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The Senate voted Thursday to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the Trump administration's Health and Human Services Secretary with a vote of 52 to 48.

Kennedy will oversee about 80,000 employees with agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was the sole Republican to vote against Kennedy. McConnell, who had polio as a child, spoke out against Kennedy's efforts to "undermine" the polio vaccine.

"RFK Jr has long expressed views that conflict with scientific evidence, especially on vaccines, and his nomination has provoked opposition from public health experts," the BBC reported. "But he has also adopted positions with popular support, scrutinizing the use of food additives and urging that the power of big pharma be curbed."

MAGA activists Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer blasted Elon Musk and President Donald Trump for distracting from the budget deficit and national debt by focusing on internet memes instead.

As the House Budget Committee was marking up a budget likely to have few cuts in the next year, Bannon suggested Republicans were more interested in slashing taxes for the rich.

"So somebody's got to explain to me where these real cuts are," Bannon said on his Thursday War Room broadcast. "The tax cut for the Social Security has to be in there, has to be in there for the middle class and working class. And to hell with the big donors, to hell with the top 1%. That three, the four trillion dollar tax cut, that trillion dollars at the top."

"I think it's really great that Elon Musk is using his celebrity and his position," Loomer opined. "It's hard to really deny that he's not a co-president when he's giving these press conferences in the White House with his son next to President Trump in a very domineering fashion."

"But I will say that we need to see more action, as you just said, from these lawmakers to make more substantial cuts instead of just, you know, pushing out these soundbites on Fox News," she continued. "It's becoming very meme-like in my, in my opinion."

Loomer argued that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) used Musk and Trump as a "human shield."

"He likes to bro it up with Elon Musk, and he likes to bro it up with Donald Trump," she said. "Elon Musk himself and DOGE as an entity has become such a lightning rod. Given the fact that it's Elon and several unvetted, many would say, teenagers who are now occupying space in White House facilities with clearances to review highly sensitive information, the focus has really been on Elon Musk and kind of the hysteria around DOGE itself."

"And so you see the media focusing on things like, oh, Elon Musk Just changed his name to Harry Bōlz. Oh, one of the guys on DOGE goes by the name Big Balls. Oh, he made racist comments about Indians, and so people are getting very caught up in the memes that are being pushed out from DOGE," a frustrated Loomer complained.

"People are getting distracted by this meme-like energy that is not just emitting from the Oval Office in these press conferences with President Trump and Elon, but also in the way that Elon and these lawmakers are now interacting."

ALSO READ: Elon Musk's DOGE boys think this is a video game as Trump plots his 2nd coup

"Because of his very large financial contribution to Republicans, to President Trump, he has a hold over them, and so they're doing his bidding, and they are in return pushing out the memes and making it more of a meme narrative."

Watch the video below from Real America's Voice.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is facing the first real test of his control of his GOP caucus in Donald Trump's second term as the clock is ticking toward a government shutdown.

According to a report from Politico's Eugene Daniels, it is "do-or-die" time for the top Republican in the House as members of the House Budget Committee review a budget proposal that is getting a thumbs-down from far-right members.

With NOTUS reporting Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) called what he has seen so far "pathetic," Politico's report notes Johnson "emerged from hours of closed-door meetings yesterday refusing to make changes to his plan, "despite hard-liner demands for deeper spending cuts and other adjustments" putting the fate of a deal in doubt.

ALSO READ: Elon Musk's DOGE boys think this is a video game as Trump plots his 2nd coup

With such a slim GOP margin in the House, and Democrats making noise about not bailing Johnson out, the House leadership is facing a "vote-count problem," the report stated.

Budget Committee members Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Ralph Norman (R-SC) have already indicated they aren't on board, which means one more Republican can derail the whole process.

The report adds, "It’s likely to remain unclear well into the day whether Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-TX) can close the deal and send a budget resolution to the floor.”

You can read more here.

On the eve of the Munich Security Conference, when defense leaders meet from around the globe to discuss strengthening alliances, European leaders are more concerned than ever about the reliability of the Trump administration, according to a report.

