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DOGE has directly affected Hurricane Prep

  • May 5
  • 7 min read

As an engineer who flies into hurricanes for the US government, Josh Ripp is accustomed to turbulence. But the last two weeks have been far bumpier than he's used to.
In late February, the Trump administration fired Mr Ripp and over 800 recently hired or promoted staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration using a form email, part of ongoing cuts to the federal workforce.
Suddenly, he and several other members of the elite Hurricane Hunters flight team were out of a job - until around 21:00 Friday when he received a second email. He was to report back to work in Lakeland, Florida, 12 March, it said.

For decades, the National Weather Service has released weather balloons at a clockworklike cadence at more than 100 sites across the country, as well as over the Pacific and the Caribbean. 
Twice a day — at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. ET — meteorologists simultaneously launch the balloons, which are equipped with instruments called radiosondes that measure temperature, humidity and wind speed. They rise about 15 feet per second for two hours, traveling through layers of the atmosphere and sending pings of data back using radio waves. 
When the air gets too thin, the balloons pop and fall back to Earth with little parachutes — mission complete. 
Data from the balloons feeds into weather models that are the backbone of forecasts across the United States, whether they’re delivered by a local television broadcaster or on your iPhone. 
But many of the release sites — at least 10 in the continental United States — have suspended or limited launches because of the Trump administration’s cuts to the National Weather Service staff. 
Meteorologists and weather balloon experts say the change will reduce forecast quality and increase risk during severe weather. 
“There’s no question it will lead to errors. It’s just a matter of how bad will it be,” said Matt Lanza, a meteorologist in Houston who writes for “The Eyewall” blog. “We know these things help with forecasts, so why are we cutting them?”

The Trump administration continues its cuts to research funding, with a proposal to cut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s budgets by billions of dollars in the 2026 fiscal year. 
In particular, NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research is projected to face $485 million in cuts. According to Ars Technica, NASA’s science programs will be slashed by almost 50%, from $7.5 billion in the 2025 fiscal year down to $3.9 billion.

Trump administration officials are recommending the elimination of the scientific research division at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times and several people with knowledge of the situation.
The proposal from the Office of Management and Budget would abolish the Oceanic and Atmospheric Research office at NOAA, one of the world’s premiere Earth sciences research centers.
A budget allocation of just over $170 million, down from about $485 million in 2024, would hobble science as varied as early warning systems for natural disasters, science education for students in kindergarten through high school, and the study of the Arctic, where temperatures have increased nearly four times as fast as the rest of the planet over the past four decades.
“At this funding level, O.A.R. is eliminated as a line office,” the proposal states.
Programs that retained funding, including research into tornado warnings and ocean acidification, would be relocated to the National Weather Service and National Ocean Service offices.


Current and former employees say fewer people working at NOAA with fewer resources could whittle away the agency’s ability to carry out its mission. Its wide-ranging portfolio includes providing reliable and life-saving information on the climate, weather and oceans, as well as supporting coastal communities and ecosystems.
For Cooley, who has spent 15-plus years studying how carbon pollution is altering the ocean’s chemistry, the professional and personal whiplash has been gutting. She said it’s the “limbo-iest limbo I’ve ever been in.” Now with having to navigate unemployment benefits and health care, and to pay rent while looking for a new job, stresses are piling up.
Several NOAA employees also said there’s mounting uncertainty and fear over which offices are going away, which are being consolidated, and who will be left to run the agency, especially the early warning systems essential for broadcasting life-saving severe weather information.
According to a memo shared with PBS News by a group of both former and current NOAA employees, an early draft of the White House budget plan envisions a far “leaner NOAA,” cutting more than a quarter of the agency’s 2026 budget.


