TGIF. You know what we do here.
→ The briefing room opens: The White House Correspondents’ Association is one of the last good clubs in journalism—elitist, secretive, full of arcane traditions, and for the last few years, determined to protect Joe Biden from questions. It’s a journalistic group that cares a lot about who gets to sit where, and for that reason and others, TGIF has long admired it. And now Trump’s press team is exploding it. Now it will be a new MAGA briefing room. It’s Dan Bongino’s house now.
Steve Bannon’s War Room has a White House correspondent (I’m completely serious). And the Trump press team is inviting new media outlets to apply for access—reader, you can apply here. This is wild. Before, one did not simply apply; one was invited. It was a proper private club. Think: wooden panels, think: Scotch, think: ink. Now think: Hooters and a BA in communications.
Credit where it’s due: The Trump press team is restoring press passes to the 440 journalists whose passes Biden revoked. You might think, Wait, Joe Biden revoked 440 press passes? No one ever mentioned this assault on the freedom of the press until now? Well, yeah. Tune in for more with Karoline Leavitt, the youngest and blondest press secretary the White House has ever seen. You can tell she ran the Kappa Gamma social schedule like the Marines. And now she’s ready to clap back on the Jim Acostas of Trump’s second term, she’s ready to air Biden’s dirty UFO laundry, and she is throwing open the briefing room gates to every “independent” “journalist” (me) out there.
If you want answers about various U.S. military deployments, first you have to watch Jake Paul boxing and film a Cameo. The briefings will have time for questions and for everyone to announce their discount codes for Athletic Greens.
→ One cannot simply email government workers: Two million of America’s federal workers this week received an email offering them a cushy resignation (eight months paid)—or they can stay, but all those remote workers will have to work in the office.
The subject line was classic Elon Musk, and it read simply: “Fork in the Road.” Elon used the same language when he offered Twitter employees an ultimatum in 2022. And he funded a Burning Man art piece titled MetaFork in the Road, and the art piece was simply a large fork sticking in a piece of road. Anyway, Bill Clinton actually did the same move, minus the Burning Man art, as far as we know, offering a buyout program for all federal workers. The move saved the government almost $110 billion over five years.
But this time, federal workers have responded in rage. Reddit is full of government workers saying they feel unsafe about the email. And a couple workers have decided that it might actually be illegal to email them all and are suing the Office of Personnel Management. If you work for the government, the whole point is you never get emails. Or at least you never have to respond to them.
I saw a TikTok of one federal worker explaining that work from home is essential—because now her colleagues are going to have to figure out childcare. Which was the first time I learned that federal workers are also full-time stay-at-home moms. NPR has dived into the new reign of commuting terror, highlighting a government worker who commutes to the office two days a week by driving 20 minutes to the train and then taking a train for 40 minutes to an hour: “You know, I’m so exhausted at the end of the day,” the worker says. “By that third morning when I’m, you know, waking up and teleworking, I am just so brain dead. It’s actually hard to focus that next day. I cannot imagine trying to get in the car and go in a third day.” A third day? I bet this guy is running the IRS.
I’m not saying I want a buyout, but I am saying eight months paid sounds real nice right about now. I’m quitting TGIF to paint those lines on the asphalt of the interstate for a few days and then taking my paid leave, thank you very much.
→ Snaps for Colombia’s president: Colombia’s Marxist president Gustavo Petro decided the nation would not accept repatriation flights. It was offensive to him. Once you leave Colombia, you can never return to Colombia. Those men and women are America’s problem now, Gustavo explained. Trump then announced a barrage of penalties, a bonanza of tariffs and zingers against the country, including canceling visa appointments at the U.S. embassy in the country. America’s pundits thought they’d finally caught a good crazy Trump moment, a classic overplay of his hand.
Pro-Biden influencer Harry Sisson: “Trump just announced huge penalties on Colombia. Everything just got more expensive for you and your family. There are diplomatic ways to work with countries but instead, Trump does crap like this.”
The View co-host Ana Navarro: “Most of the flowers imported into the U.S., come from Colombia. Happy Valentine’s Day, America.”
Then Gustavo Petro caved and agreed to take back the migrants. But more importantly, he wrote the strangest presidential poem I’ve ever read. He out-crazied Trump, which we know is hard. Here is how it begins, literally the first lines: “Trump, I don’t really like traveling to the U.S., it’s a bit boring, but I confess that there are worthwhile things. I like to go to the black neighborhoods of Washington, there I saw an entire fight in the U.S. capital between blacks and Latinos with barricades, which seemed stupid to me, because they should unite.”