• Trump to give a non-State of the Union address: Tonight at 9 ET, Donald Trump will address a joint session of Congress in what is technically not a State of the Union address because he hasn’t been in office long enough. The theme is “The Renewal of the American Dream,” and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt says the speech “will celebrate his extraordinarily successful first month in office while outlining his bold, ambitious, and commonsense vision for the future.” Democrats will be on their worst behavior, including non-attendance by some and staged walkouts by others. Back in February 2020, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disgraced herself with a carefully choreographed stunt in which she ripped in half her copy of the president’s remarks. After two impeachments, 91 “felony” charges, and two assassination attempts, Trump’s polling numbers are now better than ever — while the numbers for Pelosi’s Democrats have never been worse. Coincidence?

• Ukraine aid paused: In the fallout from Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump’s Oval Office blowup, in which Zelensky sought to renegotiate a mineral rights deal for U.S. support, the White House announced that the U.S. will pause military aid to Ukraine. Zelensky had demanded a deal that guaranteed U.S. intervention should Russia renege on a peace deal, which Trump rejected as a recipe for World War III. Predictably, Zelensky has now reached out to Trump, noting that what transpired at the meeting was “regrettable” and stating, “It is time to make things right.” Meanwhile, the European Union is looking to expand its military spending with a proposed $840 billion rearmament plan. Boosting European participation was likely Trump’s objective.

• Senate Dems deny a vote on sports integrity: If Democrats are intent on repairing their dumpster-diving brand and winning back the American people, they have a funny way of showing it. Last night, the Senate held a procedural vote on a bill to ban biological males from women’s sports, and the Democrats blocked it on a 51-45 party-line vote. Thanks to them, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act failed to clear the 60-40 procedural hurdle — and this despite a recent New York Times poll showing that a whopping 79% of American adults are against allowing trannies to compete in women’s sports. Why would the Democrats dig in their heels on such a loser of an issue? Ours is not to wonder why. Instead, we might thank them for their suicidal stance and their unwillingness to learn the crystal-clear lessons of last November’s election.

• McMahon confirmed as education secretary: “Linda, I hope you do a great job and put yourself out of a job.” So said Donald Trump a couple of weeks ago to Linda McMahon, whom he’d named to head the Department of Education — the wasteful, bureaucratic, and poor-performing department he wants to abolish. Now she’ll get her chance. “It’s an honor to serve as the 13th Secretary of Education under President Trump,” said McMahon after yet another disgraceful party-line vote for a Trump cabinet nominee. “POTUS pledged to make U.S. education the best in the world, return education to the states, and free students from bureaucracy through school choice. I intend to make good on those promises.” Regardless of whether the DOE survives, we can be sure McMahon will at least decentralize the power from the bloated office she now runs and return it to the states and their local districts.

• $100B semiconductor deal: The world’s leading manufacturer of semiconductors, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., announced a $100 billion investment to expand its chipmaking operations in the U.S. TSMC’s original $65 billion deal to create the operation in Phoenix, Arizona, has now grown to $165 billion. It promises some 40,000 construction jobs over the next four years, as well as “tens of thousands of high-paying, high-tech jobs.” TSMC’s move marks the largest foreign investment in America in U.S. history. The chipmaker was encouraged to increase its investment in the U.S. “at the request of Trump administration officials” last month. This comes on the heels of Apple announcing a plan to invest $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years.

• Patel refutes honeypot report: Last week, we called attention to an FBI whistleblower’s claim that then-FBI Director James Comey targeted Donald Trump in June 2015 with an off-the-books operation that predated the phony Russia collusion hoax. The whistleblower said two female undercover agents infiltrated Trump’s 2016 campaign and were directed to act as “honeypots” — that is, to use their feminine wiles to extract information from Trump’s team members. Now, FBI Director Kash Patel is pushing back: “Just like when I exposed grotesque violations and fraud leading the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Crossfire Hurricane … I will equally defend those attacked falsely. … A female agent was falsely referenced in the media this week as part of an alleged whistleblower disclosure — she was NOT a honeypot. … This agent has dedicated her life to public service, and I will have her back for it.”

• Head of FBI NY office told to resign: The head of the FBI New York Field Office, James Dennehy, was directed to turn in his resignation on Monday. Dennehy, who joined the FBI in 2002, told staff that he “was not given a reason for this decision.” However, it was Dennehy who rebuffed a directive from the Department of Justice to create and turn in a list of all FBI personnel who worked on January 6 cases, reportedly telling staff to “dig in.” Furthermore, it was Dennehy’s office that was blasted by Attorney General Pam Bondi last week for withholding “thousands of pages” of documents related to the Jeffery Epstein case. She ordered new FBI Director Kash Patel to investigate.

• U.S. epidemiologists warn Wuhan lab still doing risky research: According to two American epidemiologists, China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is now widely considered the origin source of COVID via a lab leak, is still engaged in potentially dangerous research with coronaviruses. Indeed, the lab recently discovered a new virus that could infect humans and is likely more deadly than COVID. This new virus belongs to the MERS subgroup, which has fatality rates much higher than COVID. In an opinion piece published in the journal Cell, these two epidemiologists warn that research on this new infectious virus is being conducted in a BSL-2+ laboratory, which they note is considered insufficient for working with potentially dangerous respiratory viruses. The big concern here is not necessarily the research of bat-based coronaviruses but the lack of doing so in appropriately secure biolabs.

Headlines

• Hegseth returns Army base to Fort Benning in second naming reversal (Military Times)

• Smugglers busted by feds brought 20,000 illegals into U.S., threatened to decapitate agent (Daily Wire)

• Fetterman says he’s “ally” of trans athletes after vote on Senate bill (Washington Examiner)

• States launch campaigns to hire federal workers fired by DOGE (Washington Examiner)

• Palisades and Eaton wildfires caused up to $53.8 billion in property damage (City News Service)

• Four things to know about Trump’s plan for a “crypto strategic reserve” (NPR)

• Humor: Academy announces new “Most Likely to Be on Epstein List” Oscar award (Babylon Bee)

For the Executive Summary archive, click here.