Midwest
DOGE Madness: ‘Sweet 16’ bracket set up as craziest federal waste competes for championship
EXCLUSIVE: Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) leaders in the Senate will be releasing an NCAA-style bracket of the craziest items of federal waste needing to be cut, as the public will be able to actively vote for their picks in successive Elite Eight and Final Four rounds.
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, the leader of the upper chamber’s DOGE caucus, told Fox News Digital on Friday that while college basketball’s March Madness only lasts a month, the federal government’s “spending madness” is a year-round, debt-defying event.
“The Senate DOGE Caucus is dividing and conquering to bring waste to a squealing halt,” Ernst said.
“This March, we will be scoring buckets for taxpayers by increasing transparency, stopping the silly spending, and making government actually start to work for the American people it serves.”
Sixteen “seeds” of waste will be posted in a bracket and put up for public polling on X to determine which eight waste items are bad enough to advance; followed by the next-worst four, and championship two.
DOGE CAUCUS SENATOR PUSHES FOR END TO SLUSH FUND FOR PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES
The Senate DOGE Caucus presents the 2025 Tournament of Waste. (Office of Sen. Joni Ernst)
Each DOGE caucus member received or picked priority waste items for the tournament. While there may not be any major upsets, like Lehigh University’s 2012 win over #1-seed Duke, each item’s introduction to the public may cause the same surprise.
Sen. Cyntha Lummis, R-Wyo., has her spot on the bracket represented by a Biden administration appropriation of $4.5 million to “combat disinformation” in Kazakhstan.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., who coached Auburn’s football team for many years, will be represented in the tourney by an allocation of $168,000 for an “Anthony Fauci Exhibit” at the National Institutes of Health Museum in Maryland.
A $7.9 million expenditure on teaching journalists in Sri Lanka to avoid “binary-gendered language” will be in the bracket under Sen. John Kennedy’s, R-La., name.
Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., picked a $45 million Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) scholarship program for Burmese people to be featured at the event.
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Ernst, meanwhile, will be represented by the $4 million that the Departments of Agriculture and Interior spent on setting up a farming infrastructure for insect-based food consumption for humans.
Some of the other DOGE Madness bracket “teams” include billions in costs associated with the ATF illegally miscategorizing bureau employees as “law enforcement” (Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa), $690,000 to study cannabis use among “sexual-minority gender-diverse individuals” (Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo.), $12 million for a Las Vegas pickleball facility (Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont.) and $1.75 million for MoMA – a New York City museum with already $5 billion in assets (Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah).
Additionally, Sen. James Lankford’s, R-Okla., waste bracket includes $2 billion sent to the Taliban since the Biden administration’s 2021 withdrawal.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., is represented by a six-figure line item for vegetable gardens in El Salvador, and Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., has a $1.3 million subsidy for equity and advocacy for Long Island transgender “youth of color.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Ron Johnson’s, R-Wis., bracket position is dubbed the “liberal four corners.”
Johnson is represented by a $100,000 EPA grant to a major city’s teachers’ union foundation to hold a 14-day Environmental Justice Freedom School that the DOGE caucus said touches on the quartet of climate change, teachers’ unions, indoctrinating children and paid activism.
Elsewhere in the Sweet 16 bracket, Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s, R-Tenn., position is represented by a $22 billion allocation from the Department of Health and Human Services to provide free housing and vehicles for illegal immigrants – and Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., sought to highlight millions in wasteful spending on gender transition procedures for U.S. service members.
The final spot in the bracket is for $1.45 billion in FEMA funds for luxury hotels for illegals, an item called out by Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho.
Risch notably introduced legislation to end the practice, called the End FEMA Benefits for Illegal Immigrants Act.
Amid the tournament’s division of varying types of government waste, the Senate DOGE caucus will also announce Friday that it is divvying up “priority areas” for groups of senators to focus on.
Acquisition reform, digitizing antiquated government systems, transparency efforts, restoring “‘service’ to the civil service,” fraud, non-strategic foreign aid, and cost-efficiency are all areas of study being assigned across the DOGE caucus as the legislative year heats up, Fox News Digital has learned.
Read the full article from Here
An anonymous woman filed a rare medical negligence lawsuit last week against an Illinois abortionist after a late-term abortion took a “horrific” turn when an emergency hospital visit revealed “half of a deceased pre-born human being” was found left inside her.
Chicago injury attorney Richard Craig filed the lawsuit on behalf of Jane Doe from Indiana, naming both the Champaign-based Equity Clinic and its founder, Dr. Keith Reisinger-Kindle, as defendants.
Craig told Fox News Digital in an interview Thursday he’s “never been presented” with a case like this.
DEFUND ‘BIG ABORTION’ INDUSTRY THAT THRIVED UNDER BIDEN, 150 PRO-LIFE GROUPS URGE CONGRESS
Patient Jane Doe alleges medical negligence by Dr. Keith Reisinger-Kindle (inset) after her abortion went terribly wrong. (Wright State University/Getty Images/Sixth Judicial Circuit of Illinois)
The suit alleges that during a 22-week abortion performed in April 2023, Reisinger-Kindle left parts of the fetus inside the woman’s body, leading to severe complications. After the procedure, when the woman reported persistent cramping, Reisinger-Kindle allegedly advised her to take over-the-counter pain relievers and laxatives. She later underwent emergency surgery to remove the body parts. Doe is seeking damages for medical negligence and emotional distress.
