Revealed: DOGE's Math Was Off By A Mere $35 Billion
A stand your ground law faces a test, Trump says a Michigan Democrat is worse than 9/11 and DOGE's math is finally exposed by the government
Good morning. I’m John Byrne, in for Corinne Straight.
ICE is now hunting travelers off flight manifests, and even the airlines are refusing to help. A trans woman in gun-friendly Wyoming drew her pistol after three men shoved her to the ground, and she’s the only one facing charges. President Trump told a Las Vegas casino crowd that electing a Michigan Democrat would be worse than 9/11, and critics are firing back. And a federal watchdog found DOGE couldn’t verify nearly $35 billion of the savings Elon Musk bragged about, and took credit for lease cancellations that predated the group.
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ICE Is Making Arrests at Airport Gates. The Airlines Are Saying No.
The Transportation Security Administration spent two decades teaching Americans that the airport is where your rights politely wait in a bin. ICE has now decided the checkpoint is also a place to get arrested.
According to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, ICE has stepped up immigration enforcement at U.S. airports, making one to three dozen arrests a day last month, from San Francisco to Miami to Kansas City. Top ICE leaders have told officers to attempt arrests at TSA checkpoints when possible.
The method is simple. TSA hands ICE the passenger manifests, and ICE scours them for targets. The cooperation started last summer and has led to hundreds of arrests.
Many of the people being taken into custody haven’t traditionally been targeted. Earlier cases involved final deportation orders. The new arrests include people with expired visas but a green card or asylum application still pending: people who typically have been allowed to keep working and have protections from being deported.
On July 25 in Dallas, an ICE agent stood near a gate and called out “David” as an Orlando-bound Southwest flight boarded. Agents tried to board with an administrative warrant. A gate agent refused to let them on without one signed by a judge, and declined to let them see the boarding screen.
Southwest has rebuffed ICE at least a half-dozen times in recent weeks. JetBlue says it doesn’t collect immigration status at all. A flight attendants’ union cited an agent in Minneapolis who boarded a plane to threaten a passenger who had criticized his presence.
The federal government spent years telling airlines to treat every passenger as a possible threat. Now the airlines are the ones asking for a warrant.
Wyoming Wrote a ‘Stand Your Ground’ Law. It Left Out the Fine Print on Who Counts.
Wyoming is the kind of place where you can carry a gun without a permit, register nothing, and stand your ground against anyone who threatens you. The catch, apparently, is a definition of “you” that nobody printed in the statute.
Rihanna Kelver, 28, is a transgender woman who grew up in Laramie, ran for the school board at 18, and now works at a local bar and grill. Last September, three men confronted her outside the Crowbar and Grill. One shoved her to the pavement.
The moment she landed on her back, she drew a .380 subcompact pistol and pointed it. She didn’t fire. The men walked away. The whole thing lasted about 10 seconds, and surveillance video captured it.
Wyoming’s “stand your ground” law says a person has no duty to retreat if they reasonably believe their safety is threatened and they were not the initial aggressor. Kelver was arrested and charged with aggravated assault and possession of a deadly weapon with unlawful intent, charges carrying up to 15 years.
None of the three men were charged. The man who pushed her, Scott Durham, is listed as the victim in police reports.
Kelver rejected a plea deal that would have spared her jail but stripped away her gun rights. She goes to trial in November.
The state built a law that lets you draw a gun when you’re knocked to the ground. The only person facing prison is the one who got knocked to the ground. (Read more about this story here.)
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Trump Ranks a Michigan Primary Above 9/11. New York Would Like a Word.
Every president eventually assembles a personal list of the worst things ever to happen to America, and Trump has now finished his. It ranks a Michigan Senate primary above Pearl Harbor.
Speaking in a Las Vegas casino on Wednesday, Trump went after Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, calling him “a man of hate” and using an expletive to describe him.
Then he made the comparison that stunned the room. “Communism is the greatest threat to our country in its history,” Trump said, “including even World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor, 9/11.”
On MS NOW’s “Morning Joe,” co-host Willie Geist said he was shocked, noting the president had said the election of a nominee in Michigan was worse than World War II, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11. Co-host Jonathan Lemire called the speech “obscene” and “inaccurate”, adding that the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks was coming up.
Contributor Mike Barnicle looked directly into the camera and issued a challenge. “Mr. President, if you’re listening this morning, I dare you to come to New York City on Sept. 11th,” he said, “and repeat what you just said here in Manhattan.”
Trump made the remarks weeks before the 25th anniversary of an attack that killed nearly 3,000 people.
The GAO Checked DOGE’s Math. Nearly $35 Billion of It Wasn’t There.
Elon Musk promised to run the government like a business, and he has finally delivered a business fundamental: inflated numbers on the receipts. The government’s own auditors just went through them line by line.
The Government Accountability Office examined $110 billion in savings DOGE claimed on its “Wall of Receipts,” a website tallying the cuts Musk swept through federal agencies to produce.
The results were not flattering. Of $61 billion in contract savings DOGE reported, the GAO found more than half — nearly $35 billion — was either not terminated at all or impossible to verify because DOGE’s data wasn’t specific enough to identify.
DOGE claimed it terminated 13,476 contracts. Nearly 2,000 of them were not terminated. It listed 264 leases as cuts, but 108 of them were already in process for termination before DOGE even existed.
The audit came at the request of Democratic Senators Gary Peters of Michigan and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. When the GAO tried to ask DOGE about its figures and submitted written questions, DOGE did not respond.
Musk aimed to cut $2 trillion. He claimed $215 billion. The auditors couldn’t confirm most of the slice they checked, and the group that produced the numbers wouldn’t answer the phone.
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