ICE MELT: The Department of Homeland Security went into partial shutdown overnight as Democrats blocked funding in a dispute over the practices and behavior of immigration agents in the field. The department says essential services will continue while many employees will have to work without pay as they did in the government shutdown last fall.

  Air travel could be affected if this goes on for long. Last fall many TSA employees called in sick or quit as they missed paychecks. 

 Congressional Democrats forced the shutdown as they demand that DHS agents wear body cameras, stop wearing masks, and get judicial warrants before entering private property.

EXPOSURE: Allies of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are organizing to win repeal of state laws that require vaccinations of children against measles, polio, and other diseases before they enter day care or kindergarten. A new coalition of anti-vaccine activists is targeting laws that have been the foundation of protection against sometimes fatal or crippling childhood diseases.

  “What we need to do is freaking burst the dam open,” Leslie Manookian, the backer of a law that banned medical mandates in Idaho, told supporters on a recent call, according to The NY Times.  “And that is what this year is all about, bursting the dam open in the states where we think it can happen first.”

  Bills have been introduced in at least nine states that would eliminate all or nearly all school requirements, including Democratic states like New York where there is little chance of passage. They might have a shot, so to speak, in  New Hampshire, Georgia, Iowa and Idaho. 

  Manookian told The NY Times, “It’s about putting the power back in the hands of the individual.” 

  Vaccine resistance is threatening to bring back diseases nearly eradicated. “Prior to vaccines, one in five kids didn’t make it to their fifth birthday,” Jennifer Herricks, advocacy director for American Families for Vaccines, told the Times. “Having these policies in place has really served to protect kids at the time when they are the most vulnerable to these diseases.”

 FIVE RINGS:  American figure skating star Ilia Malinan … the “Quad God” … fell twice during his long program and fell again to 8^th place in the final standings. He had been in contention for a gold medal.

  Through tears Malinin later said the pressure got to him. “It was really just something that overwhelmed me. I just felt like I had no control.”

  The American women’s hockey team routed Italy 6-0 yesterday, continuing to dominate the Olympic tournament. The US is now 5-0 with a cumulative goal score of 26-1.

  The wall Street Journal reports that American-born freestyle skier Eileen Gu, who competes for her mother’s native China, was paid $6.6 million last year by the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau. Gu is reported to have earned $23 million from competition awards, modelling, and luxury endorsement deals.

TAKEN: Officers yesterday sealed off a street about two miles from the home of the kidnapped Nancy Guthrie as the manhunt continues for the mother of “Today Show” anchor Savannah Guthrie and her abductors.

  Officers also searched a Range Rover SUV in the parking lot of a Culver’s chain restaurant.

  A new ransom note purportedly from someone involved in the kidnapping suggests that several people were involved and that one of them has left the US.

The note has not been verified. In an email sent to the tabloid outlet TMZ yesterday, the sender said law enforcement should “be prepared to go international” to locate the “main individual” responsible. 

 The author of the email claimed to know the identity of the 84-year-old woman’s abductor and said he knows her current condition.

THE REGIME:

— The Department of Homeland Security has sent demands to social media companies for the names, email addresses, telephone numbers and other identifying information on social media accounts that track or criticize the agency.

  The NY Times reports that in recent months, Google, Reddit, Discord and Meta, have received hundreds of administrative subpoenas from the Department of Homeland Security. The Times says DHS asked the companies for identifying details for accounts that do not have a real person’s name attached and have criticized ICE or informed on locations of ICE agents.

— President Trump took his politics to Ft. Bragg, North Carolina yesterday, telling troops in uniform to vote Republican while bashing former President Joe Biden. “You have to vote for us,” Trump told the soldiers. He entered to the tune of Lee Greenwood singing “God Bless the USA” and left to the beat of  the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.”

— Two Washington area golfers sued the Trump Admins over the president’s plan to take over and overhaul a public golf course, saying it will endanger affordable golf in the area.

— Trump pardoned five former National Football League players this week for crimes ranging from perjury to drug trafficking. The pardons were announced by White House pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson who said, “As football reminds us, excellence is built on grit, grace, and the courage to rise again. So is our nation.”

THE SPIN RACK: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was fatally poisoned with a toxin from Ecuadorian dart frogs, his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said. The  47-year-old Navalny, 47, died on February 16th, 2024, in an Arctic penal colony. — A baby Asian elephant was born at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo earlier this month, the first of her species to be born at the zoo in nearly 25 years. The birth will help improve the genetic diversity of the captive Asian elephant population, an endangered species. The baby’s name is  Linh Mai, which in Vietnamese means “spirit blossom.”

BELOW THE FOLD: Hollywood is in a spin about an AI-generated clip of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in a fistfight atop a rubble strewn building. The video shows what can be done without participation of real actors. And, you know, it’s just as good as any current Tom Cruise movie.

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