Andrew Hazelton, a former NOAA hurricane modeler who was fired in February alongside other probationary employees, was blunt: If forecasts and hurricane warnings go downhill, he told BI, "we could see loss of life as a result."
The agency's reach extends across the country and the globe. Besides its work on extreme climate conditions, NOAA provides the data that powers the weather app on your phone, alerts pilots to turbulence, and helps farmers know when to plant to keep American agriculture rolling.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) runs the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS), and both agencies have great value to the United States: In 2022, the NWS budget was only $1.3 billion, but it provided more than $102 billion in estimated public value—a return of investment of about 79 to 1. NOAA’s $717 million of direct grant spending on its coastal and fisheries management funding programs from 2022 and 2023 is expected to generate $1.4 billion in economic output and create more than 7,800 jobs. The federal government even placed NOAA and the NWS under the Department of Commerce to provide services that support economic vitality. From broadcasters to weather apps, meteorologists nationwide depend on the NWS’s data collection to provide accurate forecasts that all Americans rely upon. Now, current and future mass layoffs incited by the recently formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) threaten the fundamental work NOAA and NWS provide to U.S. communities and will damage public safety, economic interests, and research efforts to learn more about weather and climate.

With towns and cities in the southeastern United States still reeling from hurricanes that hit last year, scientists are now releasing their forecasts for what could unfold in the hurricane season that starts in less than two months. Colorado State University is predicting nine hurricanes in 2025, four of which could spin up into major strength, while AccuWeather is forecasting up to 10. Both are predicting an above-average season similar to last year’s, which produced monster storms like Helene. That hurricane inundated swaths of the U.S., killing 249 people and causing $79 billion in damage across seven states.
The Trump administration’s slashing of jobs at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, then, is coming at a dangerous time, experts say, as the agency generates a stream of data essential to creating hurricane forecasting models. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has eliminated hundreds of positions at NOAA as part of Musk’s stated aim of cutting $1 trillion from the federal budget. Last week, news broke that the administration was proposing to cut NOAA’s overall budget by 25 percent, with plans to eliminate funding for the agency’s research arm. 
NOAA and its various divisions, like the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center, are the ones collecting and processing the data that weather apps like AccuWeather use for their daily forecasts. Hurricane forecasters also rely on data coming from a range of government-owned instruments: real-time measurements of ocean temperatures from a network of buoys and satellites and wind speeds from weather balloons. Those readings help scientists predict what the conditions leading up to hurricane season might say about the number of storms that could arrive this summer and their potential intensity.
All those NOAA instruments require people to maintain them and others to process the data. Though Klotzbach says he hasn’t had any issues accessing the data when running his seasonal forecast model, scientists like him are worried that losing those agency staffers to cost-cutting efforts will disrupt the stream of information just as hurricane season is getting going. The National Weather Service is already reducing its number of weather balloon launches. And on Wednesday, the New York Times reported that due to severe shortages of meteorologists and other employees, the National Weather Service is preparing for fewer forecast updates. (The National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center did not return requests to comment for this story.)
The seasonal forecasts coming out now help to raise awareness in hurricane hotspots like the Gulf Coast, said Xubin Zeng, director of the Climate Dynamics and Hydrometeorology Center at the University of Arizona. But as the start of hurricane season approaches on June 1 and NOAA loses staff, researchers are worried that their shorter-term forecasts — the ones that alert the public to immediate dangers — could suffer, a result that would endanger American lives. 

One NWS forecast office, in Goodland, Kansas, is no longer operating 24/7, with about a dozen more likely to shift to non-24-hour operations if action isn’t taken this month. These offices include several in the Plains states and stretch into the Pacific Northwest.
Such a change is virtually unheard of in the absence of an extreme weather event, such as a hurricane or tornado, that either threatens the lives of the forecasters themselves or knocks them offline.
There are also more than 90 vacancies among the staff responsible for repairing NWS Doppler radars and automated surface weather observation stations, the NOAA staff member said, greatly raising the likelihood of prolonged equipment outages that could affect air travel. Weather stations provide pilots and controllers with crucial data on wind direction and speed at airports to determine how to take off and land safely, among other parameters.
Radar outages during tornado and hurricane seasons could cause forecasters to miss hazardous conditions till after they strike.
The NWS has lost more than 550 people all told, since the start of Trump’s second term, according to tallies kept by sources inside and outside of the agency. That’s about the same number as the agency lost in the 15 years between 2010 and 2025, according to Tom Fahy of Capitol Meteorologics.









 
 
 

The Voucher Scam

  • Mar 7
  • 1 min read

Backed Voucher Scam is Unpopular

Texas Republicans are forcing public schools into crisis while catering to billionaires and special interests. Their agenda puts private profits over public education. Schools are closing and the party that claims to care about rural issues is putting our rural  towns' top employment source in jeopardy.

