International
Trump ‘shocks the deep state,’ sidesteps ‘weaponized’ White House transition process’

From LifeSiteNews
The president-elect is attempting to avoid the mistakes he made during his first term by this time privately funding the transition.
Two viral postings on X describe how President-elect Donald Trump is avoiding D.C.’s entrenched “permanent state” that sought to upend his first presidency before it started, beginning with his January 2017 transition into the Oval Office.
“Having experienced firsthand the malevolence of the so-called ‘permanent government’ during his initial transition in 2016-2017, Trump is under no illusions about the loyalty or intentions of the civil service – particularly the General Services Administration (GSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Department of Justice (DOJ),” amuse explained on X. “The current transition struggle exemplifies the danger of allowing the permanent bureaucratic state to accrue power unchecked.”
“During his first term, Trump’s transition team – Trump for America, Inc. (TFA) – faced betrayal when the GSA improperly handed over thousands of emails from the transition period to Special Counsel Robert Mueller without proper authorization,” amuse wrote. “An agency ostensibly dedicated to facilitating the transition had instead been co-opted to undermine it.”
Amuse continued:
The FBI, which once served as an institution above the fray of partisan politics, has shown its hand in its dealings with Trump – spying on his 2016 campaign, embedding female honeypots within his transition, and using “national security” briefings as a pretext to disqualify his appointees, like General Michael Flynn. The Justice Department Inspector General found that former FBI agent Peter Strzok even sent another FBI agent to an intelligence briefing with Trump and Flynn as part of an effort to build a Russia collusion case against them.
These actions are not the behavior of a neutral party facilitating a democratic handover; they are the machinations of a bureaucracy desperate to retain control.
As a result, the president-elect has chosen to privately fund his side of the transition from the Biden administration.
Trump’s transition strategy: ‘Annihilating the deep state’s control’
“Trump’s MAGA administration just dropped a nuclear bomb on Washington’s corrupt establishment. By rejecting taxpayer-funded GSA tools and launching a fully private transition, Trump is cutting the deep state out of the equation. This isn’t just a handoff – it’s a full-scale revolution,” Ann Vandersteel wrote on X and Substack.
“In a jaw-dropping move, Trump has signed the Transition Agreement with the outgoing Biden administration — but with one massive twist. There’s no GSA involvement. No government phones. No government buildings. Nothing,” Vandersteel wrote.
“This isn’t about tradition. It’s about annihilating the deep state’s control,” Vandersteel continued. “Washington’s gatekeepers are panicking. Trump’s strategy leaves them powerless, blind, and scrambling in the dark.”
She continued:
The deep state relies on access. They spy. They sabotage. They control. But Trump has cut off their lifeline. His team has gone dark – no leaks, no traps, no surveillance. For the corrupt elite, this is their worst nightmare. They’re awake, sweating bullets, terrified of what’s next.
Trump’s move isn’t just bold; it’s revolutionary.
- No GSA oversight. The tools used against him in 2016? Gone.
- No taxpayer dependence. This revolution is fully independent.
- No interference. The deep state can’t touch what they can’t see.
This is a calculated takedown of a corrupt system. Trump isn’t playing defense —he’s on the offensive.
“Washington’s establishment is in freefall. The deep state relied on GSA tools to spy, infiltrate, and sabotage. Now they’re locked out entirely. They’ve lost their grip, their leverage, and their power,” Vandersteel wrote. “This isn’t a transition; it’s a declaration of war against the corrupt establishment.”
“Trump’s transition is a bold strike against the forces that tried to destroy his presidency. No leaks. No oversight. No compromise. The deep state is crumbling, and Washington will never be the same,” Vandersteel said.
“The storm isn’t coming – it’s already here.”
Corporate media in the nation’s capital is not happy about Trump’s end run around those who are accustomed to playing an integral role in White House transitions.
The Washington Post, Biden regime are losing sleep over the transition
The Washington Post has decided Trump succeeding Biden in January represents a “hostile takeover of the federal government.”
The Post laments:
Since his victory, Trump has ignored many of the rules and practices intended to guide a seamless transfer of power and handover of the oversight of 2.2 million federal employees. Instead, the president-elect, who has pledged to fire thousands of civil servants and slash billions of dollars in spending, has so far almost fully cut out the government agencies his predecessors have relied on to take charge of the federal government.
“His transition teams have yet to set foot inside a single federal office,” Post writers noted two weeks after Trump resoundingly won the 2024 election, as if breaking with standard procedure were a criminal offense against the Washington establishment.
“In calls with foreign heads of state, Trump has cut out the State Department, its secure lines and its official interpreters,” the Post added.
The Post acknowledged that Trump also “bears deep animus against the FBI, according to the people familiar with his transition process. FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago for classified materials in a case that resulted in federal charges, and he has pledged wholesale changes at the agency and at the Justice Department.”
The FBI would normally have begun vetting a president-elect’s transition team before Election Day, as well as his choices for Cabinet positions and other top staff jobs. Thus far, Trump has left the job of vetting candidates to Stanley Woodward, a D.C. lawyer on his campaign who has represented several January 6 rioters and Trump associates caught up in the classified documents case.
“I happen to know the Biden regime has been losing sleep over the transition,” amuse added in a subsequent X post. “Nothing is going to plan.”
Business
FEMA Quietly Slid $59 Million Out The Door For Illegal Migrants To Put Their Feet Up At ‘Luxury Hotels’: Musk

