Today in Politics, Bulletin 69. 2/11/25

… Elon Musk was in the Oval Office today having a press conference while Trump had to sit there quietly on babysitting duty.

… Trump did get one question about judges ruling against his Admin to block most of Musk’s moves: “It seems hard to believe that judges want to try and stop us from looking for corruption. So maybe we have to look at the judges, because I think it's a very serious violation.” Spoken like a true mob boss.

… But the real story was Trump sitting there looking very annoyed at the resolute desk while Elon’s kid picked his nose while his dad held court, laughing it up while gesticulating weirdly, taking question after question from the press. Trump looked thrilled as Musk basked in the attention.

… Rep. Eli Crane says he’s going after the judge who ruled against DOGE: “I’m drafting articles of impeachment for US District Judge Paul Engelmayer. Partisan judges abusing their positions is a threat to democracy. The left has done irreparable harm to this country. Trump and his team at DOGE are trying to fix it. This is obviously judicial overreach. Judge Engelmayer is attempting to stop WH employees from accessing the very systems they oversee.”

… Trump’s senior WH legal advisor Alina Habba missed a few too many constitutional law classes: “There’s a separation of powers for a reason. The executive branch is the ultimate authority on federal issues.”

… James Madison just rolled over in his grave.

… Musk reposted a Laura Loomer tweet this morning to his 200+ million followers which contained the name and employment information about Judge’s daughter, who apparently works for the Department of Education if it is correct. Last week he threatened a WSJ reporter with jail just for naming 6 of the people on his DOGE team.

… Sen. Elizabeth Warren on MSNBC: "My view right now is the courts are where we are hanging on to our constitutional structure. They still have the power to hold everybody else in this country in contempt if they do not follow lawfully issued court orders."

… Mother Jones: “In the 3 weeks since Trump took office, Elon Musk has posted on X at the pace of an iPad-addicted child. During a roughly two-hour stretch on Friday morning, Musk tweeted more than 40 times—about once every three minutes.

… Meanwhile, Musk changed his screen name on X for most of the day to ‘Harry Bolz’. He eventually changed it back - most likely after Cabinet secretaries, government officials, Senators and House members complained that it made it more difficult to retweet posts from ‘Harry Bolz’ out to their constituents.

… HuffPost reports that a federal employee who works on intelligence matters told them that Musk's DOGE team was at the Defense Intelligence Agency over the weekend. After that visit, DIA leaders were asked to send a full list of personnel in the agency to OPM who may have been “DEI hires”. That list of personnel included intel officials who work undercover or are embedded in foreign countries.

… AP reported ongoing govt investigations against Musk will now likely go way. These include crash investigations into Tesla’s self-driving vehicles; a DOJ criminal probe of whether Musk and Tesla have overstated their cars’ self-driving capabilities; and a govt mandate to report crash data. Missy Cummings, former senior safety advisor at NHTSA: “Musk wants to run the Dept of Transportation. I’ve lost count of the number of investigations that are underway with Tesla. They will all be gone.”

… But it isn’t just Tesla. Several of Musk’s other businesses, including SpaceX and the social media platform X, are also under federal investigations for various things.

… Reporter Caleb Ecarma: “DOGE's Edward "Big Balls" Coristine launched a privacy-focused image-sharing site in 2021 that allowed users to create custom URLs. The URLs that redirected to Coristine's site referenced the sale of child sexual abuse material, racial slurs, and rape.”

… Rep. Tim Burchett: “When I hear the Left run down a bunch of 19-20 year olds at DOGE, I think about my folks and the WWII generation that saved the world from tyranny destruction and evil.” I don’t.

If you missed yesterday’s Bulletin, you can read it here.

… Trump was asked by Fox if JD Vance has his support right now for president in 2028: “No, but he’s very capable. But I think you have a lot of very capable people. It’s too early. We’re just starting.”

… While meeting earlier today with the King of Jordan and a visibly uncomfortable Sec of State Rubio, Trump changed his position from yesterday and said the US is not going to buy Gaza, we are just going to take it: “We’re gonna take it, we’re gonna hold it, we’re gonna cherish it.”

… Trump was asked if Palestinians would ever be allowed to return to Gaza under his plan: "No, they wouldn't because they're going to have much better housing. In other words, I'm talking about building a permanent place for them.” So the ‘America First’ president is going to build free housing for Palestinians. Just what people voted for.

… A reporter asked Trump what would happen if any Palestinians refuse to leave Gaza: “They're all gonna leave.”

… Axios reports that Netanyahu met Saturday in DC with Jared Kushner to discuss Trump’s Gaza plan. For some reason.

… Of course, everything Trump is now saying about Gaza directly contradicts what Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week, which is that Palestinians would only "temporarily" be moved out of Gaza until it is rebuilt, then they would be able to return.

… Leavitt who opened her first day at Press Secretary by telling the press that she would never lie to them.

… MMA fighter and Trump supporter Sean Strickland: “Man, if Trump keeps this bullshit up, I'm about to start waving a Palestinian flag. American cities are shitholes and you wanna go spend billions on this dumpster fire? Did we make a mistake?! This ain't America first.”

