• Gaza as State #51: Anyone who thought Donald Trump would seek an isolationist course and lessen the American footprint has so far been mistaken. Indeed, he’s taking on the thorniest issues. Take the decades-old Middle East headache of Gaza. Yesterday, in a presser with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said: “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip. … We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous, unexploded bombs and other weapons. … Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings … create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.” Will the Palestinians and the Israelis accept American leadership in Gaza? Will the neighboring Arab states take the Gazan refugees? Will American troops be committed there? These are just three tough questions. But once again, Trump the Disruptor has thrown the traditional playbook out the window.

• Bondi confirmed: Pam Bondi, Donald Trump’s choice for attorney general, was confirmed on Tuesday by a vote of 54-46 in the Senate. All Republicans voted in favor, with one lone Democrat, Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman, breaking ranks and joining the Republicans in approving Bondi. She has now become the 87th attorney general in U.S. history and just the fourth woman to hold the office — albeit the first woman to hold the role within a Republican administration. She is also just the second AG to hail from Florida. Interestingly, the first woman ever to serve as AG, Janet Reno, was also a Floridian. Bondi committed to fighting “to restore confidence and integrity” to the DOJ and end the partisanship and weaponization that has marked the department over the last four years.

• Gabbard and RFK Jr. get through committee: Two of Donald Trump’s most controversial cabinet nominees passed major hurdles yesterday, winning majority votes in committee. Department of National Intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard won over two GOP holdouts on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Susan Collins and Todd Young; and Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got the vote of Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, himself a physician, to advance out of the Senate Finance Committee on a 14-13 party-line vote. Both are now headed to confirmation votes in the full Senate. Confirmation isn’t a done deal, but winning over Republican resistance was crucial. Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville offered this trenchant analysis of Trump’s influence: “They’re not going to go against him. If they go against him, they go against 77 million people. I don’t think they want that if they want [to get] reelected.”

• An EO for sports integrity: Today, Donald Trump will sign an executive order banning males from competing in female sports. The extent of the order is not yet clear — i.e., whether it will primarily apply to K-12 and collegiate sports or beyond. This action advances one of Trump’s major campaign issues: the protection of women’s sports and spaces from males posing as females. The transgender lobby has pushed hard on the false claim that gender is fluid and that a person’s feelings rather than biology should be the sole determiner of gender identity and social participation. Trump promised to confront this craziness by pledging to “keep men out of women’s sports.” The vast majority of Americans agree.

• 20,000 have already taken Trump’s worker buyout: It’d be just our luck if they’re all hard-working, highly talented, right-minded workers, but the federal government is on the verge of being trimmed down by 20,000 staffers. That’s the number that have so far accepted the “buyout” offer put forward by Donald Trump last week, according to an administration official. This represents around 1% of the federal workforce, but it’s still nowhere near the 5% to 10% reduction the administration hoped for. In addition, the annual attrition rate of the federal workforce is around 6%, which means that many of these folks may have been planning to leave anyway. Still, the offer is open until tomorrow. In any case, it’s clear that not everyone in the federal workforce has been paralyzed by what NBC News characterized as the “fear, anger, and confusion” that the buyout offer has caused.

• Trump nails Iran: Donald Trump is once again holding Iran’s feet to the fire, announcing his restoration of “maximum pressure” sanctions against the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. His action reverses the Biden administration’s weak approach to Tehran, which resulted in Iran collecting over $140 billion in profits through illicit oil exports. Trump aims to see Iran’s oil exports effectively eliminated. His goal is to both deny Iran developing nuclear weapons and neutralize its terrorist network. He also warned that should Tehran succeed in killing him, “I’ve left instructions. If they do it, they get obliterated — there won’t be anything left.”

• Gitmo flights begin: The first flight of potentially 30,000 illegal aliens has landed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Following through on Trump’s promise to use Gitmo as a detention center for illegal aliens, a dozen migrants were on the first flight from Fort Bliss, Texas. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt noted on Tuesday that Trump “is not messing around.” Last week, when Trump first introduced his plan to use Gitmo for detaining illegal aliens, he explained that it would be used to “contain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.” Questions over the high cost of the operation, as well as legal questions as to whether ICE plans to use military tribunals for dealing with immigration cases, have yet to be clarified. The goal is clearly to remove the most dangerous illegal aliens from the U.S., even if their home countries balk at taking them back.

• DEI infects college degrees: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion advocates are being drummed out of the federal government and the U.S. military, but nowhere are their numbers greater and their influence more pernicious than in higher ed. As The College Fix reports, “Course requirements in at least 30 states cost students and taxpayers at least $1.8 billion per four-year period.” At the same time, “the current undergraduate population at public universities will spend at least 40 million hours” to tackle the DEI mandate necessary for getting a college degree. “One of the reasons DEI is so costly to taxpayers,” said the Goldwater Institute’s Matt Beienburg, “is because its proponents actively enrich themselves as they increase its scope and influence over institutions.” The end of this racist grift can’t come soon enough, but we expect its proponents in higher ed to follow the rotten lead of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Headlines

• Chris Wright confirmed to serve as secretary of energy (Fox News) | Senate confirms Doug Collins as VA secretary (The Hill)

• A whopping 5,000 FBI employees were assigned to J6 cases (Not the Bee)

• El Salvador agrees to “unprecedented” migrant deal, Marco Rubio says (Newsweek)

• Judge blocks Trump’s order forcing incarcerated gender-confused men to live in male facilities (The Hill)

• Sanders and Hawley introduce bill to cap credit card interest rates at 10% (USA Today)

• At least 10 dead in shooting at Swedish school (Daily Wire)

• Humor: Democrats unveil their top 10 heroes of Black History Month (Babylon Bee)

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