• Dems focus on the Signal embarrassment: It’s hard to blame them because they have no accomplishments of their own to tout, but Democrats have had a field day with Team Trump’s Signal snafu. Rather than talking about freedom of navigation through the vital Red Sea shipping lanes and the administration’s precision strikes on the Houthi terrorists there — and what those strikes mean both for international trade and for the Houthis’ Iranian enablers — the sad-sack Democrats would rather obsess over a deeply embarrassing communications screwup among Trump’s senior national security team. Atlantic fabulist Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently included in the chat by a staffer of National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, who yesterday took “full responsibility.” Today, Goldberg released more communications as pushback against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s claim that the chat didn’t involve “war plans” with the Houthis. In any case, Trump’s team clearly trusts Signal more than it trusts the official deep state comms channels.

• Trump diplomacy brokers Black Sea truce: In an incremental win for Donald Trump’s diplomacy and his efforts to end an awful three-year war, Ukraine and Russia have agreed to a Black Sea ceasefire, which, along with an energy infrastructure ceasefire, the administration hopes will be a stepping stone for a full ceasefire. “We’ve seen the first of many steps going forward,” said U.S. envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg. “President Trump made the comment that this is going to be hard — it is when you’ve had two nations at war for over three years with this degree of death and destruction.” The sea-based ceasefire is a good place to start, Kellogg said, calling it “low-hanging fruit” because it doesn’t involve the complexity of cities, troops, or long-range missile strikes.

• SCOTUS upholds “ghost gun” regs: The U.S. Supreme Court has issued its decision on the Biden administration’s rule that severely limits Americans’ ability to obtain gun parts online to assemble their own firearms. The root issue was whether the ATF had the authority to issue such a sweeping regulation defining and regulating so-called “ghost guns.” In a 7-2 ruling this morning, the justices upheld the new regulation by pointing to the federal Gun Control Act that grants the government this power. As Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote, the law “embraces and thus permits ATF to regulate some weapon parts kits.” Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the majority, with Thomas contending that the Court “blesses the government’s overreach based on a series of errors.”

• Senate confirmations: On Tuesday, the Senate voted to confirm two more of Donald Trump’s nominees. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was confirmed by a party-line vote of 53-47 to become the new director of the National Institutes of Health. Bhattacharya, a physician and professor of health and economics at Stanford University, was an early critic of massive lockdowns in response to the COVID pandemic, as well as vaccine mandates. He was the lead author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advised a targeted approach to COVID that allowed the less vulnerable majority to develop natural immunity. Also confirmed by a 56-44 vote was Dr. Marty Makary, a surgeon from Johns Hopkins University, to head the Food and Drug Administration. Makary expressed a desire to find innovative solutions to lower drug prices. Both men are outsiders to the Washington bureaucracy.

• Pandemic drawdown: In September 2022, Joe Biden declared that “the [COVID] pandemic is over,” but it wasn’t until May 2023 that his administration finally rescinded the national emergency that Donald Trump first initiated in March 2020. Yet it wasn’t until yesterday that the CDC finally pulled back some $11.4 billion in pandemic-related funding from states, nongovernmental organizations, and international groups — almost a full two years after the pandemic was declared officially over. Of course, whenever government spending on a temporary program is ended, you can count on objections.

• Postmaster general flees a sinking ship: Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who resigned this week, took office during the COVID lockdowns and started a 10-year reform plan to overhaul the United States Postal Service. Judging by the fact that the USPS lost $9.5 billion in fiscal year 2024, there’s still a long way to go. Deputy Postmaster General Doug Tulino will take DeJoy’s place until a successor is named. Donald Trump and Elon Musk have been discussing privatizing the USPS, which is established in the Constitution, or merging it with the Department of Commerce. Democrats predictably rallied to defend the institution. After all, they’ve never seen a money pit they didn’t like. But in the age of email, cellphones, and texting, how necessary is the Postal Service?

• Public media gets hauled before House DOGE subcommittee: Like a hardy perennial, House Republicans are again pushing for woefully biased NPR and PBS to justify the continued siphoning of taxpayer funds to staff monocultural newsrooms and broadcast inarguably left-of-center programming. PBS, for example, receives funding in part from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which gets roughly $500 million a year from Congress. Today, NPR CEO Katherine Maher and PBS CEO Paula Kerger will testify before the House’s newly formed Delivering on Government Efficiency subcommittee, which is chaired by GOP firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene. “Everything is at stake,” said Kerger. “The future of a number of our stations across the country will be in jeopardy if this funding is not continued.” If only. This defunding game has historically been akin to a Republican Charlie Brown trying to kick the NPR/PBS football.

• Planned Parenthood grants to be curbed: On Tuesday, Donald Trump commented on potentially pursuing criminal charges against the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, over allegations of its involvement in the illicit trafficking of organs from aborted babies. “We’ll look into everything, but that’s certainly a subject that’s been debated for a long time, and we will look into it,” Trump explained. His administration also disclosed it would be freezing tens of millions in federal funds to the abortion provider as it probes whether Planned Parenthood used the money to promote DEI efforts. Democrat Senator Patty Murray expressed outrage, claiming that the Trump administration was “cutting off very basic and lifesaving health care.” Except, of course, for aborted babies.

• Jasmine Crockett: call to violence or call for attention? Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett is quickly rising to be the top black female voice in the Democrat Party, which might be good news for Democrats if she weren’t such a liability. On Monday, she called paralyzed and wheelchair-bound Texas Governor Greg Abbot “Governor Hot Wheels.” That crass comment is rightly garnering quite a bit of blowback for Crockett, though this is hardly the first time she’s let her tongue run away with her. A video clip surfaced Monday in which she says that Senator Ted Cruz “has to be knocked over the head, like hard, right?” Is that a call to violence? As for Abbot, he remarked, “[The Democrats] have nothing to sell but hate, and Americans are not buying it.” Well said, Governor.

• GSA majorly scales back must-sell gov’t properties: The General Services Administration had until recently listed 443 federally owned properties it deemed “non-core” and “obsolete and unsuitable” for government use and, therefore, to be sold off. Well, the GSA has now trimmed the list of properties it originally compiled during the Biden administration down to a total of just eight. The original list included more than 40 properties in Washington, DC, but now, not a single building in the district makes the list. Why the drastic change? The GSA gave no reason other than a decision “to use a more incremental approach focusing on a shorter list of assets that have already been evaluated.” Furthermore, the GSA noted that the list would continue to be updated.

• World Athletics institutes sports integrity: Better late than never. World Athletics, the international track and field governing body, has announced that it will introduce cheek swabs and dry blood-spot tests for female athletes in order to confirm that they’re not sporting any “Y” chromosomes and thereby maintain “the integrity of competition.” According to World Athletics President Sebastian Coe, who was once the world’s foremost miler, “It’s important to do it” because then we’re “not just talking about the integrity of female women’s sport, but actually guaranteeing it.” The timing of the new policy is unclear, but Coe said that the athletes will only have to undergo a single test during their careers. And sexually deviant male athletes will no longer have a fallback plan for athletic excellence.

Headlines

• Federal judge temporarily blocks shutdown of U.S.-funded radio network (Fox News)

• Climate change taken off spy agencies’ global threat list (Axios)

• Trump officially pardons former Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer (Axios)

• Anti-Israel groups aided Hamas on campus, knew of attack beforehand, October 7 victims say in lawsuit (Jerusalem Post)

• Federal judge says Texas A&M has to host drag show festival (Daily Wire)

• Humor: Elon Musk disguises IRS building as Tesla dealership so Democrats will burn it down (Babylon Bee)

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