Good morning! Pope Francis is in critical condition and is showing signs of "initial, mild" kidney failure. Thankfully, the Vatican is keeping everyone updated with nice, clearly worded statements about how the night “passed peacefully” after the pope caught some solid shut-eye.

In other news, today marks the third anniversary of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

MILITARY

🧹 Trump cleans house at the Pentagon

The Friday Night Massacre. That's what the media's calling Trump's firing of top Pentagon brass, namely chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown. Trump saluted Brown as "a fine gentleman and outstanding leader” and Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth said the ousted general was simply “not the right man for the moment.” Brown, who is black, has been criticized by many Republicans as too woke and more concerned with diversity than merit.

• Also fired were chief Navy Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the Air Force's No. 2, and the top lawyers for the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

Who is this guy? Brown was selected by Biden to chair the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2023. Prior to that, he'd been appointed Air Force chief of staff by Trump in 2020. He's a 62-year-old, four-star general from Texas who's served in the Air Force since 1984.

What's this job, again? You know how action movies always have that group of gruff military commanders sitting around a comically large table in a mysteriously dark room? They’re the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These guys are the chiefs of staff and most senior officers from each branch of the military — plus a chair and a vice chair. While they don't have operational control, they are the president's principal military advisors.

Why is this controversial? Critics of the move, like Sen. Jack Reed, believe it's a "political loyalty test" that erodes the military's trust in its own leadership. Others, like Rep. Seth Moulton, slammed it as an "un-American" politicization of the military that's "dangerous for our troops and our national security."

• During the 2024 campaign, Trump said he would fire loads of top generals for the disastrous 2021 pullout from Afghanistan.

• Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth has repeatedly slammed the Biden-era military for its alleged focus on D.E.I. over effectiveness and said "warfighting" is "the only litmus test we care about."

• Trump's defenders also say this is a standard move and cite firings by everyone from Truman in 1951 to Obama in 2013.

President Trump nominated another Air Force man to fill the job. Lieutenant General Dan "Razin" Caine, who retired in December, would return to service upon Senate confirmation. He'd also need a promotion to General, however, and would be the first Joint Chiefs chair who'd never previously served in a four-star rank. Trump believes Caine was key to defeating ISIS in 2019.

Elsewhere in the military, a Coast Guard ship in San Diego offloaded 37,000 pounds of cocaine (worth ~$275 million) in San Diego that it rounded up over 11 anti-drug smuggling ops in Latin America.

GOVERNMENT

📉 The Department of Defense announced plans to lay off five to eight percent of its ~950,000 civilian employees. Sec. Pete Hegseth explained that while the "best and brightest" will stay on, "underperformers" with noncritical jobs will get axed. He also hit back at media reports and said the Pentagon isn't actually cutting $50 billion from the budget. Instead, they’re refocusing existing funds on better uses. According to Hegseth, the changes will help return the military to its “core warfighting mission” and make it “the most lethal, badass fighting force on the planet."

📧 Federal employees are again confused after the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) sent an email blast asking them all to explain what they did last week. The email gave a response deadline of tonight (Monday) at midnight. Trump advisor Elon Musk said failure to respond would be taken as resignation and that next to no effort is required for a "passing grade." But some agencies, including the FBI and the Defense Department, told employees to hold off on responding. The State Department, meanwhile, said it will respond on employees' behalf.

👮 Kash Patel took over on Friday as the ninth director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Patel, 44, is a former prosecutor and counterterrorism staffer. But many in Congress consider him unqualified to lead the FBI and worry he'll focus on loyalty to the president over loyalty to the law. Patel and Trump, of course, dispute these claims. Soon after taking office, he announced plans to relocate up to 1,000 employees from FBI headquarters in D.C. to field offices around the country.

WHITE HOUSE

🏛️ Trump to hold exciting, not-at-all boring first Cabinet meeting

Maybe being president isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The White House’s meetings marathon continues this week with two visits from European allies and what’s sure to be a humdinger of a Cabinet meeting.

The governors: President Donald Trump hosted America's governors on Friday for the winter meeting of the bipartisan National Governors Association. Some moments were kind. Others were... a bit more combative. Trump congratulated North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein (D), saying they're "working well together" on the state's recovery from September's Hurricane Helene. But he got into it with Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D).

• The U.S. Department of Education is investigating her state for not complying with Trump's executive order that schools taking federal funds ban trans athletes from girls' sports.

