CURRENT EVENTS - JANUARY 2026

gtyellowjacket said:
I think he knows he's got trouble and is going to take the political bullet for all the Democrats.

There is also no way this is just a Minnesota/Somalian immigrant problem. If there's that much fraud, other people have figured it out. Republicans are looking at other states and I assume Democrats are too.
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There's plenty to go after. You might note why I think what's happening in Minnesota should be pursued, there's a whole lot of smoke and mirrors going on to distract people. Bottom line is that Trump owns most of this listed below because of how badly he threw money around.

Estimates of federal pandemic relief fraud range from hundreds of billions of dollars to potentially over a trillion dollars, making it the largest fraud in history. The final total amount remains unknown, as investigations are ongoing.
Several federal watchdogs have provided key estimates:
  • The SBA Office of Inspector General estimates over $200 billion in potentially fraudulent loans from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, representing at least 17% of the total funds for these programs.
  • The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated fraud in unemployment insurance programs to be between $100 billion and $135 billion, or 11% to 15% of total benefits paid.
  • An Associated Press investigation estimated up to $280 billion in fraudulent pandemic relief, with an additional $123 billion misspent or wasted. Some private experts believe the actual fraud could be closer to $400 billion or more.
The rapid disbursement of over $5 trillion in aid during the pandemic led to weakened controls, contributing to the massive scale of the fraud.

Enforcement and Recoveries
Federal agencies continue to investigate and prosecute fraud cases. As of December 2024, the Department of Justice has charged over 3,000 individuals and secured more than 2,500 convictions. Authorities have recovered over $1.4 billion in fraudulently obtained funds. The statute of limitations for fraud against the two major SBA loan programs has been extended to ten years to support these efforts.
If you have information about potential COVID-19 fraud, you
 
BlueSteel said:
While I agree, just imagine what a MAGA would do: deny it, label it a "Democrat hoax," not cooperate with any investigation... and completely get away with it.
It ain't pretty, but you know it's true.
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I'm sure most would try. I doubt it would work in Minnesota. And of course some Democrats have tried it with varying levels of success.

It does feel like the current iteration of the GOP is much more likely to push through corruption issues and the electorate gives them a pass. Maybe that's wrong. I can't think of a time when a Republican or Democrat electorate voted out a party member for corruption. It appears that the justice department is the way that most of these corrupt politicians careers get ended.
 
BlueSteel said:
While I agree, just imagine what a MAGA would do: deny it, label it a MAGA hoax, do not cooperate with any investigation... and completely get away with it.
It ain't pretty, but you know it's true.
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That's because of an asymmetry of voters. MAGA politicians do that because MAGA voters are OK with it.
 
finesse said:
There's plenty to go after. You might note why I think what's happening in Minnesota should be pursued, there's a whole lot of smoke and mirrors going on to distract people. Bottom line is that Trump owns most of this listed below because of how badly he threw money around.

Estimates of federal pandemic relief fraud range from hundreds of billions of dollars to potentially over a trillion dollars, making it the largest fraud in history. The final total amount remains unknown, as investigations are ongoing.
Several federal watchdogs have provided key estimates:
  • The SBA Office of Inspector General estimates over $200 billion in potentially fraudulent loans from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program, representing at least 17% of the total funds for these programs.
  • The Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated fraud in unemployment insurance programs to be between $100 billion and $135 billion, or 11% to 15% of total benefits paid.
  • An Associated Press investigation estimated up to $280 billion in fraudulent pandemic relief, with an additional $123 billion misspent or wasted. Some private experts believe the actual fraud could be closer to $400 billion or more.
The rapid disbursement of over $5 trillion in aid during the pandemic led to weakened controls, contributing to the massive scale of the fraud.

