THE MAGA REVOLUTION NEWS FROM ELON’S WOOD CHIPPER: All USAID workers around the world — barring those with special designations — will be placed on administrative leave by the end of this week as Elon Musk’s war on aid goes into overdrive. You can read the memo yourself (given it’s now the literal front page of the USAID site) telling all staffers worldwide they must stop work, with those overseas being shipped home within 30 days. Most Washington-based staff have already been put on leave, Nahal Toosi and Carmen Paun report, while CBS says USAID buildings across the DMV region are shuttered. Gone in 60 seconds: CNN reports President Trump chuckled yesterday when a reporter asked if Musk was winding down the entire agency. “Sounds like it!” Trump beamed. WSJ’s Alex Ward notes that, per the Congressional Research Service, “because Congress established USAID as an independent establishment within the executive branch, the president does not have the authority to abolish it.” But it seems the current restructure — if we can call it that — is sailing through unopposed. Musk read: “How Trump Gutted America’s $40 Billion Aid Agency in Two Weeks”, via Joel Schectman and colleagues at the WSJ. The four-bylined investigation has loads of good nuggets, including that “the cuts came so fast that one dismissed employee had to be rehired to process other employees’ time sheets.” The protests begin: Opponents of the aid cuts will gather on the Hill today for one of the first major protests against President Musk’s Trump’s actions. The “Rally to Restore Foreign Aid Now” will see members of Congress, former U.S. government officials and anti-Trump demonstrators gather at Upper Senate Park to protest against the shutdown of USAID. Speakers will include Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. Lois Frankel (D-Fla.), plus various former USAID officials. There was a separate demonstration outside the Treasury yesterday focused squarely on Musk. But but but: As our Rachael Bade writes in her latest “Corridors” column, prominent Dem strategists fear that vocal resistance to USAID cuts will not help the party reconnect with millions of lost voters. “My heart is with the people out on the street outside USAID, but my head tells me: ‘Man, Trump will be well satisfied to have this fight,’” says veteran strategist David Axelrod. “When you talk about cuts, the first thing people say is: Cut foreign aid.” Rahm Emanuel tells Rachael much the same: “You don’t fight every fight. You don’t swing at every pitch.” Sure, whatever: Musk himself certainly seems unconcerned by all the liberal outrage. He’s changed his X bio to “White House tech support,” and spent the night gleefully retweeting clips from TikTok and Fox News attacking wasteful spending at USAID. This, we can safely say, is his happy place. Not in a happy place: East Africa, where millions of people have been relying on USAID soup kitchens to stay alive. WaPo’s Katharine Houreld and Rachel Chason have a truly bleak report from Nairobi. CONGRESSIONAL VIBE CHECK RECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES: House Speaker Mike Johnson will update the House GOP conference this morning on the status of his ailing budget reconciliation plan following a closed-door meeting last night with key Republican holdouts. (The rest of us will have to wait to hear from Johnson at today’s presser at 10 a.m.) What’s on the table: Leaving last night’s meeting, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said $1 trillion is a realistic floor for spending cuts in the reconciliation package — a statement seemingly designed to get conservative hardliners on board with the one-bill plan. The context: Johnson is “at serious risk of being outmaneuvered by an unlikely GOP alliance” as he “struggles to sell his approach to enacting President Donald Trump’s sprawling domestic agenda,” our Meredith Lee Hill and Jordain Carney report. “A rebellion among conservative hard-liners has already forced the speaker to scrap his ambitious timeline for advancing the border, energy and tax bill. Senators, meanwhile, are getting antsy about inaction in the House and are working with Freedom Caucus members on an end-run around Johnson’s strategy.” The pressure campaign: At a dinner this coming Friday at Mar-a-Lago, Senate Republicans are expected to urge Trump to stop waiting on Johnson & co. to get it together and instead go for a two-bill plan. Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told Axios’ Stef Kight that he expects the message to be: “It’s now, Mr. President. It’s time to move. We have this.” SHUTDOWN COUNTDOWN: With just six weeks to go until federal government funding lapses, some lawmakers fear that Trump’s embrace of funding freezes and general penchant for discord could result in a shutdown despite total Republican control of Washington, our Jennifer Scholtes reports this morning. Inspiring confidence: “I don’t think anybody thinks a shutdown is a good thing. But the politics are such that we could certainly stumble into one without meaning to,” said House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.). What about a bipartisan deal? Looking less likely by the hour, given the contentious political