The Patriot Post® · Tuesday: Below the Fold

• Gabbard and RFK both face committee votes today: It’s a consequential day on Capitol Hill, as Senate committee confirmation votes take place for two key Trump cabinet nominees: Tulsi Gabbard¹ for director of national intelligence and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.² for secretary of Health and Human Services. Gabbard got a boost yesterday when moderate Maine Senator Susan Collins, who had expressed reservations, said³ she’ll vote to confirm. Collins’s Intelligence Committee has nine Republicans and eight Democrats, so even a single GOP “no” vote would likely tank Gabbard’s nomination. Now the focus turns to Indiana’s Todd Young, who seemed frustrated by Gabbard’s unwillingness to call NSA mega-leaker Edward Snowden a traitor and was subsequently branded a “deep state puppet” by Elon Musk. As for RFK, he cleared the Senate Finance Committee this morning on a 14-13 party-line vote and will now move to a vote of the full Senate.

• Trump takes on the UN and meets with Netanyahu: The United Nations has long been seen by thoughtful observers as a stridently anti-Israel organization, and President Donald Trump today will likely do something about it. Trump is expected⁴ to sign an executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the UN Human Rights Council and cutting American taxpayer funding for UNRWA, the UN’s terrorism-tinged⁵ relief agency for Gaza. “The UNHRC has demonstrated consistent bias against Israel,” said a Trump administration fact sheet, “focusing on it unfairly and disproportionately in council proceedings. In 2018, the year President Trump withdrew from the UNHRC in his first administration, the organization passed more resolutions condemning Israel than Syria, Iran, and North Korea combined.” The move is well timed for a meeting today⁶ between Trump and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who becomes the first foreign head of state to visit the second-term Trump White House.

• Down with the CFPB: Last week, Donald Trump fired⁷ Rohit Chopra, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has assumed leadership of the CFPB and ordered a pause to most of the congressionally unaccountable organization’s activities as he conducts an agency-wide review of the outfit to ensure that it will “promote consistency” with Trump’s broader policy agenda. Maybe the better long-term option would be for Trump to eliminate the CFPB entirely. Indeed, the CFPB has been operating on questionable legal grounds for a while now since it’s only supposed to pull operational funding from profits from the Federal Reserve, which has been losing money. It’s time for this non-free market regulatory blight to come to an end⁸.

• EPA employees put on notice: More than 1,100 employees who were hired by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the past year received a notice from the Trump administration that their jobs could soon be terminated⁹. An email sent to EPA employees stated, “As a probationary/trial period employee, the agency has the right to immediately terminate you.” This comes days after the Senate confirmed Donald Trump’s nominee to head the EPA, Lee Zeldin. He has since met with career EPA staff, expressing that his goal for the agency “is to create a more effective and efficient federal government that serves all Americans.” He also announced the end of all remote work at the agency.

• Rank political bias infects defenestrated IGs and USAID staff: The melodramatists at The New York Times called it¹⁰ a “late night purge,” but it’s just another step toward draining The Swamp. President Donald Trump recently fired at least 18 of the 73 federal government inspectors general, and now we have a better idea as to why. A Washington Examiner analysis¹¹ uncovered that at least six of them “had a history of donating to Democratic political committees.” The Times complains that the firings run afoul of a law that requires presidents to give Congress 30 days’ notice before jettisoning any inspector general, along with a rationale for doing so. In addition, we’re shocked — SHOCKED — to report¹² that 97% of political contributions by USAID staff went to Democrats. No wonder congressional Democrats are squealing like stuck pigs.

• Trump administration goes after anti-Semitism: The Biden administration will be remembered for many things, nearly all of them bad. One of the worst, though, was its tolerance for Jew-hatred. To right this wrong, the Trump administration’s Department of Justice announced a multi-agency task force “to root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses.” As Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, put it¹³, “Anti-Semitism in any environment is repugnant to this Nation’s ideals. The Department takes seriously our responsibility to eradicate this hatred wherever it is found.” In addition to this macro approach, the administration is engaged at the micro level. Trump’s Department of Education is investigating¹⁴ “widespread antisemitic harassment” at Columbia, Cal-Berkeley, and Northwestern in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians. Portland State University and the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, are also under investigation.

• Is Trump about to restrict mail-order abortion pills? Donald Trump has reestablished enforcement of the Hyde Amendment, the 1977 rule banning federal funding for abortions, which the Biden administration effectively ignored. In that vein, the Trump administration has ended the Biden-era DOJ policy of reimbursing abortion-related travel expenses for military personnel. Furthermore, Trump has issued executive orders barring Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funding to promote abortion overseas. The question many have is whether Trump will issue orders to stop mail-order abortion pills¹⁵. He could theoretically invoke the 1873 Comstock Act, a federal law that bans the transporting of obscene materials, as legal justification for barring mail-order abortion pills. According to estimates from the Guttmacher Institute, 63% of abortions in the U.S. are now conducted with abortion pills.

• Trump creates U.S. sovereign wealth fund: On Monday, Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a sovereign wealth fund¹⁶. This creation would take government surpluses and invest them in the market in potentially high-risk assets. However, with higher risks also comes a greater opportunity for higher returns. According to newly minted Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, “We’re going to monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet for the American people. We are going to put the assets to work." In creating this sovereign wealth fund, Trump fulfills a campaign promise. The question is, where will these funds come from? The last time the federal government had a surplus was back in 2001. One possible funding source that has been floated is revenue from Trump’s tariffs. That said, the biggest hurdle is that a sovereign wealth fund requires congressional approval.

Headlines

• Trump agrees to pause tariffs on Canada and Mexico after they pledge to boost border enforcement (AP¹⁷) | China launches limited tariffs after Trump imposes sweeping new levies (Reuters¹⁸)

• Trump advisers weigh plan to dismantle Education Department (WSJ¹⁹)

• U.S. attorney hints at prosecutions over "targeting” of DOGE employees (WaPo²⁰)

• Leaked memo exposes cartel plans for drone strikes and attacks on U.S. agents (Daily Wire²¹)

• Joe Biden potentially eyes Hollywood ventures (NY Post²²)

• Americans think the economy is looking up (Newsweek²³)

• Humor: 10 biblical disasters that were probably caused by DEI (Babylon Bee²⁴)

For the Executive Summary archive, click here²⁵.