Good morning! Your bedtime scroll of last week's TikToks might soon look a little different. Instagram is considering spinning off its Reels feature into a standalone app amid TikTok's uncertain future. To that point, the Tok is back in app stores and usage has returned to normal, obscene levels. But we're now past the halfway point of Trump's January extension of the ban deadline.

In other news, some British lady broke a world record by running 226.8 miles in 48 hours... on a treadmill. Perhaps TikTok isn’t such a waste of time after all.

WHITE HOUSE

📰 White House holds Cabinet meeting, fights press corps

Control over journalists who sit atop an abandoned, mouse-infested swimming pool is top-flight news this week. Sure, the Press Briefing Room is just down the hall from the Oval Office. But that doesn't mean it's nice.

The Trump White House has shredded longstanding policy on which news outlets can attend which presidential events. Most notably affected by the fight is the big daddy of them all, the Associated Press. The AP sued this week, arguing the White House's move to cut its access an illegal seizure of control.

• But the White House says it alone determines which news outlets can attend what. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt called some events "very privileged and limited access."

• She slammed the press corps for complaining, saying no one gets "a monopoly of press access at the White House."

The Trump administration said its rotation of new media outlets, including streaming services, into events is an issue of modernization.

Cabinet meeting: The new crew held its first Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. Four of Trump's picks are still awaiting their Senate confirmations, but the whole gang attended. The press fight continued, however, with the White House denying access to journalists from the Associated Press, Reuters, HuffPost, and some random German newspaper. TV crews and reporters from outlets including ABC, NPR, Axios, and Newsmax were invited to cover the event.

• Cabinet nominees waiting on the Senate: Linda McMahon (Education), Jamieson Greer (Trade), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (Labor), and Elise Stefanik (U.N.).

The meeting opened with a speech from President Trump followed by a prayer from Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Sec. Scott Turner. Announcements included layoffs at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a golden ticket idea, and a new illegal immigration registry. More on those last two later.

Elon Musk attended wearing a "TECH SUPPORT" t-shirt and said DOGE's primary role is "helping to fix the government computer systems." The federal government's annual budget is ~$6.75 trillion. Musk is confident that he and DOGE can "find a trillion in savings" and argued that "America will go bankrupt" unless something changes.

Ukraine: The president also confirmed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will come to the White House on Friday. The two men will reportedly sign "a very big agreement" on sharing the wealth from Ukraine's humongous deposits of the rare earth minerals that are critical to most modern tech. Details aren't yet clear on what that means — or if the deal includes the U.S.-backed security guarantees that Ukraine believes it needs.

CONGRESS

🏛️ House passes budget resolution in most dramatic way possible

Stragglers returned with fresh babies in hand and IV tubes in arm in a desperate attempt by Democrats to tank the bill. But it wasn't enough in the end (A for effort to IV guy, though). House Speaker Mike Johnson won a big victory when the House passed a Republican-backed budget resolution in a stunning 217-215 vote.

• Just one Republican defected (a conservative concerned about debt). Last-minute phone calls from Trump staved off three others.

• Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), who is battling cancer, was the only member to miss the vote. His presence would've been enough to kill the bill.

House leadership initially canceled the vote... only to reverse course 10 minutes later and pull fleeing members back into the chamber. The House plan pursues Trump's favored "one big, beautiful bill" strategy over the Senate's preference of splitting Trump's agenda into two parts.

This is a budget resolution, not a law. So it won't need Trump's signature. It's merely the first firm step in Congress's long, weird, convoluted budgeting process. Budget resolutions like this lay out overall spending goals. The details come later.

• Among other things, it aims for $2 trillion in budget cuts (of ~$6.75 trillion) with a floor of $1.5 trillion. It also includes $300 billion in new border and defense spending.

At least $880 billion of those cuts are supposed to come from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Since they oversee Medicaid, opponents claim this plan will necessarily result in massive cuts to the program. Others claim its included space for tax cuts will further destroy the budget.

Avoiding the filibuster: Owing to polarization and the Senate's filibuster rule, legislation today effectively needs 60 votes in the Senate to pass. Republicans only have 53. Thankfully for them, the Senate gods of ages past invented reconciliation.

• Most big bills these days, like Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, pass via reconciliation.

• That's a very particular process that can only be used three times per year. And only for very specific, budgety things.

This thing was written and passed specifically to kick off that reconciliation process. So if House and Senate Republicans can hang together once the actual budget-slashing begins, they've got a good chance at handing Trump a big legislative victory later this year. Until then? This cake’s only half-baked.

