(February 19, 2025 at 8:29 am)emjay Wrote: I just cannot believe what I'm seeing from Trump these days... and his cringey lapdog Vance wanting more free speech, presumably for the Far Right, in Europe... I can barely tell him apart from Putin. Is that what counts for "negotiation" in his world, just offer Putin everything he's been asking for all along and more, throwing Europe and Ukraine under the bus along the way... that'll only embolden Russia if it hasn't already. I just truly can't believe what I'm seeing. He wasn't as bad as this the first time round, wtf has changed? We live in terrifying times, now coming from both East and West

(February 19, 2025 at 11:34 am)AFTT47 Wrote:

(February 19, 2025 at 8:29 am)emjay Wrote: I just cannot believe what I'm seeing from Trump these days... and his cringey lapdog Vance wanting more free speech, presumably for the Far Right, in Europe... I can barely tell him apart from Putin. Is that what counts for "negotiation" in his world, just offer Putin everything he's been asking for all along and more, throwing Europe and Ukraine under the bus along the way... that'll only embolden Russia if it hasn't already. I just truly can't believe what I'm seeing. He wasn't as bad as this the first time round, wtf has changed? We live in terrifying times, now coming from both East and West

Give me a break. Trump was exactly the same 8 years ago. He hasn't changed a bit. What's different is that he wasn't surrounded by spineless yes men in his first term. His administration was full of gullible fools who didn't initially recognize him for what he was but aside from that, many of them really were "adults in the room." This time, Trump made sure to surround himself with mindless, spineless idiots who will just happily do his bidding no matter how insane it is. That's the only difference.

(February 19, 2025 at 1:15 pm)emjay Wrote:

(February 19, 2025 at 11:34 am)AFTT47 Wrote: Give me a break. Trump was exactly the same 8 years ago. He hasn't changed a bit. What's different is that he wasn't surrounded by spineless yes men in his first term. His administration was full of gullible fools who didn't initially recognize him for what he was but aside from that, many of them really were "adults in the room." This time, Trump made sure to surround himself with mindless, spineless idiots who will just happily do his bidding no matter how insane it is. That's the only difference.

I just mean i've never seen him so aggressive before... warmongering, in the guise of peacemaking. I'm not American and I've never followed him or his politics closely before, but this time round feels very different... here I feel I have to watch his every move like a hawk, waiting with baited breath for whatever fucked up thing he might do next that could have catastrophic consequences for the world.

(February 19, 2025 at 8:29 am)emjay Wrote: Is that what counts for "negotiation" in his world, just offer Putin everything he's been asking for all along and more, throwing Europe and Ukraine under the bus along the way... that'll only embolden Russia if it hasn't already.

Quote:A CNN review of contracting data showed that about two-thirds of the total claimed savings from contracts listed on the DOGE site came from taking the maximum amount that could possibly have been spent on so-called “indefinite delivery” contracts like the questionable ICE contract — even if the government was unlikely to spend that much. One former federal contracting official called DOGE’s savings claims “completely disingenuous.”

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The ICE contract wasn’t the only questionable savings amount claimed by DOGE. The second-, third- and fourth-largest savings listed on the DOGE site came from three IDV contracts signed by the US Agency for International Development, or USAID, related to services for the agency’s research office. Each contract lists a maximum ceiling value of $655 million.

Since the contracts were signed in 2020, the government has only committed to spending about $55 million in total under all three of them over the last four and half years, according to USA Spending data. But because DOGE’s tally of savings uses the maximum possible amount that could theoretically be spent on each, the department is claiming it saved taxpayers more than $1.9 billion in total by canceling them.

Overall, about two-thirds of the total savings claimed from contracts listed on the DOGE site — including the original $8 billion listed for the ICE contract — came from IDV contracts, with the savings amount relying on the maximum possible spending.

Quote:On the afternoon of Friday, February 7, as staff members were getting ready to leave the headquarters of the National Institutes of Health, just outside Washington, D.C., officials in the Office of Extramural Research received an unexpected memo. It came from the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, and arrived with clear instructions: Post this announcement on your website immediately.

The memo announced a new policy that, for many universities and other institutions, would hamstring scientific research. It said that the NIH planned to cap so-called indirect costs funded by grants—overhead that covers the day-to-day administrative and logistical duties of research. Some NIH-grant recipients had negotiated rates as high as 75 percent; going forward, the memo said, they would now be limited to just 15 percent. And this new cap would apply even to grants that had already been awarded.

The announcement was written as if it had come from the NIH Office of the Director. It also directed all inquiries to the Office of Extramural Research’s policy branch. And yet, no one at the NIH had seen the text until that Friday afternoon, several current and former NIH officials with knowledge of the situation told me. “None of us had anything to do with that document,” one of them said. But the memo was dressed up in a way clearly intended to make it look like a homegrown NIH initiative. (Everyone I spoke with for this story requested anonymity out of fear of reprisal from the Trump administration. HHS did not respond to requests for comment.)

(February 20, 2025 at 6:52 am)The Valkyrie Wrote: The Orange moron has, basically, just declared himself "king".

I hope he visits the Senate on the Ides of March...

Quote:WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s restrictions on foreign aid and targeting of a key agency funding programs around the world may be offering an opening to America’s biggest adversary — China.

From the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development to quitting international groups, Trump’s drastic “America First” moves have raised concerns among some lawmakers and experts about whether the U.S. is ceding global influence to its rivals, especially at a time when Washington is fretting over Beijing’s growing clout at the cost to American interests.

Foreign assistance offered the U.S. a source of “soft power” — allowing it to cultivate goodwill, build alliances and counter adversaries in a bid to shore up national security without having to dispatch troops, weapons or other more coercive measures.

In Cambodia, the contrast could not be sharper than China sending $4.4 million to support demining operations, as Trump halted a $6.3 million grant from the State Department’s Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement partly meant to clear “U.S.-origin unexploded ordnances as the remnants of war.”

[...]

“The second Trump administration will deliver the goal for China” of wielding greater global influence, Feng Zhang, a visiting scholar at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, said at a recent debate in Washington.