Good afternoon from Capitol Hill.
The House and Senate are back in session this week and President Trump is heading back to D.C. after watching the Super Bowl in New Orleans. He is the first sitting president to watch it in person. He was welcomed with fanfare—juxtaposed by Taylor Swift, who was booed by the crowd—a real-time indication of his high approval ratings.
On Wednesday, President Trump, joined by dozens of young female athletes, sports commentator Sage Steele, and former SEC athlete of the year Riley Gaines, signed a historic executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports.” In response, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which is made up of 1,100 colleges and universities and enrolls 530,000 student athletes, issued a policy complying with the new requirement.
The Senate is scheduled to have three confirmation votes this week: Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Kash Patel. After initially pushing back against RFK Jr., Sen. Bill Cassidy said he will support him, saying, “It’s been a long, intense process. But I’ve assessed it as I would assess a patient as a physician. Ultimately, restoring trust in our public health institutions is too important, and I think Mr. Kennedy can get that done.” Patel’s committee vote was postponed to this week by Senate Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Once he is reported out of the committee, his nomination will be considered on the Senate floor.
Meanwhile, the House is set to vote on a “midnight rules” bill introduced by Rep. Andy Biggs. The “Midnight Rules Relief Act” would make it possible to roll back multiple Biden-era rules under one bill as long as they were submitted during the last 60 days of Biden’s term. Currently, the House would have to introduce and vote on a Congressional Review Act “CRA” bill for each rule. A similar bill passed the House in December, but it wasn’t taken up by the Senate before the new Congress began and Trump took office.
President Trump continues to move markets and make deals with his talk of tariffs—this time on steel and aluminum. His focus is on increasing GDP and, in the spirit of DOGE, cutting wasteful spending. USAID is on life support after Trump and Musk unleashed DOGE on the agency. Staff was told that the headquarters would be closed until further notice. Senator Joni Ernst backed the move in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, writing, “I’ve uncovered that the agency often acts at odds with our nation’s best interests and uses intimidation and shell games to hide where money is going, how it’s being spent and why.” Trump also instructed the Treasury to stop minting pennies, which cost 3.69 cents to make.
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One More Thing
The Latest from Rachel Bovard: President Trump has made an appointment that has Big Tech panicked and her discussion of the op-ed with Steve Bannon on War Room.