JERUSALEM—Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas fired his prisoners’ affairs commissioner this week, seemingly demonstrating new seriousness about reforming the system of payments for terrorists that the commissioner oversaw and vocally defended.

But Abbas simultaneously replaced the former commissioner, Qadura Fares, with another convicted terrorist and leading proponent of the payments, Raed Abu al-Humus. The incoming boss quickly confirmed his support for killing Israelis.

Just hours after his appointment, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs published a photograph of Abu al-Humus smiling alongside two arch-terrorists, Ahmed Barghouti and Mohammed Aradeh, whom Israel recently released to Cairo as part of a hostage-ceasefire deal with Hamas. Barghouti, 48, was sentenced to 13 life sentences for orchestrating a series of terrorist attacks that killed 12 Israelis and wounded dozens, and Aradeh, 42, was given life in prison for attempted murder and other crimes.

The photo is among a number of early signs that Abbas will once again disappoint international donors who expect him to end “pay for slay,” as critics call the Palestinian Authority’s longstanding payments to security prisoners and the families of terrorists killed while carrying out attacks against Israelis.

“The problem is the Palestinian Authority believes that terrorists are the most honored people, and they still believe they’re the most honored people,” Itamar Marcus, the director of Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli watchdog group that has closely tracked the terrorism payments for years, told the Washington Free Beacon. “They are not saying they’ve decided it’s wrong to reward terrorists. They are saying that this [reform] is something we were forced to do because we’re in a financial crisis. That’s why there’s no meaning to this, and that’s why there’s no reason for any optimism.”

In a vaguely worded presidential decree last week, Abbas revoked the Palestinian Authority’s “financial allowances to the families of prisoners, martyrs, and the wounded” and made the recipients “subject to the same standards applied without discrimination to all families benefiting from protection and social welfare programs, in accordance with the standards of comprehensiveness and justice.” Abbas also transferred oversight of the terrorism payments from the prisoners’ affairs commission to the Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Institution, a body controlled by his office. 

International media hailed the move as the “end” of the terrorism payments and a “serious reform.” European Commission officials called the “awaited decree law” a “significant political development” that “signals the Palestinian Authority’s commitment to implement far-reaching reforms that will improve its efficiency and stabilise its fiscal situation.” 

“A reformed and revitalised Palestinian Authority remains at the core of efforts towards a two-state solution,” the officials added in a statement this week. “Therefore the [European Union] stands firm in its support to the Palestinian Authority and calls on international partners to provide the Palestinian Authority with political and financial support to empower the Palestinian government to continue to pursue its ambitious reform agenda.”

A State Department spokesman said last week that Abbas’s decree “appears to be a positive step and a big win for the Trump Administration.” But earlier this week, the Trump administration froze funding for the Palestinian Authority Security Forces.

Meanwhile, Palestinian officials have reassured the Arab public that the terrorism payments will continue. Abbas affirmed his commitment to the payments at a meeting of his Fatah political party’s parliamentary body on Friday, using the same uncompromising language that he and other Palestinian leaders have often used in the past.

“We repeat and emphasize that we are proud of the sacrifice of the martyrs,” Abbas said in televised remarks. “Even if we only have one cent left, it will go to the prisoners and martyrs. They must receive everything as in the past, for they are more precious than all of us put together.”

Qatar’s Al-Sharq newspaper quoted unnamed senior Palestinian officials last Wednesday as saying the terrorism payments would continue “without any reduction.” The officials reportedly explained that Abbas’s decree was a response to growing U.S., European, and Israeli financial pressure that has left the Palestinian Authority $3 billion in debt to local banks and unable to borrow more.

Munir al-Jaghoub, a senior Fatah official, told the UAE’s Al-Mashhad TV a day earlier that Abbas “did not stop anyone’s salaries.” According to al-Jaghoub, the president simply “issued a law to transfer these salaries to another entity that is not subject to restrictions” by the European Union. 

Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar told international media on Tuesday that the Palestinian Authority has continued “with its usual deception and its pay-for-slay strategy.” 

“Based on their statements and intelligence we have, payments to families of terrorists proceed this week as always,” Saar said. “The [authority] continues to finance and encourage terrorism.”

Saar’s remarks echoed a reported assessment by senior Israeli security officials at a security cabinet meeting on Tuesday. According to Israeli media, the officials described Abbas’s purported reform “a deception, a cosmetic move, and a facelift designed to gain legitimacy with the U.S. administration.”

Abbas’s office, the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, and the National Economic Empowerment Institution did not respond to requests for comment. 

In 2018, the last year the Palestinian Authority published a budget, the terrorism payments totaled $340 million, or 7 percent of planned spending. 

Abbas’s Palestinian Authority has long used diplomatic and accounting maneuvers to evade international pressure to end the terrorism payments. In 2020, Abbas backed out of negotiations with the Biden administration to reform the system, and in 2014, he attempted to hide the payments by temporarily shifting their distribution to the PLO’s Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs. 

