• Trump expected to sign EO abolishing Department of Education: There’s no love lost between Donald Trump and small-government GOP Congressman Thomas Massie, but they see eye to eye on abolishing the failed Department of Education. Last night, Massie hailed a news story announcing Trump’s intention to sign an executive order to that effect. “Bravo!” posted Massie. “Congress should support President Trump’s bold agenda by passing my bill, HR 899, to Abolish the Department of Education. We could also use recisions [sic] and the budget reconciliation process, which only require 51 votes in the Senate, to back him up.” Therein lies the likely solution to the problem of needing congressional approval — and 60 Senate votes — for the abolition. Trump might not be able to do away with the department and its “radicals, zealots and Marxists,” but he can certainly starve them of funding.

• Trump fires FTC commissioners, prompting lawsuits: “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (Who watches the watchmen?) This idea is at the core of the legal challenges to Trump’s firing or otherwise letting go of many executive branch employees. Trump, as the president, claims that he has firing authority, and Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson agrees. However, former commissioners Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter, both Democrats, are now suing Trump over their “illegal firings.” As Bedoya complains, “I’m a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission. The president just illegally fired me.” If these commissioners believe the head of the executive branch doesn’t have hiring and firing authority over the executive branch, it prompts the question: Who does?

• A judge vs. DOGE vs. USAID: On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang ruled that the Trump administration’s shuttering of USAID was likely unconstitutional (it’s not) and ordered that the dismantling be stopped and employees be given access to electronic systems again. Chuang also challenged the notion that DOGE’s head, Elon Musk, didn’t need a congressional appointment. Meanwhile, a member of DOGE has taken a top leadership role over USAID. “Effectively immediately,” Jeremy Lewin has been designated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the deputy administrator for policy and programs at USAID, as well as its COO. So, while the Trump administration continues to wrangle with activist judges, it’s still significantly reforming and reigning in these rogue executive agencies and departments.

• DOJ tells Judge Boasberg to pound sand: Team Trump has had it with meddlesome leftist judge James Boasberg, whose hatred of the president and whose support of illegal immigrant gang members has hampered the administration’s efforts to rid the country of the worst of the worst. Boasberg ordered the Trump Justice Department to answer five questions he posed regarding the administration’s failure to turn around in mid-flight an expulsion of Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members. According to court papers filed yesterday by the DOJ, Boasberg’s harassment constitutes “digressive micromanagement” and “grave encroachments on core aspects of absolute and unreviewable Executive Branch authority relating to national security, foreign relations and foreign policy.” Put another way, they’re telling Boasberg — and his fellow judicial despots — to pound sand.

• Trump moves beyond a Ukraine mineral deal: So much for those rare-earth materials. Nearly three weeks after Donald Trump booted an insolent Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from the White House, a minerals deal between the two countries appears to have fallen apart. Trump continues to pursue a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, but he’s walked away from the minerals deal and is now pushing for the U.S. to help Ukraine with its nuclear power facilities. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that our nation’s expertise in electricity and utility could be beneficial to Ukraine and that our involvement there could also supply “protection” for its nuclear resources — including the largest nuke plant in all of Europe, which is located on the border of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory.

• Mahmoud Khalil gets a bone: The Trump administration was stopped from deporting the anti-Semite activist who led protests at Columbia University, Mahmoud Khalil, and he will now get his day in court. New York U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman denied the Trump administration’s motion to have Khalil’s petition dismissed and, in a further blow to the government’s case, ordered it to be heard in New Jersey rather than Louisiana, where he is currently being held in ICE custody. Furman, an Obama appointee, argued that this case needed “careful judicial review” because “there are colorable claims that the Executive Branch has violated the law or exercised its otherwise lawful authority in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner." DHS Secretary Kristi Noem contends that a U.S. visa is a privilege and "when you advocate for violence and terrorism, that privilege should be revoked.”

• Pro-trans UPenn funding paused: “Promises made, promises kept,” Donald Trump posted on Wednesday after his administration froze $175 million in federal funds for the University of Pennsylvania. The reason for the action was tied to Trump’s executive order banning males from competing in female sports. Trump officials further warned that UPenn is under investigation and is “still at risk of losing all its federal funding” over potential Title IX violations related to its having allowed transgender-identifying male swimmer Lia Thomas to compete on its women’s swim team. A White House official explained that UPenn’s action resulted in “overturning multiple records hard-earned by women, and granting the fully intact male access to the locker room.”

• Tesla owners doxed: It was perhaps only a matter of time before some leftist sicko targeted Tesla owners in a manner far more chilling than the vandalism now being visited on so many of their vehicles. A lefty website has apparently published the names, addresses, and phone numbers of Tesla owners throughout the U.S., as well as the addresses of Tesla dealerships, all with an interactive map of their locations — a map navigable by a Molotov cocktail-shaped cursor. The website’s vile operators aren’t unreasonable, though; they say they’ll remove the identifying information of particular Tesla drivers if they merely provide proof that they’ve sold their vehicles. This is civil terrorism, and it needs to be rooted out and punished to the fullest extent of the law.

• Dems forced to take down anti-Musk billboards: The National Republican Congressional Committee sent a cease-and-desist letter to Lamar Advertising Company, which House Democrats had hired to post billboard messages in several vulnerable Republican districts. The Democrats’ message falsely claimed that Republicans were voting for cuts to Medicaid funding and were giving tax breaks to Elon Musk. The letter warned that the NRCC would hold the vendor “liable for the defamatory messages spread to voters in each district.” The vendor responded by pulling the billboards.

• Hillary badmouths the U.S. in Germany: “Autocracy is on the march, and we now have a government in the United States that has thrown in its lot with the autocrats.” So said failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton while in Germany, of all places, at the grandiosely named World Forum on the Future of Democracy, Tech, and Humankind. “Where there are no facts, there cannot be truth, and where there is no truth, there cannot be trust, and where there is no trust, there cannot be democracy and peace.” No one has done more to destroy facts and trust than Clinton and her Democrat Party, of course. It’s also unsurprising that her “solution” consists of the kind of thought control Germany is already enforcing, along with government-funded “truth” of the kind we’ve seen from The New York Times.

Headlines

• EU delays U.S. tariffs (Newsweek)

• Fed holds interest rates steady, still sees two cuts coming this year (CNBC)

• Elon Musk’s X regains $44 billion valuation in major comeback (NY Post)

• Man who had prison sentence commuted by Biden now facing drug, firearms-related charges (Fox News)

• Judge blocking Trump deportations played key role in Trump-Russia FISA saga (Just the News)

• Humor: Breaking: Biden’s official statement on his alleged use of autopen (Babylon Bee)

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