The left fears that Elon Musk might steal your identity and open a new credit card. Plus: AP's stubborn style. Church & state.

By Gary Abernathy

Trump is daring to reach out and touch the untouchable

Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash

“Congressional Republicans are ignoring their duty to our country while President Trump and Elon Musk trample the Constitution.”

“Why won’t Republicans in Congress stand up to Donald Trump?”

“Republicans in the House and Senate have proven they have no spine when it comes to opposing Donald Trump’s assault on our government institutions.”

On and on it goes, day after day, with Democrats and their far-left (formerly mainstream) media allies repeating the mantra that congressional Republicans cower in the corner when Donald Trump’s shadow passes over them. They insist that what Trump and Musk are doing must be stopped, and Republicans don’t have the backbone to stand up to them.

What few seem to understand or suggest is that most congressional Republicans are in favor of what Trump and Musk are doing — at least to one degree or another, depending on the Republican — but many of them have seldom been willing to voice the opinion that the federal government needs dismantled and, to coin a Biden administration phrase, built back better. And leaner.

Trump is providing cover for Republicans who, depending on their state or their district, might not be anxious to call for gutting certain departments, either because many of their constituents seem to like or depend on certain ones, or because there’s a large contingent of federal offices and workers connected to various agencies that are operating branches in their particular state or region.

But it’s safe to say that a majority of congressional Republicans are privately — some not so privately, obviously — thrilled that Trump (and Musk) are taking the shears to a bloated and largely unaccountable federal bureaucracy.

Another alarm that is routinely sounded is that Musk and his DOGE team are accessing Americans’ personal data. Oh my!

This would be more alarming if not for almost routine notices nearly every American has received in the mail in the last 10 years. Most Americans long ago became accustomed to receiving alerts from their employer, their insurance carrier, their telephone company, their healthcare provider, or even a government agency alerting them that their data has been breached. To make up for it, they offer us a year or two of free credit monitoring.

Safe to say that most Americans have accepted the sad reality that their Social Security numbers, dates of birth, annual incomes, and countless other bits of personal identifying information are in the nefarious hands of hackers.

Identity theft is rampant. But Americans are supposed to be up in arms over the fact that the DOGE team — under the legal authority of the duly elected president of the United States — is accessing their personal info?

While story after story tries to raise alarms over this development, few go on to explain why this would be dangerous. The federal government already has our personal information. We provide it every time we file a tax return, or apply for some sort of government benefits. I worry less about what Elon Musk will do with that info than what some anonymous and unscrupulous IRS, Social Security or Medicare/Medicaid employee might do with it. Whatever bad things can come from the government accessing our personal info was being done a long time ago.

Should I be worried that Elon Musk might open a credit card in my name? I kinda doubt it.

The far-left (formerly mainstream) media naturally downplays any successes the Trump administration is having, from cost-cutting to curtailing illegal immigration. But it’s amusing when an “analysis” denying that Trump and Musk’s claims of finding substantial waste are completely — and effectively — contradicted in the same piece, as well as by another column in the same publication.

That’s what happened last week at the Washington Post. First, on Feb. 12, the Post’s “fact checker,” Glenn Kessler, ran a “fact check” under the headline, “Trump says DOGE found ‘tens of billions’ in savings. Not even close.”

Kessler wrote, “DOGE has claimed only about $2 billion in annual savings from specific line items — most of which appear to come from ending diversity or climate change programs. Whether that constitutes ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ is a matter of opinion.”

Then, Kessler completely contradicts himself, noting that according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), “One report, issued last year, said that the ‘federal government loses an estimated $233 billion to $521 billion’ every year to fraud. The other report, also issued in 2024, cited an estimated $236 billion of improper payments for fiscal year 2023.”

So, “tens of billions,” just as Trump claimed, right? Wrong, according to Kessler, “These reports are filled with caveats, as they are estimates. The 2024 report on fraud relied on information from agency inspectors general, whom Trump has fired, and existing cases — fraud that had already been identified. Then an estimate of potential fraud was developed. As for the improper payments, these were mostly agency estimates of overpayments. But, again, these are estimates, not hard facts, as Trump claimed.”

So Kessler’s justification for saying Trump is “not even close” is because GAO numbers — long trusted by both sides of the political aisle — are “estimates, not hard facts, as Trump claimed.”

This is why people don’t trust the far-left (formerly mainstream) media.

Fortunately, the very next day, in the very same newspaper, columnist Marc Thiessen clarified it for everyone in an article headlined, “Behind the DOGE outrage machine.” Like Kessler, Thiessen cited the GAO figures, but elaborated on them and put them into proper perspective.

