Nancy Guthrie, the mother of Today show co-host Savannah Guthrie, has been missing for almost six weeks after she was last seen at her Arizona home on January 31. She was reported missing the following day. Authorities believe she was kidnapped, and drops of her blood were found on the front porch of her house.
The FBI last month released surveillance images of a masked man on Nancy Guthrie's porch on the night she disappeared. Authorities have not publicly identified the person, whom they called a suspect, but described him as a male about 5-foot-9 or 5-foot-10 with an average build carrying a 25-liter Ozark Trail Hiker Pack backpack. Alleged ransom notes were sent to multiple news outlets. The family is offering a $1-million reward for information leading to her recovery, with a separate reward of more than $200,000 for information about her whereabouts or that could lead to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved.
Nancy Guthrie also needs vital daily medication, adding an urgent medical dimension to an already desperate situation.
This week, retired FBI agent Maureen O'Connell offered a striking analysis of the blood evidence found at the scene, telling NewsNation's Brian Entin that the pattern of the droplets suggests Guthrie did not leave on her own.
"What I do believe is she was carried out. I don't believe she walked out. I believe she was carried out by two people and I say that because of the blood droplets, the fact that there's no void, the fact that there's no footprints, it's almost like two guys carried her and her head tilted in some way shape or form and it just came out right there."
That analysis, if accurate, reshapes the picture considerably. It implies planning, coordination, and at least two perpetrators. It also suggests violence occurred inside the home before Guthrie was removed from it.
Meanwhile, April Stonehouse, a forensics professor at Arizona State University and a former DNA analyst for government crime laboratories, told Entin she was "hopeful" investigators would find usable DNA samples from the scene. She noted that blood, semen, and saliva are the most useful substances for DNA analysis and described the presence of biological evidence as "a good thing" for the investigation.
Stonehouse acknowledged the limitations, noting that "you are at the mercy of what the suspect left behind," but said investigators would be looking for items that they think the suspect handled or used.
"I would be hopeful that they found at least a few items of evidence. It's just a matter of locating it and finding it."
She also referenced the use of DNA analysis in the Golden State killer case, a reminder that even cold trails can eventually yield identifications when the forensic work is thorough.
On February 27, the Pima County Sheriff's Department issued a statement signaling a shift in how it is allocating resources to the case, according to Newsweek:
"This remains an active investigation and will continue until Nancy Guthrie is located or all leads have been exhausted. The Pima County Sheriff's Department is refocusing resources to detectives specifically assigned to this case. As leads are developed and resolved, resource allocation may fluctuate. PCSD will maintain a patrol presence in the Guthrie neighborhood."
Read that carefully. "Refocusing resources to detectives specifically assigned" is bureaucratic language for tightening the circle. It can mean the department is moving from a wide canvas to a more targeted pursuit, which could indicate they have leads worth concentrating on. It could also mean exactly what critics might fear: the visible, large-scale response is being scaled back.
Either way, six weeks into a kidnapping case with blood evidence, surveillance footage of a suspect, and no recovery, the pressure on law enforcement is enormous. The public has a right to expect urgency that matches the severity of the crime.
Last week, Savannah Guthrie posted on Instagram with a message that was equal parts gratitude and plea:
"We feel the love and prayers from our neighbors, from the Tucson community and from around the country.…Please don't stop praying and hoping with us. bring her home."
There is nothing political about a daughter asking the country to help find her mother. There is nothing partisan about the expectation that law enforcement will devote every available resource to bringing a kidnapped woman home alive. But the case raises questions that conservatives have been asking for years about public safety, the adequacy of local law enforcement resources, and whether communities across America can count on swift and sustained investigative attention when violent crime strikes.
It seems as though despite the time that has passed, someone knows something about what happened to Nancy Guthrie. The question is, will investigators discover it before it's too late?
A 55-year-old Brooklyn man is dead after being punched in the face by a stranger on a New York City subway platform Saturday evening. The suspect fled and, as of late Saturday night, remains at large.
The fatal encounter unfolded on the northbound C and E train platform at the 34th Street-Penn subway station just before 7 p.m. According to law enforcement sources who spoke to the New York Post, the victim apparently bumped into the suspect on the platform. That exploded into a heated argument. Police sources said the suspect then pummeled the man's face, leaving him to stumble around the platform for a few minutes before he collapsed.
