Economics

Georgia perennial candidate and Democratic organizer Stacey Abrams has found herself at the center of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) into how much her “community investment group” received from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Abrams’s liberal organization, Power Forward Communities, was slated to receive at least $2 billion in community grants from the Biden-Harris administration.

However, those payments won’t be happening, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement.

“I made a commitment to members of Congress and to the American people to be a good steward of tax dollars, and I’ve wasted no time in keeping my word,” Zeldin told the Washington Free Beacon.

“When we learned about the Biden administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organizations were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this.”

“As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been,” the EPA administrator continued.

“It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”

Power Forward Communities was founded in October 2023 following Abrams’s failed bid for office against Gov. Brian Kemp.

Abrams is credited with helping Democrats flip Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats during the December 2020 elections.

In January, the Georgia Ethics Commission imposed a record-breaking $300,000 fine on a voter registration group founded by Abrams for breaches of state campaign finance regulations during the 2018 elections.

During the same month, a legal entity founded by Abrams intended to oppose efforts to limit voter fraud in the 2020 elections lost a three-year court battle, resulting in a loss and an order to pay the state back $231,000 in legal costs.

Abrams’s latest pet project told the Biden EPA that it intended to dole out $2 billion to help install heat pumps, water heaters, solar panels, home battery systems, EV chargers, and weatherization upgrades.

It was the only press statement the group ever released, while Power Forward Communities reported receiving just $100 in revenue in 2023.

“For an organization that has no experience in this, that was literally just established, and had $100 in the bank to receive a $2 billion grant—it doesn’t just fly in the face of common sense, it’s out-and-out fraud,” Daniel Turner, the executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, alleged in an interview with the Free Beacon.

“President Trump was elected with a mandate from the American people to stop the fraud and abuse by leaders who irresponsibly shoveled boatloads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity, instead of serving the American people,” Zeldin said.

“Those days are over.”

Read More at Daily Fetched

Less than two weeks into Trump’s second presidency, Elon Musk-led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has slashed over $1 billion by canceling over one hundred “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion” (DEI) contracts. Musk had promised to cut “at least $2 trillion” of the $6.75 trillion federal budget.

Over three-quarters of the recent savings were realized by canceling DEI contracts in just three departments. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was the most impacted, of which DOGE slashed $494,956,223. DOGE also saved $228,730,692 from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and $110,618,680 from the Department of Agriculture.

The least savings were from the General Services Administration—Federal Acquisition Service (FAS), which had a spending ceiling of $15,168, and only the administrative costs were saved. 

The Department of Treasury had 21 DEI contracts canceled, amounting to over $25 million, followed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), in which DOGE terminated 15 contracts amounting to over $28 million. The Department of Agriculture, also one of the top-grossing agencies, had 11 DEI contracts canceled.

DOGE has also highlighted other unreasonable expenditures, including $784 million for constructing a new Embassy in South Sudan, one of the youngest nations with a population of slightly above 10 million. 

Other potential savings could be realized by defunding Planned Parenthood, which receives nearly $700 million through government health services reimbursements and grants.

Besides DEI spending, Trump and Musk have suggested shutting down entire departments, such as the Department of Education, and returning education responsibilities to the states. In November 2024, Musk also shared Milton Friedman’s vision of a lean government, highlighting agencies that should cease to exist.

They include the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, the Department of Education, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Transportation. Trump’s HHS Secretary RFK Jr. has also suggested scrapping the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA).

While these departments earmarked for scrapping might be serving some purpose, DEI programs are an absolute waste of taxpayers’ money. They also affect government efficiency by turning down the most qualified individuals based on unrelated characteristics such as race, gender, and sexual orientation.

Hot on the heels of the recent air tragedy, it emerged that nearly 1,000 FAA air traffic controllers were turned down because they did not meet the DEI hiring criteria despite acing the pre-employment test. 