In the early 2000s, Israel brought in three top international accounting firms as part of an effort to block the PLO’s diversion of funding for the second intifada, a yearslong wave of Palestinian terrorism. But according to Yossi Kuperwasser, then the head of Israeli military intelligence’s research division, the accountants found the Palestinians’ bookkeeping impenetrable. 

“It took exactly three months for these elite companies to declare they were leaving because they couldn’t do the job,” Kuperwasser, who went on to become the director general of Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs and now heads the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security think tank, recalled to the Free Beacon. “All through these games and tweaks, the Palestinians kept paying the salaries to terrorists. So I doubt we are going to see a change this time.”

If the Palestinian Authority were to end or significantly reduce the payments, prisoners and their families would undoubtedly lead mass protests that could threaten the authority’s survival, Kuperwasser, Marcus, and other Israeli experts on the Palestinian Authority agreed.

The experts said that many of the Palestinian Authority officials in charge of the terrorism payments have long been convicted terrorists who served time in Israeli prisons, and that is unlikely to change. Marcus pointed to Abu al-Humus as an example. While Abu al-Humus’s prisoners’ affairs committee no longer formally oversees the payments, he is listed online as a board member of the body that does, the National Economic Empowerment Institution. 

“This is the Palestinian Authority,” Marcus said. “And the Palestinian Authority is a terror-supporting entity.”

In 2022, Abu al-Humus, then the head of international relations at the prisoners’ affairs commission, effusively praised Nasser Abu Hamid, a late founder of Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terrorist group who died of cancer in Israeli prison while serving seven life sentences for murdering Israelis. Abu al-Humus, who spent 10 years in prison alongside Abu Hamid for his own involvement in terrorism, remembered his late comrade as a “masked lion” and an “inspiration” to the “Palestinian youth.”

“He was not interested in political work but rather focused greatly on the struggle [against Israel],” Abu al-Humus told the Palestinian Wattan News Agency. “He worked with his colleagues in the resistance to end [Israel] and sweep it from the Palestinian land.”

The post Meet the Terrorist Overseeing Abbas’s ‘Reformed’ Payment System for Terrorists appeared first on .

PHILADELPHIA — President Donald Trump on Friday said he may put the U.S. Postal Service under the control of the Commerce Department in what would be an executive branch takeover of the agency, which has operated as an independent entity since 1970.

“We want to have a post office that works well and doesn’t lose massive amounts of money,” Trump said. “We’re thinking about doing that. And it’ll be a form of a merger, but it’ll remain the Postal Service, and I think it’ll operate a lot better.”

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Trump made the remarks at the swearing-in of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. He called the move a way to stop losses at the $78 billion-a-year agency, which has struggled to balance the books with the decline of first-class mail.

“He’s got a great business instinct, which is what we need, and we’re looking at it, and we think we can turn it around,” Trump said of Lutnick. “It’s been just a tremendous loser for this country, tremendous amounts of money that they’ve lost.”

Here are some things to know about U.S. Postal Service operations:

What’s the history of the USPS?

The Post Office was created during the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1775, when Benjamin Franklin became the first postmaster general. In 1872, Congress named it an executive branch department. But that changed after an eight-day postal strike over wages and benefits in 1970, when President Richard Nixon signed the Postal Reorganization Act, which made it an independent, self-financing agency called the U.S. Postal Service.

In recent years, as it’s sometimes struggled to stay afloat, the Postal Service has fought calls from Trump and others that it be privatized.

Who works for the USPS?

The 1970 reorganization gave workers pay raises and the right to collective bargaining, helping generations of Americans, especially Blacks and other minorities, move into the middle class. Today, the USPS employs about 640,000 workers tasked with delivering mail, medicine, election ballots and packages across the country, from inner cities to rural areas and even far-flung islands. They remained on duty during the coronavirus pandemic, when the American Postal Workers Union says more than 200 postal workers died.

Who runs the USPS?

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Republican donor who owned a logistics business, was appointed to lead the U.S. Postal Service during Trump’s first term in 2020. He has faced repeated challenges during his tenure, including the pandemic, surges in mail-in election ballots and efforts to stem losses through cost and service cuts. He announced a 10-year turnaround plan last year, but earlier this week said he plans to step down and asked the Postal Service Board of Governors to begin looking for his successor.

Who serves on the U.S. postal board and how are they selected?

The board is made up of up to nine members, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. No more than five members can come from the same political party.

The current chair is Amber F. McReynolds, a former election official from Colorado. The vice chair, Derek Kan, worked in the first Trump administration. Both were appointed by President Joe Biden.

Three vacancies on the board remain after the Senate failed to vote on Biden’s nominees to fill those seats. Biden appointed four of the current six governors and Trump two.

The board has the power to hire and fire the postmaster general. Both that person and a deputy postmaster also serve on the board.

How is the USPS funded?

Since the 1970 reorganization, the USPS has been largely self-funded. The bulk of its annual $78.5 billion budget comes from customer fees, according to the Congressional Research Service. Congress provides a relatively small annual appropriation — about $50 million in fiscal year 2023 –- to subsidize free and reduced-cost mail services.

Amid challenges that include the decline in profitable first-class mail and the cost of retiree benefits, the Postal Service accumulated $87 billion in losses from 2007 to 2020.