climate in Trump’s Washington. Dems “say any good faith agreement with their GOP counterparts is meaningless if Trump disregards the will of Congress by using ‘impoundment’ to withhold funding they pass into law,” Jennifer writes. BEST OF THE REST CONFIRMATION WATCH: The Senate officially confirmed Pam Bondi as Trump’s attorney general last night in a mostly party-line vote, 54-46, with Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman (obvs) the lone Democrat who supported her … The Senate Small Business Committee will hold a procedural vote today on Kelly Loeffler’s nomination for SBA chief at 11:15 a.m. Loeffler is expected to be confirmed without issue, though an exact date hasn’t been set on the final vote. Get ready for a late night: Senate Democrats will reportedly hold up business on the chamber floor through Thursday evening to protest the nomination of Trump’s OMB Director-designate Russell Vought, CNN’s Manu Raju reports. Though Vought is expected to be ultimately confirmed along party lines, the protests “will begin after Vought clears the final procedural hurdle tomorrow afternoon, limiting debate to 30 hours before the final confirmation vote Thursday night.” NAILS ON THE CHALKBOARD: Trump added credence to reports that he’s planning to dismantle the Department of Education, telling reporters yesterday that he hopes Education Secretary-designate Linda McMahon will eventually "put herself out of a job,” USA Today’s Zachary Schermele reports. SPIN VS. REALITY: “Trump’s mass deportation plan he promised during the campaign has not yet taken hold — but you wouldn’t know that from the White House PR campaign,” Myah Ward and Jessica Piper report. Despite the White House’s slew of social media posts touting their crackdown on illegal immigration, “the number of daily Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests, trumpeted each day on X, are still about where they were at times under President Barack Obama.” A 2028 PROBLEM TO WATCH: “The GOP keeps failing to make Nebraska a winner-take-all state. Now it might ask voters to do it,” by AP’s Margery Beck DCA CRASH LATEST: Officials say they have officially recovered all 67 victims from the wreckage of the devastating crash, bringing an end to six days of search and recovery efforts in the Potomac. “The chief medical examiner’s office is still working to identify the final victim,” NBC News’ Doha Madani reports, as authorities now focus on clearing the wreckage of the crash from the icy water. HOGG WILD: “Why some centrist Dems fear David Hogg could ‘do more harm than good,’” by Elena Schneider: “[Hogg’s election] has been accompanied by frustration among centrists that a 24-year-old March for our Lives co-founder with a million followers could hurt the party’s brand … They vented that his ascension is representative of Democrats’ failure to grapple with some voters’ frustration that the party is overly concerned with diversity and appeals to the far left.” BEYOND THE BELTWAY THE PRESIDENT THAT CHINA WANTED? Despite Trump’s tariffs and tough talk on China, he has “started his second term looking like the U.S. president Beijing has long wanted,” Nahal Toosi writes this morning in her latest “Compass” column, highlighting the reaction in parts of the developing world to the 47th president. “Threats may get results for a short time, but then over a long time, people are taking notes: We’re not going to put all our eggs into America,” one African diplomat in Washington tells her. Take your time: Trump told reporters yesterday he’s in “no rush” to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping, despite expectations of a call yesterday following China’s round of retaliatory tariffs. Trump also heavily downplayed the significance of Beijing’s move, Ari Hawkins reports. Attention, Temu shoppers: The U.S. Postal Service announced yesterday that it will temporarily stop accepting packages from China and Hong Kong. The NYT notes that the U.S. “imports about 3 million parcels a day with almost no customs inspection and no duties collected — with most of them coming from China.” MEXICO’S SURGE BEGINS: In her agreement with Trump that forestalled his threatened 25 percent tariffs, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum promised to crack down on illegal migration and the fentanyl trade with a surge of troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. Yesterday, we got a taste of that, as nearly 10,000 Mexican troops were deployed “to cities and towns on the border with the United States,” the El Paso Times’ Daniel Borunda reports. LET’S MAKE A DEAL: In a new interview with British broadcaster Piers Morgan, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he’s open to a peace deal with Russia and believes “President Trump wants to succeed in this situation,” Ali Bianco reports. Zelenskyy also added that he “is ready to move to the diplomatic track and open negotiations — after calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a ‘murderer’ who he sees as his ‘enemy.’ He said he will not accept territorial concessions in the eastern swath of the country, which is currently under Russian occupation.”
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