Why Is Melania Trump Chairing a U.N. Security Council Meeting?

First Lady Melania Trump will preside over the United Nations Security Council on March 2, addressing “Children, Technology, and Education in Conflict.”

“Mrs. Trump’s leadership will mark the first time a sitting U.S. First Lady presides over the Security Council as members consider education, technology, peace, and security,” a press release from her office read.

While the first lady has shown an interest in children’s welfare, particularly in Russia’s war on Ukraine, it’s hard to imagine her address as any more than a symbolic gesture that will look good in a social media post. U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz will be in attendance.

Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos will go to the White House Thursday as he looks to push through a merger that even Republicans say presents antitrust concerns.

The proposed deal would see Netflix acquire Warner Bros. Discovery at the cost of $70 billion. Though it’s not clear if Sarandos will be meeting directly with President Donald Trump, he will try to curry favor with his administration, whose Department of Justice has the final say as to whether the merger goes through.

Trump previously said he wouldn’t get involved with the deal, but eventually couldn’t resist trying to leverage his power for political gain. In a Truth Social post on Saturday, he called on Netflix to fire board member Susan Rice, a former Democratic policy adviser.

“Netflix should fire racist, Trump Deranged Susan Rice, IMMEDIATELY, or pay the consequences,” Trump wrote.

Trump’s request was later rejected by Sarandos.

In the meantime, 11 Republican attorneys general have asked the DOJ to block the deal.

The group penned a letter to the DOJ on Wednesday arguing that a Netflix–Warner Bros. merger would give Netflix too much power over its streaming rivals, creating a monopoly that could lead to higher prices and reduced quality.

Adding to the mess is the fact that the chief of the DOJ’s antitrust division, Gail Slater, stepped down recently after feuding with Trump officials. The acting chief is Omeed Assefi, who was previously a criminal prosecutor in the division.

Sarandos tried to downplay the discord in remarks to the BBC. “This is a business deal. It’s not a political deal,” he said.

The U.S. women’s hockey team is telling Donald Trump that they’d love to meet up, they’re just really busy right now.

After both U.S. hockey teams took gold in Milan last week, Trump rhapsodized over the men, personally calling the team up to offer an invitation to his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

As for the women? “I must tell you, we’re gonna have to bring the women’s team, you do know that,” Trump said during the call. “I do believe I probably would be impeached.”

The men’s team erupted in laughter at the remark, but the women didn’t find the mockery too funny, opting not to attend Trump’s address. A spokesperson said that while the women were grateful for the invite, the team would not be attending “due to the timing and previously scheduled academic and professional commitments.”

Whether he was hurt by the idea that anyone might not enjoy his presence or just trying to save some face, Trump then claimed during his State of the Union address that the women’s team would visit the White House “soon.”

This apparently came as news to the team, who proceeded to give an excellent nondenial denial through a spokesperson on Wednesday: “Players are back competing with their professional and collegiate teams and are in the midst of their season. They’re honored and grateful to be invited and any opportunity to visit the White House as a team will be based on their schedules once their seasons conclude.”

The team has better offers on the table, anyway. Following the Trump kerfuffle, rapper Flavor Flav said he’d throw the team a “real celebration” in Las Vegas for them and all female Olympians and Paralympians. “I’ll host them,” the Public Enemy co-founder wrote on social media. “Do some nice dinners and shows and good times.”

Cuban officials have confirmed that the country’s Border Guard troops killed four people aboard a speedboat registered in Florida Wednesday morning.

The speedboat was one nautical mile from a small island northeast of Cuba when Cuban troops approached the boat, requesting identification for venturing into Cuban territory. As it drew near, occupants aboard the U.S.-registered vessel opened fire on Cuban authorities, injuring the Cuban boat’s commander.

“As a consequence of the confrontation, as of the time of this report, four aggressors on the foreign vessel were killed and six were injured,” reads a statement by Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior. “The injured individuals were evacuated and received medical assistance.”

The identities of those killed or injured were not specified. The ministry did note that the boat’s registration number was FL7726SH, and that it was detected near Cayo Falcones, in the country’s central Villa Clara province.

American boats face significant legal restrictions with regard to travelling in Cuban waters—in no small part because of the regulations imposed by the U.S. government.

The U.S. has maintained a comprehensive embargo on Cuba since 1962, restricting trade and travel between the two countries, a policy that has effectively choked Cuba’s economic growth for more than six decades.

U.S. law prohibits any form of tourism to the island, and boats cannot enter Cuban waters without direct permitting and authorization from the U.S. Coast Guard and the Department of Commerce. Failure to comply with U.S. regulations could result in the government seizure of one’s boat, fines up to $25,000 per day the boat is in Cuban waters, or even imprisonment.

“In the face of current challenges, Cuba reaffirms its determination to protect its territorial waters, based on the principle that national defense is a fundamental pillar of the Cuban State in safeguarding its sovereignty and ensuring stability in the region,” the Cuban statement continued.

The violence comes just weeks after Donald Trump softened an oil trade ban on the island in the wake of the U.S.’s recent ousting of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a Cuban ally, and its subsequent takeover of Venezuela’s oil supply. Washington allowed shipments of Venezuelan oil for “commercial and humanitarian use” after Caribbean leaders claimed the regional economy would be devastated if they were frozen out of the nearby oil reserve.

This story has been updated.

The Trump administration is blocking Congress from seeing the classified intelligence report that prompted a whistleblower complaint against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Gabbard’s office emailed Democratic congressional staffers on February 13 and said it couldn’t send the unredacted intelligence behind the complaint, which concerns an intercepted conversation two foreign individuals had about President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, “due to the assertion of executive privilege to portions” of the information.

The Journal learned earlier this month about the complaint, which was filed with the DNI’s inspector general back in May. Gabbard’s office was supposed to disclose the complaint to Congress but didn’t for eight months, prompting an attorney representing the whistleblower to write a letter in November accusing Gabbard of burying the complaint, which has reportedly been locked in a safe.

Gabbard’s office eventually relented and shared a redacted version with some members of Congress earlier this month, using executive privilege to justify the redactions. What is known about the complaint is that it accuses Gabbard of limiting the sharing of intelligence for political purposes.

After the intelligence, which partially has to do with Iran, was gathered last year, Gabbard met with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. Following that meeting, Gabbard worked to limit who saw the intelligence, unnamed sources told the Journal.

Another part of the complaint is that NSA lawyers failed to report a possible crime to the Justice Department that came up in the conversation between the two individuals for political reasons.

The leading Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees, Senator Mark Warner and Representative Jim Himes, are now asking who asserted executive privilege and why, as it is rarely used to prevent sharing intelligence with Congress.

“The request and provision of intelligence reports have been longstanding practice between the [intelligence community] and its congressional oversight committees,” Warner and Himes wrote in a letter to Gabbard’s office Tuesday.

But writing a letter is all Democrats can do as the minority party in the House and Senate. Kushner doesn’t have a formal job in the Trump administration, but he has been involved in its key foreign policy decisions, such as Middle East negotiations, including the rebuilding of Gaza by the new Board of Peace. If he is compromised internationally, then it’s a matter of national security, and the public should know. The cover-up suggests something of that nature that would be publicly damaging to Trump. What does Gabbard know?