Last year, DeJoy announced a 10-year plan to modernize operations and stem losses, warning customers to expect “uncomfortable” rate hikes as the Postal Service seeks to stabilize its finances.

Critics, including members of Congress from several states, have said that the first consolidations slowed service and that further consolidations could particularly hurt rural mail delivery.

How does President Trump view the USPS?

Trump has been a critic of the Postal Service since his first term in office. In 2020, he threatened to block it from COVID-19 relief funding unless it quadrupled the package rates it charges large customers like Amazon, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos. Bezos also owns The Washington Post, whose coverage rankled Trump.

More recently, Trump mused in December about privatizing the service given the competition it faced from Amazon, UPS, FedEx and others.

“It’s an idea a lot of people have had for a long time. We’re looking at it,” the president said.

The 31st Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday night should offer the final clue in an unusually unpredictable Oscar race.

The other major awards — including the BAFTAs, the Producers Guild Awards, the Directors Guild Awards and the Golden Globes — have all had their say. But actors make up the largest piece of the film academy pie, so their picks often correspond strongly with Academy Award winners.

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After wins from the PGA and the DGA — and last night, the Independent Spirit Awards — Sean Baker’s “Anora” is seen as the favorite to win best picture in a week’s time at the Oscars. But Edward Berger’s “Conclave” won last weekend at the BAFTAs, the latest wrench in an award season full of them. That’s included the unlikely rise and precipitous fall of another top contender, “Emilia Pérez.”

So there are plenty of questions heading into the SAG Awards, hosted by Kristen Bell from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. Can “Wicked” make a late push and win the guild’s top award, best ensemble? Can Adrien Brody hold off Timothée Chalamet for best actor? Can Mikey Madison keep the momentum and win best actress over Demi Moore?

How to watch the SAG Awards

The 31st SAG Awards will be streamed live by Netflix beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern. An official pre-show will start an hour earlier, also on Netflix. Last year’s show, the first to air on the streaming platform, drew an audience of 1.8 million, roughly on par with earlier SAG ceremonies broadcast by TNT and TBS.

Who’s nominated by SAG?

“Wicked” comes in the leading film nominee, with five nods, while “Shōgun” heads the TV categories.

Jon M. Chu’s hit musical hasn’t yet had a major awards win, but the Screen Actors Guild has often favored populist contenders. Also up for best ensemble are “Anora,” “The Brutalist,” “Conclave” and “A Complete Unknown.”

The best actor and best actress categories should be nail biters. While Brody (“The Brutalist”) has won a string of awards, Chalamet (“A Complete Unknown”) and Ralph Fiennes (“Conclave”) could easily pull off the upset. Best actress could go to either Moore (“The Substance”) or Madison (“Anora”).

In the supporting categories, Kieran Culkin (“A Real Pain”) and Zoe Saldana (“Emilia Pérez”) are the favorites.

In addition to the competitive categories, Jane Fonda will be given the SAG Life Achievement Award.

How the ceremony plans to address the Los Angeles wildfires

The devastating wildfires that began in early January forced the guild to cancel its in-person nominations announcement and instead issue a press release. The guild has launched a disaster relief fund for SAG-AFTRA members affected by the fires. Producers have said the show will honor those affected.

(NewsNation) — Elon Musk has reiterated the need for federal government employees to explain their weekly tasks as he and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) look to scale back operations.

Musk, who was hand-picked by President Donald Trump to examine and cut federal spending, explained why he believes it is necessary on X on Sunday.

“The reason this matters is that a significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all!” he said.

“In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks. In other words, there is outright fraud.”

Musk announced on Saturday that civil servants will be asked to send an email explaining what they accomplished last week. Those who don’t comply will be fired, he said.

The message told federal employees to “please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullet points of what you accomplished last week,” copying their manager, by 11:59 p.m. EST Monday.

A growing list of agencies, including the Pentagon, FBI, State Department and Intelligence Community, on Sunday had told their employees to hold off.

A source told NewsNation that nonpolitical appointees at one agency are being told by White House liaisons not to respond.

Patel tells FBI employees to pause any responses to DOGE email

Newly-appointed FBI Director Kash Patel sent a message to the FBI workforce on Saturday night telling them not to reply to the emails.

In a memo obtained by NewsNation, Patel said the bureau would handle future responses to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) inquiries.

“FBI personnel may have received an email from OPM requesting information,” Patel wrote in his message. “The FBI, through the Office of the Director, is in charge of all of our review processes, and will conduct reviews in accordance with FBI procedures.”

“When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses,” Patel continued. “For now, please pause any responses.”

Department of Defense tells employees to pause responses

The Department of Defense shared a message to its employees on X, noting that it is responsible for reviewing employee performance.

“When and if required, the Department will coordinate responses to the email you have received from OPM. For now, please pause any response to the OPM email titled ‘What did you do last week,’” Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Darin Selnick said in a statement.

State Department says employees aren’t obligated to respond

NBC News reported that the State Department also instructed its employees not to respond.

