patrick.net

USAID has pushed nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6m) through a secretive US government financed NGO, "Internews Network" (IN), which has “worked with” 4,291 media outlets, producing in one year 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people and "training” over 9000 journalists (2023 figures). IN has also supported social media censorship initiatives. The operation claims “offices” in over 30 countries, including main offices in US, London, Paris and regional HQs in Kiev, Bangkok and Nairobi. It is headed up by Jeanne Bourgault, who pays herself $451k a year. Bourgault worked out of the US embassy in Moscow during the early 1990s, where she was in charge of a $250m budget, and in other revolts or conflicts at critical times, before formally rotating out of six years at USAID to IN. Bourgault’s IN bio and those of its other key people and board members have been recently scrubbed from its website but remain accessible at http://archive.org/

Records show the board being co-chaired by Democrat securocrat Richard J. Kessler and Simone Otus Coxe, wife of NVIDIA billionaire Trench Coxe, both major Democratic donors. In 2023, supported by Hillary Clinton, Bourgault launched a $10m IN fund at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). The IN page showing a picture of Bourgault at the CGI has also been deleted. IN has at least six captive subsidiaries under unrelated names including one based out of the Cayman Islands. Since 2008, when electronic records begin, more than 95% of IN's budget has been supplied by the US government (thread follows).

The operation claims “offices” in over 30 countries, including main offices in US, London, Paris and regional HQs in Kiev, Bangkok and Nairobi. It

That's still 294 too many, but maybe they will eventually get fired as well.

... the Party of Chaos using federal judges to oppose the dismantling of their gigantic grift scaffold. In other words, more lawfare to obstruct any earnest effort to effectively reform the management of our country. So, last week, you get Judge Carl J. Nichols in the DC District arguing that the DOGE shutdown of USAID was unauthorized and potentially illegal, lacking congressional approval.

Then, late Friday (when most citizens are checking out of the week’s struggles) Judge Paul Engelmayer out of the Southern District of New York blocked DOGE and other executive branch officials from accessing US Treasury records of expenditures. The injunction, comically, prevents Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent from seeing what his agency doles out money for — that is, from managing anything his department does. The suit that prompted the ruling was brought by nineteen states’ Attorneys General led by NY AG Letitia James. So, you see how this works.

You must also imagine that the White House was prepared for these lawfare shenanigans, though they haven’t shown their hand in response so far. This is a constitutional quarrel, of course, since it concerns who has authority between the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary over agency spending and, in particular, who gets to audit it. The actual objective by the plaintiff in these cases (the Party of Chaos) is simply to delay any corrective action.

The DOJ under Pam Bondi can designate the US Solicitor General to petition the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) for certiorari — to expedite the resolution of this constitutional issue as to whether Mr. Trump, as chief executive, and his bona fide appointees, can carry out executive functions. The arguments against that appear to be weak.

It is the President’s duty to see that the laws are faithfully executed, meaning that the departments under him do their jobs correctly, which would give him inherent authority to audit and restructure agencies like USAID. Both judges Nichols and Engelmayer are arrogating executive and legislative functions on policy-making to themselves, triggering a separation-of-powers dispute that the SCOTUS must adjudicate promptly.

What matters most in these cases is that SCOTUS has an opportunity to put up new guardrails against the hijacking of the federal courts for the purpose of lawfare — that is, for political dirty-fighting under color-of-law. The law is slow-moving, arcane, and incomprehensible to most non-lawyer citizens and that is why the Party of Chaos has misused it so liberally.

In any event, DOGE is moving ahead on many other fronts and the next battleground looks like the US Department of Education, an agency which, since its creation in 1979, has only presided over an epic degeneration in the academic performance of young people. The agency has grown since 1979 to 4,400 employees overseeing a $238-billion budget. Otherwise, what it’s mainly accomplished is to enrich the various teachers’ unions and to raise the cost of college tuitions astronomically while degenerating the purpose and value of higher ed. The fifty states were arguably doing a better job on their own without any DOE on the scene.

The Wall Street Journal carefully curated the first major challenge to the Trump agenda into a story misleadingly headlined, “Vance, Musk Criticize Federal Judge for Blocking DOGE From Treasury System.” But the judge went much further than the headline suggests. Astonishingly, he enjoined all non-career officials from accessing the Treasury system— right up to the Senate-confirmed Treasury Secretary himself.