GOVERNMENT

📄 The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will begin enforcing an old law that requires all illegal migrants to register with the feds. Everyone in the country illegally who is 14 and older will have to provide a fingerprint and an address. A DHS spokeswoman said the Trump administration "will enforce all our immigration laws" and that knowing who's in the country is a matter of "safety and security" for all Americans. One detail didn't she explain? Why exactly anyone would voluntarily sign such a registry.

🪙 President Trump on Wednesday said he wants to start selling immigration gold cards for $5 million a pop. He thinks they'll "sell like crazy" and noted that a million sales would raise $5 trillion to throw at the national debt. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick clarified that the plan would replace the existing EB-5 program, which offers visas to those investing big money in American companies. The idea is new to the U.S. but mirrors similar programs in Europe and elsewhere.

👮 Media figure and ex-Secret Service agent Dan Bongino is Trump's pick for deputy director of the FBI. Reporting to the new director, Kash Patel, Bongino will run the bureau's day-to-day operations. The job doesn't need Senate confirmation and usually goes to a career FBI agent, so the Bongino hire is controversial. It further underscores Trump's reliance this term on finding talent in nontraditional places — a method common in the private sector but rare in government.

TRIVIA

Barack Obama's presidential library is... still not open. Most of these things are dedicated about four years after the president leaves office, but the Obama Presidential Center has been plagued by construction delays, legal challenges, and now a $40 million racial discrimination lawsuit. When it does eventually open, it will be the latest in a network of facilities administered by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Who is the earliest president to have an official presidential library administered by NARA?

Hint: He died in 1964.

WORLD

⚖️ Trump White House faces flood of legal challenges

The Trump administration's reform efforts have run into the meat grinder otherwise known as the federal court system. Many of these decisions have been made by district courts, which are the lowest rung on the ladder. And no case is complete until the Supreme Court has heard— or refused to hear — it.

No matter their eventual resolution, legal battles continue to drain the new Trump administration of one thing it cannot get more of: time.

Funding freeze: Two separate judges in the Washington, D.C., federal district court this week ruled against Trump's attempted freeze of federal grants and loans. That freeze was rescinded by the Office of Management and Budget (OBM) in January. But the lawsuit lives on.

• Judge Loren AliKhan issued a preliminary injunction that prevents Trump from reviving the freeze while the lawsuit works its way through the system. She called the policy "irrational" and "ill-conceived from the beginning."

Judge Amir Ali also ordered the Trump administration to pay $2 billion in foreign aid funds to government contractors and nonprofits. The Department of Justice (DOJ) argued Ali's Wednesday deadline was unworkable to no avail. Until…

• Chief Justice John Roberts stepped in late last night to temporarily delay that payment.

Refugees: Over in Seattle, survivor of seventh grade and District Judge Jamal Whitehead issued a preliminary injunction (again, stopping the policy while the case is litigated) against Trump's Inauguration Day order stopping the refugee resettlement program. Trump did the same thing in his first term before reinstating it with fewer admittances. Biden later boosted the numbers to a thirty-year high.

• Judge Whitehead said the president's ability to modify the program "is not limitless" and said Trump's order amounted to "effective nullification of congressional will.”

Decisions like these by district judges affect the entire country. Vice President JD Vance thinks that should change.

BRIEFS

● Deported migrants will no longer be held in tent structures at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The on-site permanent detention facility will still be used, but the Trump administration said the temporary portion didn’t meet ICE's standards.

● Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins says her department has a plan to fight bird flu and ease the price of eggs. The USDA will spend $1 billion to help keep the virus off of farms, reimburse affected farmers, ease regulations on egg production, and more.

● The U.S. will terminate a 2022 permit letting Chevron export Venezuelan oil. It was issued on the promise that energy-rich Venezuela would hold a free election. But that didn't happen. Revoking the deal cuts a key financial lifeline from the dictatorship.

● Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has fired more than 100 people for using government tech for "obscene, pornographic, and sexually explicit" chats on fun topics like butthole lasers and intersex children.

QUOTE

ANSWER

He waited almost 30 years after his electoral beat down at the hands of Franklin D. Roosevelt. But Herbert Hoover did eventually get a presidential library and museum dedicated to his career in public service. It wasn't the first to open, but he remains the earliest president to be included in the NARA library club. Similar institutions exist for earlier presidents, but they're all private and unaffiliated with the federal government.