Burgess Everett and Shelby Talcott.
With the Cabinet largely confirmed, one of the most intriguing Trump nominees is Elbridge Colby, tapped as the Pentagon’s No. 3. He’s raised eyebrows in the party by arguing for less focus on the Middle East and more on China, a break from the long-term Republican focus on Iran.
Yet Colby’s trips to Capitol Hill may be helping him make headway. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said she had a “really great meeting with him” and that he’s having positive visits with GOP senators. Approached in the Capitol complex Tuesday, Colby declined comment.
Still, Colby may have to adjust some of his views to win confirmation, such as his skepticism of preserving the option to use force to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Several high-profile Trump picks have made similar conversions on defense policy, like former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s embrace of surveillance programs that she previously criticized.
“These are not people who are anything but ‘peace through strength,’” the NSC official said.
That Colby may win over skeptical lawmakers by adjusting some of his personal beliefs, as Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did earlier this year, shows that unconventional Trump nominees now have a clear path to win confirmation.
It’s for a simple reason, if you ask the White House.
“Everyone has learned at this point, if you go up against Trump, you’ll lose,” the White House official said.
The Senate also will have to confirm Lt. Gen. Dan Caine as a replacement for Brown, who was confirmed overwhelmingly by the Senate in 2023. Though Democrats said Caine’s ouster was leading to a more politicized military, Republicans mostly shrugged.
“I like [Brown] a lot, but Caine’s a better fit,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. “[Trump] just trusts Caine.”
Democrats are entering strange territory where many in their party are more conventionally hawkish than most Republicans. They do not seem to like it.
“We need people in both parties standing up to at least proclaim what’s obvious — in this case, that Russia invaded Ukraine,” said Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., referring to Trump’s false claim that Ukraine started the war.
Byron Donalds Gets In, But Casey Definitely Sounds Like She’s Running
Politico: Donalds runs in Florida
Donalds, whose congressional district includes Naples and Fort Myers, received Trump’s endorsement in a Feb. 20 Truth Social post. Trump often teased Donalds about the race during his 2024 presidential run — including in front of top donors — and considered him as a possible running mate.
But Donald is facing the prospect of running against Florida first lady Casey DeSantis, who’s been heavily involved in her husband’s political rise — and someone Gov. Ron DeSantis has said he sees as the best person to carry on his conservative policy legacy. Casey DeSantis hasn’t made a run official but she and her husband have been calling donors about the possibility.
Donalds sidestepped a question about Casey DeSantis during his Fox News interview, noting he was the only candidate in the race, and praised Ron DeSantis as a “great governor” who had done a “tremendous job.” He added it was time to focus on the future.
“Now, the job is to keep the best state in the country as the best state in the country,” he said, “and so that’s going to be the mission at hand.”
He highlighted the state’s high property insurance costs as a focus and said he wanted to make Florida the “most business friendly state in the country” and to “take the lead on cryptocurrency and digital assets.”
Donalds, 46, is a three-term member who is also in the House Freedom Caucus, the conservative group which counts DeSantis as a founding member. He was a regular surrogate during Trump’s presidential campaign and held events in battleground states to reach out to Black voters.
The former state legislator helped lead the expansion of the state’s school voucher program. He and his wife, Erika Donalds, have long been advocates of policies that make it easier for families to choose education options outside of public schools.
My report from West Palm Beach in The Spectator:
Casey DeSantis is running for Florida governor. That is simply a matter of accepted knowledge for the West Palm Beach denizens gathered at the Flagler Museum on a breezy evening among the palm trees. But it’s still astonishing to see how quickly she adapts to the role and inhabits it in a bright pink pantsuit. The far more telegenic half of the gubernatorial team, who benefits from a Myers-Briggs score that begins with “E” instead of “I,” delivered a speech last week that put a strong emphasis on “we” at every juncture — what “we” accomplished for Florida, how “we” pushed back against Joe Biden’s foolishness and how close “we” believe the loss of Florida’s model could be should Democrats prevail in the state her husband helped turn bright flaming red. Laura Ingraham, who pre-taped her nightly show to make it to the event, clapped from the front table.
