• Will Dems follow Slotkin’s lead? If the Democrats are going to avoid political irrelevancy, they’ll need to tune out the Trump-deranged wing nuts in their midst and instead listen to moderates like newly elected Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who worked in both the Bush and Obama administrations. Slotkin had the unenviable task of rebutting Donald Trump’s address late last night. Shrewdly setting up in the working-class Detroit suburb of Wyandotte — a town that both she and Trump carried — Slotkin voiced her support for border security, even if the cat had her tongue throughout the Biden years. She also nodded toward Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” approach, said Trump “stole” that line from Reagan yet would’ve “lost us the Cold War,” and claimed Trump was planning an “unprecedented giveaway to his billionaire friends.” This is tired stuff, but at least it sounds somewhat sane.

• SCOTUS rules Trump must cough up $2 billion in foreign aid: In a blow to American taxpayers and a boon to Colombian transgender opera mavens everywhere, the Supreme Court this morning refused to block a lower court’s ruling ordering the Trump administration to pay roughly $1.9 billion to groups and contractors affiliated with USAID for completed projects. It was a 5-4 decision, with the increasingly unreliable Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett siding with the court’s three leftists. On the bright side, this ruling only affects work already completed, not Trump’s plans to cut 90% of USAID’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in foreign aid spending. The dissenters — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh — wrote, among other things, “The court makes a most unfortunate misstep that rewards an act of judicial hubris and imposes a $2 billion penalty on American taxpayers.”

• U.S. reclaims Panama Canal with port majority ownership: “To further enhance our national security,” said Donald Trump last night, “my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal, and we’ve already started doing it. Just today, a large American company announced they are buying both ports around the Panama Canal.” That American company is BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, and the $23 billion deal would put the ports back in American hands, stiff-arming the increasingly predatory Communist China. “The Panama Canal was built by Americans for Americans, not for others,” Trump continued, adding that its construction came “at tremendous cost of American blood and treasure.” Trump rightly blamed Jimmy Carter for our nation’s strategically stupid abandonment of the canal, noting that the terms of that agreement have since been violated. “We didn’t give it to China,” said Trump. “We gave it to Panama, and we’re taking it back.”

• 55K illegals removed: Just over a month into Donald Trump’s second term, his administration has made good on reversing the flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S. Thus far, 55,000 illegal aliens have been deported. Meanwhile, the number of migrants seeking to illegally enter the country in February dropped to just over 8,300 — which used to be a daily number under Joe Biden. The reason for this dramatic shift has everything to do with empowering ICE and Border Patrol to do their job. As Trump quipped in his speech before Congress last night, “The media and our friends in the Democrat Party kept saying, ‘We needed new legislation. We must have legislation to secure the border.’ But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.”

• Egypt presents plan for Gaza’s future: While Donald Trump called for a complete removal of all Palestinians from Gaza as part of a solution to end the decades-long conflict with Israel, the surrounding Arab nations were quick to object. On Tuesday in Cairo, Arab leaders gathered to hear Egypt’s plan for addressing the Gaza problem. Egypt’s plan would create an independent Palestinian committee that excludes any Hamas members who would temporarily govern Gaza. Furthermore, it calls for the United Nations Security Council to deploy an international peacekeeping force in Gaza and the West Bank. Egypt estimates that the cost of reconstructing Gaza is $53 billion but offered no funding source for that expense. The war is currently in a ceasefire.

• The Houthis are officially terrorists: On his first day in office, Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring the Mexican drug cartels “and other organizations” to be foreign terrorists and making it official U.S. policy to “ensure the total elimination” of the threat they pose to the U.S. The EO didn’t name Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis, whose Red Sea thuggishness has hampered global trade by terrorizing one of the world’s most crucial shipping lanes. That changed yesterday when the State Department officially designated the Houthis as a terrorist organization. “Terrorist designations play a critical role in our fight against terrorism,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “and are an effective way to curtail support for terrorist activities.” The secretary also noted that the Houthis have launched “hundreds of attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.” Maybe now we’ll drop the gloves.

• China increases its defense budget by 7.2%: At its annual National People’s Congress, China’s communist government announced that it is raising its defense budget this year by 7.2%. This matches the increase of last year but is well below the double-digit increases of previous years, which shows the impact of China’s slowing economy. China’s military spending is now second only to the U.S. as tensions over Taiwan heighten. China has significantly increased the size of its navy, boasting the world’s largest. Meanwhile, Beijing warned Donald Trump that China was ready for any “type of war” in response to Trump’s 10% tariff on Chinese goods. “Pressuring, coercion or threats are not the right way of dealing with China,” a Chinese spokesman stated. “Anyone using maximum pressure on China is picking the wrong guy and miscalculation.”

• Florida probes contemptible Tates: Andrew and Tristan Tate recently arrived in Florida after Romanian travel restrictions were lifted. The two brothers have garnered notoriety due to their braggadocious self-promotion over having acquired their wealth through exploitative ventures in both online pornography and dubious “education” schemes, and they face sex-trafficking charges in Romania. They may be out of Romania, but that hasn’t ended their legal issues. As Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier revealed, the Sunshine State has opened a criminal investigation into the Tates. “You know, people can spin or defend however they want, but in Florida, this type of behavior is viewed as atrocious,” Uthmeier explained. “We’re not going to accept it.”

Headlines

• Supreme Court seems ready to block Mexican government’s lawsuit against U.S. gunmakers (CBS News)

• IRS drafting plans to slash 90,000-person workforce in half (NY Post)

• How federal workers are dealing with the $1 limit on their corporate cards (WSJ)

• Bowser signals end of BLM Plaza after GOP push to axe funding (Washington Examiner)

• Humor: Trump institutes military draft for everyone with Ukraine flag in their Facebook profile (Babylon Bee)

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