Welcome to the beat. I'm Ari Melbert. President Trump holding the first cabinet meeting of this

second term, and it was actually an unusual scene playing out at the White House today because

the cabinet meeting is for the cabinet. The president usually leads the discussion with the

chosen heads of the key departments, from justice to state to Pentagon, those are people

seated around the table. And yet, what you see here on your screen was something different.

It is a contrast to what has occurred literally since the country's founding. The most important

posts are in the cabinet. Some posts, by the way, get elevated to the cabinet to show that

they're important, like Homeland Security, which was added to the cabinet after 9-11.

Others are removed over time, like the post office. But as you see here, and I'm going to leave

this on screen just for the visual of what happened, the first part of today's cabinet meeting

was dominated by a non-cabinet official,

and because he's not in the cabinet, he was not seated with those other officials. He's just

standing there, the billionaire special employee, Elon Musk, not elected to a position,

not confirmed by the Senate, like every other member of the cabinet at the

table. So this already was something very different, and it comes amidst growing concern from

Republican lawmakers and Democrats, from people at town halls, including in red districts,

from experts and other critics about these musk cuts and how they

affect your safety in your life. So there is something very serious alongside the visual.

And so before we go any further and people talk about what's happening now and whether it should

be happening, we want to show you how United States cabinet meetings

have functioned throughout our history across both parties.

As you can see, we're about to have a cabinet meeting, the primary purpose of which is to discuss

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