Derek VanBuskirk

The first Senate hearing on the mid-air collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in January, which resulted in the loss of 67 lives, was held today. The conclusion: it was a miracle it didn’t happen sooner. Senator Jerry Moran, a Republican from Kansas and chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, reported that between October 21 and December 24, there were more than 1,500 “close-proximity” events between helicopters and commercial airplanes. It was just a matter of time before something terrible happened.

National Security Advisor Mike Waltz spoke to the press this afternoon for the first time since the Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg described how Waltz had inadvertently added him to a Signal groupchat in which air strikes on Yemen were planned. Waltz claimed that he'd “never met, don’t know, never communicated with” Goldberg. The only problem: Goldberg says in his report that the pair has met before. So who's lying? The Atlantic reported Monday how Goldberg was granted access to “precise information about weapons packages, targets and timing” from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, two hours before the US attack on Yemen targets on March 15. “There are a lot of lessons,” Waltz told the press while meeting with President Donald Trump and US ambassadors.

So, rest in power, Black Lives Matter Plaza. Mayor Muriel Bowser has at last caved to Republican pressure and is overseeing the renovation of the stretch of Washington's 16th Street NW leading up to the White House ahead of the US's 250th anniversary next year. Demolition of the plaza began Monday near Lafayette Square, where BLM protesters were cleared using tear gas in June 2020, and in front of St. John's Episcopal Church, where an arsonist started a fire in the basement during the protest. These events sparked Bowser’s decision to create a permanent plaza there in solidarity with their cause — protesting the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis a week earlier — and in resistance to then-President Donald Trump.

Who would have thought that Michael Wolff would have another book about Donald Trump in him? UK Books editor Sam Leith interviews Wolff on this week’s Book Club podcast. They discuss Wolff’s latest, All or Nothing, which follows the world of Trump from January 6, 2021, to his second inauguration. Seeing as this is now Wolff’s fourth book bringing to light some things those around Trump would presumably prefer to stay in the dark, Leith asks why anybody even bothers to pick up the phone when they see his name on the caller ID. Wolff says that it is in part because he has kind of become their friend after having followed Trump and his cohort around for the last ten years; but it is also because those in “Trumpworld” are themselves trying to figure out what’s been going on.

First Lady Melania Trump held a roundtable on Capitol Hill Monday with victims of revenge porn, deepfakes and sextortion in support of the "Take It Down Act." The “Take It Down Act” is a bipartisan bill cosponsored by Senators Ted Cruz and Amy Klobuchar that would require social-media platforms to remove any nonconsensual intimate images within forty-eight hours of a victim’s request. While the act passed the Senate with a unanimous vote, FLOTUS hopes it will be passed with the same enthusiasm in the House before being signed into law by her husband. She called for the prioritization of “robust security measures and to uphold strict ethical standards to protect individual privacy.

National Harbor, Maryland President Donald Trump capstoned a three-day CPAC pep rally with a message of… well, Trump. To be fair, that’s what virtually everybody else at the conference was speaking about too. The ballroom at the Gaylord National Resort was packed. In the build-up members of the Trump administration and world leaders had taken the stage, but make no mistake: the attendees were here to see the president himself. Trump entered to rapturous applause. After his signature move of standing before the podium for the entirety of “God Bless the USA,” he addressed the audience. “We fought through hell together, but in the end, we achieved the great liberation of America,” he said. “Kamala?” Trump asked himself, as if searching for a forgotten memory.

National Harbor, Maryland Former British prime minister Liz Truss began her speech at CPAC today by declaring that America has just entered its golden age with the election of President Trump. Britain, however, is in its dark age, she said: “Let’s be honest, Britain isn't working.” Truss’s concerns for the current state of the UK and Europe mirrored those expressed in Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech in Munich last week. She touched on attacks on free speech in the UK, the rise of Pakistani grooming gangs and the inability of the British government to do anything about the rise in illegal immigration.

The current and former US secretaries of transportation are playing the blame game following a rise in aviation crashes since the beginning of the Trump administration. Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden's transportation secretary, peppered X with questions Monday, asking, “The flying public needs answers. How many FAA personnel were just fired? What positions? And why?” Buttigieg's enquiries followed a string of plane crashes throughout the nation, beginning on January 29 when an American Airlines plane and a Black Hawk military helicopter collided above the Potomac River in Washington, DC, resulting in the death of sixty-seven people.

Former senator Bob Menendez was sentenced yesterday to eleven years in prison on charges of bribery, acting as a foreign agent and more. The sentence followed a nine-week jury trial, where it was shown beyond a reasonable doubt that Menendez, a Democrat from New Jersey, accepted bribes of cash, furniture, gold bars and a car to influence his role as a member of the federal legislature and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on behalf of Egypt and other parties between 2018 and 2022. Menendez was prosecuted and sentenced alongside Wael Hana and Fred Daibes, who were sentenced to over eight years and seven years, respectively, for bribery and conspiracy.

The newly sworn-in President Trump had a busy inaugural day. Between swearing into office and waving a saber around while dancing to “YMCA” at an inaugural ball, he also signed several executive orders and proclamations. After signing his cabinet and other nominations, President Trump’s first order of business was to proclaim that all flags should be flown at full staff for this and all future inauguration days. Following the inaugural parade, President Trump signed a bevy of additional executive documents as thousands of his supporters cheered.