Andrew Rice, a deputy commonwealth's attorney in Virginia Beach, crushed Democrat Cheryl Smith in the special election for Virginia House of Delegates District 98, capturing 62.46 percent of the vote to Smith's 37.5 percent with more than 11,000 votes counted as of 1 a.m. Eastern.
The margin wasn't close. It was a blowout.
The seat became vacant after Republican Barry Knight died last month, triggering a special election to cover the last two years of his term. When that seat was last contested in 2025, Knight won with 56.6 percent, and Smith took 43.2 percent. Rice didn't just hold the seat. He widened the gap by nearly six points against the same Democratic opponent.
Rice addressed supporters after the race was called:
"I'm so thankful for their support and I can't wait to get to work for them in Richmond."
Democrats have spent months constructing a narrative around special elections. After picking up 13 seats in the Virginia House during the November 2025 elections, the story practically wrote itself: voters were recoiling from Republicans, the political winds had shifted, and the party was riding an unstoppable wave into the 2026 midterms.
District 98 just punched a hole in that storyline, Newsweek reported.
Voter turnout in the district hit only 18 percent, with more than 11,700 ballots cast. Low-turnout special elections are often where enthusiasm shows itself most clearly. The voters who bothered to show up chose the Republican by a commanding margin, in a race where Democrats had every reason to believe the environment favored them.
Virginia wasn't the only bright spot. In Pennsylvania, Republican Catherine Wallen is projected to beat Democrat Todd Crawley in a special election for the state's 193rd House District, according to Decision Desk HQ. That seat has been represented by a Republican since 1972, so the hold itself isn't surprising. But in a cycle where Democrats have been claiming the political landscape is shifting beneath Republican feet, holding ground matters.
Republican State Leadership Committee President Edith Jorge-Tuñón framed the results in no uncertain terms:
"Last night's results shatter Democrats' so-called 'special election momentum.' In states like Pennsylvania and Virginia, voters rejected the claim that Democrats have a better handle on the issues that matter most and pushed back on the failed policies they continue to champion. These wins prove Republicans can break through and compete in tough environments, and the RSLC is building momentum to win nationwide in 2026."
There is a familiar pattern in how media and political operatives treat special elections. When Democrats win them, the results are treated as referendums on the national mood, bellwethers of what's to come, proof that the public has rendered its verdict. When Republicans win them, the caveats arrive immediately: low turnout, local dynamics, district composition, the usual disclaimers.
Republicans themselves have rightly noted that these races have never been predictive of general elections. That's fair. But what's also fair is applying the same standard in both directions. If Democratic special election wins were evidence of a national backlash during President Donald Trump's second term, then Republican wins in the same cycle deserve the same interpretive weight.
You don't get to cherry-pick which results count.
The next major test comes in California, where the seat left vacant by Republican Representative Doug LaMalfa, who died in January at age 65, will be filled through an election set by California Governor Gavin Newsom. A primary is scheduled for June 2, with the general election on August 4. California's 1st Congressional District presents a different kind of battleground, but the results in Virginia and Pennsylvania give Republicans evidence that their voters are engaged and willing to show up even in off-cycle contests.
The November 2026 midterms remain the prize. Democrats will continue to spin their preferred narrative, and the media will continue to amplify it. But narratives don't survive contact with actual vote totals.
In District 98, the voters spoke clearly. Andrew Rice won by nearly 25 points. No amount of "momentum" talk changes that math.
The Senate voted 51-48 on Tuesday to open debate on the SAVE America Act, the Trump-backed bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID to cast a ballot in federal elections. The vote cleared only a procedural hurdle, but it forced every senator to go on the record about whether American elections should verify that voters are, in fact, Americans.
Every Senate Democrat voted against even debating the measure. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was the lone Republican to join them. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who had voiced concerns about the bill consuming floor time better spent on other legislation, did not vote.
The bill still needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster and reach final passage. With Republicans holding a 53-47 majority, the math is unforgiving. Democrats know it, and they're not being subtle about their strategy.
Sen. Alex Padilla of California, speaking from the Senate floor Tuesday morning before the vote, made his party's intentions plain:
"We're not going to let it pass. We're going to fight it tooth and nail."
He then escalated further:
"We're prepared to stay here all day and all night, or multiple days and multiple nights and even multiple weeks, if necessary, to make sure the SAVE Act suffers the death that it deserves."
Note the language. Not "the defeat it deserves" or "the outcome voters want." The death it deserves. Padilla isn't framing this as a principled disagreement over election mechanics. He's treating voter ID like a threat that must be exterminated. That tells you everything about where the Democratic Party stands on verifying citizenship at the ballot box.
The SAVE Act, which advanced out of the House in February, does two things:
Those provisions would take effect immediately upon passage. Senate Majority Leader John Thune framed the stakes simply from the Senate floor on Tuesday:
"It's just common sense. And polls show that the American people agree."
