TRANSPARANTLY OPAQUE: Shortly before appearing with his chief cost-cutter in the Oval Office, Donald Trump signed an executive order for agency executives to draw plans for massive staff cuts and giving Tesla billionaire Elon Musk greater authority over the federal workforce.

  Trump’s order says that, with some exceptions, each agency in the future may hire only one person for every four that departs.

  Answering questions from the press for the first time since he went to work for Trump, Musk stood next to the President at the Resolute Desk saying he has found the federal government to be rife with corruption and officials who have approved money for “fraudsters.”

  Musk was accompanied in the Oval Office by his 4-year-old son, X. Yes, that’s the name. Musk claimed for instance without evidence that “quite a few people” in the shuttered bureaucracy of USAID had “managed to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position.” He claimed that some recipients of Social Security checks are listed as 150 years old.

  President Trump had posted earlier in the day that, “Billions of Dollars of FRAUD, WASTE, AND ABUSE, has already been found in the investigation of our incompetently run Government.”

  But what Musk and his assistants at the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency are doing is not audits of expenditures, but blind firing of employees and cutting of budgets. Just three weeks into the administration, they could not possibly taken enough time to uncover corruption. They are firing a shotgun in the dark claiming to have hit a bird.

  Just yesterday DOGE announced $900 million in cuts at the Education Department aimed at the agency’s research division, the Institute of Education Sciences. They announced that DOGE “terminated” 89 contracts, as well as 29 grants associated with diversity and equity training.

  Musk claimed that DOGE is being completely “transparent” but its operations are being performed in secret and as a “special government employee” he does not have to disclose his finances and conflicts of interest even though his business has billions of dollars’ worth of contracts with the federal government.

THE WAR ROOM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed President Trump yesterday saying hostages in Gaza must be released by Saturday or “intense fighting” will resume. Netanyahu didn’t say how many hostages need to be released, but Hamas has said it is holding back three hostages set for release Saturday, claiming Israel broke the ceasefire.

  Sixteen of a planned 33 hostages have been released so far under the ceasefire agreement. Another 60 are being held, some of them believed to be dead.

  Expressing frustration with the process yesterday, Trump said, “I don’t want  

to do two and then we do two in another week and then we do four. They either have them out by Saturday at twelve o’clock or all bets are off.” He didn’t say what he meant by that, but he had previously said “all hell” would break loose if all the hostages are not let go on Saturday.

  Trump also repeated his claim that the US will take over Gaza for re-development and make it into the Riviera of the Middle East. “We’re gonna’ take it, we’re gonna’ hold it, we’re gonna’ cherish it.” Trump said he would not pay for Gaza, but just take it under US authority. “It’s gonna’ bring peace in the Middle East.”

BY APPOINTMENT: Senator Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, accused Donald Trump’s nominee to head the FBI of directing of directing a purge of career officials at the bureau before being confirmed as director. Durbin said that if the allegation is true, Kash Patel “may have perjured himself” at his confirmation hearing and that the firings would have been directed by a private citizen. The Judiciary committee is set to vote tomorrow on whether to advance Patel’s nomination to the full Senate. 

HIT THE SHOWERS:  The President seems to be unhappy with the water pressure in the White House showers. Yesterday he announced on his Truth Social feed that he’s instructing EPA Secretary Lee Zeldin to reverse Biden-era standards for water conservation “pertaining to SINKS, SHOWERS, TOILETS, WASHING MACHINES, DISHWASHERS” and “likewise go back to the common sense standards on LIGHTBULBS, that were put in place by the Trump Administration, but terminated by Crooked Joe.” 

  There is a problem with at least one dim bulb in the White House.

THE SPIN RACK: Marc Fogel, a teacher sentenced to 14 years in a Russian prison for possessing marijuana, was released yesterday in a deal negotiated by Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate investor. Fogel was flown out of Russia on Witcoff’s jet. — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has begun clearing debris from burned properties in Altadena and Pacific Palisades, California. A total of more than 16,000 structures were burned. — Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon pleaded guilty yesterday in Manhattan federal court to a single count of defrauding donors who sought to help build a southern border wall. Facing 5 to 15 years in prison, Bannon made a deal that gives him a three-year conditional discharge. — Crushed by tourists, the Italian city of Venice doubled its daytime entry fee from 5 euros to 10. — The Missouri attorney general filed a lawsuit against Starbucks claiming it Diversity, Equity hiring practices are discriminatory. — The Associated Press says the White House blocked it from covering an official event yesterday because the news agency did not refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the newly-decreed Gulf of America.

BELOW THE FOLD: A day after his Justice Department dropped federal corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, Donald Trump said on his Truth Social website that, “New York is the most corrupt State in the Union.”

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