The U.S. announced a tentative agreement for Ukraine and Russia to cease fighting and ensure safe navigation in the Black Sea, though Russia’s commitment is contingent upon lifting certain Western sanctions.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to visit Jamaica, Guyana, and Suriname to discuss energy security, illegal migration, and transnational crime networks.
The U.S. State Department raised the travel advisory for Trinidad and Tobago to Level 3, advising Americans to reconsider travel due to increased risks of terrorism and kidnapping amid a nationwide State of Emergency.
U.S. and Russian officials plan to hold future talks involving the United Nations and other countries, following recent intense and constructive discussions.
The U.S. intelligence community released its 2025 Annual Threat Assessment, evaluating various threats to U.S. citizens and interests globally.
Michael Byrd, the Capitol Police officer who shot and killed Jan. 6 demonstrator Ashli Babbitt. (@NBCNightlyNews / X screen shot; @ForgiatoBlow47 / X)
In an interview Tuesday, President Trump vowed to look into the fact the U.S. Justice Department is still officially opposing the $30 million wrongful-death lawsuit brought by the Aaron Babbitt, the husband of Ashli Babbitt, the woman shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer Jan. 6, 2021.
Speaking to Greg Kelly of Newsmax, Trump said he also plans to look into Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd, the man who gunned down Babbitt outside the House Speaker’s Lobby, and the government’s treatment and remuneration of the officer.
“I am a big fan of Ashli Babbitt, and Ashli Babbitt was a really good person,” Trump told Kelly. “She was innocently standing there … and a man did something to her that was unthinkable when he shot her, and I think it’s a disgrace. I am going to look into that.”
Kelly mentioned the DOJ’s opposition to the 2024 lawsuit, to which Trump responded, “You’re just telling me that for the first time. I haven’t heard that.”
Watch a portion of Kelly’s interview with President Trump:
President Trump: “I am a big fan of Ashli Babbitt, and Ashli Babbitt was a really good person… She was innocently standing there… and a man did something to her that was unthinkable when he shot her and I think it’s a disgrace. I am going to look into that.” pic.twitter.com/764aC0J3xk
I was saddened last week to learn of the unexpected death of Tony Dolan, who passed away at age 76. Tony was the chief speechwriter to President Ronald Reagan in a “speechwriting shop” (as he called it) that included a terrifically talented group: Peggy Noonan, Peter Robinson, Ken Khachigian, Clark Judge, Josh Gilder, Mari Maseng Will, Dana Rohrabacher, Landon Parvin, and (among others) Aram Bakshian, who wrote for us at The American Spectator from 1972 until his death in September 2022. There was also the unassuming Ben Elliott, a humble and remarkable man who at times shared “chief speechwriter” duties with Dolan.
I think it was one of the best presidential speechwriting teams in American history. And its faithful leader for eight years, hired by President Reagan at age 32 and serving the entirety of the administration — reportedly the only White House senior-staff member to serve all eight years — was Anthony Dolan.
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth launched fiercely into the Atlantic
on Wednesday for continuing to claim war plans were mistakenly shared on Signal with the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.
“So, let’s me get this straight,” Hegseth posted
on X.
“The Atlantic released the so-called ‘war plans’ and those ‘plans’ include: No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods. And no classified information.
“Those are some really sh*tty war plans.
“This only proves one thing: Jeff Goldberg has never seen a war plan or an ‘attack plan’ (as he now calls it). Not even close.
“As I type this, my team and I are traveling the INDOPACOM region, meeting w/ Commanders (the guys who make REAL ‘war plans’) and talking to troops.
“We will continue to do our job, while the media does what it does best: peddle hoaxes.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also jumped into the fray Wednesday, saying: “The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT ‘war plans.’
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
“This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.”
The Atlantic has conceded: these were NOT “war plans.”
This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin. pic.twitter.com/atGrDd2ymr
Anna Bross, senior vice president for communications at the Atlantic, released a statement from the publication Wednesday, indicating:
“Attempts to disparage and discredit The Atlantic, our editor, and our reporting follow an obvious playbook by elected officials and others in power who are hostile to journalists and the First Amendment rights of all Americans. Our journalists are continuing to fearlessly and independently report the truth in the public interest.”
Attempts to disparage and discredit The Atlantic, our editor, and our reporting follow an obvious playbook by elected officials and others in power who are hostile to journalists and the First Amendment rights of all Americans. pic.twitter.com/Lj4ng0Hy6n
Waters was alluding to an executive order by President Trump banning birthright citizenship, as it clarifies the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Musk reposted a Fox News story about the event, and said
early Wednesday: “At some point, the many crimes of Maxine Waters will catch up to her.”
Elon Musk on Thursday, March 6, 2025 (Official White House photo)
Emma Colton of Fox News reported
: “Melania Trump was born in the former Yugoslavia and became a U.S. citizen in 2006, according to official government biographies of the first lady. She is the first U.S. first lady to become a naturalized citizen, and the second first lady to be born outside the U.S. – following President John Quincy Adams’ wife Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, who was born in London in 1775.
President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump (Official White House photo)
“The first lady sponsored her parents, who were also from current-day Slovenia, for green cards and then citizenship after securing her own citizenship, the New York Times reported in 2018. Viktor and Amalija Knavs, the first lady’s parents, officially became U.S. citizens in 2018. Amalija Knavs died in 2024, while her father Viktor Knavs has been spotted with the Trump family during public events in recent months, including sitting next to first son Barron Trump during the inauguration.”
During the Los Angeles protest, waters also said: “We are here because we are not going to let Trump, we’re not going to let Elon Musk, his co-president, or anybody else take the United States Constitution down.”
