Good morning! How’s everybody doing? Hopefully, we all made it through yesterday’s Spotify outage safe and sound. In the event disaster strikes again today, fear not. We’re just in time to watch the annual live stream of Sweden’s “Great Moose Migration.” Chappell who?

POLITICS

📢 Will AOC run for president?

JD Vance is the first Millennial vice president. Will AOC be the first Millennial president? The progressive New York congresswoman just turned 35, so she’s old enough to run in 2028. And she’s catching eyeballs this week for raising an eye-popping $9.6 million — ostensibly for her 2026 re-election bid— in the first three months of 2025.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez raised the money from 266,000 individual donors across the country who gave an average of just $21. The last (and only) member of the House to win the presidency was James Garfield (RIP) in 1880. But a key component of any national race is fundraising. And that’s an area where AOC clearly excels.

• She’s spent much of the past few weeks on a "Fighting Oligarchy" tour with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), drawing thousands of people even in Republican states.

AOC hasn’t dropped any hints about her political future, but a (very early) presidential primary poll has her tied for third among Democrats.

One potential 2028 opponent? Vice President JD Vance, who leaves tomorrow for an eight-day trip to Italy and India.

One person probably not running? Former President Joe Biden. He made his big return to the public square this week with a (paid) speech in Chicago. In a speech to a national conference for a disability advocacy group, Ol' Uncle Joe slammed his successor for "shooting first and aiming later." He argued Trump's federal job cuts are causing "needless pain" and called Social Security "a sacred promise" to be protected.

• Rumors in D.C. are that Biden is itching to jump back into the arena and help Democrats however he can. The only problem? They’d rather he stay home.

GOVERNMENT

💳️ Members of Elon Musk's team at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are building a system to run President Trump's gold card immigration plan. The cards would replace the existing EB-5 visas. That program grants permanent residency to people who create 10 jobs or invest at least $800,000 in an American business. Trump's plan would offer similar benefits in exchange for $5 million in cold, hard cash, which he says could be used to pay off the federal debt. Commerce Sec. Howard Lutnick said the program could be unveiled as soon as this week and claimed last month that 1,000 of these puppies had already been sold -- though no money has yet changed hands.

💧 Welp. The Pentagon’s got more leaks than a gas station bathroom. The Department of Defense (DoD) has now suspended three top officials amid a wide-ranging investigation into leaks of "national security information." Deputy Secretary of Defense Steven Feinberg's chief of staff was tossed on Wednesday, while two top advisors to Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth were escorted out of the building on Tuesday. Leaks include aircraft carrier movements and Panama-related military plans.

💰️ The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) began testing its free DirectFile tax-filing software in early 2024. By the 2025 tax season, it was available for use by residents in 25 states. In 2026, however, it might be time to crawl back to Hell TurboTax. The Trump administration plans to eliminate the DirectFile program, which it considers to be a waste of government resources, since other free, IRS-sponsored filing options already exist via third parties.

IMMIGRATION

✈️ Van Hollen goes to El Salvador

We've got good news and bad news. The good news is that we're not focusing on tariffs today (though China did just halt exports of critical minerals to the U.S.). The bad news? We’re doing immigration again. The saga of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia continues.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen flew to El Salvador as part of a growing effort by some in Congress to free Abrego Garcia from CECOT (aka: the Terrorism Confinement Center). That's a maximum-security mega-prison built in 2022 as part of El Salvador's gang violence crackdown. It holds up to 40,000 inmates.

• Van Hollen met with El Salvador’s vice president, but was denied the chance to visit the prisoner in question.

• Other lawmakers sympathetic to his cause are now organizing similar trips.

The United States is paying El Salvador $6 million to house at CECOT some men that the Trump administration believes to be members of violent international gangs like Tren de Aragua and MS-13. About 250 deportees were shipped there before those deportation flights were stopped by a federal judge.

Who’s Kilmar Abrego Garcia again? He’s a citizen of El Salvador who came to the United States illegally in 2011. In 2019, an immigration court said he was a gang member (perhaps dubiously) but ruled that he couldn’t be deported to El Salvador due to his home country’s problems with violence. So he was allowed to remain in the U.S. (but not permanently).

• Fast forward a few years, and, well, he was just deported to El Salvador despite that court order remaining in effect.

• He has a young son and a wife in Maryland. Both of them are U.S. citizens.

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” his return to the U.S. That seems clear enough, but the White House says there’s nothing they can do since he’s now in El Salvador’s custody.

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele met with President Trump in the Oval Office this week. He refused to send Abrego Garcia back, saying he couldn’t “smuggle him into the United States.”

• Bukele is extremely popular and just won a landslide reelection. On his watch, El Salvador has gone from one of the world’s most dangerous nations to one of the safest.

• But his critics warn he’s a wannabe dictator who doesn’t respect human rights or give alleged criminals due process.

Now, two U.S. federal judges are taking aim at the White House for ignoring court orders. The one handling Abrego Garcia’s specific case scolded the administration for not bringing him back and warned she wouldn’t tolerate further “gamesmanship.”

• The one who stopped the deportation flights to CECOT? Well, he might hold federal officials in criminal contempt of court and seek their prosecution for flying three planes of people to CECOT after he ordered them to stop.

What’s next? More judicial actions are a certainty as Trump and Bukele point fingers at each other. And Congress is exploding as Attorney General Pam Bondi says this guy is “not coming back” and President Trump ponders sending "homegrown criminals" to CECOT, too.

TRIVIA

Sagrada Família is already one of Spain's most famous landmarks. Now the massive Barcelona church's architect, Antoni Gaudí, is on the path to sainthood after Pope Francis recognized his “heroic virtues.” Unfortunately for Gaudí, his masterpiece isn’t quiiiite finished yet. When did construction on Sagrada Família begin?

Hint: Chester A. Arthur was president of the United States at the time.

BRIEFS

● Shein and Temu plan to raise prices (RIP) as President Trump moves to end the "de minimis" tariff exemption. Critics claim that the rule, which applies to items valued at less than $800, lets foreign companies unfairly avoid shipping rules and taxes.

● The United Kingdom's highest court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that Britain’s Equality Act doesn’t apply to trans women. As a result, women-only hospitals, sports leagues, shelters, and more will have the option to exclude or include them.

● Sec. Marco Rubio announced the closure of the State Department's Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office. Rubio called it "antithetical" to American ideals and claimed it spent more than $50 million censoring Americans.

● An island-wide power outage has left Puerto Rico in the dark. The island's 3.2 million residents pay twice as much for power as their mainland counterparts, but deal with constant blackouts. Half the island lost power on New Year's Eve in 2024.

● Israel plans to keep troops deployed to nearby foreign "security zones" indefinitely. Defense Minister Israel Katz (yes, Israel) said forces will remain in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Syria as a buffer, but some say the move could hurt peace negotiations.

QUOTE

ANSWER

They can throw up a new Starbucks in a matter of weeks. Apparently, however, humongous, extremely ornate church buildings take a little while longer to complete. Construction on Sagrada Família began all the way back in 1882. It’s set to be completed in 2026, just in time for the 100th anniversary of Gaudí’s death…. that is, everything except for some sculptures, small details, and of course the gigantic main entrance staircase extending the length of two full city blocks.