He's right, and not just rhetorically. Voter ID polls consistently well across party lines, a fact that makes the intensity of Democratic opposition all the more revealing. The American public overwhelmingly supports the idea that you should prove who you are before you vote. The Democratic caucus unanimously opposes even discussing it on the Senate floor.
Democrats will not say plainly why they oppose voter ID. They can't, because the honest answer is politically radioactive. Instead, the argument gets buried under process complaints, access concerns, and vague accusations about "voter suppression," a term that has been stretched so far beyond its original meaning that it now apparently includes asking someone to prove they're a citizen before participating in the civic act reserved exclusively for citizens.
Consider what Padilla and his colleagues are actually fighting against. Not a poll tax. Not a literacy test. None of the genuinely shameful tools were once used to disenfranchise Americans. They are fighting a requirement that voters demonstrate the single most basic qualification for voting: citizenship.
Every other Western democracy manages this without collapsing into authoritarianism. Mexico requires a voter ID card with a photo, fingerprint, and holographic security features. India, the world's largest democracy, issues a national voter ID to nearly a billion eligible citizens. Canada requires identification at the polls. France requires it. Germany requires it. But in the United States, asking for the same basic verification is treated by one political party as an existential crisis.
The procedural reality is stark. Republicans have 53 seats. They need 60 votes to break a filibuster. That means seven Democrats would need to cross the aisle, and right now, zero have shown any inclination to do so. Trump allies have promised to grind the Senate to a halt over the bill, turning it into a prolonged confrontation that forces Democrats to repeatedly defend their opposition in public.
That may be the real value of this fight, regardless of the final vote count. Every day Democrats spend filibustering voter ID is another day they have to explain to their constituents why proving citizenship is too much to ask. Every floor speech against the SAVE Act is another clip for the opposition research file heading into the 2026 midterms.
The bill's provisions would take effect immediately upon passage, meaning a successful vote would reshape election procedures before November 2026. Democrats understand the stakes. A country that verifies its voters is a country that makes it harder to benefit from ambiguity.
The Senate now enters what could be days or weeks of debate. Padilla and Senate Democrats have signaled they intend to make the process as painful and protracted as possible. Republicans, for their part, seem willing to let them. There is political utility in forcing the opposition to spend weeks publicly arguing against the idea that voters should be citizens.
Tillis's absence and Murkowski's defection are worth watching. Internal Republican discipline will matter if this fight drags on and attention drifts. But the broader dynamic favors the GOP. The policy is popular. The principle is sound. And the other side is stuck arguing that the world's oldest democracy shouldn't bother checking who shows up to vote.
Padilla wants to kill the bill. He may succeed in math. But every day this debate continues, the American public gets a clearer picture of which party trusts voters and which party trusts the system to stay unverified.
The progressive left's bid to plant new "Squad" members in Congress collapsed across Illinois on Tuesday night, with far-left candidates losing in every contested Democratic primary where they challenged moderate or establishment opponents. Four districts, four defeats. The rout was comprehensive.
In Illinois' 9th district, left-wing influencer and journalist Kat Abughazaleh fell to Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss. In the 8th, progressive candidate Junaid Ahmed lost to moderate former Rep. Melissa Bean. In the 2nd, progressive state Sen. Robert Peters came in a distant third. And in the 7th, CPC-backed labor leader Anthony Driver Jr. and progressive organizer Kina Collins finished third and fourth, respectively.
Not one insurgent broke through. Not one came close enough to claim a moral victory. Not one gave the Squad the reinforcements it desperately needed.
The marquee contest was Illinois' 9th, where Abughazaleh ran a conspicuously pro-Palestinian campaign against Biss. Axios noted that both candidates were opposed by AIPAC, which had backed pro-Israel state Sen. Laura Fine through its affiliate Elect Chicago Women, spending millions on her behalf.
Fine came in third anyway. AIPAC then pivoted in the final week, training its fire on Abughazaleh. The Chicago Progressive Partnership, meanwhile, ran ads boosting lower-tier leftist Bushra Amiwala, further fragmenting the progressive vote.
Biss, who carried endorsements from the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, won comfortably. AIPAC framed the outcome as a success despite its preferred candidate's third-place finish:
"While disappointed Laura Fine didn't prevail, the pro-Israel community is proud to have helped defeat would-be Squad members Kat Abughazaleh and Bushra Amiwala."
That's an interesting way to describe spending millions on a candidate who lost. But the bottom line is the same: the most aggressively left-wing candidate in the race went down.
The 8th district offered the clearest test of whether progressive infrastructure could manufacture a congressional seat. Junaid Ahmed had the full weight of the left behind him: Justice Democrats, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and a local DSA chapter. Melissa Bean had AIPAC, crypto, and AI-affiliated PACs.
Bean won.
Justice Democrats Executive Director Alexandra Rojas tried to spin the loss as someone else's failure:
"It took AIPAC, AI, and Crypto coming together to spend millions whitewashing Melissa Bean's right-wing record in Congress to elect a former Congresswoman."