Floridians may not be surprised by this, but on the national scale, the shock could be significant. No matter: “With Casey, we would just run it back all over again,” one conservative influencer tells me about her prospects. The DeSantis supporters, hardened by the 2024 trail, are ready and eager. And interestingly enough, a top pollster (whose clients include other successful statewide politicians) tells me: “What’s interesting about Ron is that alone among the 2024 challengers, no one dislikes him — it just wasn’t his turn, but Florida still loves him.”
By extant property, will they love Casey as well? It’s quite a roll of the dice for someone with her notable lack of electoral experience to jump in for the big job. And complicating matters is that “Truth” from the Donald, who has, by dint of naming one Floridian after another to his cabinet — including Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz, Pam Bondi and Matt Gaetz (peace be upon him) — cleared a path for his favored nominee, the charismatic and eminently viral Byron Donalds. “Byron Donalds would be a truly Great and Powerful Governor for Florida and, should he decide to run, will have my Complete and Total Endorsement,” Trump posted last week. “RUN, BYRON, RUN!” The representative told CPAC to stay tuned, but everyone anticipates he’ll be getting in.
But for Ron, he’s having none of it — telling reporters yesterday that his wife is “somebody that has, I think, the intestinal fortitude and the dedication to conservative principles. Anything we’ve accomplished, she’d be able to take to the next level.” This goes beyond mere avoidance of the guest room or the couch — it’s clear DeSantis has a strong preference in this race, and it’s at odds with one of the most ambitious members of the House, who even put his name into the speaker’s race at one point last year.
For Donalds, though, there are problems lurking at the side of his path to the governorship. He will have to navigate a race that may not just pit him against a popular young first lady who is a calculated political operator in her own right, and can effectively run on the culture war issues that animate Republicans at the moment, but potentially against that sidelined foe as well. Matt Gaetz’s podcast career seems to be dying in its cradle, described by some Floridians as “awkward” “clunky” and “just plain boring.” Given his access to resources thanks to his family wealth, why not throw your cardigan in the ring? A right-flanked Donalds could be far more beatable than one running unopposed — and the DeSantis mafia could be counting on that factor to be decisive.
The most fascinating element of this could be a replay of a clash that never happened. Because Don never took the debate stage opposite Ron, the GOP electorate was denied the chance to see the two men go toe to toe. Now, Florida may be on the cusp of a battle by surrogate. Prepare to choose your champion, Sunshine State.
Decline In Christianity May Have Stopped
After many years of steady decline, the share of Americans who identify as Christians shows signs of leveling off – at least temporarily – at slightly above six-in-ten, according to a massive new Pew Research Center survey of 36,908 U.S. adults.
The Religious Landscape Study (RLS) is the largest single survey the Center conducts, aiming to provide authoritative figures on the size of U.S. religious groups because the U.S. census does not collect that information.
We have conducted three of these landscape surveys over the past 17 years, with more than 35,000 randomly sampled respondents each time. That’s enough to paint a statistical portrait of religion not only nationally, but also in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as in 34 large metro areas…
The first RLS, fielded in 2007, found that 78% of U.S. adults identified as Christians of one sort or another. That number ticked steadily downward in our smaller surveys each year and was pegged at 71% in the second RLS, conducted in 2014.
The latest RLS, fielded over seven months in 2023-24, finds that 62% of U.S. adults identify as Christians. That is a decline of 9 percentage points since 2014 and a 16-point drop since 2007.
But for the last five years, between 2019 and 2024, the Christian share of the adult population has been relatively stable, hovering between 60% and 64%. The 62% figure in the new Religious Landscape Study is smack in the middle of that recent range.
The largest subgroups of Christians in the United States are Protestants – now 40% of U.S. adults – and Catholics, now 19%. People who identify with all other Christian groups (including the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Jehovah’s Witnesses and many others) total about 3% of U.S. adults.
The Crazed Leftists Trying To Stop Capitalism
If this sounds like standard fringe far-left agitprop, that’s because it is. But the One Called Jai has clearly found some traction online with Americans who are desperate to show some tangible opposition to Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the whole DoGE and MAGA project. Historian Heather Cox Richardson, whose popular Facebook posts have become a sort of Trump 2.0 InfoWars for disaffected liberals, picked up the boycott and put her label on it, as did the perpetually triggered Stephen King, who posted on BlueSky, “Don’t buy stuff on February 28. Money’s the only thing these dicks understand. #resist.”
