• Big win for DOGE: Democrat efforts to stop Elon Musk and DOGE from continuing their audit of federal government agencies were dealt a major blow on Tuesday — and by an Obama-appointed judge, no less. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is no fan of Donald Trump, ruled against the lawsuit brought by 14 Democrat-run state attorneys general who alleged that Musk and DOGE were causing harm by having access to Americans’ sensitive information. While expressing sympathy for the states, Chutkan correctly observed that the president, as head of the executive branch, has the legal authority to manage the executive branch. Despite Chutkan’s disdain for Trump, it would appear that the judge is more averse to having her decisions overturned by a higher court.

• DOGE already reports having found $55 billion in savings: It must be the greatest return on investment in the history of the world. Yesterday, in the space of less than a month, Elon Musk’s small band of T-shirt-clad 20-somethings issued the Department of Government Efficiency’s first progress report, which claims to have uncovered some $55 billion in savings. Really. The Musk-led department has plunged into the records of federal government agencies to find them rife with fraud, waste, abuse, error, and redundancy. You can see it for yourself, exhaustively itemized, right there on the DOGE website, complete with a Top 10 list of both total contract savings and contract savings as a percentage of budget. (Spoiler alert: USAID tops both lists.) How’s that for transparency?

• Eighth Circuit dumps Biden’s student giveaway: Joe Biden’s original gambit to see some $500 billion in student loan debt canceled was finally ruled unconstitutional by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. The court initially blocked the SAVE plan after Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey raised a lawsuit against it, and on Tuesday, it ruled that Biden’s secretary of education had “gone well beyond this authority by designing a plan where loans are largely forgiven rather than repaid.” Bailey welcomed the court’s decision, stating, “Though Joe Biden is out of office, this precedent is imperative to ensuring a President cannot force working Americans to foot the bill for someone else’s Ivy League debt.”

• U.S. and Russia continue to talk without Ukraine: Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced yesterday that the world’s foremost nuclear superpowers have agreed to reestablish “the functionality of our respective missions in Washington and Moscow,” adding that the U.S. would also build a senior-level team focused on Donald Trump’s promise of ending the awful war in Ukraine. Notably absent from these discussions is any diplomatic representation from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which has understandably fueled fears that Russia will hold the upper hand in any peace deal. Rubio added that negotiators have agreed to explore the resumption of geopolitical and economic cooperation once peace is restored to Ukraine. Rubio’s comments came in the wake of yesterday’s four-and-a-half-hour meeting between his team and that of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

• Rand Paul opposes Trump’s labor pick: One of Donald Trump’s most controversial cabinet nominations is Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a pro-union ex-congresswoman, to head the Labor Department. She is scheduled for a Senate hearing today, though Senator Rand Paul made clear that he will oppose her confirmation. What is most troubling for Paul is Chavez-DeRemer’s support for the PRO Act, “which would not only oppose national right to work, but it would preempt state law on right to work.” The PRO Act is indeed a dangerous threat to work freedom, severely limiting Americans’ ability to self-employ. Should Chavez-DeRemer fail to gain the majority votes needed to advance from the committee, she would need a 60-vote threshold in the full Senate in order to move to a confirmation vote. It will be interesting to see if any Democrats back her.

• LOL: Dems vow to recapture the working class: From the “Good Luck With That” files comes word that newly ensconced DNC Chairman Ken Martin has promised to wrest the loyalties of the working class away from Donald Trump and the Republican Party and restore them to their rightful place among the woke, race-baiting, illegal-immigration-enabling, sex-change-operation-supporting Democrats. “I believe the canary in the coal mine for what happened on November 5,” Martin says, “was the recent showing that, for the first time in modern history, Americans now see the Republicans as the party of the working class and Democrats as the party of the elites. It’s time to remind working Americans — and also show them every day — that the Democratic Party always has been and always will be the party of the worker.” Just how stupid do these chardonnay-sipping elitists think working-class Americans are?

• Hamas animals to return baby boys’ bodies: Hamas announced yesterday that it would return on Thursday the bodies of four Israeli hostages, including a young mother, Shiri Bibas, and her two little boys, Kfir and Ariel, who were just nine months and four years old, respectively, when they were kidnapped on October 7, 2023. Hamas claims that the three were killed in an airstrike. Meanwhile, in Brooklyn’s Boro Park last night, a pro-Palestinian pro-baby-murdering group staged an anti-Israel protest right smack in the middle of one of the world’s largest Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods. Fights broke out amid chants of “Zionists, go to hell!” and “There is only one solution, Intifada revolution!”

• Cartels raise prices for smuggling illegals: Thanks to Donald Trump’s renewed focus on border enforcement, the number of migrants illegally entering the U.S. has dropped “approximately 95%,” according to the White House’s Stephen Miller. But smuggling migrants is big business for Mexican cartels, and thanks to the crackdown, smuggling costs are rising. “The cartels, in fact, are enormously frustrated because they’ve never seen a clampdown like this in American history,” Miller observed. The cartels are now charging roughly $16,000 to $17,000 to smuggle individual migrants into the U.S. and $30,000 or more to get a migrant deeper into the U.S. interior. A Chinese couple recently found by Customs and Border Protection officers hidden in a vehicle crossing from Mexico into the U.S. reportedly paid smugglers $45,000 apiece. This rising cost will also help to dissuade migrants from seeking to enter the U.S. illegally.

Headlines

• FBI pick Kash Patel advances in full Senate procedural vote (NY Post)

• Senate confirms Howard Lutnick to be commerce secretary (National Review)

• Trump reins in independent agencies (Whitehouse.gov)

• Trump expands access to in vitro fertilization (Whitehouse.gov)

• Trump orders DOJ to fire all remaining Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys (Newsweek)

• EV maker Nikola files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection (Fox Business)

• Humor: 10 suspicious names still on Social Security rolls (Babylon Bee)

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