She added that the result "is a massive loss for AIPAC as they lose more and more influence within the Democratic Party." A curious interpretation of an evening in which AIPAC's opponents went 0-for-4. Rojas also claimed Justice Democrats spent "very little" in these races, which is either an admission that they didn't think they could win or an explanation for why they didn't.
The other two races barely qualified as contests. In the 2nd district, progressive state Sen. Robert Peters finished a distant third behind both AIPAC-backed Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller and former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. In the 7th, state Rep. La Shawn Ford edged out AIPAC-backed Chicago Treasurer Melissa Conyears Ervin, while the progressive candidates, Driver and Collins, were afterthoughts.
The 7th is the one district where AIPAC's candidate also lost, but the progressive wing didn't benefit. Ford won on his own terms, without the Squad apparatus behind him.
Illinois was supposed to be fertile ground. Dozens of insurgent Democrats are running in congressional races across the country this cycle, and the Illinois primaries were an early bellwether. The results suggest the Squad's brand of politics, centering campaigns on opposition to Israel, progressive litmus tests, and social media energy, does not convert to votes even in deep-blue territory.
AIPAC was candid about what it saw:
"Life looks pretty good."
The organization said Illinois voters "rejected far-left, would-be Squad members who centered their campaigns on attacking Israel." That framing is self-serving, but it's not wrong.
For House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Tuesday was a welcome development. Jeffries is most popular among the moderate and mainstream liberal wings of the Democratic Party, and every Squad expansion complicates his leadership. Every Squad loss simplifies it.
The progressive post-mortem is already writing itself. Rojas previewed it:
"No amount of shell PACs or covert funding can hide their toxicity from Democratic voters."
This is the pattern. The far left runs candidates on ideology and online enthusiasm. The candidates lose. The far left blames dark money rather than examining whether voters actually want what they're selling. Then they run the same playbook in the next cycle, expecting different results.
At some point, "we were outspent" stops being an explanation and starts being an excuse. Especially when your candidate had endorsements from two U.S. senators, a national PAC, and a sprawling grassroots organization, and still couldn't close.
The Squad isn't growing. In Illinois, the Democratic electorate made that clear.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has endorsed former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn in his bid for Maryland's 5th Congressional District, marking the second time she's thrown her weight behind a candidate whose entire political identity rests on a single day five years ago.
Pelosi, who is not seeking re-election, announced the endorsement in a release, according to The Hill.
"On January 6, 2021, Harry Dunn bravely defended our democracy from Donald Trump's violent MAGA mob. Since then, Harry's been called to do everything he can to protect Marylanders and all Americans from extremists like Donald Trump. I'm proud to endorse Harry Dunn for Congress."
Dunn returned the favor, saying Pelosi "stood firm when our democracy was under attack and helped lead the country through one of the most difficult moments in our history."
This is not Pelosi's first time endorsing Dunn. She backed him in 2024 as well. That endorsement didn't carry him very far. Dunn failed to win the Democratic primary that year in Maryland's 3rd Congressional District.
Now he's running in a different district entirely. The 5th is opening up because Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer is not seeking re-election.
Hoyer, for his part, has endorsed his own former campaign manager, Maryland Delegate Adrian Boafo, for the seat. So Dunn isn't just running against the Republican field eventually; he's navigating an intraparty fight where the outgoing incumbent's preferred successor is someone else, as Fox News reports.
Pelosi called Dunn "a true American hero and exactly the right person to represent Maryland in Congress." The question Maryland Democrats will have to answer is whether being present at the Capitol on January 6 constitutes a congressional résumé, or whether voters in the 5th District want something more from their representative.
Dunn's candidacy is a case study in a particular kind of Democratic branding that emerged after 2021: take a figure associated with January 6, elevate them to symbolic status, and convert that symbolism into political office. It worked for some. It hasn't worked for Dunn, at least not yet.
The language of the endorsement tells the story. Pelosi's statement doesn't mention a single policy position. Not healthcare. Not taxes. Not infrastructure. Not education.
Not anything that a voter in Bowie or College Park or Upper Marlboro might actually care about when deciding who represents them in Washington. The entire pitch is January 6, five years later.
There's a shelf life on that argument, and Democrats seem unwilling to test whether it's already expired. Dunn already lost one primary with this exact framing. Switching districts doesn't change the product. It just changes the audience.
Pelosi's endorsement matters less for what it says about Dunn than for what it reveals about the state of the Democratic bench. When a former Speaker of the House, one of the most powerful figures in modern Democratic politics, is spending her remaining political capital on a candidate who already lost a primary, it raises a straightforward question: Who else do they have?
The Democratic Party has spent years investing in narrative over governance. The January 6 committee. The endless hearings. The made-for-television moments. Dunn's candidacy is an extension of that project. It treats political theater as a qualification.
Hoyer's endorsement of Boafo suggests that at least some Maryland Democrats understand the district needs a candidate with actual legislative experience and local roots, not a national symbol parachuting into an open seat. Whether primary voters agree will say something about where the party's base actually is.
