• Trump and Putin agree to a limited ceasefire: Peace in Ukraine was never going to be the one-day deal Donald Trump talked about on the campaign trail, but the Russians appeared to take a step in that direction. The White House readout of a nearly three-hour phone call yesterday between Trump and Vladimir Putin yielded an “energy and infrastructure ceasefire” as well as the makings of a “maritime ceasefire” in the Black Sea and a “full ceasefire and permanent peace.” Still, as former CIA station chief Dan Hoffman said on Fox News this morning, “We’re closer to the beginning than the end,” adding that our policy toward Putin should be to “mistrust and verify.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, meanwhile, will speak with Trump today after having stated, “For us, the red line is the recognition of the Ukrainian temporarily occupied territories as Russian.”

• Leftists target Schumer: Yesterday was a tough day for Chuck Schumer. The onetime Senate majority leader was engaged in damage control, making the TV rounds and defending himself against calls to step down as minority leader in the wake of what leftists see as a budgetary surrender to Donald Trump. “It gives me no pleasure to say this to you because we are friends,” said “The View’s” Sunny Hostin, “but I think you caved. I think you and nine other Democrats caved.” In response, Schumer said, “We’re going to fight this every day. But I want to win and fight smart. According to one senior House Democrat, though, Schumer’s popularity "is hovering somewhere between Elon Musk and the Ebola virus.”

• What’s in those JFK files? Yesterday, Donald Trump made good on a campaign promise by ordering the National Archives to release some 80,000 pages of records related to the November 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Historians and conspiracists alike will be poring over the files, as many of them are now free of the frustrating redactions that have helped give rise to conspiracy theories suggesting the involvement of the CIA and even Kennedy’s White House successor, Lyndon Johnson. Trump’s move does seem to have rare bipartisan support, though. “It’s too soon to know whether there’s much in the documents released today,” said Trump-hating Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen last night, “but it is a good sign that some progress toward the goal of full disclosure is underway.”

• SpaceX to the rescue: After being stranded on the International Space Station for over nine months, astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore finally returned to Earth yesterday, safely splashing down in the Gulf of America off the coast of Florida aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. The rescue mission was months in the making after Williams and Willmore’s originally planned return flight on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft after a week-long stay on the ISS was scrapped because NASA decided it was not safe enough to fly the astronauts back home. NASA then turned to Elon Musk-owned SpaceX to get the astronauts back. Why did it take so long? Well, according to Donald Trump and Musk, the Biden administration rebuffed an earlier timeline for political reasons, a claim that both astronauts and NASA officials were unaware of. In any case, the good news is that Williams and Wilmore are now safely back home.

• Judge blocks EPA from getting back $20B: A former Biden EPA official likened the effort to push billions of taxpayer dollars out to dubious climate groups before Donald Trump took office to “throwing gold bars off the Titanic.” Nevertheless, the money will remain with those groups. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled on Tuesday that the EPA had “no legal justification” in its efforts to reclaim $20 billion. When new EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin took over, he noted that the “EPA will be an exceptional steward of taxpayer dollars dedicated to our core mission of protecting human health and the environment, not a frivolous spender in the name of ‘climate equity.’” However, that stewardship task has become more difficult thanks to activist judges like Chutkan.

• Judge orders Pentagon to allow tranny troops: It’s two steps forward and one step back for America’s Armed Forces, as yet another leftist federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from exercising the constitutional powers of the presidency. Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes issued an injunction blocking the administration’s efforts to rid the military of the emotionally unfit morale-destroyers known as “transgender” troops. Reyes, whom we’re shocked to report is a Biden appointee and a lesbian DEI hire to boot, called the ban “unabashedly demeaning,” citing the non sequitur that trannies have been serving openly in the military since 2021. As Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller put it, “District court judges have now decided they are in command of the armed forces. Is there no end to this madness?”

• 75% of DOE funding buoys Dems: Of the Department of Education’s annual $280 billion budget, less than 25% goes directly to educating America’s kids. The rest of that taxpayer funding, some $220 billion, goes into the Washington bureaucracy, where it is then shelled out to consultants who in turn shovel some of that money back into Democrat coffers. Money also goes to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that exist to push a leftist agenda. As Representative Harriet Hageman (R-WY) put it, “It is money laundering and money churning at its absolute best.” This is really why Democrats have been up in arms over DOGE; it’s threatening their deceitfully constructed revenue streams. It’s all about the money.

• Fossil fuels deliver again: Rare earth elements make modern technology possible, making access to them of utmost importance. The problem: The U.S. imports almost all of its rare earth supply, including 75% from China. It’s not a good situation, though there is some good news. Research from the University of Texas at Austin has found that a vast quantity of accessible rare earth elements currently exists within the U.S. They are found in great quantities within coal ash, which has been accumulating for decades thanks mainly to coal-fired power plants. Researchers found that within this accumulated coal ash, there exists as much as 11 million tons of rare earth elements, eight times the amount the U.S. currently has in domestic reserves. So, what had previously been classified as waste is now worth upwards of $8.4 billion in rare earth elements. Maybe we shouldn’t be shuttering coal-fired power plants.

• AI escalation needs more energy: At the Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy (ARPA-E) summit this week, Energy Secretary Chris Wright discussed the necessity of U.S. leadership on Artificial Intelligence and therefore on power generation. AI “takes the highest form and the most expensive form of energy, electricity, and turns it into intelligence,” said Wright. The preferred solution is nuclear power. Amazon, Google, and Meta have joined a pledge to triple global nuclear power generation in the next 25 years, while Texas is trying to expand its Advanced Nuclear Deployment Office to draw nuclear projects to the state. Tennessee via Oak Ridge has long led nuclear innovation and will likely continue in that role. AI and nuclear power will likely shape the course of the next few decades; investing in them now is the smart move.

• Illegal alien pleads guilty to identity theft, illegal voting: Carlos Abreu, a citizen of the Dominican Republic, pleaded guilty this week to aggravated identity theft, lying to get a U.S. passport, and illegal voting. He entered the U.S. in 2001 and lived in New Jersey, where he married and fathered a child. In 2007, he was accused of sexual assault, kidnapping, and endangering a child. Subsequently, he stole the identity of a U.S. citizen, fled the state, and began living as a full citizen. He voted in Florida elections and was able to purchase firearms. Donald Trump was excoriated for claiming that “they’re not sending their best,” and Abreu is not one of the best. As of Monday, he was being held at Florida’s Broward Main Jail.

Headlines

• Judge says DOGE’s dismantling of USAID likely unconstitutional (WSJ)

• Trump freezes $175 million of UPenn funds over gender-confused men (Newsweek)

• Trump fires Democrat FTC commissioners (Fox News)

• China, Hong Kong threaten to thwart sale of Panama Canal ports to BlackRock (Fox News)

• FBI extradites top MS-13 leader from Mexico (Daily Wire)

• Humor: Federal judge orders astronauts be returned to space station (Babylon Bee)

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