The Patriot Post® · Monday: Below the Fold

• Trump axes union rights for several agencies: Donald Trump has signed an executive order ending collective bargaining¹ for many federal employees. The order specifically applies to federal employees working within agencies engaged “with national security missions,” which includes but is not limited to the Department of Defense, the Department of Veteran Affairs, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the EPA, the Energy Department, the CDC, the FDA, the Treasury Department, and the Coast Guard. Trump based his authority for this order on the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, which a memo from the White House noted ensures “that agencies vital to national security can execute their missions without delay and protect the American people.” Collective bargaining for federal employees has always been an oxymoron², as they are supposed to be working on behalf of taxpayers, not against them.

• Comedic Hillary blasts Trump’s Signal snafu: If political satire flatlined³ in 1973 when Henry Kissinger was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, it was defibrillated on Friday by BlackBerry-smashing, homebrew-serving Hillary Clinton. In a New York Times op-ed⁴ about the Trump administration’s Signal snafu⁵, Her Lowness began: “It’s not the hypocrisy that bothers me; it’s the stupidity. We’re all shocked — shocked! — that President Trump and his team don’t actually care about protecting classified information or federal record retention laws. But we knew that already.” And on she went. Remember, this is the same “extremely careless⁶” Clinton who routinely passed classified — and, in at least eight cases, Top Secret — information via her personal email server⁷. Of all the people the Times could’ve picked to prosecute this case, the paper chose⁸ Hillary Clinton? You can’t make this stuff up.

• Trump “pissed” with Putin: “I was very angry, pissed off when [Vladimir] Putin started getting into [Volodymyr] Zelensky — his credibility — and started talking about new leadership in Ukraine,” Donald Trump reportedly told NBC News’s Kristen Welker⁹. That followed Putin’s call last week for a change in Ukraine’s leadership before a potential peace deal. Trump and his administration have been negotiating a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, but with little success thus far. A frustrated Trump, who has taken a neutral stance regarding blame for the war, warned Putin, “If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault … I am going to put secondary tariffs on all oil coming out of Russia.” Meanwhile, Trump warned Zelensky¹⁰ against backing out of a mineral rights deal.

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• Columbia interim president steps down, former journalist takes over: It seems less like a move to bring accountability or change to the flailing Columbia University than a shell game to protect bad policies. Katrina Armstrong, interim president at Columbia, has stepped down¹³. Apparently, reforming the school and eliminating anti-Semitism¹⁴ so that the Trump administration will renew federal grants worth $430 million is a bridge too far for the Columbia Board of Trustees. The board chose its cochair, Claire Shipman, as the new acting president. Shipman has spent approximately 27 years working for CNN and ABC and recently divorced former Obama Press Secretary Jay Carney. With a pedigree like that, we can be sure that Shipman’s tenure will be one of resisting¹⁵ this administration’s attempt to free the university from ideological capture.

• State is shuttering USAID: The U.S. Agency for International Development may finally be history, as the State Department effectively shuttered¹⁶ the rogue agency on Friday, hours before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower-court ruling that had blocked DOGE’s effort to shut down the agency. An announcement from the State Department said it “will seek to retire USAID’s independent operation” and will “assume the responsible administration of USAID’s remaining life-saving and strategic aid programming.” Translation: All USAID programs deemed worthy of saving, roughly 20%, will be absorbed into the State Department, and the rest will be ended. Furthermore, the department announced, “All non-statutory positions at USAID will be eliminated.” The Fourth Circuit rejected the lower court’s view that dismantling USAID was likely unconstitutional, with Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr. writing, “While defendants’ role and actions related to USAID are not conventional, unconventional does not necessarily equal unconstitutional.” Good riddance, USAID¹⁷.

