Trump's Military Orders: Transgender Ban, Ending DEI, US Iron Dome, Vaccine Mandate Flip
Plus: Elon Musk Talks To Germany's Far-Right & New Chinese A.I. Model Plunges Stocks
Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up!
Good morning,
Get ready to go Gaga... Lady Gaga announced that her new album, “Mayhem,” will be out March 7. She described the 14-track album as a return to her pop roots.
It will feature the previously released singles “Disease” and “Die with a Smile,” along with a third single that Gaga is slated to debut during a commercial break at Sunday’s 2025 Grammy Awards.
“Mayhem” follows Gaga’s 2024 album “Harlequin,” which was inspired by her role as Harley Quinn in “Joker: Folie à Deux.”
2025 will be a big year for Gaga. She is set to receive the prestigious Innovator Award at the iHeartRadio Music Awards in March. In April, she will be headlining Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, with Post Malone and Green Day.
Have a good one!
Mosheh, Jill, Sari, & Lauren
📣 DRIVING CAR SEAT SAFETY FORWARD — THE BABYARK REVOLUTION
To be sold in the US, a car seat has to score below 1,000 on the Head Injury Criteria scale, a strict requirement to protect children. But the range of what’s permissible means manufacturers can approach this in different ways.
Taking safety to a whole new level, using premium materials and advanced technology, babyark has changed the way car seats are built.
babyark has taken patented technology used in flying cars, armored vehicles, and helicopters and adapted it to car seats.
A steel coil extends within the base to reduce the impact of a crash, diverting and redistributing energy away from your baby to mechanisms built into the seat.
From the steel skeleton to the world’s most advanced impact-absorbing polymer in the headrest, babyark doesn’t just say they believe that form and function strengthen each other in safety - they developed every feature with this in mind.
📌 TRUMP’S SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDERS RESHAPING THE MILITARY
As newly-confirmed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth arrived at the Pentagon for his first day on the job yesterday, President Trump made headlines for four executive orders related to the military:
Transgender Ban: The first prohibits any transgender individuals from enlisting or serving in the armed forces.
Cut To DEI Programs: Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs will now be eliminated from the military. The order refers to them as “woke assaults” on the U.S. armed forces.
Vaccine Mandate Reversal: Any service members who were discharged under Biden-era COVID-19 vaccine mandates will be reinstated with backpay.
American Iron Dome: Establish a process to develop a missile defense shield for the U.S. homeland. Iron Dome is Israel's system for intercepting rockets, which was developed with U.S. support.
FUTURE FOR TRANS MILITARY MEMBERS
The order banning transgender Americans criticizes the Biden administration for allowing the Department of Defense to embrace what Trump calls “gender insanity.” It also prohibits the government from covering the costs of gender-affirming medical treatments for current service members.
Early in his first term, Trump banned transgender Americans from serving in the military.
On Trump’s first day in office last week, he signed an order revoking a Biden administration directive that allowed transgender people to serve openly in the military.
This new executive order goes a step further, banning the use of identification-based pronouns in the armed forces and asserting that transgender members are not allowed to serve due to concerns about their mental and physical readiness.
Up next: While the Department of Defense is directed to implement Trump’s new order immediately, incoming lawsuits will likely block it for now.
There are no official numbers on transgender service members, however, estimates suggest there are up to 15,500 people who could be affected by the new law.
IMPACTS OF VAX REVERSAL
Another executive order will reinstate service members who were discharged under Biden-era COVID-19 vaccine mandates. These individuals will be allowed to return to active duty and also receive back-pay for the entire duration of their absence.
This order affects approximately 8,000 service members — about 1% of the military — who refused to comply with the vaccine mandate, which was in place from August 2021 to January 2023. Exceptions had been made for medical and religious reasons.
Only about two dozen individuals opted to apply for reinstatement after the mandate was lifted.
📌 MUSK TELLS FAR-RIGHT GERMAN PARTY THAT THE NATION SHOULD MOVE BEYOND “PAST GUILT”
Elon Musk is getting a lot of backlash for speaking at a campaign event for Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party this weekend, telling the crowd that German “children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great-grandparents.” It is a reference to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.
Musk added, “It’s good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything.”
As an adviser to President Trump, Musk also noted that “the Trump administration is also supportive” of the AfD’s anti-immigration agenda.
AfD leader Alice Weidel, who is running to be German chancellor, thanked Musk and told the crowd, “Let’s make Germany great again.”
GERMAN ELECTIONS
Moving past guilt over the atrocities of Germany’s Nazi era is a key pillar of the AfD’s platform.
Last year, the AfD became the first far-right party to win a state election since World War II.