Online commenters were not kind to Waters, saying:
“When they start investigating Maxine Waters, they will likely need a whole server of space to catalog the crime she is involved in. … She has her hands in everything.”
“Can we deport Maxine Waters? At least from any government position? Bless her heart, she just needs to go.”
“She’s mentally ill. She called for violence against MAGA Republicans during President Trump’s first term and a lot of innocent people were harmed. She should be removed from office immediately.”
“Maxine is a diabolical Democrat who only plays the opposition for the sake of it. This woman stood in front of a crowd of homeless people and told them to go home. She is an a*****e and has the most punchable face.”
“If Congress needed a village idiot, Maxine Waters would be the lifelong incumbent. In a just era, she’d be run out of Washington on horseback.”
Anti-Semite Maxine Waters voted most corrupt politician in the USA 4 times! Democrats love the criminals! pic.twitter.com/QP79yfhXsU
Kari Lake
said the Trump administration is putting the United States government on a diet through spending cuts, and that she will contribute by slashing the United States Agency for Global Media budget.
Lake, President Donald Trump’s
nominee to be director of the Voice of America, is currently serving as special adviser to Voice of America’s parent organization, United States Agency for Global Media. Appearing on Steve Bannon’s podcast “The War Room,” she said she’s working to scale back the agency to its “bare minimum,” in alignment with the president’s recent executive order
aimed in part at lowering federal spending on media.
This morning, I joined @Bannons_WarRoom
to provide an update on my efforts to cut waste at USAGM.
President Trump has tasked me with returning these agencies to their mission, reducing them to the statutory minimum, and putting an END to their rampant abuse of taxpayer money.… pic.twitter.com/eSNL7lYPxx
United States Agency for Global Media is a global media agency designed to “inform, engage, and connect people around the world in support of freedom and democracy,” according to its website
. Several entities are overseen by United States Agency for Global Media, including Voice of America, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, and Middle East
Broadcasting Networks.
According to Lake, programming supported by the agency does not always serve its pro-American purpose.
“The focus was supposed to be talking and telling the American story
, and they haven’t been doing that,” she said. “I recently tuned in and saw a graphic on Voice of America that showed President Trump with a swastika over his face. That’s not what our taxpayer-funded media should be putting out.”
Lake explained that the cuts are not solely about editorial content but about a broader mission to prevent bankruptcy and rein in government spending.
“We’ve got to get this debt under control, Steve,” she added, “or we won’t have a country anymore.”
Many government agencies—such as United States Agency for Global Media—are created by Congress, so Trump cannot dismantle them through an executive order
. However, funding for the agencies can be cut back to a legal minimum.
Lake is working with lawyers to determine the statutory minimum for the various grantees of United States Agency for Global Media to scale back funding.
She noted that once money is funneled to United States Agency for Global Media’s grantees, there is a lack of transparency. “We don’t know exactly what they’re doing with that money. … So, we just want to have more transparency. They’re trying to give us less transparency and they’re suing us right now to stop us from cutting off the spigot to them.”
When asked about the lawsuits, Lake explained that several employees of Voice of America and other United States Agency for Global Media agencies are suing to prevent reduced funding and layoffs
.
“We are going to fight these lawsuits,” Lake promised. “We believe we’re in the right here and we will continue to fight them.”
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal
.]
Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson said Tuesday that the left’s obsessive behaviors are self-destructive and “killing their own party.”
In a speech at the Human Rights Campaign on Monday night, Democratic Texas Representative Jasmine Crockett called
Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott
, who uses a wheelchair, as “Governor Hot Wheels” and described him as a “hot a** mess.” During an appearance on “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Hanson said the Democratic Party’s political rhetoric against Trump exacerbates political divisions and diminishes the opposition’s credibility.
“They’re on the side of pro-HAMAS, pro-terror supporters. They’re on the side of gang members. They’re on the side of terrorist-designated organizations. You’ve got Jasmine Crockett threatening bodily harm to Ted Cruz. Now she’s calling the governor of Texas ‘Hot Wheels’ who’s disabled,” Hanson said.
Hanson cited the low approval ratings of these strategies and likened them to an addiction that damages rather than benefits the party employing them.
WATCH:
“They’re almost like an addict. They know that what they’re doing is a fixation and it’s killing their party. It’s down at about 27% approval, and, yet, like every addict, they have to have their fix, and they can’t stop even though they know it’s killing them,” Hanson added.
Hanson also criticized the continuous legal actions that he said are designed more to delay than to deliver substantive outcomes.
“I think they feel that by the time this gets to the appellate district federal courts, and then up to the Supreme Court, then they have succeeded in their strategies,” Hanson said. “And it’s part of a larger effort. The street violence we see, the smutty videos we see, all of it is designed to delay, delay, delay, and Donald Trump is not going to have a third term. So they understand that.”
Hanson also criticized the opposition for not engaging in more constructive political efforts, such as addressing significant national debt or immigration challenges.
“What they’re not doing, as you know, is they’re not saying to him, let’s work to get rid of the $3 billion in interest per day, or let’s work together and see if we can find the 12 million people that we let in the last four years,” Hanson said. “It’s street theater. It’s delay. It’s lawfare. It’s sort of also the administration counterpart of what we saw for four years with Letitia James, Fani Willis, Alvin Bragg, Jack Smith, Eugene Carroll.”
Upon assuming the presidency on Jan. 20, Trump quickly enacted executive orders
to limit illegal immigration and designated Mexican drug cartels, TdA, and MS-13 as foreign terrorist organizations. In response, Democratic states and unions filed numerous lawsuits, prompting Republican legislators to propose new laws that would restrict district judges from issuing nationwide injunctions on these executive actions.
Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