• Patel releases FBI docs on 2017 GOP baseball shooting: It’s been nearly eight years since a deranged leftist attempted to massacre¹⁸ congressional Republicans at a baseball practice in suburban DC — a shooting that nearly cost then-Majority Whip Steve Scalise his life. Outrage ensued some four years later, though, when it was learned that the FBI had deemed¹⁹ the attack as a “suicide by cop.” Former Director Chris Wray ultimately reversed the bureau’s disgraceful conclusion — meant to obscure the party affiliation of the assailant — but he never released the FBI’s documentation. Now, in a win for transparency, Director Kash Patel has done so²⁰, explaining, “I can report that … the FBI has provided the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence all requested documents related to the Congressional Baseball Game shooting in 2017.”

• Coyotes are now smuggling migrants out of the country: It was stunning enough to see how quickly the influx of illegals coming across our southern border dried up. But in yet another example of the Trump Effect, the traffickers who smuggled humans into our country are now, according to²¹ journalist Alfredo Corchado, offering those illegals “paquetes de retorno,” or return trips, now that the free stuff of the Joe Biden years has given way to Rule of Law. Even The New York Times has noted²² the trend, reporting on one illegal who made an appointment with a judge so he might voluntarily depart and perhaps one day return legally. Meanwhile, despite strong support²³ for Trump’s deportation regime, a Rasmussen survey²⁴ finds that 26% of voters are somehow opposed to deporting Venezuelan gang members.

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• Biden’s sorry student loan legacy: Human nature tells us that if you pay people not to work, they won’t work. Similarly, we now know that if you give out millions of lucrative loans without a serious expectation that they are paid back, many folks won’t pay them back. Recall that Joe Biden implemented a cynical vote-buying scheme in which he “paused” the repayment of student loans due to the COVID pandemic. Then he began writing off large tranches of those loans, even as the Supreme Court declared²⁷ his actions unconstitutional. Now, according to the New York Fed, a record share²⁸ of those student loans — nearly one-fourth of them — are delinquent, and as of February, 63% of loans haven’t been reduced since repayments were restarted in 2023.

• “Snow White” tanks: Disney’s live-action remake²⁹ of its beloved animated classic “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” followed up a bad opening weekend with an even worse second weekend. Ticket sales for “Snow White” nosedived 66%³⁰, pulling in just $14.2 million and falling to second place behind the surprisingly solid opening for the new Jason Statham thriller “A Working Man.” Disney spent north of $350 million on this remake, so to break even, it will need to gross around $700 million. Thus far, the film has pulled in $143 million worldwide. Well on its way to proving the popular refrain “Get woke, go broke,” “Snow White” is now on a trajectory to become what director John Nolte calls “the biggest box office bomb in history³¹.”

• “A is for Abortion” according to a display at a Fairfax school: “I respect the right of our students to respectfully share their honest, comprehensive historical perspective that is relevant to them as young adults.” That’s how Dr. Michelle Reid³², superintendent of Fairfax County (Virginia) Public Schools, defended a display that features an image of a coat hanger and a pregnancy test under the words “A is for Abortion.” The display is a West Springfield High School project for an elective Women’s History class. One wonders how comprehensive the perspective on abortion could possibly be coming from a class that excludes the study of half the human population. Other woke letters in this alphabet include “M is for Mansplain,” “T is for Trans Women,” and “Z is for male gaZe.” Sadly, this story is another example of indoctrination in our failing³³ public school system.

Headlines

• Trump appeals deportation case to Supreme Court (Daily Signal³⁴)

• Trump admin appeals decision blocking dismantling of CFPB (Fox Business³⁵)

• Major law firm strikes preemptive deal with White House (Politico³⁶)

• Trump warns Iran “there will be bombing” if Tehran spurns nuclear talks (Newsweek³⁷)

• Former Musk EV rival Trevor Milton pardoned by Trump (Daily Wire³⁸)

• March for Our Lives lays off most employees (Bearing Arms³⁹)

• Humor: Trump leaves presidency to become even more powerful district court judge (Babylon Bee⁴⁰)

For the Executive Summary archive, click here⁴¹.