A 911 call reported an unconscious man on the platform. Police found him unresponsive. First responders attempted life-saving measures before rushing him to Lenox Hill Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The attacker fled. The New York Police Department told the Gothamist that an investigation remains ongoing and no arrest had been made as of late Saturday. Authorities have yet to release the victim's identity. The assailant apparently remains at large.
There is no mystery about what kind of city produces an incident like this. A man bumps into a stranger in a crowded subway station during the early evening. Within moments, he is dead. His killer walks away and vanishes into the city.
This is not an anomaly. It is the predictable result of years of treating public safety in New York's transit system as a secondary concern, something to be managed with social workers and reduced enforcement rather than the visible, assertive policing that once made the subway rideable for eight million people a day.
The details here are sparse, and that itself is telling. The Post obtained a blurry photo of the suspect on the platform, according to Breitbart, but no physical description has been released to the public. A man is dead, his killer is walking free somewhere in the five boroughs, and the public has been given almost nothing to work with. If the goal is to actually catch this person, that approach is difficult to explain.
New York's subway system has long functioned as a barometer of the city's willingness to maintain order. When the system is safe, it signals that basic civic expectations still hold. When it isn't, everything downstream suffers. Businesses lose customers. Workers drive instead of riding. Tourism takes a hit. The people who suffer most are working-class New Yorkers who have no alternative, the ones who cannot afford a cab or an Uber every time they need to get across town.
A man should be able to accidentally bump into another person in a crowded subway station without it becoming a death sentence. That used to be an unremarkable expectation. The fact that it now reads as almost naive tells you everything about where New York's public safety culture has drifted.
The political class in New York has spent years agonizing over whether police are too visible in the subway, whether fare enforcement is equitable, and whether quality-of-life policing disproportionately affects certain communities. Meanwhile, a 55-year-old man from Brooklyn rode the train on a Saturday evening and never came home.
The NYPD says the investigation is ongoing. That is the bare minimum. What matters now is whether this case receives the resources and urgency it demands, or whether it quietly fades into the background noise of New York's violent crime statistics.
Every New Yorker who steps onto a subway platform is making an implicit act of trust in the city's ability to keep them safe. Saturday night at Penn Station, that trust was betrayed in the most fundamental way possible. A man bumped into a stranger, and it cost him his life.
His killer is still out there.
A body discovered without a head, hands, or clothing on a rural road in upstate New York in March 1970 has finally been identified as Clyde A. Coppage, a 35-year-old originally from Pennsylvania. His killer remains unknown.
New York State Police announced the identification this week, the result of DNA advancements and FBI assistance that closed one chapter of a case that has haunted Allegany County for more than half a century. But the most important chapter, who murdered and dismembered Coppage and dumped his body on Davis Hill Road in Andover, remains wide open.
When Coppage's remains were found in 1970, investigators had almost nothing to work with. No head. No hands. No clothing. No identification of any kind. The mutilation appeared deliberate, designed to make identification impossible.
Trooper James O'Callaghan noted that the evidence suggested Coppage was killed and dismembered somewhere else before his body was left on the road. Whoever did this didn't just commit murder. They tried to erase a man's identity, as Fox News reports.
And for 56 years, it worked.
Coppage was never reported missing. A man from Pennsylvania was found dead in rural New York, with no one looking for him. That detail alone raises questions that the passage of time makes harder, not easier, to answer. Who was Clyde Coppage? What brought him to Allegany County? And who wanted him not just dead but unrecognizable?
The New York State Police did not give up on the case. As the agency stated in its release:
"Over the course of nearly 56 years, investigating members of the New York State Police continued to track down every lead, but the identity of the male remained unknown."
In June 2022, investigators exhumed Coppage's body to develop a DNA profile. With the FBI's assistance, that profile eventually produced an identification. The specific technology and process that made it possible were not detailed, but the result speaks for itself: a nameless victim finally has a name.
It is worth pausing on that timeline. The exhumation happened nearly four years ago. The identification came only now. DNA work at this level is painstaking, and the fact that law enforcement pursued it at all on a case this old reflects a commitment to resolution that deserves recognition.
The Bureau of Criminal Investigation out of NYSP Amity is now asking the public for help with any information about Coppage or his killer. The investigation remains active.