Meanwhile, Musk has a long way to go to achieve his initially projected $2 trillion target, which he later reduced by half. Nonetheless, any savings, especially those linked to destructive ideologies like DEI, are highly welcome. We can only hope that DOGE will accelerate the cancelations as the Trump administration settles in.

Musk must also surmount various challenges, including non-cooperation by senior employees. Recently, USAID’s director of security and his deputy were sent on administrative leave after denying DOGE employees access to its systems, claiming that some did not have the necessary security clearances.

However, DOGE officials say they did not attempt to access classified materials for which they did not have security clearances.

“No classified material was accessed without proper security clearances,” Kate Miller stated.

As DOGE gains steam, such incidents are only likely to increase, hampering its ability to audit government agencies.

A survey published in mid-January revealed that business leaders are hopeful that the U.S. will avoid a major recession now that President Trump has returned to the White House.

“The January 2025 NABE Business Conditions Survey results reveal that business conditions remained relatively unchanged through the end of 2024, although a larger share of respondents than in the previous survey foresees higher prices going forward,” said National Association of Business Economics President Emily Kolinski Morris in the study published by the organization. “At the same time, the odds of a recession continue to diminish according to panelists, with the downside risks largely tied to uncertainty over the implementation and timing of policy proposals from the new administration.” 

Experts Speak Out

A majority (82%) of NABE members said the probability of the U.S. entering a recession is roughly 25% or even lower over the coming year. Some 62% reported no change in recent prices while 30% reported higher prices, the smallest share since Jan 2021, according to analysis by the Daily Caller.

“The survey results suggest a steady-state economy,” NABE Business Conditions Survey Chair Selma Hepp, chief economist and senior vice president at CoreLogic, wrote in the press release. “However, concerns remain regarding shortages of skilled labor and a potential for more price pressures ahead. In addition, the outcome of the recent U.S. elections did not change hiring or investment plans for 70% of respondents.”

Read More at Million Voices

Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) found that Native-born American employment is 716,000 below pre-pandemic levels as President Joe Biden leaves the White House.

Despite the regrowth of millions of jobs in the post-COVID-19 pandemic market, the total workforce failed to fully recover throughout the Biden administration’s term in office, FRED revealed. When the figures take into account foreign-born employment, the total workforce has grown to record levels.

Even though the data shows that American-born workers are still not back and working like they used to be, Biden’s White House claimed victory for “American workers” in the face of a “sluggish recovery,” the Daily Caller News Foundation wrote in its analysis. 

“Over 1.6 million construction and manufacturing jobs have been created under President Biden,” the White House stated in December. “His economic plan is creating good-paying jobs for American workers.”

Misrepresenting The Numbers?

Fox News host Shannon Bream recently confronted Vice President-elect J.D. Vance over Biden’s allegedly “good” jobs numbers, according to Newsweek. Vance explained that Biden deserves credit for the “dumpster fire” of an American economy.

“He actually hasn’t left the American people in good economic condition, that’s why they made Donald J. Trump president-elect of the United States,” Vance told Fox. He also touched upon the cost of living, our “trillions and trillions of dollars” of federal debt, as well as skyrocketing oil prices that have occurred in the last two months of Biden’s term. Newsweek then described how inflation has allegedly cooled since the pandemic. Have you felt this?

We’re Not Stupid

Americans aren’t stupid. The economy was the #1 concern for the 2024 presidential vote, as reported by Gallup. In fact, the economy was so important, it ranked the highest since the Great Recession of 2008. 

One demographic that did exceptionally well under Biden’s economy was government workers, according to the Daily Caller. The new highs of 23.5 million employees on the government’s (our) payroll, as of December 2024, follows a record-setting trend by the Biden-Harris administration: hiring people to work for the government, despite overall unemployment rising across the country. 

“The percentage of the total workforce that is employed by the government has been steadily increasing for two and a half years, including in the December [BLS] report,” Heritage Foundation federal budget expert Richard Stern told the outlet. “This indicates that once Biden’s economic policies could take effect, they started to strangle the private sector and transfer resources to local, state, and federal governments.”

Read More at Million Voices