“Last March, the Government Accountability Office issued a report in which it estimated that the federal government had spent a whopping $236 billion on “improper payments” during the previous fiscal year, including $175 billion in payments to deceased individuals or those no longer eligible for government programs, and $44.6 billion in ‘unknown payments’ — meaning the government does not know where the money went,” Thiessen wrote.

“To put that in perspective, $236 billion is nearly three times the entire budget of the Department of Homeland Security, nearly three times the budget of the Education Department, and nearly twice what the federal government spent on infrastructure projects that year. It is the equivalent of more than half of all corporate taxes the federal government took in that year — all wasted, lost or stolen through fraud,” he noted.

“Worse, the GAO reports that in some fiscal years, waste and fraud reached as high as $521 billion, and have cost taxpayers more than $2.4 trillion over the past two decades. And that is just an estimate made without the benefit of the AI-powered accounting efforts Musk’s revamped USDS is applying,” Thiessen pointed out.

But according to “fact checker” Kessler, nothing to see here.

By the way, the Post lets us know at the end of “fact check” columns that the Post fact checker “is a verified signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network code of principles.” Apparently, the first principle is “always find ways to call Donald Trump a liar.”

Finally, the far-left (formerly mainstream) media’s crocodile tears for the plight of laid-off federal workers is another thing that’s not winning them any plaudits from the general public. Apparently, according to the media, a lot of federal employees are entitled to their jobs for life.

USA Today, for example, ran a story under the headline, “‘Took away my hope.’ Federal workers say Trump mass firing upended their lives.”

This was actually the lead paragraph: “The termination notice came just before Valentine's Day, and Elena Moseyko's heart was shattered as she broke down crying in front of her two young children.”

Focusing on various people who were losing their jobs, the story added, “They worried about everything from making rent to paying student loans. Many talked about going into government work because they value public service and feeling like those values are being trampled. ‘I'm much more angry than devastated,’ said Chelsea Milburn, a 34-year-old Navy reservist, who lost her job as a public affairs specialist for the Department of Education. ‘It took away my hope that I would continue to be respected and valued for my service. And especially in the way the termination happened.’”

Apparently, there were no flowers or candy sent with the termination notice.

All people who lose their jobs worry about paying their bills. And whether you feel “respected and valued” is, in fact, based on an inner quality of self-assurance, not on feedback from others, which can leave you an emotional wreck if you put too much stock in it.

Remember, nearly all federal workers were offered the chance to take advantage of an extremely generous buyout offer, which would have given them seven or eight months of pay and continued benefits while they were job hunting. The Trump administration had made it abundantly clear that not taking advantage of the offer was risky, since layoffs were likely. Unions did their workers no favors by advising against taking the buyouts.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American changes jobs about every four years, sometimes by choice, sometimes by being fired or laid off. Most Americans hold about 12 different jobs in their working lifetimes. Good luck finding outrage outside the federal workforce for people who, like most of us have had to do, now have to go job hunting.

It’s unfortunate. It can be difficult. But it can be done. The attitudes that have emerged in story after story lately about federal workers in shock over losing their jobs tells us everything about our bloated federal workforce, how it got that way, and why it stays that way — up to now, anyway.

The AP’s stubbornness on the Gulf of Mexico/America

Photo by Ryan Spaulding on Unsplash

When President Trump decreed that the Gulf of Mexico would henceforth be known as the Gulf of America, I thought it was silly. I still do. But who cares?

Our most popular mapping agencies have followed Trump’s lead, but the Associated Press says no. Why?

All three newspapers where I worked subscribed to the Associated Press. Back then, in a world where most media was already far to the left politically, the AP was an unbiased, “just the facts” reporting agency. That has changed in recent years, as the AP has joined the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSBNC, NBC, ABC, CBS and others as a far-left attack dog against Trump specifically and Republicans who support him generally. It’s really too bad.

The AP says it won’t change its stylebook to adopt the gulf’s new name because it’s been the Gulf of Mexico for 400 years and, as a news agency that serves countries outside the U.S., “the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.”

That’s not a good argument. First, while it does indeed serve news agencies far and wide outside the U.S., the AP is an American company. Like CNN, just because it is read or watched elsewhere, with physical offices in other countries, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t proudly identify as a U.S. organization.

But here’s the thing: Now as in the past, local editors have the ability to edit AP stories to better reflect local preferences. For example, when I worked at the Hillsboro, Ohio, newspaper (Hillsboro Press Gazette, later The Times-Gazette) I often edited AP stories that came in about things happening in or around Hillsboro or Highland County. Most local editors (those who actually read the AP stories before publishing them, anyway) do the same.