Fifty-six years is a long time. Whoever killed Clyde Coppage may well be dead themselves. But "may" is not "is," and cold cases have been broken on less. The identification itself proves that. A case everyone assumed was unsolvable just yielded its biggest breakthrough in half a century.
There is something deeply unsettling about a murder designed to strip a person of their very identity. It is not just violence. It is an attempt at annihilation, to make someone disappear so completely that the world never even knows to ask what happened to them. For 56 years, that plan succeeded. Coppage existed in the files only as an unidentified set of remains on a back road in Andover.
He has his name back now. What he still needs is justice.
A federal judge ruled Saturday that Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty can sit in on Monday's Kennedy Center board meeting, receive documents about President Trump's plan to close the center for two years of renovations, and even speak her piece. What the judge did not do: force the board to let her vote.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper concluded that Beatty, an ex officio member through her position in Congress, is entitled to participate. But he drew the line at compelling a vote, finding she hadn't carried her burden on that front.
"The Court finds, however, that Beatty has not carried her burden as to her right to vote, at least at this very early stage."
Cooper added that the "marginal harm" to Beatty from not voting is limited since she can lodge objections on the record and attempt to persuade her colleagues. In other words, she gets the microphone but not the ballot. A distinction that tells you everything about the strength of her legal position, as CNBC reports.
Beatty sued to preclude the Trump administration from excluding her from Monday's session, where the board is expected to decide whether to approve the president's proposal to shutter the Kennedy Center on July 4 for a two-year renovation. She told reporters outside the courthouse that she went to court "to stand up for the rule of law and democracy."
Her lawyer, Nathaniel Zelinsky, framed the request as routine:
"We're not asking for something unusual. It's my friends on the other side you are asking you to deviate from the norm."
But let's be honest about what this lawsuit was really about. One Democratic congresswoman wanted to insert herself into a board decision she disagrees with. She got access, which is fine. She didn't get veto power, which is better.
During Thursday's arguments, Cooper pressed Justice Department lawyer William Jankowski on why Beatty hadn't been given details about the closure plan. "Why not just give her the information?" the judge asked. "How is the government harmed?" Jankowski responded that the information "should be provided to Beatty and other meeting participants by Monday," adding cryptically that "an action isn't final until it's final."
The Kennedy Center saga is one of the more interesting subplots of the second Trump term. During his first stint in office, Trump paid the institution little mind. Some honorees threatened to boycott if he participated, and he ended up skipping all four of the annual honors awards programs during that period. The relationship was, at best, indifferent.
This time around is a different story entirely. Since returning to the office in January 2025, Trump has shown a far higher level of interest than any recent president. Consider what he's done:
In December, the board voted to add Trump's name alongside Kennedy's on the building's exterior. It was done the following day.
On Friday, Trump announced that Richard Grenell, the ally he appointed as the center's president, will step down and be succeeded by Matt Floca, who manages the Kennedy Center's facilities operations. That transition is expected to be finalized at Monday's meeting.
Trump has complained about the building's appearance, and the complaints aren't without basis. The building has fallen on hard times. Numerous artists have canceled performances. Attendance has dropped off. A $257 million renovation commitment isn't the act of someone trying to destroy a cultural institution. It's the act of someone trying to save one that the people who claim to love it have allowed to deteriorate.
That's the part Beatty and her allies would rather not discuss. They want to frame this as an assault on the arts. What it looks like, from the outside, is a president who secured a quarter-billion dollars in funding, installed competent leadership, and proposed a renovation plan to restore a building that needs it.
Beatty told reporters: "I want to know where your money, our money, is going." A fair question in the abstract. But she's an ex officio member of a board that has a chairman, appointed leadership, and congressional funding already in place. Her lawsuit wasn't about transparency. If it were, she'd have been satisfied with the judge's order granting her access to documents and a seat at the table.
She wanted a vote. The court said no.
Monday's meeting will proceed. Beatty will be in the room. She'll have her documents, her speaking time, and her objections on the record. What she won't have is the power to block a renovation that Congress already funded.
Sometimes a seat at the table is exactly what it sounds like: a chair.
An 18-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador who enrolled as a junior at a Virginia high school has been charged with nine counts of assault and battery after allegedly groping 12 female classmates over a period of several months. Israel Flores Ortiz, who is almost 19, was accused of repeatedly creeping up behind students in crowded hallways and grabbing them between the legs at Fairfax High School, located 20 miles outside of Washington, D.C.
