POLITICAL PURGE: The Justice Department fired at least a dozen prosecutors who worked on the January 6^th insurrection cases and is considering going after the FBI agents who worked on the same.

  President Trump is wiping out the people he perceives to be political enemies while his cabinet nominees, Kash Patel for the FBI among them, swear before Congress that  they will uphold the law.

  The NY Times reports according to a memo they obtained that  leaders at the DOJ told the FBI to notify more than a half-dozen high-ranking career agents that they face firing. 

  Emil Bove, a former Trump criminal defense lawyer who’s now the acting deputy attorney general, told the acting leadership at the FBI to compile a list of all agents and FBI staff “assigned at any time to investigations and/or prosecutions” relating to the events of January 6^th.

TRADE WAR:  President Trump says he is placing steep tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada and China that would go into effect today. He said it’s to make those countries stop the flow of migrants and drugs into the US while accepting more migrants themselves.

  You can expect those countries to retaliate … tariffs make everything more expensive

  The tax on Mexican and Canadian goods would be 25 percent, just ten percent on Chinese.  Those countries account for more than a third of the goods and services traded to and from the United States. The tariffs could affect cars, medicine, shoes, lumber, electronics, steel and many other goods.

  Trump said yesterday that he would also “absolutely” impose tariffs on the European Union, saying they had “treated us so terribly.” He said that by the middle of the month the US would eventually put tariffs on chips, oil, and gas and eventually  steel, aluminum and copper.

LOSS AND BLAME: Early reports say that the Army Black Hawk helicopter that collided with an American Airlines jet over Washington was a half-mile off its approved route and flying at a higher altitude.

  The Army has not released the name of a female pilot, who is described as having been very experienced. With the investigation under way, President Trump reached his own conclusion, posting on Truth Social that, “The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot. It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???”

NEWSBEAT: Chuck Todd, the former host of “Meet the Press” and a longtime fixture in NBC’s political coverage, announced that at age 52 he is leaving the network. Last year Todd led an in-house rebellion when the network hired as a political analyst Ronna McDaniel, the former chair of the Republican National Committee.

  Accused by President Trump of favorably editing an interview with Kamala Harris, CBS’s “60 Minutes” has agreed to hand over a transcript of the interview to the FCC. Trump is suing CBS for $10 billion claiming CBS deceptively edited the interview.

  White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced this week that she’s opening a seat in the briefing room to “new media”  Leavitt, who’s 27, said “It is a fact that Americans are consuming their news media from various different platforms, especially young people.” She said,  “And as the youngest press secretary in history, thanks to President Trump, I take great pride in opening up this room to new media voices to share the president’s message with as many Americans as possible.”

  And in the sad news department, the storied Newark Star-Ledger newspaper, New Jersey’s paper of record, is publishing its last print edition tomorrow and going completely digital. With steep declines in readership, more than 3200 newspapers have shut down since 2005.

THE SPIN RACK: Hamas militants in Gaza today released three more hostages in exchange for 183 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel as part of the continuing cease-fire. Hamas has been making a public show out of the releases. —  Six people including a pediatric patient are believed dead after a medical Learjet crashed near a shopping center in Philadelphia. It was flying to Mexico with a stop planned in Missouri. — Firefighters say the devastating wildfires in the Los Angeles area are now fully contained. Trump administration officials began releasing water from two dams in California’s Central Valley as the President Trump continues to blame the fires on water policies in the Democratic-run state. — A New York doctor has been indicted for sending an abortion drug to a teenager in Louisiana where the procedure is nearly completely illegal. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said the state would not comply with an extradition request for the doctor’s arrest. — A 525-pound bear was found hiding in a crawl space beneath an Altadena home that had been evacuated during the wildfire that destroyed much of the town. It took nearly a day for wildlife officials to get the bear out of there.

BELOW THE FOLD: They say a tattoo is a permanent reminder of a temporary feeling. Saturday Night Live alum Pete Davidson had 200 tattoos and is working on having them removed.

  Davidson told talk host Jimmy Fallon that most are already gone. “They burn off a layer of your skin, then it has to heal for six to eight weeks,” he said. “You can’t get in the sunlight. And then you’ve got to do it, like, 12 more times.”

  Asked why he got so many tattoos Davidson said, “Everybody was getting tattoos, like, five years ago. Remember that?” Yes, because you can see that everybody has tattoos.

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