Welcome to the beat, everyone. I'm Ari Melbert. And let me tell you off top, Chris Hayes is on the

beat tonight. We have a new discussion about the cycles of trust and distrust against elites

and now experts in our society. So he is really the perfect person for the conversation we're

going to have. That's new tonight. Chris Hayes, of course,

you know him from 8 p.m. But you can get him at 6 p.m. Eastern tonight. We are going all in

on the beat. And we'll update you on the vote on the controversial FBI pick, the Senate,

approving that today for the Trump administration. But we begin with the ongoing efforts to purge the federal

government in all sorts of ways that are clearly counter to what Congress and sometimes federal

laws and rules state. Indeed, the Trump administration admits sometimes that it is going to push as far as it

can, the courts have the final say, to change a lot of how we think

of the federal government and its tradition of having a career or nonpartisan civil service corps.

Today, though, it's reaching a different place, the United States military and the Pentagon.

President Trump says he will cut the Pentagon's sweeping $800-plus billion budget and that they have targets of around $50 billion from defense in each of the following five years. Four of those, of course, they have governance over in this presidential term. U.S. officials are warning, however, that how you do it matters,

that the new defense secretary has other agenda items that are quite different than just spending

cuts, but trying to take more control or potentially political control of aspects of the military

like the General's Corps that are supposed to be independent.

And remember, when you think about what's going on here, the idea of cutting the military

budget has long been something that liberals and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party

has tried to do more than other wings of the Democratic or Republican Party.

And I've told you, we're going to watch out for

what's happening out here. There may be times where the Trump administration is proposing things

that the way they're doing it and in the context of everything else they're doing are very

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