The Onion

Spez says $19.99 fee "enhances community dialogue through monetary validation"

Classified report warns of dangerous exposure to different perspectives

(Washington DC) As the government continues to purge employees, one bright spot is appearing in the forming picture; Americans are re-filing their taxes with an additional 65 million dependents added to 2024 tax returns. The IRS, having laid off 6,700 employees, says they “are struggling” to keep up with the changes, as people across the country are amending or adjusting their initial tax filing, adding children, spouses, friends, relatives, plants, and even their favorite inanimate objects as dependents to their tax forms.

Leon Sturbgetter, a cow detangler in Wibson, Missouri, is delighted by the new freedoms afforded by a weakened IRS. “Bessie is a special heifer… she deserves a deduction. In fact, every cow in this herd behind me is on my return now. I don’t even own them.”

Sturbgetter is not the only American taking advantage. Some former IRS employees are uniting to attempt to mutually claim all 6,699 fellow colleagues as dependents. When asked if this is legal, one former employee stated “I guess I’ll have to audit me if it’s not… looks good!” He laughed.

Not everyone is laughing, however. One republican senator, who asked not to be named, stated that he is concerned with fiscal responsibility, unless the president said not to be. “We need to cut programs until we have a balanced budget, and our projected $7 tax revenue will not go far. The cuts may hurt everyday Americans, and I for one thank god I am not one.”

Elon Musk could not be reached for comment.

(San Francisco, CA) As the US Government is slowly collapsed in the pursuit of government efficiency, other competitors in the coin space are also reaching out to tap into this new, unexplored area of blockchain profitability. LiteCoin, a smaller, blockchain-based token that touts itself as equivalent to BitCoin or DogeCoin, has opened the “Legislative Inefficiency Termination Executive,” or LITE, as an alternative means to reduce government function under the guise of cost saving and efficiency.

Their office, based in Washington DC and opening next week, will seek to also reduce government waste and spending, while also acting like a government agency. “We plan to show up places and demand information, and then make sudden, reckless actions that create headlines, and hopefully help our coin price,” said one LiteCoin enthusiast over Skype. “We plan to innovate exactly like the larger agency, just not as well… just like in the original coin space.”

When asked how this would improve the government, the reaction was glib. “Clearly you haven’t spent much time in the coin space. The money will come - this is about innovation. We can create a replica of the leading ideas, and refine them in a space we our coins profit. This government idea is just like when NFTs were created, and we need to get in now, while there is still value.”

Economists were not as optimistic about the plan. Said one, “Look, maybe they should just give a bunch of coins to the president in a bag marked ‘bribe,’ I don’t know. My NSF funding is cut off, I haven’t had time to look into it.

“I have a large frappachino for Kara,” he added.

While LiteCoin has joined the fray, the most valuable coin, Bitcoin, does not seem to be joining in yet. And with Tiktok having limited bandwidth in America, no coin bros were able to comment by deadline.

Source

WASHINGTON — In a move that sent shockwaves through the tech industry, former President Donald Trump signed an executive order today declaring all open-source code "un-American" and making its creation, distribution, or use punishable by up to 20 years in federal prison. "Nobody knew code could be free. It's terrible, folks. Terrible," Trump declared from his Mar-a-Lago residence. "Real Americans pay for their software, and they pay big league. That's what made this country great." The controversial order, scrawled in gold Sharpie on the back of a McDonald's receipt, specifically targets what Trump called "socialist programmer communes" like GitHub and Linux. It requires all software to be developed behind closed doors and sold at "whatever price the market can bear, plus 50%." Tech industry leaders were quick to respond, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reportedly doing backflips in his office while shouting "Windows forever!" Meanwhile, Linux creator Linus Torvalds was last seen attempting to seek political asylum in Finland, muttering something about "git push" and "force shutdown -h now." The order has created particular confusion in the government sector, where thousands of federal websites running on open-source software suddenly became illegal. The White House's own website temporarily displayed a blue screen of death with the message "ERROR: FREEDOM.EXE NOT FOUND." "This is a great day for American software," said Trump's newly appointed Chief of Proprietary Code Enforcement, a sentient copy of Windows Vista. "We're going to make coding great again by putting it behind the biggest, most beautiful paywalls you've ever seen." At press time, a underground resistance movement of developers had already formed, sharing code snippets via an elaborate network of Morse code signals sent through reprogrammed coffee makers.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was only officially confirmed and sworn in as the new Secretary of Health and Human Services yesterday, but he's already making his presence felt in a major way. Sweeping changes are coming to the way the federal government promotes health, and it starts with the famous Food Pyramid.

Trump, who won reelection in November 2024 partly by claiming he could end the Ukraine war in one day, spent his first month in office posting cryptic messages on Truth Social about how the “deep state” was preventing him from implementing his genius plan. Now, with pressure mounting, he has finally delivered on his promise – by offering to surrender on Ukraine’s behalf.