Trump’s government efficiency department plans to cut $500 Billion in unauthorized expenditures, including funding for Planned Parenthood

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy shared their plans to ‘take aim’ at ‘500 billion plus’ in federal expenses, including ‘nearly $300 million’ to ‘progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.’

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are planning to ax taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood as part of their forthcoming work for the next Trump administration, they revealed in a Wednesday op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.

The businessmen have been appointed by President Donald Trump to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which will work from outside the official government structure to cut wasteful government spending and excess regulations, as well as “restructure federal agencies,” as Trump announced last week on Truth Social.

Musk and Ramaswamy shared Wednesday that as part of their work at DOGE to downsize government spending, they will be “taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended,” thereby “delivering cost savings for taxpayers.”

They specifically called out Planned Parenthood as one institution that will lose taxpayer funding once DOGE kicks into gear. In their op-ed, the duo said the federal expenditures they plan on cutting includes the “nearly $300 million” dedicated “to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.”

Musk and Ramaswamy also reportedly will take aim at the “$535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations,” according to Catholic Vote, although they have not shared all of the federal spending they plan to cut or reduce.

“With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government,” the business duo wrote. “We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail.”

Mogul and X owner Musk, who was outspoken before his DOGE appointment about the big problem of waste, noted last week that if the government is not made efficient, the country will go “bankrupt.”

He reposted a clip from a recent talk he gave in which he explained that not only is our defense budget “pretty gigantic” — a trillion dollars —but the interest the U.S. now owes on its debt is higher than this.

“This is not sustainable. That’s why we need the Department of Government Efficiency,” Musk said.

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Carney Admits Deficit Will Top $61.9 Billion, Unveils New Housing Bureaucracy

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Carney Admits Deficit Will Top $61.9 Billion, Unveils New Housing Bureaucracy

Published on September 15, 2025

Todayville

Dan Knight

The Prime Minister said this year’s shortfall will exceed last year’s $61.9B as Ottawa creates Build Canada Homes to expand affordable housing.

Prime Minister Mark Carney just admitted that this year’s federal budget deficit will be “substantial” larger than last year’s $61.9 billion shortfall. Speaking in Nepean ahead of Parliament’s return yesterday, Carney defended the red ink as the cost of what he called “nation-building” investments in housing, defense, and protection from global trade shocks.

Lets recap for those at home not keeping score, the federal government ran a $61.9 billion deficit last year. It was supposed to be closer to $40 billion, but like every Liberal promise, the reality was far worse. That single number, that $61.9 billion hole, was a turning point. It destroyed what little credibility Justin Trudeau had left, and it forced his own finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, to walk away.

Now, let’s pause here. Chrystia Freeland didn’t just “move on.” She resigned in December 2024 after a bitter clash with Trudeau. She couldn’t defend the runaway spending anymore, couldn’t keep pretending the numbers added up. And when your own finance minister, the person who signed off on the books, decides she can’t be part of the game, and yet she’s ok with Carney spending more???

But here’s the part that’s truly insane. Just last week, those same media outlets were floating headlines about the Liberals preparing an “austerity budget.” The Globe and Mail literally told us Carney was weighing “austerity” alongside “investments.” CTV reported the government’s own House Leader was warning Canadians about “tough choices” ahead of the fall budget. Austerity! After sixty billion dollars in red ink.

And these idiots actually had the gall to use that word, “austerity” while the country drowns in debt, while the deficit is climbing even higher, and while Carney is out there hiring new bureaucrats and creating brand-new agencies with billions of your dollars. You can’t make this up.

And speaking of spin, let’s get to the real show. Because once Carney slipped and admitted the deficit was going to be bigger, he launched into the propaganda portion of the presser, the part where he pretends to be solving the housing crisis. And what’s the solution? You guessed it. Another federal agency. A brand-new bureaucracy carved out of CMHC. Because in Carney’s Canada, the answer to too much red tape is… more red tape.

They’re calling it Build Canada Homes. Sounds nice. It gets $13 billion of your money on day one. It has a mandate to “plan, finance, and build homes.” And who’s running it? Anna Belo — a former Toronto deputy mayor turned private-sector consultant. Because nothing says “housing affordability” like another revolving-door insider cashing a taxpayer-funded paycheck.