“The State Department will respond on behalf of the Department. No employee is obligated to report their activities outside of their Department chain of command,” read a notice from Tibor Nagy, acting under secretary for management at the State Department.

Tulsi Gabbard says National Intelligence employees shouldn’t respond

And the New York Times reported that National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard sent similar guidance to employees of agencies she oversees in the Intelligence Community (I.C.).

“Given the inherently sensitive and classified nature of our work, I.C. employees should not respond to the OPM email,” Gabbard reportedly wrote.

National Treasury Employees Union employees advised not to respond

A screenshot posted online shows an email the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) sent to its members saying employees were “strongly” advised to not respond to OPM’s request.

“We are concerned about the implications of this request and are actively working to protect your rights and interests,” the NTEU said in a statement.

DHS says it will handle responding to OPM

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has informed its employees that it will respond directly to the request, requiring no action from individual offices or staff.

An internal email sent Sunday stated that DHS management would handle the response on behalf of the entire department and its component agencies.

“No reporting action from you is needed at this time,” wrote Deputy Under Secretary for Management R.D. Alles, instructing employees to refrain from responding outside their DHS chain of command.

The directive was also sent to federal air marshals, according to a member of the national council.

Department of Health and Human Services backtracks, tells employees to ‘pause’

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued two conflicting emails to employees Sunday, according to a source who shared the messages with NewsNation.

The first email, sent in the morning, confirmed that employees should respond to the “What did you do last week?” email. However, a second email sent in the evening reversed course, instructing employees to “pause” answering the OPM request, with further guidance expected around noon Tuesday.

Another message to National Institutes of Health employees urged employees to hold off.

NewsNation partner The Hill contributed to this report.

Imagine if a reckless driver caused a crash that took the life of a young child. Picture the heartbreak of that child’s family, who now have to live with an unimaginable loss, due to someone else’s fault.

You would think the law would help these families get justice, right? That someone would be held accountable? That someone would have to pay the price for taking an innocent life? Unfortunately, given the current law in New York, you would be wrong.

I’ve cried every day since May 3, 2023. My life was broken that night. My son, Ethan, was just 14 years old when a drunk driver took his life. Ethan was full of kindness, joy, ambition, love, and happiness. His future was stolen in an instant. And yet, under New York’s outdated law, Ethan’s life is considered to have absolutely no value for my family’s grief, and the deep pain my family feels is completely ignored.

New York’s wrongful death law is over 175 years old. Today, if someone is killed due to another person’s wrongdoing, like a drunk driver in our case, their family can seek compensation based on whether the victim was earning money for their family. This means if a child, a stay-at-home parent, or a retired grandparent is killed, the law says their life has basically no value. No exceptions.

Losing a loved one isn’t just about losing their paycheck. It’s about losing their laughter, love, and future moments together. Forty-eight out of 50 states in the United States ensure that grieving families have a path to justice. But not New York.

The New York Legislature recognized this injustice and sought to pass the Grieving Families Act, a law that would finally allow families to seek justice for their pain and suffering. It had overwhelming support from both Democrats and Republicans (how often do we see that these days?!)—proof that this isn’t a partisan issue but a moral one.

Yet, Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed it three times.

The impediment seems to be the risk that insurance premiums would rise largely in the case of wrongful deaths on the part of doctors or hospitals. I’m sure, and I hope and pray, that a compromise can be made to pass this bill.

Can anyone side with a drunk driver responsible for someone else’s death? Seems like Governor Hochul does.

Now is the opportunity for state officials, including Governor Hochul, to fix an unjust law. Imagine losing a child and being told, “Sorry, but accountability only matters when the victim is either alive or was earning a paycheck.” That’s exactly what my family and I are facing.

Ethan’s life mattered. Every life lost matters. It’s time for our State and the Governor to stand with families by updating New York’s wrongful death laws.

Almost every state in the US agrees. New York families agree. Democrats and Republicans agree. If you agree, I am asking you, on behalf of my family, myself, and my son’s memory, to call and email your State Senator and Assemblymembers as well as Governor Hochul, to tell them to pass the Grieving Families Act.

Gary Falkowitz is a personal injury attorney and East Hills Village prosecutor in Nassau County.

U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) adds Microsoft Power Pages vulnerability to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added a Microsoft Power Pages vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2025-24989, to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog.

CVE-2025-24989 (CVSS score: 8.2) is an improper access control flaw in Power Pages, an unauthorized attacker could exploit the flaw to elevate privileges over a network potentially bypassing the user registration control.

Raj Kumar with Microsoft reported the vulnerability. This week Microsoft addressed it and confirmed that this vulnerability is actively exploited in the wild.

“Affected customers have been given instructions on reviewing their sites for potential exploitation and clean up methods. If you’ve not been notified this vulnerability does not affect you.” reads the advisory published by Microsoft.

According to Binding Operational Directive (BOD) 22-01: Reducing the Significant Risk of Known Exploited Vulnerabilities, FCEB agencies have to address the identified vulnerabilities by the due date to protect their networks against attacks exploiting the flaws in the catalog.