Earlier this month, Musk and Weidel held a lengthy discussion on Musk’s X platform. When Musk asked Weidel to respond to allegations about the AfD’s links to Nazi ideology, she dismissed the accusations, calling Hitler a “communist socialist guy” and arguing the AfD is “exactly the opposite.”
The Christian Democratic Union, a center-right political party, is leading polling, and will likely form a coalition with the center-left SPD party. Via: Politico.
BACKLASH CONTINUES
Although the AfD denies being extremist, its leaders have drawn criticism for statements minimizing the Holocaust and using rhetoric around immigration that has been seen by critics as having Nazi overtones — like attacking minority groups as the “other.”
AfD co-chairman Alexander Gauland has spoken about fighting an “invasion of foreigners.”
The party openly focuses its rhetoric on Islam and migration, seeing Islam as alien to German society.
Musk’s remarks come just days after German police announced an investigation into who was projecting images of Musk making a gesture resembling a Nazi salute onto a Tesla factory outside Berlin.
📌 FUTURE OF GLOBAL AI: CHINA PULLS AHEAD DESPITE U.S. CHIP EXPORT RESTRICTIONS
U.S. technology stocks dropped Monday, following news that Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek’s new A.I. model was developed at a fraction of the cost of competing models.
DeepSeek's product has also become one of the top 10 performing chatbot models, according to a popular ranking. Meanwhile, it dethroned OpenAI's ChatGPT as the most downloaded free app in the U.S. Apple App Store this week.
Investors were rattled by fears that advances by the Chinese could threaten the moneymaking power of tech giants in the U.S., Europe, and beyond. A.I. chip giant Nvidia’s stock fell about 16% in trading, erasing nearly $600 billion in market value.
THE CHINESE TECH
On Jan. 20, DeepSeek introduced its new product, R1, a specialized model designed for complex problem-solving. It was immediately praised by industry leaders as a breakthrough in A.I. technology.
R1 was built on the company’s previous V3 model, released in December, which DeepSeek claims is on par with OpenAI’s GPT-4o.
DeepSeek officials said R1 cost just $5.6 million to train, which is a fraction of the $100 million – $1 billion estimated cost of building comparable models. Last week, Meta said it would spend upward of $65 billion this year on AI development.
Keep in mind, the cost analysis was provided by the Chinese-owned company, so some people on Wall Street are skeptical.
While leading A.I. companies like OpenAI and Google train their chatbots on supercomputers using upwards of 16,000 chips, DeepSeek's engineers claim they needed only about 2,000 specialized Nvidia chips to achieve competitive results.
Specialists note that DeepSeek’s technology still lags behind OpenAI and Google, but its ability to rival them using fewer, less advanced chips has raised eyebrows across the tech industry. It also highlights the limitations of Washington’s restrictions on exporting chips, in an effort to curb China’s rapid A.I. advances.
Another thing to think about:
⏳ SPEED READ
🚨NATION
📌 Transgender inmate sues over Trump's order curtailing LGBT rights (YAHOO)
📌 Dr. Phil joins ICE team and border czar Tom Homan for Chicago deportation operations (FOX) Quakers challenge Trump order allowing immigration raids at religious sites (AXIOS)
📌 Trump Justice Department fires officials who investigated Trump and launches ‘special project’ into January 6 cases (CNN)
📌 Earthquake strikes New England, with shaking felt from Boston to Portland, Maine (CNN)
🌎 AROUND THE WORLD
📌 Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians stream back to shattered northern Gaza in ceasefire’s week two (AP)
📌 Hundreds of US visa appointments canceled in Colombia following spat over deportation flights (TIME)
📌 Auschwitz survivors mark Holocaust Remembrance Day 80 years after liberation (NPR)
📌 World's biggest iceberg could be on collision course with Antarctic penguin island (CBS)
📱BUSINESS, SCIENCE & TECH
📌 iOS 18.3 is out with tweaks to AI notification summaries (VERGE)
📌 Federal Reserve expected to stand pat on rates even as Trump demands cuts (AP)
📌 Heart disease remains leading cause of death in US, new report finds (ABC)
🎬 SPORTS & ENTERTAINMENT
📌 Shootings, stabbing and more reported during NFC championship celebrations in Philadelphia (GMA)
📌 Women’s soccer has its first million-dollar player. Here’s a look at how the record fee has grown (AP)
📌 Selena Gomez sobs in since-deleted video with Mexican flag, says 'all my people are getting attacked' (PEOPLE)
📌 Alec and Hilaria Baldwin address emotional toll of ‘Rust’ shooting in first look at ‘The Baldwins’ (CNN)