• Trump ousts 20 last-second Biden immigration judges: Democrats keep getting boomeranged by Donald Trump, who fired 20 immigration judges appointed at the 11th hour by Joe Biden’s handlers. If there were any doubt about the motivation behind the defenestrations, a senior DOJ official put them to rest: “The Biden administration set a precedent by terminating numerous immigration judges during their term or trial periods.” This review, said the official, “is following that precedent.” The Trump DOJ has thus cleaned house, having last month fired its acting director at the Executive Office for Immigration Review, its chief immigration judge, its general counsel, and its head of policy. Unfortunately, there are still plenty of dangerous leftist judges on the bench — one of whom in Boston recently ignored an ICE detainment request, on “sanctuary” grounds, for a suspect charged in “multiple counts of aggravated and forcible child rape.”

• Sorry, unfunny, shadow-of-its-former-self SNL turns 50: It seems like only decades ago that Steve Martin, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Eddie Murphy were doing really funny and edgy things on “Saturday Night Live.” This weekend’s 50-year “Anniversary Celebration” of the iconic show was thus a sad reminder of what once was. Perhaps the best (read: worst) example of this was a Tom Hanks caricature of one of those 77 million Trump voters — whom Hanks apparently believes are old, white, and racist. No one ever accused Hanks of being politically astute, though, as OutKick’s Clay Travis pointed out that this past election was the least racially divisive in half a century. For the record, Hanks’s smug prediction that Trump would be president “right about the time that spaceships come down filled with dinosaurs in red capes” hasn’t aged terribly well.

• Maddow’s big lie: In a blatant effort to paint DOGE chief Elon Musk as a corrupt stooge of Donald Trump, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow “exposed” a $400 million contract that Musk’s company Tesla has with the U.S. government to produce armored electric vehicles. “As the top campaign donor to U.S. President Donald Trump, Elon Musk has apparently somehow convinced the United States government — specifically, the United States Department of State — that the taxpayers of the United States of America should spend $400 million buying ‘Armored Tesla (Production Units),’” Maddow claimed. However, what Maddow failed to disclose is that it was the Biden administration that procured the $400 million contract with Tesla last year, a contract that the Trump administration has subsequently put on hold with “no current plans to issue it.”

• CNN’s Kaitlan Collins promotes Mangione defense fund: In an apparent cold-blooded and premeditated act, 24-year-old Luigi Mangione allegedly murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson this past December on a New York City sidewalk. Unfortunately, too many have responded with praise of Mangione, viewing Thompson’s murder as an act of vigilante justice. In light of this, Mangione’s legal defense team created a defense fund in which Mangione expresses his gratitude for the public support he has received that “has transcended political, racial, and even class divisions, as mail has flooded MDC from across the country, and around the globe.” That support evidently includes CNN White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins, who shared a link to Mangione’s defense fund on her X page. Collins has subsequently removed the post following a mountain of criticism.

• Polling shows we’re finally on the right track: You may have missed it, but the world of political polling ended a 20-year losing streak last Thursday. On that day, a key Rasmussen Reports metric finally emerged above water, with the poll’s Right Track number registering 47%, one point higher than its Wrong Track number of 46%. Eat your heart out, Barack Obama. This sense of optimism can only be attributed to Donald Trump and his administration’s furious pace of undoing the awfulness of the Biden years. As of late last week, Trump had issued 90 executive orders and other such directives. His pace blows away that of his first term by a factor of three — and eclipses the combined executive order total of the Biden, Obama, and Clinton regimes during that same period.

• Canadian fans boo anthem; American players make ‘em pay: It’s great to see citizens of our 51st state finally exercising their God-given right to free speech, even if it comes at the expense of Old Glory. Saturday night in Montreal, Canadian hockey fans booed lustily during the playing of the American national anthem … and proceeded to watch their Team Canada get whipped 3-1 by those Trumpy Team USA Americans in the 4 Nations Face-Off. But before that hockey game broke out, three good fights erupted in the first nine seconds after the puck dropped, largely courtesy of the Tkachuk brothers, Matthew and Brady. “It is what it is,” said American star Zach Werenski. “We kind of had an idea. We used it as motivation the best we could and found a way to get a win. … Definitely don’t like it, though.”

• Pro-life laws save lives: Last week, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) released its study regarding the impact of pro-life laws since Roe v. Wade was overturned in the summer of 2022. The study looked at data from all 50 states and found that states which had enacted laws severely limiting or banning abortions had a significant rise in overall fertility rates. JAMA noted that the increase in fertility rates from pro-life laws was most pronounced among unmarried women, blacks, Hispanics, and women on Medicaid. JAMA concluded that over 22,000 lives had been saved by these pro-life laws. While there is still a long way to go, that number still represents thousands of babies whose lives have been saved thanks to pro-life laws.

• Obama’s library plagued by DEI: Barack Obama’s presidential library was envisioned as a celebration of DEI, but thanks in large measure to DEI, it has turned into a construction nightmare. The project has suffered from delays and massive cost overruns as well as a $40 million lawsuit. The original $350 million project has ballooned to $830 million. In 2017, the Obama Foundation touted its DEI-based construction quotas, stating, “With these aggressive goals, the foundation is hoping to set a new precedent for diversity and inclusion in major construction projects in Chicago and beyond.” A black-owned concrete company subcontracted for the project is suing, claiming $40 million in cost overruns due to the lead contractor changing standards and imposing new rules. The lead contractor has countered, stating, “The construction issues were all unequivocally driven by the underperformance and inexperience of the concrete subcontractor.” Kind of like Obama’s presidency.

Headlines

• White House blocks Associated Press from Oval Office, Air Force One (Fox News)

• Trump administration slashes CDC workforce by 10% (Newsweek)

• State Department drops opposition to Taiwan independence from website (National Review)

• The U.S. wants access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth (Morning Brew)

• Hamas releases three more hostages, Israel frees over 300 Palestinian prisoners (Just the News)

• Humor: Canadian hockey fans boo their future national anthem (Babylon Bee)

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