THE WARRIOR: Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth was confirmed last night to be Secretary of Defense with Vice President JD Vance casting the single deciding vote. Three Republican senators and two independents voted against Hegseth, leaving it 50-50 requiring Vance to weigh in.

  Hegseth just barely overcame allegations about his personal and professional life to win confirmation. Approving one of the most controversial and possibly least qualified of Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees is evidence that the Senate Republicans are falling in line with the President and putting up little resistance.

  Hegseth has vowed to eliminate “woke” from the defense Department and bring back the “warfighter” mentality. “This is for the troops. For the warriors. For our country,” he wrote in a statement. “America First. Every day. We will never back down.”

IT WAS ONLY DAY FIVE: New Yorker columnist Susan Glasser opened her latest article with, “Exhausted yet?”

   She wrote: “Eight years after the first Trump Inauguration, we know the drill. He loves to drown us in outrage. The overwhelming volume is the point — too many simultaneous scandals and the system is so overloaded that it breaks down. It can’t focus. It can’t fight back. The distractions are just too damn distracting.”

  In that vein, President Donald Trump said yesterday he may get rid of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, and that the federal relief organization is a disaster itself.

  The President also said that a condition of relief for the fire zones of Southern California is for the state to require voter ID.

  Trump spoke as he visited areas of North Carolina devasted by Hurricane Helene. “I’ll also be signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA,” Trump said. The President said it might be better if governors and state governments should be responders to disasters rather than FEMA.

  FEMA has more than 17,000 employees and a $33 billion budget. “Whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it and not waste time calling FEMA,” he said. “And then FEMA gets here and they don’t know the area. They’ve never been to the area, and they want to give you rules that you’ve never heard about.”

  In regard to California relief, Trump said, “You want to have proof of citizenship. Ideally, you have one day voting. But I just want voter ID as a start.” He also said he wants a change in water policy, a huge issue in the West. Trump told reporters, “I want the water to be released, and they’re going to get a lot of help from the US.” 

WAIT, THERE’S MORE: 

— President Trump last night fired 17 inspectors general, the watchdogs who oversee federal agencies. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a statement that, “President Trump is dismantling checks on his power and paving the way for widespread corruption.”

— The State Department under Florida Sen. Marco Rubioto stopped nearly all “existing foreign assistance awards” with the exception of Israel and Egypt. This would appear to be a cutoff of military aide for Ukraine.

— The administration has made a show of loading detained immigrants onto military transport planes and flying them out of the country

— Trump stripped security protection from several of his perceived enemies, the latest Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former head the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Disease and a leader in the fight against the Covid pandemic.

  Trump already took security protection from John Bolton, his former national security advisernow a Trump critic, and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo. All three men have received death threats. “When you work for government, at some point your security detail comes off,” Trump told reporters during a press briefing in North Carolina. “You can’t have them forever.”

  And he said, “They all made a lot of money they can hire their own security.”

— Trump ordered federal prisons to house transgender women inmates in men’s facilities and stop medical treatments related to gender transition. The order also applies to immigration detainees.

— A federal judge ordered Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the extremist Oath Keepers whose 22 year sentence for sedition in the January 6^th prosecutions was commuted by Trump, to stay out of Washington. The judge said, ““You must not knowingly enter the District of Columbia without first obtaining the permission from the Court … You must not knowingly enter the United States Capitol Building or onto surrounding grounds known as Capitol Square.”

— “The Associated Press says it will recognize President Trump’s name change of Alaska’s Mount Denali to Mount McKinley, but not the Gulf of America. But the Interior Department says it will refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America 

THE OBIT PAGE: Arthur Blessitt, a street preacher from Hollywood who in 1969 carried a 110 pound cross on his back from Los Angeles to New York then continued around the world, has died at age 84.

  Blessitt had worked the street trying to convert hippies, addicts, and the homeless before he set on his trek that covered 43,000 miles. At first he put wheels on the big cross before swapping it for a 42-pounder. He said Jesus had told him to take his mission around the world.

THE SPIN RACK: Hamas freed four female Israeli soldiers who had been border watchers on the day of the October 7^th massacre. They all seemed to be in good health and Hamas made a show of how many militants are still alive. — Spirit Airlines says that offensive tattoos and revealing will get passengers barred from flights.

BELOW THE FOLD: The owner of a mansion in West Sussex, England, says the estate is unsellable because the singer Adele used to live there and suggested without saying so that it’s haunted. The owner said he’s been trying to sell it for 14 years.

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