1. COMING ATTRACTIONS: Ahead of Thursday’s Intelligence Committee hearing on Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination for director of national intelligence, questions continue to swirl over the former Hawaii representative’s viability. Key Intel committee swing vote Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told The Hill’s Al Weaver that she’s zeroing in on Gabbard’s past work to repeal Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits surveillance of foreign targets. Though Gabbard has attempted to walk back some of her prior criticism, Collins isn’t sold. “Her answers to the written questions were very hedged on it,” Collins told Weaver. “I know there’s been a lot of reporting that she’s changed her position. That’s not how I read her answers. I read them as, ‘I’ll take a look at the reforms and see if they meet my concerns.’” Gabbard can’t afford to lose a single vote on the 9-8 Intel panel. And while the committee vote is typically held behind closed doors, some Senate Republicans are making a rare push to publicize the vote, Rachael Bade scoops. By opening up the vote, Trump-allied senators are hoping a public pressure campaign could sway the committee’s skeptics. But but but … Though “panel rules allow for the release of a vote tally, they do not allow for a public roll call of how each member voted. … Opening up the committee vote, in other words, would require the secretive committee to waive its rules, and it is unclear whether [Senate Intel Chair Tom] Cotton has that power.” A fascinating path … In a worthwhile new profile, NYT’s Elizabeth Williamson and Charles Homans detail Gabbard’s evolution, from growing up in a secretive offshoot of the Hare Krishna movement to her days as an anti-gay activist to becoming “darling of the political left” to, finally, Trumpian celebrity. 2. AI ON THE BRAIN: Some major U.S. tech companies saw their stocks tumble today due to the “sudden popularity of a Chinese artificial intelligence model called DeepSeek,” which has provoked new anxieties “about whether the massive spending on artificial intelligence ― and the specialized chips, data centers and related power infrastructure ― are justified,” WaPo’s Aaron Gregg, Shannon Najmabadi and Cat Zakrzewski report. A fraction of the cost: DeepSeek “said training one of its latest models cost $5.6 million,” WSJ’s Mauro Orru writes — a small fraction of the mammoth cost associated with some U.S.-based AI models with similar capabilities. The big picture: DeepSeek’s success has prompted “fears it could disrupt the global dominance of U.S. tech,” Orru writes. And, per Gregg and Najmabadi, it “suggests the Biden administration’s export controls — meant to limit China’s access to the specialized chips, like those from Nvidia, that power AI models — haven’t completely slowed rivals’ development.” 3. THE IG PURGE: Hannibal Ware, one of the 18 inspectors general fired last week by Trump, hit back at the president today in comments on MSNBC. Ware warned that the president’s round of late-night terminations constituted a “threat to democracy,” noting that the IGs are nonpartisan entities designed to root out corruption. "IGs oversee how the priorities of the administration is being conducted to make sure that there is transparency in government, and to make sure that there’s no fraud, waste and abuse, and how taxpayer funds are being expended,” Ware said, calling the firings “a threat to transparency in government." More from NBC News’ Rebecca Shabad and Annemarie Bonner 4. DEEP IN THE HEART: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed hundreds of state border force agents join the thousands of national guardsmen already in place on the Texas-Mexico border as Trump cracks down on border security, the Dallas Morning News’ Karen Brooks Harper reports. The 400 members of the Texas Tactical Border Force, along with C-130 aircrafts and and Chinook helicopters, were sent today from bases in Fort Worth and Houston in order “to work side-by-side with U.S. Border Patrol agents to stop illegal immigrants from entering our country and to enforce immigration laws,” Abbott said in a statement on X. The Texas governor has been pushing Congress in recent weeks to reimburse billions for his robust border security program known as “Operation Lone Star” and citing insufficient support from the Biden administration. 5. DEMS IN ARRAY: All 47 Senate Democrats signed on to cosponsor a proposed resolution condemning Trump’s pardon of violent Jan. 6 defendants. The one-line resolution reads: “the Senate disapproves of any pardons for individuals who were found guilty of assaulting Capitol Police officers.” Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) — who has recently shot down rumours he was switching parties — wasn’t initially signed on to the resolution, though he added his name about an hour after it was put forward. More from Kyle Cheney 6. ONE TO WATCH: “One of 2025’s Biggest Battles Over Abortion Rights Has Already Begun,” by NYT’s Reid Epstein: “Democratic allies of Judge Susan Crawford “say that electing her will preserve abortion rights in [Wisconsin] and lead to new congressional maps,” while Republican supporters of Judge Brad Schimel “warn that maintaining the court’s 4-to-3 liberal majority will bring about the end of a host of [GOP-enacted] laws.”
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