Experts also recommend private organizations review the Catalog and address the vulnerabilities in their infrastructure.

CISA orders federal agencies to fix this vulnerability by March 21, 2025.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, privilege escalation)

(NewsNation) — Pope Francis had a “peaceful night” Saturday after receiving blood transfusions and high levels of oxygen to treat his double pneumonia, the Vatican said Sunday, but remains in “critical condition.”

Blood tests showed early kidney failure but he remains alert, responsive and attended Mass, the Vatican said, as the 88-year-old pontiff battles a complex lung infection.

Francis took to social media to express his gratitude to supporters, writing, “I’ve recently received many messages of affection, and I’ve been particularly struck by the letters and drawings from children. Thank you for your closeness, and for the consoling prayers I have received from all over the world.”

The pontiff, who entered the papacy at age 76 in 2013, is being treated at Gemelli Hospital in Italy where he was initially admitted for bronchitis on Feb.14.

He has missed Sunday Mass in back-to-back weeks after suffering a severe and prolonged respiratory crisis requiring oxygen.  

Though not on a ventilator, Francis is struggling to breathe and is keeping his movement limited, according to officials. Still, he remains alert, sitting upright, working and joking, though a bit more fatigued than the day before. 

The pope also received blood transfusions after tests revealed thrombocytopenia, a condition of abnormally low levels of platelets in the blood. 

Doctors said their biggest concern now is the risk of germs that could enter his bloodstream and cause sepsis, a life-threatening infection. 

His medical team says he’s expected to return to the Vatican, which may be unsurprising, as he has said previously that the position of pope is a lifelong commitment. 

Despite his illness, Francis mentioned the war in Ukraine, saying “Tomorrow (Feb. 23) will be the 3rd anniversary of the large-scale war against Ukraine. A pain. And shameful occasion for the whole of humanity,” going on to call for the “gift of peace in all armed conflicts around the world.” 

Doctors said he will stay hospitalized at least through next weekend. 

A mass for the pope in his native city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, is expected at 9:15 a.m. Sunday. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report

OXON HILL, Md. — President Donald Trump said Saturday that “nobody’s ever seen anything” like his administration’s sweeping effort to fire thousands of federal employees and shrink the size of government, congratulating himself for “dominating” Washington and sending bureaucrats “packing.”

Addressing an adoring crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside the nation’s capital, Trump promised, “We’re going to forge a new and lasting political majority that will drive American politics for generations to come.”

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The president argues that voters gave him a mandate to overhaul government while cracking down on the U.S.-Mexico border and extending tax cuts that were the signature policy of his first administration.

Trump clicked easily back into campaign mode during his hour-plus speech, predicting that the GOP will continue to win and defy history, which has shown that a president’s party typically struggles during midterm elections. He insisted of Republicans, “I don’t think we’ve been at this level, maybe ever.”

“Nobody’s ever seen anything like this,” Trump said, likening his new administration’s opening month to being on a roll through the first four holes of a round of golf — which he said gives him confidence for the fifth hole.

Trump has empowered Elon Musk to help carry out the firings, and the billionaire suggested Saturday that more might be coming.

“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk posted on X, which he owns. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”

Later, an “HR” email was sent to federal workers across numerous agencies titled “What did you do last week” and asking that recipients “reply with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.” It cautioned against sending classified information, and gave a deadline of Monday at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Trump also said during the speech that he’d carry out harsher immigration policies. But those efforts have so far largely been overshadowed by his administration’s mass federal firings. He announced that one entity with a workforce that had been significantly reduced, the U.S. Agency for International Development, would have its Washington office taken over by Customs and Border Protection officials.

“The agency’s name has been removed from its former building,” he said.

The president also repeated his previous promises to scrutinize the country’s gold depository at Fort Knox.

“Would anybody like to join us?” he asked to cheers from the crowd at the suggestion that administration forces might converge on the complex. “We want to see if the gold is still there.”

But Trump also devoted large chunks of his address to reliving last year’s presidential race, jeering at former President Joe Biden and mispronouncing the first name of former Vice President Kamala Harris — his Election Day opponent — gleefully proclaiming, “I haven’t said that name in a while.”

He went on to use an expletive to describe Biden’s handling of border security, despite noting that evangelical conservatives have urged him not to use foul language.

Trump had kinder words for Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying “I happen to like” him, while saying, “we’ve been treated very unfairly by China and many other countries.”

On the sidelines of the conference, Trump met with conservative Polish President Andrzej Duda amid rising tensions in Europe over Russia’s war in Ukraine. After he took the stage, Trump saluted Duda and another atendee, Argentine President Javier Milei.

Trump called Duda “a fantastic man and a great friend of mine” and said “you must be doing something right, hanging out with Trump.” He noted that Milei was “a MAGA guy, too, Make Argentina Great Again.”

Poland is a longtime ally of Ukraine. Trump upended recent U.S. policy by dispatching top foreign policy advisers to Saudi Arabia for direct talks with Russian officials that were aimed at ending fighting in Ukraine.

