
Mike Pence is no profile in courage
CNN
Despite former Vice President Mike Pence's attempts to distance himself from former President Donald Trump, Peter Bergen writes that if Pence thinks this will give him a significant leg up over Trump, he has misjudged both the former president and his supporters.
Former President Donald Trump, of course, has been an Olympic-level Putin apologist for years. Just two days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Trump praised Putin's actions in Ukraine as "savvy" and "genius."

The US military’s strikes in Iran over the weekend prompted a swift response from across the federal government to react to any fallout, but current and former officials say the administration’s DOGE-driven cuts to a host of agencies have made it harder to grapple with the conflict and prepare for potential retaliation.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe on Wednesday said in a statement that the agency had obtained “a body of credible evidence [that] indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged” by recent strikes, underscoring a broad intelligence community effort is ongoing to determine the impact of the US strikes on three of the country’s nuclear sites on Saturday.

White House’s DOGE spending cuts request runs into criticism, questions from some Senate Republicans
The head of the White House budget office on Wednesday defended the Trump administration’s push to enact sweeping cuts to federal funding, even as some Republican senators voiced concerns and raised questions about the breadth of them.