  • Texas Republicans think wealthy kids deserve $10,000 in extra school funding — working-class kids? Just $220.

  • Greg Abbott is complaining online to defend his billionaire-backed voucher scam – because he knows it's just a handout to the rich.

  • But Texans see right through him, and have let school voucher supporters know they don’t want public dollars funneled into private schools.

  • Abbott’s repackaged voucher scam, HB 2 and HB 3, holds public school funding hostage, forcing Texans to choose between vouchers or underfunded schools.

  • See how much your district stands to lose under Abbott’s plan at DontDefundMySchool.com — and take action before it’s too late.

 
 
 

Russia First

  • Mar 4
  • 16 min read

Updated: Mar 7



I am dismayed but not shocked about what happened to Zelenskyy in the White House.


This was Trump and Vance showing their loyalty to Putin.


There was a gd TASS Russian 'reporter' (FSB) there to witness it too.


Europe is now becoming unified and seeing America as part of the axis of evil along with Russia, China, North Korea, etc.


Trump, Musk, and Vance are loyal to Putin, not America.







As his White House meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart devolved into a stunning blowup, President Donald Trump leaned on a familiar refrain to explain his unique kinship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
“Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” Trump said Friday, raising his voice and gesturing with his hands as he recounted the long-since-concluded saga of a federal investigation in which both he and the Russian president played starring roles.
“He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia, ever hear of that deal?” Trump said.



In recent days, Trump has promoted Moscow’s horrendously false talking points, excoriating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator” and blaming Ukraine for the brutal war that Putin, a real dictator, launched. He also kicked off talks with Russia to end the war and left out Ukraine. It’s hard to imagine a better scenario for Putin. And at the United Nations, the Trump administration proposed a resolution on the war that declined to hold Russia responsible for the conflict. (It was amended to include language blaming Moscow and then passed, with Washington abstaining.)
Plus, the chaos caused by Trump and Elon Musk’s blitzkrieg against US government agencies could well redound to the Kremlin’s advantage. With national security agencies—the CIA, the FBI, and others—and the Pentagon under siege due to this assault, their capabilities to defend the nation from threats posed by Russia or other adversaries will be diminished. All the Trump/Musk-generated conflict is in sync with Putin’s long-standing aim to sow discord in the United States.

Zelenskyy is the leader of the free world now. Don't forget what Churchill did.




The good news is that people are waking up.



The bad news is that the Musk Regime is actively aiding and abetting Russian attacks on the United States.



1) NOAA Layoffs



The Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs (CRSRA) office regulates commercial remote sensing satellites. Companies that have or need licenses for their systems received an email notifying them that “no senior personnel remain in the office” and NOAA’s Office of General Counsel will deal with them for an indefinite period of time. They were alerted to “expect significant delays in processing all actions.”
CRSRA is part of the Office of Space Commerce (OSC), which has spent the last couple of years building up its staff to respond to new responsibilities including developing a space situational awareness (SSA) system for civil and commercial satellite operators to keep track of where all the satellites are and issue collision warnings. Approximately 10,000 active satellites are in orbit right now — about 7,000 of which are Musk’s Starlink broadband internet satellites — along with tens of thousands of pieces of space debris.
Historically DOD tracks satellites and publishes unclassified data on their locations on a public website, Space-Track.org. In 2018 during his first term, President Trump directed the Department of Commerce to take over responsibility for doing that for the non-military satellite sector. The task was assigned to the OSC. Initial testing of the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS) began on September 30, 2024.
Work on TraCSS is continuing at least for now. Today OSC invited industry to comment on a draft work statement for a Collision Avoidance Gap Pathfinder with comments due March 15.
However, OSC also today canceled a planned meeting of their Advisory Committee on Excellence in Space (ACES) scheduled for next Wednesday.