Enforcement and Recoveries
Federal agencies continue to investigate and prosecute fraud cases. As of December 2024, the Department of Justice has charged over 3,000 individuals and secured more than 2,500 convictions. Authorities have recovered over $1.4 billion in fraudulently obtained funds. The statute of limitations for fraud against the two major SBA loan programs has been extended to ten years to support these efforts.
If you have information about potential COVID-19 fraud, you
Click to expand...
PPP and EIDL in particular were rushed through with watered-down terms (compared to typical SBA requirements for loans and grants unrelated to COVID but the existing infrastructure for which were used to stand up the PPP and EIDL loans) that Congress and Trump knew would lead to substantially heightens fraud risk. The decision was taken to accept the fraud risk to mainline cash into the economy and then go back and seek out the fraudsters after the fact.

But people forget that legislators in late March/early April of 2020 originally set up PPP as a 90-day program. They thought the COVID crisis would be resolved by July 4th.

When that quickly proved hopelessly optimistic, and PPP proved immensely popular/over-subscribed, the program was endlessly revised with ex post facto rule changes that would never stand up in court in ordinary circumstances and expansions and extensions of the availability of PPP loans into 2021 and the right to have the low interest loans remain outstanding for AT LEAST 5-years if not forgiven.

The Biden Administration were also part of the problem, further watering down already diluted conditions to borrowing to encourage underbanked populations (people without many basic business records, no bank accounts, etc.) to benefit from the program. Both the Trump and Biden Administrations rushed through approval of small banks, savings and loans and fintechs as new SBA lenders to increase lender participation and increase access for communities that have not traditionally used or had full access to traditional banking services.

The result was a disaster of terrible record-keeping, overwhelmed and ill-conceived loan document review processes and a run on PPP by all kinds of fraudsters.

A lot of really good things came out of PPP — a lot of small and mid-sized companies were saved, at least for a time, gig economy workers had access to income and employees remained employed and paid even though they had to stay home to fight the pandemic. But the trade-off of standing up a massive loan program literally overnight (the loan applications were being accepted about 36 hours after the legislation was signed) was unavoidable fraud. It was a conscious choice.

Think of all the stories about how hard it is to do the paperwork for a FEMA loan after a localized disaster. This disaster was everywhere, all at once. No one had the capacity to process all those traditional loan applications and get money out the door in a matter of weeks unless the rules were tremendously relaxed.

BTW, the Senator who was the mastermind of PPP was Marco Rubio. It was his baby. And it worked better than anyone expected possible but at a significant cost of fraud. And there were actually a ton of applicants who in good faith rushed in to borrow loans and genuinely thought they were complying with PPP terms and then had their loans forgiven but are STILL discovering they weren’t qualified or borrowed too much or whatever.

The statute of limitations has been extended several times for PPP reviews, audits and fraud claims, and is now 10 years from the forgiveness determination date, so the government has given itself until 2030 or 2031 (and ins one cases even 2032) to track down fraud on the program.
 
nycfan said:
PPP and EIDL in particular were rushed through with watered-down terms (compared to typical SBA requirements for loans and grants unrelated to COVID but the existing infrastructure for which were used to stand up the PPP and EIDL loans) that Congress and Trump knew would lead to substantially heightens fraud risk. The decision was taken to accept the fraud risk to mainline cash into the economy and then go back and seek out the fraudsters after the fact.

But people forget that legislators in late March/early April of 2020 originally set up PPP as a 90-day program. They thought the COVID crisis would be resolved by July 4th.

When that quickly proved hopelessly optimistic, and PPP proved immensely popular/over-subscribed, the program was endlessly revised with ex post facto rule changes that would never stand up in court in ordinary circumstances and expansions and extensions of the availability of PPP loans into 2021 and the right to have the low interest loans remain outstanding for AT LEAST 5-years if not forgiven.

The Biden Administration were also part of the problem, further watering down already diluted conditions to borrowing to encourage underbanked populations (people without many basic business records, no bank accounts, etc.) to benefit from the program. Both the Trump and Biden Administrations rushed through approval of small banks, savings and loans and fintechs as new SBA lenders to increase lender participation and increase access for communities that have not traditionally used or had full access to traditional banking services.

The result was a disaster of terrible record-keeping, overwhelmed and ill-conceived loan document review processes and a run on PPP by all kinds of fraudsters.