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jason Hopkins
“That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals!” he continued. “A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) handed out $59 million to “luxury” hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants, Elon Musk said Monday.
Musk — who leads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a temporary agency within the Trump administration tasked with weeding out frivolous spending by the federal government — said it was his DOGE team that made the discovery. The top White House official said the payment was in violation of President Donald Trump’s executive order and efforts would be made to recover the funds.
“The @DOGE team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants,” Musk posted on X. “Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order.”
“That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals!” he continued. “A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds.”
The details around the alleged payout are not completely clear. FEMA did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation, nor did a spokesperson for DOGE.
Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in October denied the Biden administration was using FEMA funds for migrant accommodations, but in 2022 she suggested that the agency was assisting cities with the migrant crisis.
On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order that placed a temporary suspension on refugee resettlement into the United States. The president additionally noted how some major cities, like New York City and Chicago, have requested federal aid to help manage the massive influx of migrants entering their jurisdictions.
The president additionally signed an executive order placing a freeze on federal grants and loans as it conducts a review of the government’s spending, but that order has since been blocked by the courts.
However, New York City officials have a long history of placing illegal migrants into four-star hotels as they’ve struggled to find accommodations for the sheer number of asylum seekers flocking to the Big Apple.
New York City began housing migrants in the four-star Collective Paper Factory hotel around August 2023 after it was reorganized into a Department of Homeless Services emergency shelter. The five-story Collective Paper Factory itself is equipped with a restaurant, a gym, a bar, meeting rooms for guests and communal spaces.
The “chic” Square Hotel was converted into housing for migrants. Other “upscale” hotels in the Big Apple have also been converted into migrant housing in the past as city officials continue to deal with the migrant crisis, including The Row, which has also been described as a “four-star hotel.”
“A 4-star hotel is considered luxury lodging,” according to Kayak, a company that provides hotel booking services. “Guest rooms are noticeably more spacious, with top-quality linens, pillowtop mattresses, bathrobes, slippers, minibars, and upscale toiletries, plus equipped kitchens.”
NYC’s Department of Homeless Services was reportedly seeking a contract with local hotels to provide roughly 14,000 rooms in order to shelter migrants through 2025. City officials anticipated spending on migrants in need of housing for the current fiscal year and the past two years combined will exceed $2.3 billion, with a significant amount of these costs going toward hotel rent.
The Big Apple — a sanctuary city jurisdiction with strict laws restricting cooperation between local law enforcement and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — has become a major destination for the massive number of illegal migrants who’ve flocked into the United States. Roughly 230,000 migrants have arrived in NYC since the spring of 2022, according to data provided by the mayor’s office.
FEMA underwent an internal investigation in November after it was uncovered that a supervisor reportedly instructed disaster relief workers deployed in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton to avoid houses with Trump signs.
Business
Judge blocks Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury records

From LifeSiteNews
The emergency ruling comes as 15 Soros-installed AGs seek to block Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from access to information that would reveal how activist groups in blue states have been funded by the U.S. government.
In a stunning and sweeping emergency injunction that has even stunned the people who demanded it, a Manhattan-based district judge has just removed Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent from his authority over the Treasury Department; blocked any political appointee from accessing records within the Treasury Department; blocked any “special appointee” of President Trump from records within Treasury; and demanded that all information previously extracted be destroyed.
The emergency injunction, signed by District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan, was determined without any input from the Trump administration and applies until Friday, February 14, 2025, when U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas will hear the full arguments of the lawsuit.
The emergency ruling comes as a result of 15 (Soros-installed) attorneys general from New Jersey, New York, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, Rhode Island, and Vermont all filing suit in New York seeking to block Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from access to information that would reveal how activist groups in their states have been funded by the U.S. government.
READ: Judge blocks Trump plan that would put thousands of USAID staff on paid leave
From Reuters:
The lawsuit said Musk and his team could disrupt federal funding for health clinics, preschools, climate initiatives, and other programs, and that Republican President Donald Trump could use the information to further his political agenda.
DOGE’s access to the system also ‘poses huge cybersecurity risks that put vast amounts of funding for the States and their residents in peril,’ the state attorneys general said. They sought a temporary restraining order blocking DOGE’s access.
The judge, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama, said the states’ claims were ‘particularly strong’ and warranted him acting on their request for emergency relief pending a further hearing before another judge on February 14.
‘That is both because of the risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking,’ Engelmayer wrote.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat whose office is leading the case, welcomed the ruling, saying nobody was above the law and that Americans across the country had been horrified by the DOGE team’s unfettered access to their data.
‘We knew the Trump administration’s choice to give this access to unauthorized individuals was illegal, and this morning, a federal court agreed,’ James said in a statement.
‘Now, Americans can trust that Musk – the world’s richest man – and his friends will not have free rein over their personal information while our lawsuit proceeds.’
Engelmayer’s order bars access from being granted to Treasury Department payment and data systems by political appointees, special government employees and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department.
The judge also directed that anyone prohibited under his order from accessing those systems to immediately destroy anything they copied or downloaded.
The order by the judge is transparent judicial activism; it will almost certainly be overturned and nullified by later rulings. However, it creates blocks and slows down the goal of DOGE and the objective of the Trump administration.
On what basis do states think they can sue the federal government to stop the federal government from auditing federal spending? How can a judge block the executive branch from executing the functions of the executive branch? This lawfare activism is ridiculous.
Within the ruling:
… restrained from granting access to any Treasury Department payment record, payment systems, or any other data systems maintained by the Treasury Department containing personally identifiable information and/or confidential financial information of payees, other than to civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties within the Bureau of Fiscal Services who have passed all background checks and security clearances and taken all information security training called for in federal statutes and Treasury Department regulations… [Emphasis added.]
So the unelected bureaucracy is in charge and not the secretary of the Treasury?
Reprinted with permission from Conservative Treehouse.
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