Mass firings at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have resulted in what is essentially a shut down of the unit responsible for licensing US remote sensing satellites, according to multiple sources, with license holders receiving emails notifying them all correspondence would now be handled by NOAA’s Office of General Counsel.
“This is a temporary arrangement to address continuity of operations as no senior personnel remain in the office due to reductions in force,” reads a copy of the email from the Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs (CRSRA) division seen by Breaking Defense. “CRSRA is unable to state when this arrangement might end.”
CRSRA is the division within NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce responsible for regulating space-based commercial remote sensing, including work involving companies such as Planet, Maxar and BlackSky that provide imagery to the National Reconnaissance Office for use by the Defense Department for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance purposes. NOAA, in turn, is under the Department of Commerce.

~


Further, the head of the Office of Space Commerce’s program to create a civil space traffic management regime designed to take the burden of warning non-military satellite operators of potential on-orbit crashes off DoD’s shoulders, Dmitry Poisik, also has been fired, the same sources told Breaking Defense.
Poisik was hired in July 2024 as the first director of the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCCS) program, and thus fell under the Office of Personnel Management’s order for termination of all federal agency “probationary” employees. In most federal agencies, personnel who have yet to complete one full year in their job are given “probationary” status.
Nonetheless, work under the TraCCS program appears to be continuing, with the Office of Space Commerce today issuing a call for industry comment on its proposal for a new “pathfinder” project. “The pathfinder would investigate commercially available capabilities for the identification and cataloging of space objects immediately after their launch and deployment,” the notice explains.

Effectively the Department of Defense is now blind.


2) Russia is free to attack the US



US President Donald Trump's administration is pausing its offensive cyber operations against Russia, officials say, as a diplomatic push continues to end the war in Ukraine.
The reasoning for the instruction has not been publicly stated, and it is not clear how long the halt might last. The defence department has declined to comment.
The directive reportedly came before Trump ended up in a televised row with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House on Friday.
Since returning to office, Trump has markedly softened the American position towards Moscow in eagerness to reach a deal to end the war - following Russia's full-scale invasion more than three years ago.


3) Russia’s Satellite Killer



Most civilian satellites are very sensitive to high-energy radiation and an atomic explosion in low Earth orbit would seriously damage telecommunications, GPS, and meteorological services

~


What is the point of stationing atomic weapons in space? Attacking a terrestrial target from orbit requires waiting hours — sometimes days — for it to come within range. A ballistic missile or a cruise missile is much more agile. Or the fractional orbital bombing technique, tested by the Soviet Union in the 1960s and later banned under the SALT II agreements.
It is another matter if the aim is to disable enemy satellites. There are also various ways — kinetic projectiles or energy projection weapons — but without a doubt the most expeditious is to detonate a nuclear device nearby. Both the USA and the USSR have carried out tests of this type, always under the pretext of scientific research, not for aggressive purposes. The first was the American operation Argus, in 1958, which consisted of detonating six low-yield nuclear warheads over the South Atlantic; and the Soviets, in 1961 and 1962, made five launches from a range in Kazakhstan.
But the most famous of all these nuclear tests in space was Operation Starfish Prime. On July 9, 1952, a Thor rocket launched from an atoll 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) west of Hawaii carried a one-and-a-half-megaton bomb into space. A pair of recoverable capsules carrying cameras and measuring equipment to analyze the results of the test were aft. The 700-kilogram craft exploded at an altitude of 400 kilometers — almost the distance at which the International Space Station (ISS) orbits. It was already nighttime, so the glow could be seen perfectly from Honolulu, the Hawaiian capital, as an impressive fireworks display that lasted about a quarter of an hour.
But it wasn’t all spectacle. The electromagnetic pulse generated by the explosion was much more powerful than expected. It caused blackouts and damaged power and telephone networks in the Hawaiian islands and knocked out half a dozen satellites, including Ariel — the first British satellite — and a Soviet one. It also created a radiation belt around the Earth that would take months to dissipate.
All these effects pale in comparison to those suffered on Soviet soil as a result of their own tests. When the detonation occurred over inhabited territory, overhead power and telephone networks acted as antennas, generating pulses of thousands of amperes. Insulators could not withstand the overload, fuses and protection systems were triggered, and damage was caused to a power station supplying the capital. It was clear that an atomic explosion in space would have devastating consequences on the ground.
All this happened 60 years ago, in the context of the Cold War. No nuclear device was ever detonated in space again. Now, with the tense geopolitical situation, threats are intensifying. What would happen if a multi-megaton warhead exploded 200 kilometers (125 miles) above our heads?