Fox News Digital reached out to Dunn's campaign but received no response as of the time of reporting.
Dunn served as a Capitol Police officer. That's an honorable profession. But honorable service in one role does not automatically translate into competence in another, and voters who lived through a primary where this same pitch fell short have every reason to ask what's different this time.
The answer, apparently, is the district. The messenger hasn't changed. The message hasn't changed. Pelosi hasn't changed. Only the zip codes have.
Jeffrey Epstein's longtime accountant told the House Oversight Committee under oath that he never witnessed any financial transaction between Epstein and President Donald Trump or anyone in Trump's family. Five witnesses have now testified to the same thing.
Richard Kahn, one of the executors of Epstein's estate, sat for a closed-door deposition on Wednesday at the Rayburn Building as part of the committee's investigation into how the federal government handled Epstein's case. Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., spoke to reporters afterward and delivered the headline Democrats clearly did not want.
"Mr. Kahn testified under oath that — because the Democrats asked this question — that he had never seen any type of transaction to Trump or anyone in his family."
Note the detail Comer tucked in there: "because the Democrats asked this question." They went fishing. They came back empty.
Comer made a point of tallying the results so far.
"That makes the fifth witness now that's testified under oath that they've never seen any involvement by Donald Trump or the family."
Five depositions. Five witnesses. Five times under oath. Zero evidence connecting the president to Epstein's financial network. At some point, the absence of evidence stops being a gap and starts being the answer. Democrats on the committee keep asking the same question, and the witnesses keep giving the same response. The investigation is doing exactly what investigations are supposed to do: follow facts wherever they lead, even when the destination disappoints one side of the aisle.
Kahn did confirm that five people paid significant sums of money to Epstein. Comer identified them:
Fox News reported that according to Comer, Kahn said Epstein was "under the impression" he made his money as a tax advisor and financial planner. Epstein was known to have served as a financial advisor for each of the five.
That list is where the real story lives. A convicted sex trafficker embedded himself among billionaires and dynastic wealth, and the question Congress should be pressing is how federal investigators allowed that arrangement to persist for as long as it did. The committee's mandate is to examine how the government handled Epstein's case, and the financial map Kahn sketched out provides far more meaningful terrain than the Trump-focused fishing expeditions Democrats keep launching.
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., offered reporters a different version of the deposition. He claimed Kahn testified that a "person who was an accuser of Donald Trump was given a settlement by Jeffrey Epstein's estate."
That framing lasted about as long as you'd expect. A person familiar with the deposition said Kahn's attorneys went back on the record to correct the claim.
"Earlier testimony from Kahn about the Trump accuser receiving a settlement from the Epstein estate is incorrect. When the Democrats asked about Jane Doe 4, they were talking about someone else. Kahn's attorneys went back on the record to clarify that the person the Dems thought was Jane Doe 4 was not an individual they had ever heard of."
So the Democrats' dramatic reveal required an immediate correction from the witness's own legal team. This is what happens when you build a question around a conclusion you've already reached. The facts refuse to cooperate.
Subramanyam also mentioned that "another head of state" came up during testimony as having financial transactions with Epstein. He did not elaborate on who that was. If that detail matters, and it likely does, it deserves the same scrutiny the committee has given every other lead. Names matter more than innuendo.
The Oversight Committee has now deposed multiple figures connected to Epstein's world, including Ghislaine Maxwell, in a closed-door session in February. Each round produces the same dynamic: Democrats arrive hoping to build a case against the president, and each round, the testimony fails to deliver one.
Five witnesses under oath is not a technicality. It is a consistent, repeated, sworn record. If even one of those witnesses had produced a receipt, a wire transfer, or a single documented connection, it would have led every newscast in the country. Instead, silence from the evidence and noise from the Democrats.
The serious questions in this investigation have always been about institutional failure. How did Epstein operate for so long? How did a man with a prior federal conviction for sex offenses maintain a financial advisory empire among the world's wealthiest people? Which prosecutors, which agencies, which officials looked the other way?
Those are the questions that protect future victims. Those are the questions that expose the rot. But they require following the evidence rather than a political obsession.
Five witnesses have now testified. The record speaks for itself.
President Donald Trump torched California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Truth Social Wednesday night, calling the Democrat's recent public remarks "perhaps the most self-destructive interview I've ever seen" and declaring his 2028 presidential ambitions dead on arrival.
The target of Trump's post: a weekend stop in Atlanta, where Newsom, promoting his forthcoming memoir, attempted to connect with a predominantly Black audience by emphasizing his own academic shortcomings. A short clip of those remarks circulated widely on social media and drew sharp criticism from across the political spectrum.
Trump did not mince words.
"In one fell swoop, he took himself out of even being considered as the Presidential Nominee of the Crazy Democrats."
He added that Newsom had described himself as "dumb, had low Boards, can't read, has dyslexia, and has a mental disorder," calling the performance "a politically suicidal act" and concluding flatly: "He is no longer a viable Presidential Candidate!"
