Tulsi gabbard

The second Trump administration has begun as it means to go on: moving fast and breaking Washington brains. Firings commenced immediately, from inspectors general to senior FBI officials to workers who refused to go back to the office (for the federal government, the pandemic never ended). The confirmations blasted through the Senate, with even controversial figures like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth rammed through in the first week. Executive Orders flew out like a flock of war pigeons released from the battlements — forty-five in the first two weeks alone — bearing commands small and sweeping.

It was Groundhog Day in more ways than one this month. Yes, Punxsutawney Phil (accurately) predicted six more weeks of winter, but America also witnessed newly inaugurated President Donald Trump issue a flurry of Executive Orders, only to see many challenged immediately by Democratic attorneys general and paused by judges.During Trump’s first term, Executive Orders like his one restricting travel from seven Muslim-majority countries were challenged by Democrats and liberal activist groups like the American Civil Liberties Union. This time around, many of the challenges and pauses are focusing on Trump’s work, in conjunction with Elon Musk, to slash government spending radically.

For the proponents of what they like to call realism and restraint in foreign affairs, it’s been a banner day. President Donald Trump has initiated peace talks with Russia by sidelining Ukraine. And Tulsi Gabbard has been confirmed to become director of national intelligence — overseeing eighteen agencies — on a 52-48 vote. At the White House, where she was sworn in by Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump declared that Gabbard is “an American of extraordinary courage and exceptional patriotism.”   The sole Republican to dissent from her nomination was Mitch McConnell who has vowed to uphold oldline Republican internationalism during what is more than likely his final term in the Senate.

President Trump said that steel tariffs would be announced Monday — and that reciprocal tariffs against, among others, the European Union, were coming early this week. Yet questions remain whether these tariffs will go into effect, or if their announcement is being used as a bartering chip, as with other tariff threats last week.The threat of tariffs reemerged after Trump met with Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba last week to discuss Japanese investment in US Steel. This 25 percent tariff on imported steel and aluminum appears to be an attempt to protect US and Japanese shared interests. This tariff is set to be placed on all nations equally and is not a bargaining tool, unlike those with which Trump threatened Canada and Mexico last week.

President Donald Trump warned Hamas that there would be “hell to pay” when he returned to the White House if the terrorist organization continued to hold the hostages that it and Gazans have held for almost 500 days. Around eighty hostages, living and murdered, remain in Gaza.Last night, Trump laid out what “hell to pay” could look like: a potential American takeover of the Gaza Strip, maximum pressure against Iran and arms shipments to Israel.Trump, who famously compared the Arab-Israeli conflict to a “real-estate deal” in 2015, proposed a radical reshifting of the entire region, alongside Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu — the first foreign leader he’s hosted in person in the White House in his second term.

For the past month, the tone among Washington insiders was dour as it related to the confirmation prospects of Donald Trump’s edgier nominees. Sure, the argument went, Marco Rubio is a slam dunk, and no one takes issue with Doug Burgum or Sean Duffy. But the attitude toward Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for health and human services secretary and Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination as director of national intelligence were grim. More than a dozen Republican insiders in the past week assured me that one or both nominations were doomed, citing the opposition from the Wall Street Journal editorial page, legacy newspaper columnists such as David French and Marc Thiessen and the editors of National Review, who took a particularly aggressive stance against Gabbard. All of them lost.

Amid the tragedy of a deadly plane and helicopter crash at Washington, DC’s Ronald Reagan National Airport that has shaken the entire country, it’s becoming increasingly clear how many close calls have been avoided over the years — and that changes may be coming to the status quo.While it’s been almost two decades since the last major commercial airline crash in America, reports are beginning to emerge about how many near misses have happened, especially in DC’s busy airspace.Just days before an army helicopter collided with the plane coming in from Wichita, Kansas, several other planes had already aborted landings at Reagan due to helicopters in the way.

Tulsi Gabbard has been roundly described for weeks as the Trump cabinet nominee with the most narrow path to approval, with multiple media sources suggesting that she does not have the Republican votes to win should she even get out of the Senate Intelligence Committee. But if that is the case, it wasn’t on display in her performance before the committee today — not in her presentation, her chosen backers, nor in the lines of questioning from Republican members. It has been widely suggested that two senators, Todd Young of Indiana and Susan Collins of Maine, could potentially break with Trump by siding against Gabbard in the behind-the-scenes vote on her nomination.

Elon Musk’s influence on the federal government has reached new heights, with a memo going out to millions of federal employees with a simple message: get on board or take a permanent, (and expensive!) paid vacation.The Trump administration just sent a DoGE-infused ultimatum to much of the federal workforce: opt in to working in your office or take our buyout. According to the White House, “We’re five years past Covid and just 6 percent of federal employees work full-time in office.” President Donald Trump and Musk have made it clear that a return to in-person work is nonnegotiable. The ultimatum, described in a post as “a fork in the road,” would bring the federal government in-line with where the private sector has been moving in recent months and years: back to the office.

First, a disclaimer: Tulsi and I are good friends. Despite our political differences, we’ve forged a deep bond over the years.  At our first lunch together, we got kicked out of the restaurant because we couldn’t stop talking. Today, I’m proud that she and her husband Abraham are godparents to my eldest daughter, Liberty. It’s because I know Tulsi so well that I understand why she would make an excellent director of national intelligence. Americans have understandably lost trust in our intelligence services. In choosing Lieutenant Colonel Gabbard, President Trump has picked a highly-qualified, reform-minded leader who can regain that trust.

Donald Trump doesn’t take office for another week, but the Trump show starts in earnest this week with a confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, followed shortly by Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, Doug Burgum, Doug Collins and others.While some drama is to be expected, Trump’s current nominees have mostly run the gauntlet unscathed. Not all were so lucky, however. Former congressman Matt Gaetz quickly withdrew his name from consideration to be attorney general once he felt that he no longer had a foreseeable path forward; another Florida man, Hillsborough County sheriff Chad Chronister, withdrew his name from consideration due to concerns from the right about his record during Covid-era lockdowns.

Donald Trump’s ascension to his second presidency comes with a new cadre of followers and sidekicks, in the form of a cabinet built almost entirely from fresh faces. This is not a president interested in continuity, which he signaled early on, stating on social media that Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo — his erstwhile United Nations ambassador and secretary of state — would have no place in his second administration. The first name wasn’t a surprise, given the obvious tension he had with the woman who was his last challenger in the primary. The second was because Pompeo had been a dutiful supporter of Trump while in office, wrote a book defending their shared record on foreign policy and rejected the opportunity to run himself.

Donald Trump may have a four-year term, but he has far less time to make a real difference. In practice, he may have a year or perhaps eighteen months before the midterm election looms and Congress slows to a crawl. If Trump wants to be a transformational president — and he clearly does — then he will have to move fast. That’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s beginning with a series of rapid-fire appointments, most of which require approval from the new, Republican-majority Senate. (His White House aides, such as national security advisor, do not require Senate approval.) What message is Trump sending with his appointments so far? First, he demands loyalty — to him and to the agenda he articulated clearly on the campaign trail.