Those meetings did not include Ukrainian or European officials, which has alarmed U.S. allies. Trump is meeting on Monday at the White House with French President Emmanuel Macron and Thursday with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Trump also has begun a public tiff with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom the U.S. president called a “dictator” while falsely suggesting that Ukraine started the war — though on Friday Trump acknowledged that Russia attacked its neighbor.

Trump told the CPAC crowd, “I’m dealing with President Zelenskyy. I’m dealing with President Putin” and added of fighting in Ukraine, “It affects Europe. It doesn’t really affect us.”

Zelenskyy has said Trump is living in a Russian-made “disinformation space.”

For much of the time since Russia invaded in February 2022, the United States, under Biden, pledged that Ukraine would play in any major effort to end the fighting, vowing “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” Trump’s administration has dispensed with that notion, as the Republican president has accelerated his push to find an endgame to the war.

“I think we’re pretty close to a deal, and we better be close to a deal,” Trump said Saturday.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt subsequently told reporters that Trump and his team were focused on negotiations to end the war and “the President is very confident we can get it done this week,” though such a tight timeline seems difficult.

Leavitt is one of three administration officials who face a lawsuit from The Associated Press on First- and Fifth-Amendment grounds.

The AP says the three are punishing the news agency for editorial decisions they oppose. The White House says the AP is not following an executive order to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

Later, Trump hosted a formal dinner at the White House for governors from around the country who were in Washington for a meeting of the National Governors Association. Trump said Republicans and Democrats can always call him and joked that he might address Democratic concerns first.

“Let us all recommit ourselves to strengthening America and making it something even more special than it has been,” Trump said. “And we’re going to be one united nation, and maybe together, this is going to be easier if we start uniting.”

The president, who wore a tuxedo and bow tie, was accompanied by first lady Melania Trump, who had her own tuxedo but no tie. Trump told those gathered that his wife helped organize the event.

“She worked very hard on making sure everything was beautiful,” he said to applause.

Trump also said he’d give a tour of the Lincoln Bedroom after the meal to anyone who wished to see it.

“I think maybe it’s like the most important room in the whole country,” he said. “The most important bedroom definitely.”

—Weissert reported from Washington.

Elon Musk caused alarm among federal employees and drew ire over an email sent on Saturday requesting that employees summarize their work for the week, and warning on social media that a failure to do so would be taken as a resignation.

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The email—which boasted the subject line “What did you do last week?”—was sent from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to workers in various government departments, including the FBI, the State Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Veterans Affairs Department, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), according to the New York Times. “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished this week and cc your manager,” the email read, telling employees to respond by midnight on Monday.

In a post shared on his social media platform X, Musk, the head of the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), said: “Consistent with President Donald Trump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week. Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.” However, there was no mention of resignation in the email sent to employees.

TIME has reached out to the White House for comment and clarification.

Read More: This Obscure Office Is at the Center of Elon Musk’s Efforts to Harness Federal Data

The OPM email spearheaded by Musk has drawn anger from advocates, unions, and government officials.

Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), released a statement against the emails.

“It is cruel and disrespectful to hundreds of thousands of veterans who are wearing their second uniform in the civil service to be forced to justify their job duties to this out-of-touch, privileged, unelected billionaire,” Kelley said. He went on to add that the AFGE would “challenge any unlawful terminations” of federal employees.

Doreen Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents employees from 37 different departments and offices, said in a statement that the email “should be called out as completely un-American,” according to CNN.

“NTEU’s members are professional civil servants and will not back down to these blatant attempts to attack a vital resource for the American public,” she said.

Read More: The Major U.S. Companies Scaling Back DEI Efforts as Trump Targets Initiatives

Republicans have shown varying levels of support and criticism over Musk’s directive. On Sunday’s episode of ABC’s This Week, Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York was asked to share his reaction to the email and Musk’s comment that failing to respond would be tantamount to a resignation. 

Lawler said: “I don’t know how that’s necessarily feasible. Obviously, a lot of federal employees are under union contract.”

He then went on to show his support for Musk’s efforts to downsize the government.

“There’s no question, as the Department of Government Efficiency moves ahead, what they are seeking to do is ensure that every agency and department is effectively and efficiently doing their job,” Lawler told host Martha Raddatz. “The task at hand for Elon Musk and DOGE, at the direction of President Trump, is to find efficiencies and savings, and make sure that our federal workforce is doing their jobs.”

Also appearing on This Week, fellow Republican and the former Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, said that Musk’s survey is a “complete overstep.”

“As with everybody’s employment, things vary from week to week,” Christie said. “From a management perspective, you can see what a clown car this is right now.”

Meanwhile, during an appearance on CBS’ Face the Nation, Utah Republican Senator John Curtis said: “If I could say one thing to Elon Musk, it’s please put a dose of compassion in this. These are real people, real lives, mortgages. It’s a false narrative to say we have to cut and we have to be cruel to do it.”

Appearing on the same show, Maryland Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen also shared his perspective. “There’s no article in the Constitution that gives Elon Musk that authority,” he said. “The actions he’s taking are illegal, and we need to shut down this illegal operation.”

