• Trump budget bill squeaks through House: In a promising sign that the House speaker just might be able to pass major legislation even with his razor-thin majority, Mike Johnson herded his Republican cats long enough last night to pass a bill that calls for $1.5-$2 trillion in spending cuts over a decade, along with $4-$4.5 trillion in tax cuts. The vote was 217-215, with all but one member — Kentucky’s perennially frugal Thomas Massie — voting in favor. The Senate favors larger tax cuts, though, and will likely alter the House bill — which means Johnson will have to endure another nail-biter.

• Pelosi rule under scrutiny: A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit heard arguments yesterday about a $1.7 trillion omnibus passed in 2022 with more than half the votes being cast remotely via then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s proxy voting rules. “I’m just wondering,” asked one judge, “If 218 members can say, ‘Madam Speaker, you’ve got my proxy to be present, so anytime you want to convene the House, you’ve got a quorum.’ Can that work?” Suffice it to say that Democrats never cared anything for “norms,” and the Framers never contemplated remote voting.

• DOGE staffers quit: Twenty-one civil “servants” resigned from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency yesterday, saying that they wouldn’t use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.” To which we ask: Critical to whom? “We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the Constitution across presidential administrations,” the malcontents wrote in a joint resignation letter. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.” In response, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “Anyone who thinks protests, lawsuits, and lawfare will deter President Trump must have been sleeping under a rock for the past several years.”

• Biden IRS leaked 400,000 Americans’ tax files, not 8,000: From our “Captain Renault” files comes word that the same former IRS contractor who leaked Donald Trump’s tax records prior to the 2020 election also leaked confidential tax info on more than 405,000 American taxpayers, approximately 89% of whom were business entities. That’s more than five times the number the IRS had initially said were victimized. The culprit, leftist hero Charles Littlejohn, was sentenced to five years in prison for his trouble. At his sentencing, Littlejohn uttered some rubbish about acting out of a “sincere and misguided belief that he was serving the public interest.” Of course, what he meant was that he thought he was serving the interests of the Trump-hating Left.

• Trump revokes security clearances for Jack Smith’s law firm: “We’re going to call it the ‘Deranged Jack Smith’ signing or bill,” Donald Trump quipped to reporters as he signed an executive order on Tuesday. That order stripped the security clearances for attorneys at Covington & Burling, a Washington law firm tightly connected to Democrats that worked with Special Counsel Jack Smith on his failed lawfare endeavor against Trump. In 2022, Smith was picked by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Trump over his challenge of the 2020 election results and his handling of classified documents. However, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision upholding presidential immunity effectively gutted Smith’s election case, which he eventually dropped following Trump’s election victory.

• Trump pushes restart of Keystone XL pipeline: Infamously, one of Joe Biden’s first actions upon taking office in 2021 was canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, reversing Donald Trump’s first-term decision to green-light the continuation of the project that began in 2010 but that Barack Obama halted. It marked Biden’s first salvo in his war on fossil fuels. However, now that Trump is back in office, he wants the pipeline restarted. “Come back to America, and get it built — NOW!” Trump said in a post directed at the original company behind the pipeline project, TC Energy. “I know they were treated very badly by Sleepy Joe Biden, but the Trump Administration is very different — Easy approvals, almost immediate start! If not them, perhaps another Pipeline Company. We want the Keystone XL Pipeline built!”

• Trump admin looks to end bird flu: With egg prices skyrocketing due to the avian flu, public frustration is growing, with many recalling Donald Trump’s promise to “immediately” lower grocery costs. The current means for fighting the virus is the mass slaughter of chickens when infected birds are found within a poultry population. Since August, over 73 million egg-laying chickens have been slaughtered or died due to the avian flu. Since 2022, over 100 million chickens have been affected, showing that the problem has lingered and worsened. Kevin Hassett, Trump’s National Economic Council director, argues for a different approach, which he calls “a smart perimeter.” That means working with scientists to establish biosecurity and medication, including using a newly approved avian flu vaccine. Hassett argues this “should have happened a year ago, and if it had, egg prices would be a lot better than they are now.”

• Dem governor’s tortured gender language: After Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin objected to Democrat Governor Tony Evers’s proposed budget because it replaces traditional gendered language like “mother” with “inseminated person” and “father” with “natural parent” and “wife” with “person,” Evers accused them of “lying.” He defended the language change as necessary for legal clarity surrounding IVF, which he charged Republicans with opposing. State Republican Representative Amanda Nedweski blasted Evers, writing, “Where’s the lie [Gov. Evers]? It’s right there in your own budget. You are attempting to erase parents from state statute. If you believe moms are moms, and dads are dads, then there would be no need for this change. Apparently Evers believes dads can be moms too.” Given that Republicans control both state legislative chambers, Evers’s proposal will go nowhere.

• Florida sues woke Target: Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has announced a class-action lawsuit against the Target Corporation for having misled its investors, citing a grotesque 2023 Pride Campaign. Target said it would monitor the social and political risks posed by its wokeness, but the company was far more concerned with ingratiating itself with the Rainbow Mafia. As Uthmeier put it, “Target’s efforts to sexualize children caused its stock price to plummet, harming Florida’s retirement fund and putting the retirements of our teachers and first responders at risk.”

Headlines

• Zelensky to visit White House on Friday as sides close in on minerals agreement (Washington Examiner)

• One million federal workers respond to Musk’s “What did you do last week?" email (Daily Wire)

• Trump introduces $5 million "Gold Card” that wealthy people can buy to come to America (Daily Wire)

• SCOTUS to hear straight woman’s discrimination case that could reshape employment law (Fox News)

• Apple shareholders reject proposal to scrap DEI (NY Post)

• Byron Donalds launches bid for Florida governor (The Hill)

• Humor: A list of some of the things government employees said they accomplished last week (Babylon Bee)

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