“This is someone who performed an abortion that at 22 weeks of gestation – which at that point renders a two-day process – and then on the second day, when most of the work is done, at the culmination of his work, he entered a note, saying, these are his words, ‘products of conception were visibly inspected and confirmed to be complete,’” Craig said. “That’s his note. Well, clearly that didn’t happen.”
“When she presented to the emergency room two days later, they found what they described to be as a half of a pre-deceased fetus,” Craig said. “And the films that are in the records actually suggests more like two-thirds. So, how could he say that he visibly inspected her?”
Doe, a mother of four, also alleged that Reisinger-Kindle refused to provide pertinent information to the attending surgeons without her consent.
In a medical report included in the lawsuit filings, an obstetrician/gynecologist asserts that Reisinger-Kindle “deviated from a reasonable standard of care” during the abortion by perforating the plaintiff’s uterus and failing to recognize the injury.
DOGE MUST ‘DEFUND’ PLANNED PARENTHOOD, MIKE PENCE’S WATCHDOG GROUP URGES MUSK
The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, allowing states to have greater discretion in regulating or even outlawing abortion procedures. (Jose Luis Magana/AFP /AFP via Getty Images)
The report also states that Reisinger-Kindle “failed to adequately examine the fetal parts” after the procedure. According to the lawsuit, there was a hole in the woman’s uterus roughly the size of a large coin. The report notes that if Reisinger-Kindle “performed an adequate exam of the remains, it should have been obvious that fetal parts were left behind.”
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade and leaving it up to states to decide on abortion, Illinois has solidified its position as a haven for the procedure, enacting a series of legislative measures to shield both providers and out-of-state women seeking abortion services from lawsuits.
FEDS GAVE $700M TO PLANNED PARENTHOOD DURING YEAR OF RECORD ABORTIONS
Reisinger-Kindle, who was featured in a Chicago Tribune article, was one of many providers who opened abortion clinics in the Midwest following the high court’s ruling.
Craig – who said taking the case won’t make him “any friends in Illinois” – also alleged Reisinger-Kindle didn’t administer any pain-relief medication to the fetus, which would have stopped its heartbeat, prior to its dismemberment.
An Illinois abortionist is being sued by an anonymous former patient for negligence. (Darin Oswald/Idaho Statesman/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
“The current laws would prevent me, for instance, from pursuing a claim against this doctor on behalf of the child for what had to be excruciating pain that the child underwent while he was being dismembered piece by piece, without any pain relief,” Craig said. “And so those laws do, in fact, prevent me, or anybody from taking that position and seeking redress for that on the behalf of the child.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to Reisinger-Kindle for comment but did not hear back by time of publication.
Read the full article from Here
A Michigan man has been charged in connection with the human trafficking of a Saginaw woman.
Marcell Davon Joseph, 24, of Clinton Township, is charged with human trafficking enterprise resulting in injury, prostitution/transporting, prostitution/accepting earnings and domestic violence. If convicted, Joseph faces up to 20 years in prison.
According to the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office, Joseph was accused of trafficking a 28-year-old woman, physically assaulting her multiple times and forcing her to engage in sex acts with other men while refusing to give her any of the money.
Joseph was arrested on March 21 in Madison Heights. He was arraigned the next day and received a $150,000 cash/surety bond.
The sheriff’s office says he was previously convicted of larceny, resisting a police officer and unarmed robbery.
“I am proud of these cooperative efforts with our law enforcement partners that are finding and rescuing people from a torturous situation,” Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said in a statement. “We look forward to holding anyone that traffics another human being fully accountable for their actions.”
A probable cause conference is scheduled for April 2.
Anyone who is a victim of human trafficking or knows someone who is can contact the Common Ground Human Trafficking Crisis Hotline at 248-451-2622, the Oakland County Human Trafficking Task Force at 248-240-3166 or the sheriff’s office dispatch at 248-858-4950.
MILWAUKEE — The Canadian government is trying to persuade Americans to urge their government to rethink imposing tariffs through a new ad campaign.
The move comes as a trade war escalates between the U.S. and Canada. The campaign features digital billboards seen across the country, including in Milwaukee.
The Canadian government is hoping to reach Americans in hopes of urging U.S. lawmakers to reconsider tariffs in place and future tariffs.
At the corner of Oakland and Locust, the message “Tariffs are a tax at the gas pump” rotated every 20 minutes.
Mike Beiermeister
Residents in the neighborhood, like Julia Williams, never thought they would see something like this.
“That is just wild,” Williams said. “We’ve never had Canada try to get our attention like that; I’ve got to be honest.”
The billboards are also drawing strong reactions from people online.
TMJ4 spotted the advertisement in two other locations around the city.
Some, like Samantha, think it is a great move by the Canadian government.
“Tariffs are not a great move, and I think it gets straight to the point,” Samantha said.
Watch: Mixed feelings over Canadian government anti-tariff billboard campaign in Milwaukee
Canadian government uses billboards to get America’s attention
Christian told TMJ4 he supports imposing tariffs on Canada and isn’t sure the campaign will be effective.
“Maybe it will work. Maybe it won’t. I guess we’ll see what happens,” Christian said.
Even if it doesn’t change any minds, the messaging is catching some people’s attention.
“I think it sends a message, but I don’t know if it will necessarily change people’s opinions,” Julianna said. “I think people are very set in their ways, and it’s a very polarizing political climate.”
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