Kristi Noem played “Hot Mama” as the walk-up song for her formal introduction at the Department of Homeland Security headquarters in January 2025. President Trump had put her in charge of his signature campaign promise—the largest mass-deportation campaign in U.S. history—and Noem took a fast, flashy approach to the job. She dressed as a Border Patrol agent and an ICE officer, and rode horseback at Mount Rushmore in ads.

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Donald Trump campaigned on the idea that electing him was the best way to avoid wars. He has referred to himself as the “peace president,” going so far as to complain that he hadn’t won a Nobel Peace Prize.

The United States and Israel took at least a month to prepare their attack on Iran, assembling the largest arsenal of aircraft carriers and fighter jets that the Middle East has seen in decades. But one gap in their planning became clear during the first days of the war, as the United States and its allies used their most advanced anti-aircraft systems to shoot down swarms of cheap, easily replaceable Iranian drones.

This time last year, Jay Bhattacharya’s main claim to fame was, in essence, a hot take on COVID. In 2020, Bhattacharya, then a health economist at Stanford University without specialized training in infectious disease, co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter that downplayed the risk of COVID and called for most of society to reopen before the arrival of vaccines.

Updated at 7:52 p.m. ET on March 5, 2026
Kristi Noem’s autobiography includes the harrowing story of her decision to put down her dog, Cricket. The ill-fated pet had first ruined a hunting foray by going “out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life,” and went on to kill several chickens belonging to a neighbor. Noem then decided she had to shoot Cricket. “It was not a pleasant job,” she recounts, “but it had to be done.