• Black Hawk pilot named: The name of the third member of the Black Hawk helicopter crew involved in the fatal collision with an American Airlines jet that resulted in the deaths of 67 people has finally been released: Army Captain Rebecca Lobach, 28. Her name had initially been withheld due to a request from her family, which goes against normal protocols and ironically only served to fuel the very speculations about her competency that her family likely wanted to avoid. However, she had an impressive résumé and over 450 hours of flight time. Lobach had also served as a White House Military Social Aide for the Biden administration, her family noted in a statement, “volunteering to support the President and First Lady in hosting countless White House events, including ceremonies awarding the Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”

• Trump counters China in Panama: Shortly after President Donald Trump dispatched Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Panama, the tiny country with the world’s most strategically vital isthmus announced that it’ll end its “Belt and Road” development agreement with Communist China. At issue is the Panama Canal, which the U.S. spent 11 years and thousands of lives to build in the early 1900s and which Jimmy Carter relinquished to Panama in 1977. The country’s president, José Raúl Mulino, reasserted his nation’s sovereignty over the canal, but he has undoubtedly noticed Trump’s tough talk. “What they’ve done is terrible,” said Trump yesterday on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews. “They’ve violated the agreement. … China is running the Panama Canal. That was not given to China; that was given to Panama, foolishly. … We’re going to take it back, or something very powerful is going to happen.”

• Border crossings plummet: Nothing contrasts the Trump and Biden administrations more starkly than the situation at the southern border. After just his second week in office, Donald Trump has seen a 93% decrease in the number of illegal border crossings. In a Fox News interview over the weekend, Border Czar Tom Homan credited Trump as the “game-changer,” observing, “No one has had the success he’s had in securing the border.” Homan further pointed out ICE’s arrest of 5,000 criminal illegal aliens in just Trump’s first week while noting that “we’ve got more work to do.” The clear difference between Trump and Biden on illegal immigration is simple: Trump is enforcing the law; Biden went out of his way to avoid doing so.

• Trump fires CFPB director: The director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Rohit Chopra, was fired by Donald Trump on Saturday, ending his five-year term nearly two years early. Chopra, who is a protégé of Senator Elizabeth Warren, has been a target of Republican lawmakers, but primarily because he headed the CFPB, which they want to eliminate due to its independence from congressional oversight. The CFPB came into existence during the Obama era as part of the Dodd-Frank regulatory package that targeted Wall Street following the 2008 financial crisis. Senator Ted Cruz leads a number of Republicans who are aiming to defund CFPB and may seek to do so in a reconciliation bill in the next few months.

• Appeals court rules handgun ban on young adults is unconstitutional: In a win for supporters of our Second Amendment, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously late last week that the federal government’s ban on handgun sales to adults age 18-20 is unconstitutional. Of course it is. In Reese v. ATF, the panel ruled that the government failed to persuade them that 18- to 20-year-olds aren’t a subset of “the people” mentioned within the terse language of the Second Amendment. As Judge Edith Jones noted, “There are no age or maturity restrictions in the plain text of the Amendment, as there are in other constitutional provisions.” She compared gun rights to others specified in the Bill of Rights — such as the right to peaceably assemble and to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

• McConnell contrasts with Trump’s youth movement: Former Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared on “60 Minutes” this weekend, and he showed all 82 years of his age. McConnell, who has suffered from a couple of very public bouts of catatonia-like health episodes, told CBS’s Lesley Stahl that he’s still “very upset” with President Donald Trump and that they haven’t spoken “for quite a while.” McConnell recently stepped down from his 17-year run as the GOP’s Senate leader just as the party wrested control of the upper chamber from the Democrats on November 5. His presence in the Senate seems at odds with Trump’s youth movement, which includes Vice President JD Vance (40), Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (44), Director of National Security nominee Tulsi Gabbard (43), UN Ambassador Elise Stefanik (40), and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (27), the youngest person in history to hold that role.

• Pentagon changes: The preferential treatment that legacy media outlets have long enjoyed in Washington is changing fast. The Pentagon has announced an “annual media rotation” program to “broaden access” for new media outlets that haven’t “previously enjoyed the privilege and journalistic value” of working within the building. As a result, NBC News, The New York Times, National Public Radio, and Politico have exited their office spaces in the Pentagon to make way for the New York Post, Breitbart, One America News Network, and HuffPost. Meanwhile, the Defense Department is also scrapping the controversial Biden-era subsidization of abortion-related travel expenses for military personnel. Furthermore, the Pentagon has put a pause on “special observances” related to several politicized recognitions, including Black History Month and Pride Month.

• Animal rights group appeals to DOGE: We don’t know whether Elon Musk is a dog lover, but he might become one in light of how they’ve been treated during the Biden administration. As part of a barbaric $5.3 million drug testing study by the National Institutes of Health — and we want to warn you here — six-month-old beagle pups are put into jackets and injected with cocaine and methamphetamine, which causes them to vomit and foam at the mouth. Now, by way of Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, members of Congress are joining animal welfare groups such as White Coat Waste to end that animal testing, which they say is both inhumane and wasteful. Said Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst, who chairs the DOGE Senate caucus: “It is about doggone past time to put bureaucrats in the doghouse for wasting tax dollars on cruel and unscientific experiments on puppies.”

Headlines

• Ken Martin wins election as the next chair of the DNC (NBC News) | Gun control activist David Hogg elected vice chair (Breitbart) | Humor: To announce they’ve given up completely, DNC selects Hogg as vice chair (Babylon Bee)

• USAID leaders tell staffers not to show for work as Musk declares war on agency (National Review)

• Senior FBI official forcefully resisted Trump administration firings (NBC News)

• Manhunt tied to “anarchist” vegan cult in Border Patrol agent killing (Fox News)

• Plane crash in Philadelphia neighborhood kills seven (CBS News)

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