Since he took office, Trump has "insisted NATO members massively boost their defense spending, dismissed the U.S. military’s role in Europe, frozen foreign aid, advocated taking over Greenland, treated Russia as a negotiating partner and threatened to pull support from Ukraine," wrote Paul McLeary and Jacopo Barigazzi in a piece for Politico Thursday.

Now his administration is set to come face-to-face with their European counterparts on Friday. "And while allies have experience navigating the disruptions and uncertainties of the U.S. president, this administration is a more expansionist and aggressive one than they’ve faced before," wrote McLeary and Barigazzi.

François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s minister of innovation, science and industry, told Politico, “The rules of the game have changed," thanks to Trump's heavy reliance on punitive tariffs and his stated desire to annex Canada as a 51st state.

ALSO READ: 'Making America less safe': Democrats warn of disaster as Trump purges the CIA

In addition, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made it clear this week that "priorities such as China and securing the southern border mean that 'stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.'”

Jan Lipavský, the Czech Republic’s minister of foreign affairs told Politico, “We don’t know what the U.S. will propose, so everyone is looking to Munich."

According to the writers, "The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment. But Trump said Wednesday that he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin about negotiating an end to the war. The conversation, which signaled a stunning shift in strategy with Moscow, will likely prove a major topic this weekend."

European officials will be listening for a specific U.S. plan for Ukraine, the article continued, "and want a promise that Trump will play hardball with Putin. Some diplomats fear the U.S. president strengthens Putin’s hand by showing he wants to make a deal."

Read the Politico article here.

A faction of Republicans demanding a "budget-busting tax cut" could threaten the Trump administration's entire agenda, argued the chief economist for a conservative economic think tank in a new article.

Oren Cass wrote in Thursday's New York Times that one group in particular — a free-enterprise advocacy group called The Club for Growth — was pushing the administration to prioritize maintaining the huge tax cut that became law during President Donald Trump's first term.

That cut is scheduled to expire this year, and hard-liners say restoring the law "must be Congress’s 'top priority' because it 'delivered record economic growth.'"

ALSO READ: Dems in disarray: Unforced error nixes Elon Musk subpoena — and sparks infighting

Trouble is, "That’s not true," Cass wrote. "Economic growth was lower in the year after the law’s passage than the year before. The two-year stretch that followed its passage saw slower growth than any other two-year period of the economic expansions in the 1990s and 2000s — not the kind of record anyone should be boasting about."

Cass wrote that tax cuts "simply are not a top priority for the American people broadly, the working class that now forms the core of the Republican coalition nor even the Republican Party itself." He backed up his claim by citing a Fox News survey showing just 1 percent of voters "said tax reform should now be President Trump’s top priority."

Cass also cited a survey compiled by his own organization, American Compass, that found "most working-class voters would want to see Congress raise taxes on corporations and on households with income about $250,000 before cutting spending."

"With the federal budget deficit much larger than it was eight years ago, genuine fiscal conservatives within the party oppose simply extending the cut for eight to 10 more years. But the anti-tax activists insist it’s the only way forward," Cass wrote. In addition, he argued that fighting over the "low priority" tax bill "will stall the more promising elements of the Trump agenda and expose themselves as badly disconnected from the interests of the working class that put them in power."

Read The New York Times article here.

Rep. Don Beyer (R-VA) reacted with horror on Wednesday to a legal complaint filed against the Trump administration on behalf of an American family that had to scramble to escape Congo after X owner Elon Musk shut down the United States Agency for International Development.

The complaint in question was first flagged on X by Politico reporter Robbie Gramer and it featured testimony of a USAID worker who alleged that "the chaos of the Trump administration's haphazard and extra-Constitutional shutdown of USAID has caused my family and me immense emotional distress by contributing to the already intense sense of panic and uncertainty of the riots in Kinshasa."

As Reuters has reported, rioters in Kinshasa stormed embassies of multiple nations late last month to protest what they said was the Rwandan government's support for the M23 militia movement.

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Reacting to this, Beyer expressed total disgust at the actions of Musk and President Donald Trump.

"This is an absolute scandal," he charged. "Trump and Marco Rubio abandoned American workers and their families abroad without approving grant waivers to provide their safe return to the United States. They lost their possessions, their housing, and their pay, and the whole time Elon Musk was slandering them with bogus accusations."

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