4) Weather forecasts can no longer be trusted



A scientist with a doctorate who issues tsunami alerts. A hurricane-hunting flight director. A researcher studying which communities will get flooded when a storm strikes.
They were among the more than 600 workers the Trump administration cut last week when it eliminated about 5% of the workforce at the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“I was considered an essential employee, part of a 24/7 safety watch,” said Kayla Besong, a physical scientist at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, which sends tsunami alerts. Until Thursday, she was part of a team of 12 who programmed the systems that determine whether parts of the U.S. coastline are at risk and issued alerts accordingly. Two people were required to be working at all times, she said.
The mass firing — of educated, specialized workers who viewed themselves as the next generation of scientists protecting life and property — could stretch NOAA’s workforce thin and hinder work on programs designed for public safety, former agency employees and leaders said.
Climate change is making weather disasters more common. Last year, NOAA counted 27 billion-dollar disasters, which resulted in the deaths of 568 people in the United States. It was the second-highest number since 1980, when NOAA began keeping such records, even accounting for inflation.
At the same time, meteorologists and forecasters say they’ve faced public vitriol and harassment despite increasingly accurate predictions. Some blame the politicization of climate change and the proliferation of conspiracy theories.

5) Money Laundering & Crypto



The U.S. Treasury Department announced it will not enforce a Biden-era small business rule intended to curb money laundering and shell company formation.
In a Sunday evening announcement, Treasury said in a news release that it will not impose penalties now or in the future if companies fail to register for the agency’s beneficial ownership information database that was created during the Biden administration.

~


In September 2022, the Treasury Department started rulemaking to create a database that would contain personal information on the owners of at least 32 million U.S. businesses as part of an effort to combat shell company formations and illicit finance.
The rule required most American businesses with fewer than 20 employees to register their business owners with the government as of Jan. 1, 2024. Small businesses are targeted because shell companies, often used to hide illegally obtained assets, tend to have few employees.
Treasury officials, including former Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, said the regulatory burden would be small, costing about $85 per business, but would offer benefits to law enforcement officials seeking to track down money launderers and other criminals. She said in January 2024 that more than 100,000 businesses had filed beneficial ownership information with Treasury.
The rule and its legislative authority — the Corporate Transparency Act, an anti-money laundering statue passed in 2021 — have been mired in litigation. In 2022, a small business lobbying group sued to block the Treasury Department’s requirement that tens of millions of small businesses register with the government. On Feb. 27, Treasury’s Financial Crimes and Enforcement Network said it would not take enforcement actions against companies that do not file beneficial ownership data with the agency.


Cryptocurrency prices briefly jumped after President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement he wants the U.S. government to purchase and hold a variety of digital assets in a strategic reserve fund, an announcement that highlights Trump’s growing attempts to use volatile cryptocurrency prices as a barometer of his public support.
Trump said on social media Sunday that his administration is working toward creating a “Crypto Strategic Reserve” that will include lesser-known cryptocurrencies XRP, solana, and cardano. He later followed up with another post saying his planned reserve would also include bitcoin and ether, the two most popular cryptocurrencies.
The announcement helped crypto prices enjoy a brief rebound after recent sell-offs. Bitcoin shot up to about $95,000 after dipping below $80,000 last week. XRP, solana and cardano saw massive spikes in their prices after Trump’s announcement Sunday.
But by Monday afternoon, prices had fallen roughly back to where they were before Trump’s announcement. U.S. stocks also fell sharply Monday after Trump confirmed plans to impose 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico.


6) Buy a US Green Card



President Trump said he is planning to introduce a new visa to attract rich foreigners to America — something he is calling a "gold card."
For $5 million, people will be able to apply to become lawful permanent residents. Trump said the program would be rolled out in two weeks, would bring in "very high-level people," and said the proceeds from the program could help pay down the deficit.


