Critics view the Department of Government Efficiency’s emails asking federal employees for evidence of productivity as chaotic, arbitrary and even cruel measures to impose on a devoted civil service.

But Elon Musk is simply bringing normal private-sector standards to a government that desperately needs them. Since the Pendleton Act of 1883 introduced merit-based selection and civil-service job protections for federal workers, the administrative state has proliferated without sufficient checks and balances from the president or Congress.

The federal bureaucracy has ballooned from a few agencies to more than 450, many of which are “independent” of the president. Americans often view the president as responsible for the actions those agencies take. The system nudges new presidents to give up and go along.

And that’s exactly what they’ve done. No president—not Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan—has cracked this nut. Most reforms have made the administrative state larger, not smaller. Mr. Trump refuses this deal.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion has been dying a slow death since Donald Trump assumed the presidency once more. Suddenly, it’s in rigor mortis.

It’s a philosophy that was aimed at evening the playing field for people of all races, genders and sexual persuasions, but instead it merely divided people and encouraged institutionalized racism, division, and putting someone’s characteristics over their actual merit for jobs and promotions.

Now two financial giants, BlackRock and Bank of America, are moving away from DEI even after BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink made the ludicrous statement in 2021 that “we must embed DEI into everything we do.”

A very strange priority, since his firm is supposed to effectively manage capital for people, pension plans and companies, not wage social justice campaigns.

But BlackRock, the world’s largest investment company that manages over $11.5 trillion, has now cut some key wording out of its annual report:

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, I had many ideas for today’s speech, but one by one I discarded them. Here’s why. We live in turbulent times. After a short break from history that some of us enjoyed, it has again caught up with us all.

In times like these, when the world seems out of joint, when the old seems to be dying but the new cannot yet be born, what we need is a return to basics. To questions about what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s true and what’s actually happened, and what’s just a figment of propaganda.

According to Kremlin’s propaganda, what started three years ago was a justified reaction to Western imperialism allegedly threatening Russia’s security.

In fact, we have seen a modern-day colonial war against Ukrainian people who want a better life and realize they can never achieve this goal by going back to their subjugation to Russia.  Kremlin aggression is a manifestation of a failing empire’s desperate struggle to restore its sphere of influence.

Republican lawmakers are sounding the alarm over the Trump administration’s pointed refusal to blame Russia for starting the war in Ukraine, and they are highly skeptical about negotiating any lasting peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom many describe as a war criminal.

The Republican criticism of President Trump’s strategy for ending the war in Ukraine comes after the United States voted with Russia and its allies, such as North Korea and Belarus, against a United Nations resolution condemning Russian aggression toward Ukraine and calling for the withdrawal of its troops from the country.

The vote was on Monday, three years to the day when Russian began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. The measure, which received the backing of NATO allies, passed the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly despite the U.S. opposition.

While GOP senators were willing to grant Trump broad deference on his controversial Cabinet nominees, they are doubling down in blaming Russia for starting the war and warning the president to approach Putin warily in any negotiation.

This has been a dizzying and disorienting week in international diplomacy. One with wild implications for Ukraine, the future of America’s standing in the world and President Trump’s legacy.

President Trump is absolutely right in wanting to end the bloodshed in Ukraine. The suffering has been appalling and the stalemate brutal. But in the furious mix of wild opinions this week from the White House down, there are at least 10 truths which every American voter must hang onto.

In Trump’s rush to end the bloodshed, these are also the truths against which any deal will be judged and will define him when the history books are written.

To ignore them or not treat them with the gravity they deserve will also have enormous consequences for decades to come:

TRUTH No. 1

Vladimir Putin started this war, despite what President Trump said days ago.

[This is the full text of the President of Ukraine delivered at the Munich Security Conference last Saturday, February 15. Full video is here.]

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At the start of the Conference, every country usually shares its stance, priorities, whether officially, openly or through informal talks with journalists, with partners.

This year, a country that was not even invited still made its presence known. A country that everyone talks about here – not in a good way.

The night before Munich this year, a Russian attack drone struck the sarcophagus covering the ruined fourth reactor of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

It was a modified “Shahed” drone – a Russian drone, a technology Iran passed on to Russia. Its warhead carried at least 50 kilograms of explosives.

We see this as a deeply symbolic move by Russia, by Putin.

Donald Trump’s demand for a $500 billion “payback” from Ukraine goes far beyond US control over the country’s critical minerals. It covers everything from ports and infrastructure to oil and gas, and the larger resource base of the country.

The terms of the contract that landed at Volodymyr Zelensky’s office a week ago amount to the US economic colonization of Ukraine, in legal perpetuity. It implies a burden of reparations that cannot possibly be achieved.

In genuine commerce the other side can usually walk away. Trump’s demand is iron-fist coercion by a neo-imperial power against a weaker nation with its back to the wall, and all for a commodity bonanza that exists chiefly in Trump’s head.