• The clash ended with Mills telling Trump, "We'll see you in court."

The Cabinet: They haven’t all been confirmed by the Senate just yet (three more to go). But the president will host his first Cabinet meeting on Wednesday in the, get this, Cabinet Room at the White House. The notoriously boring meetings don’t happen often but are a good chance to make sure the two dozen or so people who actually, you know, run the government are on the same page.

• Per federal law, the Cabinet always includes the vice president and the 15 heads of the executive departments (that’s the people typically called “secretary").

• Presidents can also deem other jobs “Cabinet-level.” This usually includes people like the White House chief of staff, the director of the CIA, the head of the EPA, and the UN ambassador.

The world leaders: French President Emmanuel Macron will become the first European leader to meet with Trump at the White House this term when he swings by today. British Prime Minister Kier Starmer (which is somehow his real name) will visit on Thursday. The meetings come as Europe scrambles to figure out how to respond to the ongoing U.S.-Russia peace talks attempting to end the war in Ukraine.

The GOAT: In a slightly more fun meeting, Trump hosted Tiger Woods for a Black History Month ceremony. He used the occasion to expand on his plans for a National Garden of American Heroes. The president revealed that the garden will include statues of, among others, Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, Harriet Tubman, Aretha Franklin, and Frederick Douglass.

TRIVIA

He may have just been involuntarily retired, but Gen. Charles Q. Brown will forever hold a place in the record books. In 2020, he became the first-ever African American to serve as chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force. But, when he got promoted in 2023, he wasn’t the first to chair the Joint Chiefs — he was second. Who was the first black military officer to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? 

Hint: This later served as Dubya’s secretary of State.

WORLD

🎁 Argentine president gifts Elon Musk ‘chainsaw for bureaucracy’

Who doesn’t love a good chainsaw? What about a chainsaw emblazoned with the phrase “Long live liberty, damn it"? What if it came from Argentina’s iconoclastic libertarian president? Not that he couldn’t afford it already, but Elon Musk was given just that by Argentine President Javier Milei.

Conservatives gathered over the weekend at the 2025 edition of CPAC — that’s the Conservative Political Action Conference. Held annually since 1974, the event is the primo political conference for righties the world over.

In a total shocker, Vice President JD Vance won a 2028 straw poll of attendees, with 61% viewing him as the party's best nominee post-Trump. In his speech, Vance continued his crusade against Germany for arresting people over online "hate speech" and warned that the decline of free speech could put a strain on U.S.-European relations.

• Other members of the Trump administration also spoke, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and Interior Sec. Doug Burgum.

Elon Musk threw on some shades and wielded his new chainsaw on stage, which Milei used in his 2023 campaign as he proposed slashing government spending. Musk said President Trump is on board with the "DOGE dividend" idea to send checks to taxpayers using a portion of cut spending, which he called the “spoils of battle.”

It's not all fun and games for conservatives these days. At events back home, some Republican congressmen are facing crowds of voters angry with the speed and method of Trump's cuts. At the same time, polls show Trump’s approval rating is slipping as Americans say he needs to do more about high prices.

BRIEFS

● Friedrich Merz is likely Germany’s next chancellor after his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won Sunday’s election. The hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) soared to a second-place finish over the currently ruling center-left party.

● Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass ousted Fire Chief Kristin Crowley. An investigation found that the LAFD sent 1,000 firefighters home the morning the Palisades fire broke out despite knowledge that wildfire conditions were ripe.

● Ukrainian President Zelenskyy says he’ll resign if it means security guarantees for Ukraine. On a similar note, Trump hopes to reach a deal in which the U.S. gets access to Ukraine’s vast mineral wealth in exchange for its defense aid.

● Australia is ticked at China for running live-fire Navy drills in international waters just off Australia's coast. China hit back, calling the complaints "hyped up.” Meanwhile, Russia flew by Alaska in what the U.S. called a non-threatening regular occurrence.

QUOTE

ANSWER

President George H.W. Bush selected him as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1989. He served in that role through the first eight months of Bill Clinton’s term before retiring from the military in late 1993. In 1996, he nearly ran for president and was said to be Clinton’s most feared potential Republican opponent. Colin Powell never did end up running for office. But he did continue in government, serving as George W. Bush’s secretary of State from 2001 to 2005.