7) Make Terrorism Great Again



The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is gutting a landmark project designed to fund social science research with important implications for national security. Dozens of researchers with grants under the Minerva Research Initiative (MRI)—studying violent extremism, disinformation, and threats from climate change, for example—have had their grants terminated in recent days. Participants in the most recent round of applications received an email that the department was “no longer offering the Minerva University Research Competition.”
MRI, billed by the Pentagon as “Social science for a safer world,” was established in 2008. It has been awarding 3- to 5-year grants for unclassified research by university researchers “to help DOD better understand and prepare for future challenges.” In its latest funding round, in August 2024, the department awarded $46.8 million to 19 teams to work on topics from the use of artificial intelligence in national security to the movement of people displaced by climate change. At least nine of those projects have received termination notices, as have more than a dozen projects from previous rounds.
DOD did not immediately answer questions about the reason for the terminations and the criteria used to decide which projects to ax. “I wish I could tell you that I see a pattern in the ones that are being cut that I know about,” says Neil Johnson, a physicist at George Washington University who also lost a grant. “I’m not sure that I do.” Many researchers worry the terminations so far are the start of the dismantling of the entire program.
MRI was built on lessons learned after the terror attacks of 11 September 2001, says Scott Atran, an anthropologist and psychologist at the University of Michigan. The Pentagon realized military capacity alone was not enough to anticipate and manage international security threats and that “the social and behavioral sciences could be instrumental in filling the gap,” he says. Atran was the principal investigator on two MRI grants funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, one focusing on factors that keep the Western military alliance from fragmenting and the other to examine what motivates people to keep fighting in a war. “Both have been stopped dead in their tracks,” he says.
Also terminated is a project led by economist and political scientist Christopher Blattman at the University of Chicago that aims to better understand how drug cartels in Colombia are organized and operate and how they recruit new members. The work is directly related to the root causes of major issues such as illegal immigration and the fentanyl crisis, Blattman says: “This is the number one security threat in the hemisphere and we have a unique opportunity here to bring rigorous social science to documenting how this whole system works and figuring out how to counter it.” Blattman was officially awarded the 3-year, $2.1 million grant on 1 February. For now, the project will continue at a slower pace, he says, while “we just kick into emergency fundraising mode.”
Johnson was the principal investigator of a project focused on mapping how threats online and offline interact and where foreign influence, misinformation, and anti-U.S. narratives build up online. “We’re the only group in the world that maps out the entire online space, upward of 50 platforms—all the social media platforms and the gaming platforms, he says. “As a taxpayer I can’t understand why [DOD] wouldn’t want it.”
Yet the program was also threatened in 2020, toward the end of President Donald Trump’s first term. Some DOD officials thought its funding could be better spent on other priorities, despite a review the year before by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine lauding MRI-funded research.
Renard Sexton, a researcher at Emory University who’s studying whether Taiwan’s recent defense reforms help deter an attack from China, has also been told his project is terminated. Other canceled projects investigated whether climate change could lead to armed conflicts over access to fish stocks and how it affects societies in the Sahel.
The initiative has helped build up a generation of social science researchers engaged with national security, says Jacob Shapiro, a political scientist at Princeton University. “It’s been a great program for building the cognitive and analytical foundations for making smart defense policy,” he says. Shapiro leads an MRI project to evaluate whether China’s investment projects in Southeast Asia are earning it durable influence, a project that has not been terminated. Several other researchers told Science they haven’t received termination notices either.
“Many of us cut our teeth as assistant professors with support from the Minerva initiative which allowed us to support students and carry out field work,” says Joshua Busby, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin and a senior adviser for climate at DOD in 2021–22. “Losing one of the key sources of support for the social sciences is another big blow to academic inquiry and likely undermines our government’s capacity to understand and respond effectively to threats the country faces.”
“Jettisoning the entire … initiative, whose yearly cost is that of a single F-16, [would be] about the most cost-ineffective measure that DOD and the nation could implement,” Atran adds.

8) Become an ally to Putin




Russia agreed to assist President Donald Trump’s administration in communicating with Iran on issues including the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program and its support for regional anti-US proxies, according to people familiar with the situation.