There’s some recent precedent for these sorts of boycotts — on the left and the right. Conservative activists were successful in knocking Bud Light down a few pegs after the beer brand partnered with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney for a series of obnoxious endorsements. More recently, a liberal black minister in Minneapolis has been leading a boycott of Target stories in response to the supermarket dumping its DEI policies, which seems to have directly impacted traffic in the stores. Chick-fil-A has long been a target, from liberals who protested the company’s opposition to same-sex marriage, and, more recently, from conservatives, who opposed the fast-food chain’s adoption of DEI programs. Neither boycott has laid a finger on Chick-fil-A, showing that if people want a product badly enough, no political movement can persuade them otherwise.
But no recent boycott movement has come close to what the People’s Union is trying to do, which is basically stop capitalism in its tracks. The One Called Jai followed his call for a general blackout with proposed week-long boycotts of Amazon, Walmart, Nestle and General Mills, as well as a second day-long economic blackout on April 18. Enough people seem into it online to indicate that this isn’t going to completely fizzle. It will steam in the background, Occupy-tinged radiation.
Meanwhile, the Heather Cox Richardson “community” has begun circulating a list of more than 100 companies that are “openly supporting Project 2025,” indicating that a super-boycott may soon be in order. These range from big hitters such as Walmart, Procter & Gamble and Papa John’s, to football teams such as the New Orleans Saints and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, to several big beer brands and fast-foot chains, and a few more specific product lines, like L.L. Bean, Maidenform underwear, Grey Goose vodka and the George Foreman Grill.
Feature
Items of Interest
Foreign
The Spectator: The case for moving SOUTHCOM back to Panama.
WSJ: Zelensky, U.S. Agree to Minerals Deal, Details Still Unclear
The Spectator: Only Trump, not Zelensky, can save Ukraine.
WSJ: Iran Has Enough Highly Enriched Uranium for Six Nuclear Weapons
The Spectator: Gove: Britain must learn the lessons of our new world disorder.
The Spectator: Starmer’s Surprisingly Ruthless Foreign Aid Cut
National Interest: 80 Year Anniversary of the Battle at Iwo Jima
Domestic
Punchbowl: GOP Budget Resolution Passes After Trump Calls
Punchbowl: House Looks For Tax Offsets
WSJ: Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins: My Plan to Lower Egg Prices
Politico: Progressive California Rep. Lateefah Simon to give Trump response
The Spectator: Lipson: Behind the Vicious Attacks on Elon Musk
WSJ: Trump Administration Special Government Employees Take Outside Pay
WSJ: Some GOP Lawmakers Want Musk to Pass the Doge Torch to Agency Chiefs
Politico: Lisa Demuth: Interview with the new GOP Minnesota House Speaker
Politico: Tim Walz won’t run for Minnesota Senate seat
New York Mag: Cuomo Dominates More Polls as He Preps to Join Mayor Race
Media
Politico: Jeff Bezos pushes Washington Post Opinion page right, editor resigns
Axios: Washington Post in uproar as Opinion Editor resigns
Newsweek: Jake Tapper faces backlash over new book on Biden decline.
Politico: Gavin Newsom launches podcast, plans to interview conservatives
Mediaite: Fox News’ Kat Timpf Announces Shocking Cancer Diagnosis
Health
City Journal: Kratom Herb: Should Congress Regulate?
Tech
WSJ: Disney Employee Hacked in Life Ruining Cyberattack
Ephemera
WSJ: NFL faces effort to ban Tush Push
THR: Kathleen Kennedy Replacement: Favreau v. Filoni?
MSN: Nothing in TV Is a Sure Bet Except for Taylor Sheridan
The Cut: Chris Pratt’s Cringeworthy Comments on Nude Scene in White Lotus
Quote
“Let opinion be taken away, and no man will think himself wronged. If no man shall think himself wronged, then is there no more any such thing as wrong.”
— Marcus Aurelius