can call Social Security. We learned 40% of the phone calls that they get are from fraudsters” who are attempting to commandeer retired seniors’ benefit payments.

“What we’re doing will help their benefits,” assured Musk. “As a result of the work of DOGE, legitimate recipients of social security will receive more money, not less money.” 

“There are over 15 million people that are over the age of 120 that are marked as alive in the Social Security system,” said Steve Davis, who has previously worked alongside Musk at SpaceX, the Boring Company, and X

He explained that despite this being discovered by hardworking personnel at the SSA back in 2008, nothing was done. As a result, 15-20 million social security numbers that were clearly fraudulent were just floating around, susceptible to being used for “bad intentions.”

Health care entrepreneur Brad Smith, who has taken charge of auditing HHS and NIH, also cited stunning, troubling statistics displaying the extreme inefficiencies of the nation’s top federal health organizations.

Smith said that at NIH, “Today they have 27 different centers” created by Congress over the years and there are “700 different IT systems,” each using their own IT software.

“They have 27 different CIOs (Chief Information Officers),” added Smith, “so when you think about making great medical discoveries, you have to connect the data.”  

Those discoveries are likely severely hampered by NIH’s communications disconnect.

Anthony Armstrong, a Morgan Stanley banker now working for DOGE at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) talked about “duplicative functions” and “overstaffing” at government agencies. He said that money is “sloshing out the door.”

As an example, he cited the IRS, which has 1,400 employees whose only job is to provision laptops and cell phones to IRS workers.  

“As an ex-CFO of a big public tech company, really what we’re doing is, we’re applying public company standards to the federal government, and it is alarming how the financial operations and financial management is set up today,” said Tom Krause, CEO of Cloud Software Group.  

He explained that there is virtually no accountability or verification protections when it comes to the Treasury Department disbursing funds to various government agencies.

A 94-year-old grandmother is no longer “going to be robbed by forces like she’s getting robbed today, and the solvency of the federal government will ensure that she continues to receive those social security checks,” added Musk.

“The reason we’re doing this is because if we don’t do it, America is going to go insolvent and go bankrupt, and nobody’s going to get anything,” said Musk.

Tyler Hassen, a former oil executive working at the Interior Department for DOGE ​​alleged that there was no departmental oversight at the Interior Department “whatsoever” under the Biden administration.  

Steve Davis talked about the out-of-control issuance and use of federal credit cards. 

“There are in the federal government around 4.6 million credit cards for around 2.3 to 2.4 million employees. This doesn’t make sense. So, one of the things all of the teams have worked on is we’ve worked for the agencies and said, ‘Do you need all of these credit cards? Are they being used? Can you tell us physically where they are?’” recounted Davis.

“Clearly there should not be more credit cards than there are people,” interjected Musk.

Musk later described how the Small Business Administration (SBA) has given out $300 million in loans to people “under the age of 11.” An additional $300 million in loans has been handed out to people “over the age of 120.”

Musk said that these government loans are clearly “fraudulent.”  

“Terrible things are being done,” he exclaimed. “We’re stopping it.” 

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2025 Federal Election

Donald Trump suggests Mark Carney will win Canadian election, touts ‘productive call’ with leader

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‘It was an extremely productive call, we agree on many things, and will be meeting immediately after Canada’s upcoming Election,’ Trump wrote about Carney on Friday.

U.S. President Donald Trump says he had “an extremely productive call” with Prime Minister Mark Carney and implied that the World Economic Forum-linked politician will win Canada’s upcoming federal election.

“I just finished speaking with Prime Minister Mark Carney, of Canada,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday. “It was an extremely productive call, we agree on many things, and will be meeting immediately after Canada’s upcoming Election to work on elements of Politics, Business, and all other factors, that will end up being great for both the United States of America and Canada. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Reacting to the post, LifeSiteNews editor-in-chief John-Henry Westen wrote on X:

Trump’s comments come just weeks before Canadians head to the polls on April 28 for a federal election. Carney called the snap-election just nine days after taking over for Justin Trudeau as leader of the Liberal Party and prime minister.

Carney, an admitted “globalist” and “elitist,” formerly served as head of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England, and has extensive ties to globalist groups like the World Economic Forum and the United Nations.

Trump’s comments regarding Carney may prove significant as much of the debate in the mainstream media ahead of the election has been about how the prospective leaders will handle tariff threats and trade deals with America.

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