President Donald Trump’s decision to pause American military aid to Ukraine is handing Russia’s Vladimir Putin the upper hand on the battlefield and in geopolitical negotiations, former officials and experts warned Tuesday.
The White House said the defense assistance was being reviewed to make sure it was contributing to the administration’s goal of being “focused on peace.”
Military analysts say that withholding Ukraine’s defensive lifeblood will be “crippling” in a matter of months as it tries to hold back the Russian war machine and defend its cities being bombed nightly.
It will also deepen the chasm between the Trump administration and Washington’s longtime European allies, who are already scrambling to fill the void left by a U.S. government pursuing a rapprochement with their chief antagonist in Moscow.
Michael McFaul, Washington’s former ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, likened the move to President Franklin D. Roosevelt losing “the 1940 election to an America Firster who then had the U.S. switch sides in World War II ... We’d all be speaking German now.”
“That’s why this current moment feels like,” he wrote on X. “Three years into a war between an imperialist dictatorship with autocratic allies and a democracy, Trump just switched sides.”



Donald Trump’s decision to suspend all military aid to Ukraine will have an effect within days, a Ukrainian MP has warned.
Oleksandr Merezhko, who chairs the Ukrainian parliament's foreign affairs committee, told The Independent: “My main concern is the lack of missiles for air defences to protect Ukrainian cities," he said. "The Russians will use this opportunity to intensify attacks. This is why Trump's decision is so dangerous."


"The question is no longer whether Europe's security is threatened or whether Europe should shoulder more of its responsibility for its own security," von der Leyen said.
"The real question in front of us is whether Europe is prepared to act as decisively as the situation dictates and whether Europe is ready and able to act with speed and with the ambition that is needed," she added.
In Brussels, von der Leyen told reporters she had outlined her five-point 'Rearm Europe' plan in a letter to EU leaders, seen by Euractiv.
A first step would include activating the escape clause of the EU's Stability and Growth Pact, which limits budget deficits among EU countries, to allow for higher national defence spending without triggering the bloc's excessive debt procedure.
As a second step, the EU will propose €150 billion in loans to boost defence spending for joint procurement in a wide range of capabilities such as air defence, drones, military mobility or cyber defence.
A third option would be to propose "additional possibilities and incentives" for EU countries if they decide to use cohesion programmes to boost defence spending.
The fourth and fifth options would be to mobilise private capital through the EU Savings and Investment Union and the European Investment Bank (EIB).
Von der Leyen's proposals came hours after US President Donald Trump ordered a halt of all Ukraine military aid, stepping up pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the bitter White House showdown last Friday.
Her proposals come ahead of the emergency EU leaders' summit on Thursday, where EU countries are expected to discuss the funding options and decide which are acceptable.


9) Diseases run rampant because of downfall of USAID which was our soft power


Millions will die and they will rightly blame America.



Russia Wins the Cold War



From where President Vladimir Putin is sitting, it looks like Russia is now winning a yearslong struggle with the United States and the West. And the result may be more war.
President Donald Trump’s announcement overnight that the United States would immediately halt military aid to Ukraine was welcomed by the Kremlin on Tuesday, and his decision appears to vindicate Putin’s visceral dislike of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Meanwhile, the White House’s growing differences with NATO, the 32-member U.S.-led military alliance set up to counter the Soviet Union after World War II, and apparent rapprochement with Russia are fracturing the Western liberal order that for decades contained Putin’s ambitions.
The fight is by no means over.
Hours after Trump's announcement on Ukraine, European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced plans to strengthen Europe’s defense industry and increase military capabilities by freeing close to 800 billion euros ($841.4 billion).
“We’re living in the most momentous and dangerous of times,” she said in a statement. “We are in an era of rearmament.”

Update:



The US has reportedly banned the UK from sharing American intelligence with Ukraine, in a move which could seriously hinder Kyiv’s efforts to fight Russia.


The Daily Mail reported on Tuesday night that British intelligence agencies and military outlets have been ordered not to share the US-generated intelligence which has previously sent to Ukraine (known as Rel UKR).


As Kyiv has been sharing information with Western security partners – like the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand – since Vladimir Putin invaded, this is likely to impact Ukraine’s ability to deter Russian forces.


Downing Street has been contacted for comment.


It comes after Donald Trump temporarily paused military aid to Ukraine to pressure the country to sign up to a potential US mineral-sharing deal and negotiate peace with the Russia.

 
 
 
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