Musk appeared to address the mounting criticism early Sunday, via posts on X. He stated that the email responses should take “less than 5 mins” and that many “good responses” from employees have already been received. “These are the people who should be considered for promotion,” he said.

The DOGE leader also called the highly-discussed email “a very basic pulse check.” He then proceeded to conduct a poll on his X account, in which he asked: “Should all federal employees be required to send a short email with some basic bullet points about what they accomplished last week?” The poll received over 1.2 millions responses, with 70.6% voting yes.

Musk’s actions came soon after President Trump posted on his own social media platform, Truth Social, on Saturday that Musk should be “more aggressive” in his efforts to downsize the federal government—a goal that has already led to mass layoffs and the ceasing of many government contracts.

In a response sent on X, Musk said of Trump’s feedback: “Will do, Mr. President!”

Read More: Kash Patel, Trump’s Pick for FBI Director, Is Confirmed by Senate

According to an NBC report, Trump’s newly-confirmed FBI Director Kash Patel told FBI employees in an email to “pause any responses” to Musk’s directive, expressing that they will go through their own performance review process.

“The FBI, through the Office of the Director, is in charge of all our review processes, and will conduct reviews in accordance with FBI procedures,” the message from Patel reportedly read.

And Patel is seemingly not alone. An email said to be from the State Department leadership to its employees had a similar message: that leadership would respond to the OPM email on behalf of the department, and they would evaluate their own employees.

Department heads from the Pentagon, the IRS, FEMA, and NOAA, are also reportedly seeking guidance before they instruct their employees to respond, according to emails obtained by ABC News.

Last week I was in Austin and stopped into the LBJ Presidential Library, which is definitely worth a visit. It’s got the presidential limo, a replica Oval Office, and even the suit Johnson wore when John F. Kennedy was shot. Of course Johnson was in the car behind JFK. How convenient!

Speaking of which, Dominic Green returns to the Weekend Beacon with a review of Louis Ferrante’s Borgata: Clash of Titans: A History of the American Mafia: Volume 2 of the Borgata Trilogy.

“Ferrante is a fluid raconteur. Even his picture captions are gripping: ‘Johnny Dio socks a photographer during a break at the Rackets Committee.’ His clashing titans are the Kennedy brothers, Jack and Bobby, and the criminal fraternity headed in Florida by Santo Trafficante, in Louisiana by Carlos Marcello, and in Chicago by Sam Giancana. The road to Dallas begins with Bobby Kennedy using the McClellan Committee (a.k.a. the ‘Rackets Committee’) to launch his political career by taking down Jimmy Hoffa, the more than necessarily mobbed-up president of the Teamsters union. Hoffa backed Nixon in the 1960 presidential elections. The mafia bosses backed JFK, funneling ‘millions of dollars’ into the West Virginia primary and, it seems, fixing the Illinois vote in 1960 (‘gross and palpable fraud,’ said the Chicago Tribune).

“‘It’s rather like watching the Borgia brothers take over a respectable north Italian city,’ Britain’s prime minister Harold Macmillan said when the Kennedy brothers arrived in Washington, D.C.

“Jack appointed Bobby as attorney general, even though Joseph Kennedy Sr.’s string-pulling had failed to win Bobby a spot at Harvard Law and Bobby had never fought a case in court. Bobby built up a ‘hit list’ of 2,300 mobsters, beefed up the Justice Department’s racketeering section by 400 percent, and mobilized every possible branch of the federal government against the Mob. ‘That rat bastard, son-of-a-bitch,’ Giancana reportedly ranted to Trafficante, ‘we broke our balls for him and gave him the election, and he gets his brother to hound us to death.’

“Bobby Kennedy, a ‘little fart’ in Sen. Lyndon Johnson’s estimation, wanted to make a big noise. He cut corners in his zeal. In April 1961, INS agents grabbed Carlos Marcello, put him and a companion on a plane and flew them to Guatemala. Expelled to El Salvador, they were put onto a bus and dumped in a jungle in Honduras. They staggered 17 miles to the nearest human settlement in ‘silks suits and alligator shoes,’ guided most of the way by two local boys with machetes. Aided by a bribe to the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, and possibly by Sen. Russell Long of Louisiana, Marcello returned to the United States more than somewhat peeved.”

But peeved enough to pull the trigger? Release those files!

If you ask James Erwin, our belief in such conspiracies was driven by Oliver Stone’s movies. But films have always held sway over the culture, he explains, dating all the way back to Birth of a Nation.

“In 1915, when movies were not two decades old, Wilson screened D.W. Griffith’s silent epic The Birth of a Nation in the White House, the first film to be played there. A giant leap forward in the language of cinema, The Birth of a Nation was a Lost Cause paean to the Ku Klux Klan. Klansmen were portrayed as a noble and chivalrous brotherhood protecting white women from the predations of their freed slaves who had turned to drink, rape, and political corruption with wicked alacrity in the absence of slavery.

“‘It’s like writing history with lightning,’ the president reportedly remarked after the screening. ‘My only regret is that it is all so terribly true.’