During the Atlanta event, Newsom leaned into self-deprecation in a way that clearly was meant to read as humility. Speaking to an audience that included Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, the governor offered this, according to Newsmax:
"I'm not trying to impress you, I'm just trying to impress upon you, I'm like you. I'm not better than you. I'm a 960 SAT guy."
He went further, telling the crowd that they had never seen him read a speech "because I cannot read a speech." He later defended the remarks by referencing his lifelong struggle with dyslexia, saying his mother "didn't want my dyslexia to hold me back."
The defense might have landed differently if the audience were, say, a dyslexia advocacy group. Instead, Newsom chose to tell a room full of Black Americans that the way to prove he's "like you" is to announce he can barely read and scored a 960 on his SATs.
According to 2024 College Board data cited by the New York Post, the average SAT score for Black students is 907 out of 1,600, compared with 1,083 for white students. Newsom's self-reported 960 sits just above the Black student average and well below the white student average.
He chose that number. He chose that audience. The implication wasn't subtle.
Sen. Ted Cruz captured the dynamic in four words, writing on X that Newsom's remarks represented the "soft bigotry of low expectations." Rep. Randy Fine of Florida called them "disgusting." Even rapper Nicki Minaj weighed in, noting that Newsom's apparent strategy for bonding with Black people "is to tell them how stupid he is & that he can't read."
When you've lost Nicki Minaj, you've lost the room.
Newsom has been working to build a national profile ahead of a potential 2028 presidential run. The memoir tour, the out-of-state stops, the carefully curated relatability: all of it points toward a man who sees himself as the future of the Democratic Party. Atlanta wasn't a random stop. It was a signal.
But the signal he sent was not the one he intended. Instead of projecting the kind of aspirational competence that voters look for in a presidential candidate, Newsom chose to lead with weakness. He told a national audience that he can't read a speech. He bragged about a mediocre test score. He framed his own limitations as the connective tissue between himself and a Black audience, which says far more about how Newsom sees that audience than it does about his humility.
This is the core contradiction of the modern Democratic approach to minority voters. The party claims to champion Black excellence while its leaders repeatedly signal that the way to connect with Black Americans is to lower the bar. Newsom didn't walk into that room and talk about achievement, entrepreneurship, or opportunity. He walked in and said: I'm not very smart either.
Democrats have run this playbook for decades, and it's wearing thin. Black voters increasingly recognize the difference between a politician who respects them and one who performs relatability like a costume. Newsom's Atlanta moment was the costume slipping.
Newsom later posted a longer clip of the exchange on X, attempting to reframe the remarks around his dyslexia diagnosis. The pivot is understandable. Dyslexia is a real challenge, and there's nothing wrong with discussing it openly.
But context matters. Newsom didn't open up about dyslexia at a health conference or an education summit. He dropped it in the middle of a political performance designed to make a Black audience in a key Democratic city feel like he's one of them. The dyslexia defense doesn't erase the calculation that preceded it.
If anything, it raises a harder question for Democrats weighing their 2028 options. A candidate who generates this kind of bipartisan backlash during a book tour isn't going to fare better under the relentless pressure of a presidential primary. The self-inflicted wounds don't get smaller on a bigger stage. They get bigger.
Trump saw the opening and took it. So did Cruz, Fine, and Minaj. Newsom handed everyone of them the ammunition and then acted surprised when they fired.
Richard Kahn, Jeffrey Epstein's longtime accountant and one of the executors of his estate, testified under oath Wednesday that he had never seen any financial transaction connecting Donald Trump or anyone in his family to Epstein. The closed-door deposition before the House Oversight Committee marks the fifth witness to say the same thing.
Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., delivered the news to reporters outside the Rayburn Building with the kind of plainness that needs no embellishment:
"Mr. Kahn testified under oath that — because the Democrats asked this question — that he had never seen any type of transaction to Trump or anyone in his family."
Note the parenthetical. The Democrats asked the question. They got an answer they didn't want. Five times running.
Comer framed the testimony in the context of the committee's broader investigation into how the federal government handled Epstein's case, according to Fox News.
"That makes the fifth witness now that's testified under oath that they've never seen any involvement by Donald Trump or the family."
Kahn's deposition also shed light on where Epstein's money actually came from. According to Comer, Kahn said he was under the impression Epstein made his money as a tax advisor and financial planner. Comer identified five people who transferred significant sums of money to Epstein:
Trump was not among them. His name didn't appear on a ledger, a wire transfer, or a receipt. Five witnesses have now confirmed that under oath.
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., offered a different spin after the same deposition. He told reporters that a "person who was an accuser of Donald Trump was given a settlement by Jeffrey Epstein's estate." The implication was loud. The substance was thin.