Ortiz entered the country illegally in 2024 and was released under a federal government policy during the Biden administration, according to local outlet 7News. He appeared in court on Friday following his arrest on March 7. A Fairfax County judge denied him bail this week after reviewing surveillance video and determining the proposed conditions did not adequately protect the public.
The prosecutors did not oppose his release. The judge overruled them anyway. That detail alone tells you everything about who was taking this seriously and who wasn't.
Parents say Ortiz's behavior had been going on for months before his arrest. The mother of one alleged victim described the pattern in plain terms:
"He just sneakily walked up behind them and put his hand in between their legs."
She made clear this was not an ambiguous contact:
"It was not just a butt smack or a butt grab. It was a groping of a private area. It had been occurring for several months."
Police listed February 25 as the official offense date, but the mother indicated roughly 12 girls had reported the assaults. Principal Georgina Aye sent a letter to parents on March 12, days after Ortiz's arrest, describing the conduct as "inappropriately touching other students" and "touching students' buttocks while they were transitioning in the hallways."
Notice the language. "Inappropriately touching." "Transitioning in the hallways." The principal's letter reads like it was drafted by a liability attorney, not an educator responsible for the safety of teenage girls. A grown man was grabbing children between the legs for months, and the official communication to parents couldn't even describe what happened honestly, as New York Post reports.
Ortiz entered the country illegally in 2024 and was released into the interior under a Biden-era federal policy. He then enrolled as a high school junior despite being nearly 19 years old. Every layer of institutional screening that should have flagged an adult illegal immigrant sitting in classrooms with minors failed to do so, or never existed in the first place.
After his arrest, ICE lodged a detainer seeking custody of Ortiz for deportation. The agency said the Fairfax County Sheriff's Office failed to honor it.
An ICE spokesperson did not mince words:
"Unfortunately, sanctuary politicians like Gov. (Abigail) Spanberger are outlawing cooperation with ICE and choosing to RELEASE criminal illegal aliens from their jails back onto their communities to create more American victims."
"We are calling on Fairfax County to honor our detainer to ensure this violent criminal is removed from our country so he can never claim another victim again."
Fairfax County's refusal to cooperate with ICE is not a passive bureaucratic oversight. It is an active policy choice. Local officials decided that shielding an illegal immigrant charged with serially groping teenage girls from federal immigration enforcement was the moral high ground. That is the logical terminus of sanctuary policy: the people it protects are not the people it claims to protect.
Ortiz faces misdemeanor assault and battery charges, not sexual assault. The maximum penalty is one year in jail. For nine counts. For months of alleged predatory behavior against at least 12 girls.
One parent called the county's response "abysmal" and said officials "attempted to diminish what happened to these girls." That is not an unreasonable reading. When you describe a grown man grabbing minors between the legs as "inappropriately touching" and charge it as simple battery, you are communicating a message to those girls about how seriously the system takes what happened to them.
Fairfax County Public Schools offered the predictable boilerplate in a statement to 7News:
"While Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) is unable to comment on specifics due to federal and state privacy laws, we prioritize student and staff safety and we fully investigate any time someone shares that an incident has occurred at school, or that they do not feel safe at school."
They "prioritize student and staff safety." They "fully investigate." And yet an adult illegal immigrant allegedly groped a dozen girls for months inside their building before anyone was arrested.
Every institution in this story failed in a predictable direction. The Biden administration released Ortiz into the country. The school system enrolled him without catching that a near-19-year-old illegal immigrant had no business in an 11th-grade classroom. The school let the behavior continue for months. The prosecutors didn't oppose bail. The sheriff's office refused to honor the ICE detainer. The principal's letter sanitized what happened.
At no point did any institution prioritize the safety of those 12 girls over the procedural comfort of protecting an illegal immigrant from consequences. Not one flagged his enrollment. Not one acted swiftly on the reports. Not one cooperated with federal authorities after his arrest.
This is what sanctuary policy produces in practice. Not a principled stand for civil liberties, but a cascading series of institutional failures in which every actor defers to the next, and the only people left unprotected are the victims. Twelve teenage girls learned that lesson in the hallways of Fairfax High School.
Walter Carter Jr., the president of Ohio State University, resigned Monday after disclosing what the school called an "inappropriate relationship" with "someone seeking public resources." Carter had held the position for barely two years.
