Weekly Review

The newly appointed FBI director, Kash Patel, who has also been tapped to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told his employees to ignore Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s latest directive, which demands federal employees respond with five bullet points explaining what they have accomplished in the past week and comes with the stipulation that “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”^{1 2 3 4} At least one labor council representing federal prison union locals chastised the order, writing in a statement that it is “ridiculous and lacks in the understanding and acknowledgement of what these brave men and women do every day for this great country.”⁵ The Trump Administration fired the only locksmith at Yosemite National Park, who holds all of the park keys, which are sometimes used to help rescue visitors locked in park bathrooms.⁶ Bernie Sanders kicked off his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour that targets districts in the Midwest that Trump won by small margins; thousands attended the rallies in Omaha, Nebraska, and Iowa City, with both events filling up overflow spaces.^{7 8 9} The former vice president Kamala Harris joined Joe Biden in signing with Creative Artists Agency with a focus on speaking engagements and publishing opportunities; in a statement, the agency said that it plans to work closely with Harris to create “strategic opportunities that expand her platform in support of the issues she has championed throughout her decades-long career in public service.”^{10 11} Musk, who has been at the center of custody disputes with the musician Grimes and the Babylon Bee employee Ashley St. Clair, who respectively mother three and one of his children, was seen wielding a chainsaw at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference with Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, who is embroiled in a cryptocurrency scandal after promoting $LIBRA in an alleged “pump and dump” scheme that collectively lost investors millions of dollars, and the AfD party in Germany, which has been accused of Nazi sympathies, finished second in the national election, behind Friedrich Merz’s CDU party, in the strongest showing for a far-right party since the Third Reich. ^{12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19}

“Super pigs” wreaked havoc on the U.S.–Canada border; after a second deadly attack, pigs in Piedmont, Alabama, were put down; and a grand jury recommended the abolition of the Hanceville, Alabama, police force after determining that the department, of which every officer is currently on administrative leave, represents “an ongoing threat to public safety.”^{20 21 22} As patronage dries up, the chain restaurant Hooters, which was acquired by a private-equity partnership in 2019, prepared to file for bankruptcy as it sorts out a $300 million debt with counsel from the firm Ropes & Gray.^{23 24} A zoo in New Bedford, Massachusetts, announced that a 21-year-old harbor seal succumbed to bird flu, a zoo in Syracuse, New York, shuttered its bird exhibits in an attempt to prevent the spread of bird flu, and in Florida, egg enthusiasts explored raising or renting their own chickens to avoid egg price inflation caused by bird flu.^{25 26 27 28} In Ireland, a bird dropped the severed hand of a 12-year old boy over a schoolyard.²⁹ A homeowners’ association in Las Vegas is working to “humanely” relocate hundreds of invasive goldfish that have once again taken over the Cadence Central Park Pond, and the European Union and Sweden are working to bolster their maritime security after the suspected sabotage of several sea cables, which authorities believe was Russian retaliation for the E.U.’s defense of Ukraine, which relies on continued European and U.S. support as President Volodymyr Zelensky negotiates a potential peace deal brokered by the United States and Trump, who recently called Zelensky a dictator.^{30 31 32 33 34 35} A Catholic hospital in Ohio is facing charges after refusing police orders to search a man’s anal cavity for drugs, saying the procedure would have been “morally wrong,” and Pope Francis is still alive and being treated at Gemelli Hospital in Rome, Italy, despite confusion after RTÉ News reported that he “passed a peaceful night.”^{36 37 38}

A man sneezed out his intestines, but was released from the hospital less than a week later after a “reassuring abdominal examination,” a woman was heralded as a “cone-noisseur” after Hudsonville Ice Cream named her the Ultimate Ice Cream Fan, the FDA classified the now-recalled Mombo Vanilla Soft Serve Ice Cream Mix as Class I, because it “could cause severe or even life-threatening allergic reactions,” and an Alabama senator introduced a bill to exclude sweets from SNAP benefits.^{39 40 41 42} Burkina Faso celebrated the opening of its new Moulin Double Star Mill, with a daily processing capacity of 220 tons of flour and 80 tons of bran, which was established in an effort to boost domestic industry.⁴³ After three consecutive years of growth, a new report shows worker strikes are down in Portugal last year, with 1,099 instances of organized work stoppages.⁴⁴ Victor Wembanyama, the starting center of the San Antonio Spurs, ended his season and bid for the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year after being diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis in his right shoulder, and the New York Yankees reversed a near-fifty-year beard ban, which prompted former team captain Derek Jeter to celebrate by posting an AI image of himself donning full facial hair, with the caption: “New Rules!”^{45 46 47} Hoopla, a popular e-book vendor, faced criticism after distributing AI-generated books to libraries, and while the company assured its clients in an email that it is doing the work to “learn, grow, and continuously improve,” one librarian said they put their trust in Hoopla, but “Hoopla has broken this trust.”⁴⁸—Peter Lucas