… Trump is doing everything he possibly can to screw up the Gaza hostage exchanges that have been painstakingly negotiated for months. In addition to telling them he is going to seize their land, he now adds this: "As far as I'm concerned, if all of the hostages aren't returned by Saturday at 12:00, I would say cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out. I'd say they ought to be returned by 12:00 Saturday and if they're not returned, all of them, not in drips and drabs, not 2 and 1 and 3 and 4 and 2."

… Page Six reports that Kid Rock and Lauren Boebert were seen getting into a cab together in at 2:30 AM after attending the same party: “Our (rather tawdry!) source suggested the pair planned to, er, keep the inaugural balls swinging into the wee hours .. and said Lauren was totally transfixed by the rock star, yapping away, doing a little dance, and clapping like she was front row at his concert - basically giving Kid Rock all the hype he needed.”

… Page Six asked Boebert’s press secretary if she wanted to comment: “I think we’ll pass.”

… Border Czar Tom Homan has been getting an earful about deportation arrests being much lower than promised. NewsNation reported that a source close to Trump said he told Homan: “The numbers are too fucking low!”

… When NewsNation asked Homan if Trump is happy with how the deportations were going so far, Homan responded: “I’m not. I’m not satisfied. There are more criminal aliens that need to be arrested, hundreds of thousands. Sanctuary cities are putting roadblocks up. We’ve got leaks.”

… He told Newsmax he believes that a federal agent leaked their big raid in CA to the press, which made it another flop. He then referred to an LA Times report that said agents are planning to carry out a “large scale” immigration enforcement action in LA in the next couple of weeks. They cited a fed law enforcement source who told them that agents with the FBI and the DEA’s LA field offices are being called in to assist: “They needed more bodies.”

… Kristi Noem was furious about it also and said she is going to hunt down the person who spoke to the Times: “The FBI is so corrupt. We will work with any and every agency to stop leaks and prosecute these crooked deep state agents to the fullest extent of the law.”

… Homan told Fox he is going to make the source pay: “Secretary Noem is correct. Some of the information we are receiving tends to lead towards the FBI. I talked to the Dep AG and they’ve opened up a criminal investigation. They promised that not only will this person lose their job and their pension, they will go to jail.”

… Homan also explained why many of the people they are arresting and deporting don’t have criminal records: "We'll find the bad guy, but if he's with others - others that aren't a criminal priority but are in the country illegally - they're gonna go too. So sanctuary cities are gonna get exactly what they don't want - more agents in the neighborhoods and more non-criminals being arrested."

… Latin Times reported that men dressed in hoodies descended on a taco truck in Memphis and arrested several workers. The company TACOnganas Memphis posted a video of the incident and released a statement. "Earlier today, individuals entered one of our trucks and took away several of our employees. We do not know what prompted this. We have heard from the employees. They've been told they're being detained by ICE.

… “You'll see they have no uniforms, do not show any badge or ID, and did not leave any identifying information or paperwork. If not for our security cameras, we would not even know this happened. We've contacted legal aid organizations to help the employees, and we're gathering any information we have to share with their families. Our company complies with federal and local immigration laws, and we know everyone is dealing with situations like this. We know our community is scared.”

… An interesting battle between House and Senate Republicans has unfolded, as members of the House Freedom Caucus have teamed up with Lindsey Graham and Senate Republicans to undermine Speaker Mike Johnson.

… Part of the issue is Homan yelling and screaming about needing more money urgently, and using that as his excuse for deportations being low. Republicans in the House and Senate want to give it to him, but Trump and Johnson want to package that into one “big beautiful bill” with their massive tax cuts and other agenda items. The reason is because they know their paltry spending cuts combined with tax cuts are going to infuriate deficit hawks, and figure the only way to get them on board is to force them to have to also vote against border funding in the same bill.

… Fox reported that Trump Budget Director Russ Vought told Republican Senators today at a luncheon that $175 billion is urgently needed for border security and immigration enforcement, as funds are beginning to run out.

… This is what Lindsey Graham has been saying for a week while Mike Johnson has steadfastly disagreed with him saying there is no rush. It appears Vought is siding with the Senate’s plan of a faster more limited bill for now which doesn’t include the Trump tax cuts.

… But those deficit hawks in the House Freedom Caucus see the trap and figure that the Senate’s package is a way for them to wiggle out of it so they can force deeper spending cuts in the second bill. That is because the Senate package primarily only addresses border and deportation funding. But the cuts those hawks want are likely to involve Medicaid and Social Security, which most moderate Republicans do not want to touch.

… The House Freedom Caucus account posted this on X: “President Trump needs more resources for border security and immigration enforcement NOW. Freedom Caucus continues to have the only plan in the House to get this funding ASAP. We cannot wait months to do this.”

Just a reminder that there is no Bulletin tomorrow since I do my live podcast ‘Uncovered’ every Wednesday at 4:00 ET. I do a deep dive on the top 10-12 news items of the week with a lot more context and commentary. I will post the link as usual on Substack tomorrow, but you can watch it any time.

… But Punchbowl reports that Johnson told his Leadership Committee that he would not bring up Lindsey's budget resolution if it passed the Senate because he insists on doing everything in one package. So it appears Republicans are in a standoff with