It’s President Donald Trump’s second week in office, and he has wasted no time being the wrecking ball he promised his voters he would be.
On Tuesday, he issued a memo freezing trillions of dollars in federal funding, in his attempt to purge the government of “woke ideology,” which was followed by chaos and confusion—and ultimately blocked by a federal judge. Earlier in the week, Trump convinced Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro to accept deported Colombian migrants—who Petro had turned away from his borders only a day earlier—after Trump threatened a 25-percent tariff on Colombian imports to the U.S.
Back in Congress, the Senate narrowly confirmed Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense in a dramatic tie-breaking vote cast by a hurried J.D. Vance who showed up just in the nick of time. Meanwhile, RFK Jr. is currently having his highly anticipated confirmation hearing to run the Department of Health and Human Services. Just as that began, Caroline Kennedy—the only surviving child of John F. Kennedy—came out Tuesday with a bombshell public denunciation of her cousin, calling him unqualified, “a predator,” and a hypocrite. She also alleged that he used to “put baby chickens and mice in a blender to feed to his hawks.” Can’t say we had that on our 2025 bingo card…
Finally, the Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek sent tech stocks plummeting on Monday (to the tune of more than $1 trillion) after it rolled out a new app on the U.S. market that is a fraction of the cost of American AI competitors. All of which brought up questions—and panic—about our brewing AI war with China.
To talk about it all, Free Press senior editor Peter Savodnik is joined today by Brianna Wu and FP investigative reporter Madeleine Rowley, who spoke to Hegseth this week about his plans to end diversity, equity, and inclusion in the military.
Get $10 for free when you trade $100+ with code HONESTLY: https://kalshi.com/honestly
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hi everyone, here is a compact, clear summary of the important facts about US Foreign Aid that all Americans I believe should know in order to debunk the distraction and misinformation of the Republicans approach to this. This article is made to be shared widely. Please share it and use it where you think it can do the most good Thank you.
https://theconversation.com/as-trump-tries-to-slash-us-foreign-aid-here-are-3-common-myths-many-americans-mistakenly-believe-about-it-248979
Time [26:00]; Trans people in the military. Two same-sex roommates when one is planning to transition. Should the non-transitioning roommate be allowed to change rooms? Because a bedroom is a socially intimate space, individuals should be allowed to change rooms. The non-transitioning roommate entered into the roommate contract with expectation of same-sex.
When drag-queen story-hour and pediatric-Trans became a part of K-12 school life, I predicted a wrecking-ball backlash that would unjustly affect non-activist Trans people who just want to live their lives.
But, the woke version of Trans has been so harmful, that is must be dismantled and reconstructed in a non-woke manner just like public health and education.