The agency’s first big ideas? Modular housing, a $1.5 billion “rental protection fund,” and lots of partnerships with provinces, municipalities, and Indigenous groups. In other words: buzzwords. More meetings. More layers of government. More bureaucracy.

And then, as if to drive the joke home, Carney rolled out his housing minister. Who is it? Gregor Robertson. Yes, the same Gregor Robertson who, as mayor of Vancouver, presided over one of the worst housing affordability collapses in Canadian history. The man under whose watch prices skyrocketed, taxes doubled, and working families were driven out of the city. That’s the expert. That’s the guy they put in charge. Yeah, he’s got “experience” all right. Eye roll.

Even Pierre Poilievre saw straight through it. Speaking to his caucus on Parliament Hill ahead of the fall sitting, the Conservative leader mocked Carney’s shiny new agency as just another layer of government that won’t build homes.

“After six months in office, not a single home has been built. Instead, he’s created another bureaucracy. Meanwhile, CMHC’s own forecast shows homebuilding will fall 13%. In the GTA, it’s already down by half. That is the Carney record.”

Poilievre tied the criticism to Carney’s broader record of announcements without results, comparing the “nation-building” pitch to the agency’s empty promise: new logos, new titles, no shovels in the ground.

This is the Liberal solution in a nutshell: take a crisis they helped create, build another layer of bureaucracy, and put the very people who caused the problem in charge of fixing it. And then tell you, with a straight face, that this time, it’ll be different.

And here’s the kicker. Every dollar of this so-called “nation-building” deficit is a dollar borrowed against your future. Last year alone, interest payments on the debt blew past PBO’s estimate of $49.1 billion… THAT’S MORE than Ottawa spends on health care transfers.

Lets be clear, thank God the fall session is back. Because here’s the truth: these Liberals only shine when the press is playing duck and cover for them. When it’s just press conferences, glossy slogans, and clapping seals, they look untouchable. But the moment Parliament is sitting, the moment committees start pulling threads, the whole show falls apart.

Remember what happened when they had just two days of committee hearings on that ferry contract? Over a billion dollars, handed to China, while they were busy telling Canadians “Canada First.” They were humiliated. Because when the facts are out in the open, when the spin stops working, this government has nothing left to stand on.

This fall will be no different. Mark Carney can rebrand deficits as “nation-building,” he can launch new bureaucracies and hire insiders at half a million dollars a year, but once Question Period starts, none of that will save him. The reality is simple: this government is not long for the world. And soon enough, we’ll see real austerity… Not because they choose it, but because they’ve run out of money and credibility to keep the game going.

By Dan Knight · Hundreds of paid subscribers

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Artificial Intelligence

What are data centers and why do they matter?

Published on September 14, 2025

Todayville

From The Center Square

By Shirleen Guerra

Data centers may not be visible to most Americans, but they are shaping everything from electricity use to how communities grow.

These facilities house the servers that process nearly all digital activity, from online shopping and streaming to banking and health care. As the backbone of artificial intelligence and cloud computing, they have expanded at a pace few other industries can match.

Research from Synergy Research Group shows the number of hyperscale data centers worldwide doubled in just five years, reaching 1,136 by the end of 2024. The U.S. now accounts for 54% of that total capacity, more than China and Europe combined. Northern Virginia and the Beijing metro area together make up about 20% of the global market.

John Dinsdale, chief analyst with Synergy Research, said in an email to The Center Square that a simple way to describe data centers is to think of them as part of a food chain.

“At the bottom of the food chain, you’re sitting at your desk with a desktop PC or laptop. All the computing power is on your device,” Dinsdale said.

The next step up is a small office server room, which provides shared storage and applications for employees.

“Next up the chain, you can go two different directions (or use a mix),” he explained.

One option is a colocation data center, where companies lease space instead of running their own physical facilities. That model can support a multitude of customers from a single operator, such as Equinix.

The other option is to move to public cloud computing.

“You buy access to computing resources only when you need them, and you only pay for what you use,” Dinsdale said.

Providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Google run massive data centers that support tens of thousands of servers. From the customer perspective, it may feel like having a private system, but in reality, these servers are shared resources supporting many organizations.