The university announced the departure in a statement, though it offered almost nothing in the way of specifics. Neither the identity of the person involved nor the nature of the relationship appeared in the school's announcement. What did appear was a careful selection of language designed to convey seriousness while revealing as little as possible.
Carter, according to the New York Times, acknowledged he had "made a mistake in allowing inappropriate access to Ohio State leadership to support her personal business." That single sentence does more work than the entire university statement. It confirms the relationship involved a woman, that she had a private business interest, and that Carter used his position to open doors for her.
Carter went to work at Ohio State in January 2024 on a contract running through 2028 with a salary of about $1.2 million. He is a former vice admiral and naval flight officer who served as superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy, president of the U.S. Naval War College, and president of the University of Nebraska before arriving in Columbus.
That résumé makes the fall steeper. This was not some mid-career administrator with a thin portfolio. Carter carried the weight of military command and institutional leadership at the highest levels. The expectation that accompanies credentials like those is not merely competence but integrity. Ohio State hired a man whose career was built on discipline and accountability. What they got was someone who, by his own admission, compromised university access for someone's private gain.
John W. Zeiger, chairman of the university's board, wrote a letter accepting Carter's resignation. His public statement was measured but unmistakable, Breitbart reported:
"The Board was surprised and disappointed to learn of this matter and takes the situation and its potential impact on the university very seriously."
"Surprised and disappointed" is board-speak, but the phrase "potential impact on the university" signals that the board understands the damage may extend well beyond one man's career. When someone with the keys to a flagship public university grants "inappropriate access" to advance a private business, the questions multiply fast. What resources were offered? What decisions were influenced? Who else knew?
The most striking feature of this episode is the vacuum at its center. The university disclosed almost nothing:
That level of opacity from a public institution spending public money should concern every Ohio taxpayer. Ohio State is not a private company handling a quiet personnel matter. It is one of the largest public universities in the country, and its president was drawing a seven-figure salary from funds that ultimately trace back to the people of Ohio. The public deserves more than a carefully worded press release.
Zeiger closed his letter with a notably diplomatic line:
"We respect your decision and appreciate your cooperation in supporting an orderly leadership transition."
Translation: Carter cooperated, so the board let him walk out the front door. That may be the pragmatic choice for institutional stability, but it leaves the impression that elite leaders at elite institutions still get to manage the terms of their own accountability.
This story fits a pattern that conservatives have watched develop across American higher education for years. University presidencies have become less about academic stewardship and more about institutional empire-building. Salaries climb into the millions. Administrative layers multiply. And the culture at the top starts to resemble corporate boardrooms where conflicts of interest are managed rather than prevented.
Carter's admission that he allowed "inappropriate access" to support a private business is not just a personal failure. It is a window into how university leadership operates when the money is large enough and the oversight is loose enough. Public universities enjoy enormous autonomy. Their boards are often composed of political appointees and donors whose incentive is to protect the brand, not to scrutinize the president's calendar.
The result is a system where a scandal like this surfaces only when the president himself decides to come forward, and even then, the institution releases the minimum information necessary to close the chapter.
Carter resigned. That is a consequence. But resignation without disclosure is damage control, not accountability. If a state legislator had granted government access to a private individual to advance her business interests, the calls for investigation would be immediate. The standard should not be lower because the institution is a university rather than a statehouse.
Ohio State's board now faces a choice. It can treat this as a closed matter, appoint an interim president, and move on. Or it can answer the questions that its own statement deliberately left open. The first option is easier. The second is what a public institution owes the public.
A man who commanded warships and led service academies walked away from a $1.2 million job because he opened the wrong doors for the wrong person. The university that hired him would prefer you not ask which doors or how far they opened.
Three journalists are waiting on a federal judge to decide whether Washington State's legislature can lock them out of covering its final days in session, after their applications for press credentials were denied in what their attorneys call a clear violation of the First Amendment.
U.S. District Judge David Estudillo indicated a decision could come as early as late Monday or early Tuesday, with the 2026 legislative session scheduled to adjourn Thursday. The ruling will determine whether plaintiffs Brandi Kruse, Jonathan Choe, and Ari Hoffman receive emergency press passes in time to cover the session's conclusion.
The case, brought by the Citizen Action Defense Fund on behalf of the three journalists, was removed from Thurston County Superior Court to federal court on March 2. At its core is a question that should trouble anyone who takes press freedom seriously: Does the government get to decide which journalists are real enough to watch it work?