The source material itself notes that such a settlement does not necessarily mean it was regarding Trump. And it got thinner still. A person familiar with the deposition said Kahn's attorneys went back on the record to clarify the issue entirely:
"Earlier testimony from Kahn about the Trump accuser receiving a settlement from the Epstein estate is incorrect. When the Democrats asked about Jane Doe 4, they were talking about someone else. Kahn's attorneys went back on the record to clarify that the person the Dems thought was Jane Doe 4 was not an individual they had ever heard of."
So the Democrats' headline moment collapsed before the deposition even ended. The attorneys corrected the record. The supposed link evaporated on contact with actual fact-checking.
Subramanyam also mentioned that "there was another head of state" with financial transactions tied to Epstein, though he declined to say who. A tantalizing claim with no follow-through. Standard fare.
This has become a familiar ritual. The House Oversight Committee deposes a witness. Democrats hunt for a Trump connection. The witness, under oath, confirms none exists. Democrats emerge with carefully worded insinuations that unravel within hours. Reporters carry the insinuation in the headline and bury the correction in paragraph twelve.
Five depositions. Five witnesses. Zero evidence of Trump's involvement. At some point, the absence of evidence after a sustained, motivated search becomes evidence of absence. The committee has now heard from Epstein's accountant, his confidante Ghislaine Maxwell in a prior closed-door session, and others. The financial trail leads to a handful of wealthy clients. It does not lead to Trump.
The left spent years treating the Epstein investigation as a guaranteed path to Trump's doorstep. They demanded transparency. They got it. Now the transparency is inconvenient.
The more productive question has always been the one the committee was chartered to answer: how did the federal government allow a convicted sex offender to operate for as long as he did? How did Epstein's network function? Who enabled it, and which institutions looked the other way?
Those are serious questions. They deserve a serious investigation. But every deposition that fails to produce a Trump connection gets less attention from the same people who once demanded the files be released. The concern was never really about accountability. It was about a political target.
Five witnesses have now testified under oath. The record is building, and it tells a clear story. Just not the one Democrats wanted to hear.
Jeremy Carl, President Trump's nominee for assistant secretary of state for international organizations, withdrew his candidacy on Tuesday after weeks of scrutiny over past remarks about American culture and white identity. The withdrawal came not because Democrats had the votes to block him, but because not every Republican on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations was willing to back him against unified Democratic opposition.
That distinction matters.
Carl needed unanimous GOP support on the committee to overcome what he described as the "unanimous opposition of Senate Democrats." He didn't get it. And so a nominee with the full backing of both the President and Secretary Rubio walked away from a post he was qualified to fill.
Carl announced his withdrawal on X, expressing gratitude to Trump for both the original nomination and the renomination that followed after the first expired:
"I wanted to announce that I am withdrawing my nomination for consideration as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs. I am tremendously grateful to President Trump for nominating me and then (upon expiration of my original nomination) renominating me for this role, and I am also grateful to Secretary Rubio and his team for their continued support throughout this long and time-consuming process."
He was blunt about what killed his confirmation:
"Unfortunately, for senior positions such as this one, the support of the President and Secretary of State is very important but not sufficient. We also needed the unanimous support of every GOP Senator on the Committee on Foreign Relations, given the unanimous opposition of Senate Democrats to my candidacy, and unfortunately, at this time this unanimous support was not forthcoming."
So the President wanted him. The Secretary of State wanted him. And a handful of Republican senators, facing the prospect of a political fight, decided they didn't want the hassle.
The controversy centered on Carl's past use of the phrase "white culture," which Democrats treated as a confession of racial supremacism rather than what Carl explained it to be. During his February confirmation hearing, Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy pressed Carl to explain what values he believed were disappearing and how "white culture" was being erased in America.
Carl's answer was straightforward. He described "white culture" as referring to a shared American civic culture, specifically the cultural traditions shared by most Americans before the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act. He argued that people of all backgrounds can participate in that culture. Whether you agree with his framing or find it clumsy, it is a recognizable argument about assimilation and civic identity. It is not white supremacy.
But nuance is not the currency of confirmation hearings. The phrase was extracted, weaponized, and deployed.
According to The Daily Caller, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused Carl of holding "a long history of racist, white supremacist, and antisemitic views." The accusation arrived the same day Carl withdrew, functioning less as an argument and more as a branding exercise. Attach the words "racist" and "white supremacist" to a nominee's name often enough, and the political math shifts, even among allies.
Carl recognized the tactic for what it was, firing back at Schumer directly:
"You appear to only disavow racism, antisemitism and racial supremacy if you think you can use those words as a cudgel to beat Republicans, which is why you haven't denounced the anti-White racist comments of Texas Democrat House leader Gene Wu or Democrat Congresswoman and U.S. Senate candidate Jasmine 'The only people that are crying are the mediocre White boys' Crockett."
The point Carl raises deserves more than a news cycle. Schumer frames himself as a guardian against racial extremism, yet Democratic officials who make openly racial remarks about white Americans face no calls for accountability from their own leadership. Jasmine Crockett, a sitting congresswoman and Senate candidate, publicly declared that "the only people that are crying are the mediocre White boys." Gene Wu's comments were apparently inflammatory enough for Carl to cite them. Neither generated a Schumer press conference.