Cloud providers now operate at a scale that was “unthinkable ten years ago” and are referred to in the industry as hyperscale, Dinsdale added. These global networks of data centers support millions of customers and users.

“The advent of AI is pushing those data centers to the next level — way more sophisticated technology, and data centers that need to become a lot more powerful,” he said.

What is a data center?

At its simplest, a data center is a secure building filled with rows of servers that store, process and move information across the internet. Almost every digital action passes through them.

“A data center is like a library of server computers that both stores and processes a lot of internet and cloud data we use every day,” said Dr. Ali Mehrizi-Sani, director of the Power and Energy Center at Virginia Tech told The Center Square. “Imagine having thousands of high-performance computers working nonstop doing heavy calculations with their fans on. That will need a lot of power.”

Some are small enough to serve a hospital or university. Others, known as hyperscale facilities, belong to companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta, with footprints large enough to be measured in megawatts of electricity use.

How big is the industry?

Synergy’s analysis shows how dominant the U.S. has become. Fourteen of the world’s top 20 hyperscale data center markets are in the U.S., including Northern Virginia, Dallas and Silicon Valley. Other global hotspots include Greater Beijing, Dublin and Singapore.

In 2024 alone, 137 new hyperscale centers came online, continuing a steady pace of growth. Average facility size is also climbing. Synergy forecasts that total capacity could double again in less than four years, with 130 to 140 new hyperscale centers added annually.

The world’s largest operators are American technology giants. Amazon, Microsoft and Google together account for 59% of hyperscale capacity, followed by Meta, Apple, and companies such as Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance.

How much power do they use?

Large data centers run by the top firms typically require 30 to 100 megawatts of power. To put that into perspective, one megawatt can power about 750 homes. That means a 50-70 megawatt facility consumes as much electricity as a small city.

“Building one data center is like adding an entirely new town to the grid,” Mehrizi-Sani said. “In fact, in Virginia, data centers already consume about 25% of the electricity in the state. In the United States, that number is about 3 to 4%.”

That demand requires extensive coordination with utilities.

“Data centers connect to the power grid much like other large loads, like factories and even towns do,” Mehrizi-Sani said. “Because they need so much electric power, utilities have to upgrade substations, lines and transformers to support them. Utilities also have to upgrade their control and protection equipment to accommodate the consumption of data centers.”

If not planned carefully, he added, new facilities can strain local power delivery and generation capacity. That is why every major project must undergo engineering reviews before connecting to the grid.

Why now?

The rapid rise of AI has supercharged an already fast-growing sector. Training models and running cloud services requires enormous computing power, which means facilities are being built faster and larger.

“AI and cloud drive the need to data centers,” Mehrizi-Sani said. “Training AI models and running cloud services require massive computing power, which means new data centers have to be built faster and larger than before.”

Dinsdale noted in a report that the industry’s scale has shifted sharply.

“The big difference now is the increased scale of growth. Historically the average size of new data centers was increasing gradually, but this trend has become supercharged in the last few quarters as companies build out AI-oriented infrastructure,” he said.

Why certain states lead the market

Different states and regions offer different advantages. According to a July 2025 report by Synergy Energy Group, Virginia became the leading hub because of relatively low electricity costs when the industry was expanding, availability of land in the early years and proximity to federal agencies and contractors.

Texas and California are also major markets, for reasons ranging from abundant energy to the presence of technology companies.

Internationally, Synergy’s analysis shows that China and Europe each account for about a third of the remaining capacity. Analysts expect growth to spread to other U.S. regions, including the South and Midwest, while markets in India, Australia, Spain and Saudi Arabia increase their share globally.

What is at stake?

For most Americans, data centers are invisible but indispensable. Almost everything digital depends on them.

“Streaming movies, online banking, virtual meetings and classes, weather forecasts, navigation apps, social media like Instagram, online storage and even some healthcare services” all run through data centers, Mehrizi-Sani said.

Synergy’s forecast suggests the trend is unlikely to slow.

“It is also very clear that the United States will continue to dwarf all other countries and regions as the main home for hyperscale infrastructure,” Dinsdale said.

This story is the first in a Center Square series examining how data centers are reshaping electricity demand, costs, tax incentives, the environment and national security.