A lot of really good things came out of PPP — a lot of small and mid-sized companies were saved, at least for a time, gig economy workers had access to income and employees remained employed and paid even though they had to stay home to fight the pandemic. But the trade-off of standing up a massive loan program literally overnight (the loan applications were being accepted about 36 hours after the legislation was signed) was unavoidable fraud. It was a conscious choice.

Think of all the stories about how hard it is to do the paperwork for a FEMA loan after a localized disaster. This disaster was everywhere, all at once. No one had the capacity to process all those traditional loan applications and get money out the door in a matter of weeks unless the rules were tremendously relaxed.

BTW, the Senator who was the mastermind of PPP was Marco Rubio. It was his baby. And it worked better than anyone expected possible but at a significant cost of fraud. And there were actually a ton of applicants who in good faith rushed in to borrow loans and genuinely thought they were complying with PPP terms and then had their loans forgiven but are STILL discovering they weren’t qualified or borrowed too much or whatever.

The statute of limitations has been extended several times for PPP reviews, audits and fraud claims, and is now 10 years from the forgiveness determination date, so the government has given itself until 2030 or 2031 (and ins one cases even 2032) to track down fraud on the program.
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All of this. nycfan is the expert on this and it's all spot on. That won't stop the Pubs for one second, though, from blaming the Dems for 100% of the PPP-related fraud.
 
Trump and his cronies are starting to tie the Maduro arrest to Trump’s claims that the election was stolen from him in 2020:

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Rock said:
It doesn’t seem like Democrats can do much, if anything, but man this one really pisses me off.
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Courts will reverse. I don't see even SCOTUS upholding this. 'Course I've said that before, but if they have an instinct of self-preservation, they will tell Hegseth to go fuck himself. Otherwise, the same will be done to them.

I am confident that the majority of people will come to agree with me that the only remedy to MAGA is General Sherman. We need another reconstruction. the first didn't fully take. And hopefully it will happen when people realize that the constitution is not a suicide pact.

Trump has put us closer to nuclear war than we have been in 40 years, single-handedly. Except the nuclear war would be with our former allies. That sort of thing must be punished, and the punishment must not be handed out sparingly. There is a lot of rot that must be cleared.
 
nycfan said:
IMG_3451.jpeg
IMG_3452.jpeg

Kelly actually reminded serving military they are not required to follow unlawful orders, he did not advise them not to follow lawful orders.
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Is he going to demote himself for making those exact same comments several years ago in a video I can no longer find because the first 10 pages of a google search are filled with articles about today's action?
 
uncsig said:
Is he going to demote himself for making those exact same comments several years ago in a video I can no longer find because the first 10 pages of a google search are filled with articles about today's action?
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IMG_3455.jpeg

“In 2016, as then-presidential candidate Donald Trump vowed that US troops would carry out even his most extreme battlefield orders as commander in chief — some of which former military leaders said would be illegal — Pete Hegseth warned that service members had a duty to refuse unlawful orders from a potential President Trump.

“You’re not just gonna follow that order if it’s unlawful,” Hegseth said in a March 2016 appearance on “Fox & Friends,” referring to veterans he spoke with.

“The military’s not gonna follow illegal orders,” Hegseth said of Trump in another March appearance on Fox Business…”

 
For what it's worth, here is the statute cited by Hegseth:

(1) In general.-Except for a conditional determination authorized by subsection (d), a determination of the retired grade of an officer pursuant to this section is administratively final on the day the officer is retired, and may not be reopened, except as provided in paragraph (2).

(2) Reopening.-A final determination of the retired grade of an officer may be reopened as follows:

(A) If the retirement or retired grade of the officer was procured by fraud.

(B) If substantial evidence comes to light after the retirement that could have led to determination of a different retired grade under this section if known by competent authority at the time of retirement.

(C) If a mistake of law or calculation was made in the determination of the retired grade.

(D) If the applicable Secretary determines, pursuant to regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Defense, that good cause exists to reopen the determination of retired grade.

Letters A-C are not satisfied by definition; the conduct occurred after retirement and there was no mistake. So he's left with D. Note that the regulations have to be prescribed. It's not "whatever the secretary determines on the spot." And it's also the service secretary, not SecDef
 
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