“Ironically, neither the quotation nor the events depicted in the film were ‘terribly true.’ The sentiment, however, was correct. Cinema has the unique power to burn a striking impression on the psyche of popular audiences far more effectively than any academic like Wilson could have dreamed. Making a historical film, biopic, or period piece is writing history with lightning, and the product is certain to dazzle the imaginations of viewers far more than any rigorously researched tome. The Birth of a Nation proved so influential that the Ku Klux Klan, which had largely been stamped out in the 1870s, was refounded in 1915 and counted some six million members by its peak in the early 1920s.

“As fewer and fewer Americans read books, movies continue to grow in their influence over public perceptions of history. Much as news consumption has moved from print to screen, historical pedagogy will be shaped more by Hollywood productions than rigorous literature. Film is simply too compelling an art form for the written word to compete.”

You know what film is not compelling? Captain America: Brave New World. Our John Podhoretz has a few thoughts to share.

“The movie can’t decide if Sam is being made to feel less-than by our evil white supremacist culture, given that Sam is black—or whether he’s exhausted because he feels like he must represent all underrepresented people, because he’s black. All I’m saying is, he’s black, and that’s pretty much all the movie is saying about Sam Wilson, who appears to have two friends and no family and no backstory and is of absolutely no interest as a character. The original Captain America, Steve Rogers, had a wonderful backstory in which he was a 90-lb. weakling genetically engineered during World War II into a giant hunk of a guy who only agreed to the tampering to help save his country but found himself relegated to being a show pony in patriotic pageants. Apparently only white guys get good backstories.

“If Sam weren’t as good as Steve Rogers, that would be evidence he was only chosen to carry the shield because he was black. Now, in one sense, that would be fine, no? I mean, if Sam is there to represent the marginalized people in our society, then he was a diversity hire—and what would be wrong with that in the eyes of Hollywood’s liberal culture? After all, Hollywood literally casts roles by putting out casting calls and saying which parts need to be ‘diverse.'”

Another failure “is how the movie also requires some knowledge of the Marvel TV show called Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which featured a Black Lives Matter-inflected plot. We learn in that series that there was a black Captain America before Sam. He was a black soldier named Isaiah Bradley who drank the serum that transformed Steve Rogers a decade later, during the Korean War. But because he was black, see, he was thrown in prison for 30 years because he couldn’t be allowed to exist by the racist country that was created in 1619.

“I’m sure this all makes sense to Ta-Nehisi Coates, but then, so does licking the undersole of a Hamas boot. Bradley is released from prison at the end of that TV series and becomes part of the plot in this movie. He is mind-controlled into taking a shot at the president, but very specifically mind-controlled, in that he’s supposed to miss. Man, that mind control is specific and accurate! In any case, what he’s doing in this picture and why makes no sense unless you watched the 2021 show. Which I hope you didn’t, because Falcon and the Winter Soldier was very, very bad and not worth your time even if you were a Chinese person in Wuhan who had been soldered into your apartment.”

It takes super-human skill to put together a show like Saturday Night Live, week in and week out for 50 years. But that is exactly what Lorne Michaels has done. Alexander Larman reviews Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live by Susan Morrison.

“Morrison uses a structure that sometimes makes the book feel like the longest New Yorker article you’ve ever read (and, at over 600 pages, this is long). She supplies sharp, pointed vignettes of a typical week’s preparations for the show, which Jonah Hill is down to host, as we go behind the scenes into sketch ideas, prima donna antics from the cast, and Michaels’s autocratic power over everything that is broadcast live on the night. Then there are flashbacks to lengthier chronological sections from Michaels’s early career as a gag writer for shows like Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, which made Goldie Hawn’s name but failed to make his, to his success with SNL, early disillusionment that eventually led to him quitting the show after five years, and then a triumphant return and success in making the brand a consistently beloved—if not always artistically top-drawer—one.

“It is an inevitability that the early sections, which include a fantastically annoying, drugged-up John Belushi, a smarmy and self-assured Chevy Chase, and a near-catatonically laid-back Bill Murray, feature the strongest characters and the most arresting vignettes. We learn that Michaels’s stock advice to joint-smoking, coke-snorting colleagues was to ‘rotate your drugs’ and that the famous Lennon-McCartney story, in which the two nearly appeared live on the show in 1975 to collect the check for $3,000 that the producer solemnly offered on air for the Beatles to perform, was only partially true. They considered heading down to 30 Rockefeller Plaza the following week, but the show was on hiatus then, meaning that the opportunity for a once-in-a-lifetime reunion was never possible.

“SNL today is a safer, less risky environment for writers and performers alike, which may also have taken some of the seat-of-your-pants thrills out of the show. It is taken as a given that staffers will attend therapy, and they are advised to meet their shrinks on Monday afternoons, when it is also expected that they will discuss their stressful and demanding work with Michaels. Although the producer is, naturally, a liberal, he has also strived to make the show as apolitical as possible—including famously inviting Donald Trump to host in 2015—and pushes back against criticism by saying, ‘On whatever side, if there’s idiocy, we go after it. We can’t be the official organ of the Democratic Party.’ He reminds the performers that ‘we’ve got the whole country watching—all fifty states.'”

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