Honestly with Bari Weiss
Trump’s Second Week: DeepSeek, DEI in the Military and . . . Baby Chickens?
Thu, 30 Jan 2025
It’s President Donald Trump’s second week in office, and he has wasted no time being the wrecking ball he promised his voters he would be. On Tuesday, he issued a memo freezing trillions of dollars in federal funding, in his attempt to purge the government of “woke ideology,” which was followed by chaos and confusion—and ultimately blocked by a federal judge. Earlier in the week, Trump convinced Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro to accept deported Colombian migrants—who Petro had turned away from his borders only a day earlier—after Trump threatened a 25-percent tariff on Colombian imports to the U.S. Back in Congress, the Senate narrowly confirmed Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense in a dramatic tie-breaking vote cast by a hurried J.D. Vance who showed up just in the nick of time. Meanwhile, RFK Jr. is currently having his highly anticipated confirmation hearing to run the Department of Health and Human Services. Just as that began, Caroline Kennedy—the only surviving child of John F. Kennedy—came out Tuesday with a bombshell public denunciation of her cousin, calling him unqualified, “a predator,” and a hypocrite. She also alleged that he used to “put baby chickens and mice in a blender to feed to his hawks.” Can’t say we had that on our 2025 bingo card… Finally, the Chinese artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek sent tech stocks plummeting on Monday (to the tune of more than $1 trillion) after it rolled out a new app on the U.S. market that is a fraction of the cost of American AI competitors. All of which brought up questions—and panic—about our brewing AI war with China. To talk about it all, Free Press senior editor Peter Savodnik is joined today by Brianna Wu and FP investigative reporter Madeleine Rowley, who spoke to Hegseth this week about his plans to end diversity, equity, and inclusion in the military. If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to TheFP.com and become a Free Press subscriber today. Get $10 for free when you trade $100+ with code HONESTLY: https://kalshi.com/honestly Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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From the Free Press, this is Honestly. I'm Peter Savodnik, in for Barry Weiss, who unfortunately is bedridden with pneumonia this week. It is Trump's second week in office, and he has wasted no time being the wrecking ball he promised he would be.
Look, there is a lot of confusion this morning about what exactly this directive means, but it may be the most far-reaching executive action this White House has taken yet. It could potentially halt hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending on everything from assistance to farmers to Head Start programs
Yesterday, he issued a memo freezing trillions of dollars in federal funding in his attempt to purge the government of woke ideology.
Two Columbia Air Force planes have touched down in Bogota carrying people who have been deported as part of Trump's immigration sweep. One of the planes...
Earlier in the week, Trump convinced Colombia's President Gustavo Petro to accept deported Colombian migrants, who Petro had turned away from his borders only a day earlier.
The development comes after Colombia's president refused to allow U.S. military planes to land over the weekend, claiming the detainees on board were being treated like criminals. Trump quickly responded.
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