The biggest problem with the judge’s decision appeared right in the story. “The Democratic attorneys general,” the WSJ admitted, “said the true limitations on DOGE’s access remain unclear.” In other words, the plaintiffs didn’t know, and can’t prove, whatever they think DOGE might be doing. Under the high injunction standard, tangible evidence of irreparable harm is normally needed to get an injunction.

I reviewed U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer’s order. It seemed weak. The order —written in whole part by the Democrat AGs— founded the decision to temporarily stay all access to Treasury systems by “political appointees” (including the Secretary!), by citing an unnamed “heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking.” That unquantifiable “heightened risk of hacking,” whatever that means, seemed far from sufficient to justify a temporary restraining order.

In New York, as in most places, “a showing of irreparable harm is the single most important prerequisite for the issuance of a preliminary injunction.” Heightened risks, regardless of their speculative stature, hardly show irreparable harm.

Judge Englemayer, an Obama appointee, didn’t cite a single piece of evidence supporting the alleged threat. The hearing (if there was one) was held ex parte, meaning the Trump Administration wasn’t permitted to participate, and it looks like the “evidence” was pure guesswork by the blue-state Attorneys General. Nor did Englemayer’s order explain how state Attorneys General have standing to interfere with the federal government’s internal processes and procedures.

The whole thing was sketchy. According to the docket, the states’ motion was filed at 9:30pm on Friday night, and Judge Englemayer signed the AGs’ pre-drafted order three hours later at 1am. Since Englemayer was acting as an emergency duty judge, the case was automatically assigned to a full-time federal judge.

Late yesterday, Trump’s DOJ filed an emergency motion to dissolve the TRO. Here is the Trump motion’s first paragraph:

At approximately 1:00 a.m. on Saturday, February 8, 2025, this Court issued an ex parte
Temporary Restraining Order that purported to limit access to a vast swath of Treasury systems to
only "civil servants," while prohibiting "all political appointees" from doing the same. On its face,
the Order could be read to cover all political leadership within Treasury--including even Secretary
Bessent. This is a remarkable intrusion on the Executive Branch that is in direct conflict with
Article II of the Constitution, and the unitary structure it provides. There is not and cannot be a
basis for distinguishing between "civil servants" and "political appointees." Basic democratic
accountability requires that every executive agency's work be supervised by politically
accountable leadership, who ultimately answer to the President. A federal court, consistent with
the separation of powers, cannot insulate any portion of that work from the specter of political
accountability. No court can issue an injunction that directly severs the clear line of supervision
Article II requires. Because the Order on its face draws an impermissible and anti-constitutional
distinction, it should be dissolved immediately.

In other words, Judge Englemayer’s astonishing order inserted the courts fully inside the Executive Branch’s business, purporting to segregate Executive-branch goats from the lambs, dividing employees by labels of “civil service” and “political appointment,” in effect assuming direct micromanagement of the Treasury Department. Worse, the terms “civil servant” and “political appointee” are undefined and are not anything more than commonly understood jargon.

Yesterday, newly assigned Judge Jeanette Vargas, a Biden appointee, directed the two sides to first "meet and confer" this morning to see whether any agreement could be reached or at least narrow the disputed issues. Given the issues, that seems unlikely to happen. Barring that, the states’ response to the Motion to Dissolve the TRO is due by 5:00 pm, and Trump’s DOJ’s reply is due by 11:00 pm tonight.

My guess is that the TRO won’t survive the next 48 hours, at least not in its present, overbroad state.

This temporary restraining order is not the first, nor will it be the last, to be filed against the Trump Team’s Swamp draining efforts. After all, lawfare is one of the left’s favorite tools. Many lawsuits have already been filed, and more will surely be filed. I don’t plan to cover every lawsuit; rather, I’ll let you know if something significant happens. If I don’t mention it, that means I think it’s just normal legal wrangling and nothing to get excited about yet.

This order might be more interesting in that it shows the Swamp’s growing terror of Trump’s “political appointees.” Before Trump 2.0, career bureaucrats felt safe and insulated from political staff since the bureaucrats have so many ways of frustrating an incoming Administration’s team. This overreaching order shows that the long-established status quo is melting, and the Deep State is freaking out.

If the TRO gets slapped down quickly, it will be a helpful barometer for how much patience the judiciary has for these tactics. If it somehow survives in any meaningful way, it will be headed for the Supreme Court.

DOGE Blocks Taxpayer Funding for Fauci Museum Exhibit