This is not about keeping score on who said what. It is about whether the standard is consistent or whether "racism" is simply a word reserved for one side of the aisle.
Democrats did exactly what Democrats do. They found a phrase, stripped it of context, and turned it into a weapon. That is not surprising. It is not even interesting anymore. It is simply the process by which the left polices the boundaries of acceptable thought.
The more troubling question is why Republican senators on the Foreign Relations Committee couldn't hold the line for a nominee their own president selected twice and their own secretary of state publicly supported. Carl's remarks were defensible. His qualifications were apparently not in question. The only thing standing between him and confirmation was political discomfort.
Every time a Republican senator flinches at a Democratic attack line, it validates the tactic. It tells Schumer and his caucus that the "racist" label still works, that it can still peel off enough GOP votes to sink a nominee without a single substantive policy objection being raised. The incentive structure is simple: if the smear works, they will keep using it.
This is not the first time a conservative nominee has been torpedoed not by Democratic votes but by Republican hesitation. The confirmation process has become a credentialing system in which the left determines which conservative thinkers are acceptable for government service. Anyone who has written, spoken, or published outside the narrow band of approved discourse becomes a liability rather than an asset.
The result is a slow but steady filtering of the talent pool. Bold thinkers get replaced by safe ones. People who have actually engaged with the most contentious cultural debates of the era are deemed too controversial to serve, while the debates themselves rage on without them.
Carl wrote about American identity and assimilation. He argued that a shared civic culture was dissolving. Whether his language was optimal is a matter of taste. Whether his underlying observation is wrong is a matter no senator bothered to seriously contest.
Trump will nominate someone else for the post. That person will likely have a thinner paper trail and fewer interesting things to say about the state of American culture. The position will eventually be filled. The machinery moves on.
But the lesson lingers. If you want to serve in government, don't write books. Don't use phrases that can be clipped out of context. Don't engage with the questions that actually matter. Play it safe, say nothing memorable, and wait your turn.
That is the confirmation culture the Senate has built. Jeremy Carl just learned what it costs to have said something worth attacking.
President Trump told House Republicans in Miami on Monday that passing the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act is the single most important thing the party can do before the fall midterms, and he put Senate Democrats on notice: no SAVE Act, no signatures on anything else.
The bill, which would require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, cleared the House last month with the support of every Republican and one Democrat. It now heads to the Senate, where it needs 60 votes to pass. Republicans hold 53 seats. The math is obvious. So is the fight.
Trump framed the legislation in the plainest terms possible during his remarks at the House Republican retreat at Trump National Doral Miami:
"This is not complicated: voter identification."
He called it a "common sense measure" and "the easiest thing we have," then pointed to polling he said shows 86% of Democrats support voter ID laws. The holdouts, in his telling, aren't rank-and-file voters. They're the people running the Democratic Party.
"Democrats are at 86%, except for the people that run the Democrat Party, because they want to try and win elections illegally."
He didn't leave room for charitable interpretation.
"It's the only reason you vote against voter ID – because you want to cheat."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded exactly the way you'd expect from someone whose party has turned election integrity into a culture-war grenade. He labeled the SAVE Act "Jim Crow 2.0" and claimed it would "disenfranchise tens of millions of people," according to the New York Post.
Think about that claim for a moment. Tens of millions of American citizens, according to Schumer, cannot prove they are citizens. The argument collapses under the weight of its own absurdity. You need identification to board a plane, buy a firearm, open a bank account, or pick up a prescription. But requiring it to vote in a federal election is somehow an act of racial oppression.
Schumer then escalated the stakes in response to Trump's vow on Sunday to "not sign other Bills until this is passed."
"If Trump is saying he won't sign any bills until the SAVE Act is passed, then so be it: there will be total gridlock in the Senate."
He followed that with an even starker declaration:
"Senate Democrats will not help pass the SAVE Act under any circumstances."
Under any circumstances. Not "we have concerns about implementation." Not "we'd like to negotiate amendments." Under any circumstances. Schumer isn't opposing a specific provision. He's opposing the concept of verifying that voters in American elections are Americans.
Trump, being Trump, didn't limit himself to policy arguments. He took a shot at Schumer that landed somewhere between insult and observation, calling him "a horrible politician" and adding that Schumer "is now a Palestinian. Officially, he is registered as a Palestinian." The remark was a jab at Schumer's leftward drift on Israel and his willingness to align with the progressive wing of his party on virtually every issue that matters to them.
The quip will generate headlines. The substance underneath it shouldn't get lost. Schumer has positioned himself and every Senate Democrat as a wall against voter ID, a policy supported by overwhelming majorities of the American public, including, by Trump's cited figures, the vast majority of Democratic voters themselves.
That's the contradiction worth watching. Democratic leadership is not representing Democratic voters on this issue. They're representing a strategic interest in keeping the voting process as porous as possible.