For instance, the AP might report on something happening at nearby Rocky Fork Lake, and the story would say something like, “Rocky Fork Lake is located about three miles east of Hillsboro, Ohio.” I would delete that line, because local readers were well aware of Rocky Fork Lake and its location.

There are many examples of how editors slightly revise AP stories to be consumed by local readers when the story concerns something happening locally. The AP naturally writes for a broader audience than the local readers who live where the story is focused.

For local stories, the AP was often a good source of additional detail to buttress local reporting. It’s common for editors to take a couple of paragraphs from an AP story to insert into locally-written articles, usually with a note at the ending saying something like, “The Associated Press contributed to this story.”

That’s why the AP’s argument that it must continue to refer to the “Gulf of Mexico” for its international agencies and readers doesn’t hold water. As a U.S.-based company, the AP could easily justify calling the gulf by its new name, while editors in Mexico and and any other country (and in the U.S. for that matter) could edit it to say “Gulf of Mexico.” (Likewise, U.S. editors can easily change the AP’s stubborn style to say “Gulf of America” if that is their preference.)

No, the AP’s insistence on referring to the Gulf of Mexico even if it costs them access to certain presidential events seems as petty as Trump’s insistence that the AP change its style. The AP should change the name, since it is actually official in this country, and if it wants, it can append a notice atop stories alerting editors that the “Gulf of America” is being used, in case local editors want to change it.

Despite what some are rigidly stating, this is really not the hill to die on as a news agency.

Random thoughts on this and that …

The state is not the church. News outlets continue to focus on the hardships created by cuts in federal funding pursued by the Trump administration, as well as sympathetic stories focused on illegal immigrants (the media too often refuses to use the “illegal” descriptor, which misleads readers and viewers) who are scared because of the Trump administration’s crackdowns. Annual reminder: The work of the church is not the work of the state. People often cite Bible passages to insist our government has a duty to care for the poor and downtrodden. While a social safety net is good for extreme (and usually short-term) cases, the job of feeding, housing and generally caring for the poor and downtrodden falls to churches and other private charitable institutions. Confusing the state with the church leads to a huge misunderstanding of the job of one versus the other.

That ain’t free speech. In rebuking Vice President J.D. Vance for calling on Europe to do more to protect freedom of speech, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz actually said this: “We should be very clear that free speech in Europe means that you are not attacking others in ways that are against legislation and laws we have in our country.” So, the opposite of free speech. Amazing.

Our media loves European leaders. When Republicans are in the White House, it’s sad the lengths to which today’s far-left (formerly mainstream) media goes to present European leaders as being morally superior to U.S. leaders. They delight in presenting stories on how European leaders are chastising U.S. leaders — and it’s clear which side they’re on.

Chase’s Dimon lays down the law. The greatest quotes of the year so far all came last week from Chase CEO Jamie Dimon in leaked audio on the topic of working from home versus working in the office.

“It simply doesn’t work,” Dimon told employees about working from home. “And it doesn’t work for creativity. It slows down decision-making. And don’t give me the s‑‑‑ that ‘work from home Friday’ works. I call a lot of people on Friday. There’s not a g- - - - -n person to get a hold of. The young generation is being damaged by this. That may or may not be in your particular staff, but they are being left behind. They’re being left behind socially, ideas, meeting people — In fact, my guess is most of you live in communities a hell of a lot less diverse than this room.”

But his kicker was the best of all, directed at employees balking at returning to the office: “You don’t have to work at JP Morgan. So, the people of you who don’t want to work at the company, that’s fine with me. I’m not mad at you. Don’t be mad at me. It’s a free country. You can walk on your feet. But this company is going to set our own standards and do it our own way. And I’ve had it with this kind of stuff.”

Bravo.

‘MAGA Republicans Are Already Normal’ — for yourself or for that friend or loved one confused about the election

“MAGA Republicans Are Already Normal — And Other Shocking Notions” is a great addition to the library of MAGA Trump supporters, or the perfect gift for non-MAGA friends and loved ones to help them make sense of the 2024 election results. It’s available on Amazon. Buy it here.

The book (actually much thicker than the illustrations above indicate — the hardcover and paperback are each 453 pages) is a compilation of many of the nearly 200 columns I wrote for the Washington Post from 2017 to 2023 (and a handful of columns I wrote about Trump for The (Hillsboro) Times-Gazette from 2015 to 2017). The columns cover a variety of topics, but they particularly focus on Trump’s rise to political prominence and help explain his appeal.

Here’s a link to a website dedicated to the book.

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