Trump's case to House Republicans was straightforward: pass the SAVE Act and make Democrats own their opposition to it heading into November.
"They're doing everything possible because they know if we get this, they probably won't win an election for 50 years."
He paused, then added: "Maybe longer."
Whether or not the bill clears the Senate, the political logic is sound. Voter ID polls at supermajority levels across party lines. Forcing a vote, or forcing Democrats to block one, creates a clean contrast heading into the midterms. Republicans stand for verifying citizenship. Democrats stand against it. That's not a complicated message to communicate to voters.
Trump also acknowledged that Republicans who push election integrity measures "fight like hell," but conceded "boy, do they get killed," a reference to the media and institutional backlash that accompanies any attempt to tighten voting procedures. The acknowledgment matters. It signals to House members that the White House understands the political cost and is willing to absorb it alongside them.
The SAVE Act needs seven Senate Democrats to reach 60 votes. Schumer has promised that zero will defect. That means one of two things happens:
Trump, for his part, dodged questions at a Monday press conference about whether his vow to withhold signatures extends to specific legislation, including funding for the Department of Homeland Security. The ambiguity is itself a pressure tool. Every piece of legislation Senate Democrats want now sits behind a single gate: prove you believe only citizens should vote.
Schumer called it gridlock. Trump might call it leverage. The distinction depends entirely on which side you think is defending something worth defending.
Eighty-six percent of Democrats support voter ID. Their leaders would rather shut down the Senate than let it happen. That gap between the party and its voters isn't a polling anomaly. It's the whole story.
President Trump will travel to Hebron, Kentucky, on Wednesday to rally support for Ed Gallrein, the former Navy SEAL he endorsed to unseat Rep. Thomas Massie in the state's upcoming Republican primary. Gallrein's campaign confirmed he will be at the event. Massie will not.
The visit marks a rare move by a sitting president: campaigning directly in a fellow Republican's home district to end his career. Hebron sits in Boone County, just south of Cincinnati, squarely inside Massie's turf along the Ohio River. The primary election is May 19th, just a little more than two months away.
Trump will also make a stop in Ohio. White House spokesperson Liz Huston framed the trip in economic terms:
"President Trump will visit the great states of Ohio and Kentucky on Wednesday to tout his economic victories and detail his administration's aggressive, ongoing efforts to lower prices and make America more affordable."
But the Kentucky leg of the trip carries a message that has nothing to do with grocery bills.
Thomas Massie is a seven-term congressman who has refused to support Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill," criticized the president's foreign policy, and accused him of executive overreach on military actions, including operations against drug boats and Iran. Trump has railed against Massie as "the worst Republican," and the frustration has only deepened.
As the New York Post reported, speaking to House Republicans at their retreat at Trump Doral on Monday, Trump didn't name Massie directly but left little mystery about his target:
"We have to get a couple of people on board, which at least one case is virtually impossible. I wonder who that might be, sick person."
A senior administration official was more explicit, telling The Post that Massie's opposition has crossed a line from principled disagreement into something less useful:
"You can have differences, but you have to be constructive. He is not constructive. In fact, he's the Democrats' favorite member."
That last line deserves attention. In a House where margins are razor-thin, a Republican who consistently hands the opposition its talking points and its votes isn't a maverick. He's a liability.
There is a long and honorable tradition of intraparty disagreement in American politics. Nobody expects 100 percent loyalty on every vote. But there is a difference between a member who negotiates behind closed doors and ultimately gets to yes, and one who builds a brand around being the loudest "no" in the room.
Massie has positioned himself as the latter. He has:
To his credit, Massie led the charge on demanding the Justice Department release all its files in the Jeffrey Epstein case. That's a position with broad support on the right. But one good call doesn't erase a pattern of obstruction on the issues that matter most to the GOP agenda right now.
His campaign's response to the Hebron rally was telling: "Congressman Massie will not be attending as he has a previously scheduled official event." Clean, bloodless, and entirely beside the point. The president of the United States is coming to your district to tell your voters you need to go. Whether you attend is not the story.
Ed Gallrein offers the kind of profile that Republican primary voters in a district like this tend to reward: a former Navy SEAL who has praised Trump, his policies, and his handling of the conflict with Iran. Where Massie criticizes, Gallrein supports. Where Massie obstructs, Gallrein signals he'll execute.
That contrast is the entire campaign in miniature. Trump doesn't need members who agree with him privately and grandstand publicly. He needs votes. With the legislative calendar pressing forward and the "Big Beautiful Bill" still in play, every seat matters, and every reliable vote matters more.
Trump told the House Republican retreat that the party's unity is historic:
"The Republican Party has fantastic spirit, the level I don't think has been seen before."
A Wednesday rally in Boone County is how you make sure that spirit translates into results. Massie's district will decide on May 19th whether it wants a congressman who fights the president or one who fights alongside him.
The president just made that choice a whole lot easier to see.