The defense, represented by attorney Jessica Goldman of Summit Law Group, argued that the plaintiffs are not independent journalists but political participants who don't deserve credentials. Goldman contended that the three have crossed a line from reporting to activism, Just the News reported.
"The plaintiffs here are not just attending an event, which journalists do all the time. These plaintiffs did way more than that, they were the leaders of these events. They were the keynote speakers … they have attached their fame and notoriety to trying to get these legislative … these laws passed by the legislature."
Goldman called the plaintiffs "actors in the arena" and argued that press independence requires separation from political parties and constituent groups. She further argued:
"The press must be independent from the government and from political party, their constituent groups, and the many organizations which have a stake in legislative proceedings."
It's a tidy argument, right up until you think about it for more than ten seconds.
The premise of Goldman's argument is that journalists who hold opinions, attend rallies, or advocate for causes forfeit their right to cover the government. If that standard were applied consistently, half the press galleries in America would be empty by Friday.
Editorial journalism is not a loophole. It is a tradition older than the Republic. The founders who wrote the First Amendment were themselves pamphleteers, polemicists, and partisans. The idea that "opinion" journalism disqualifies someone from covering government proceedings would have baffled every signer of the Constitution.
CADF Executive Director Jackson Maynard made exactly this point at Monday's hearing:
"My clients are allowed to take sides. They engage in political editorial work, and they are allowed to do that. Freedom of the press does not pass by the founders solely to protect speech that favored the government."
That last line deserves to sit with you. The freedom of the press was designed precisely to protect coverage the government doesn't like. The moment credentialing becomes a tool for filtering out unfriendly voices, it stops being an administrative process and becomes a gatekeeping operation.
This fight didn't materialize out of nowhere. In 2025, the Capitol Correspondents Association gave up press credentialing responsibilities after The Center Square was initially denied credentials, and Choe and others pushed the issue. That history matters. It suggests a pattern: journalists who don't fit a particular ideological mold encounter friction when they try to cover state government.
When the entity responsible for credentialing walks away from the job rather than apply its standards fairly, that tells you something about those standards.
Whatever body now handles press credentials for the Washington State Legislature (the source material does not identify the current credentialing authority) denied all three plaintiffs. The suit contends this denial violates both federal and state constitutional protections for freedom of the press and due process.
Maynard framed the stakes plainly outside the courtroom:
"I think this case is really just about press freedom and whether or not the government has an appropriate goal in deciding who gets access to them to be able to do their jobs and make sure this legislative process is transparent."
The phrase Maynard kept returning to is worth noting. He called his clients "the eyes and ears of the people in the legislative process." That framing matters because it redirects the conversation away from the journalists themselves and toward the public they serve.
When a credential is denied, it isn't just the reporter who loses access. It's every reader, viewer, and listener who relies on that reporter's coverage. The question isn't whether Kruse, Choe, and Hoffman deserve to be in the building. It's whether the people who follow their work deserve to know what's happening inside it.
"There really should be a kaleidoscope of different perspectives. You know, opinions that are critical of policy, and maybe some there are supportive and some that are neutral so that people can get the truth."
Maynard's point here is almost disarmingly reasonable. A healthy press corps includes voices that challenge the government, voices that support it, and voices that try to play it straight. Filtering for only one type isn't neutrality. It's curation.
The timing of this case adds urgency that no appeal can fix. The 2026 session adjourns on Thursday. If Judge Estudillo rules against the plaintiffs or simply takes too long, the question becomes moot for this session. The journalists miss the coverage. The public misses the reporting. And the precedent, or lack of one, carries forward.
Maynard acknowledged the compressed timeline but signaled the fight won't end with this session:
"We don't have a lot of time before the end of session, but we will evaluate the court's order in light of the importance of this issue."
That's the right posture. Win or lose this week, the underlying constitutional question isn't going anywhere. If a state government can deny press credentials based on a journalist's viewpoint, every opinion writer, editorial board member, and commentator in America should be paying attention.
The First Amendment doesn't protect only the reporters the government finds convenient. It was written for the inconvenient ones.
Charlotte Manley, the woman who served as Prince Andrew's private secretary and treasurer for years, has emerged as what royal watchers are calling a "key witness" in the investigation into the disgraced royal's conduct. Manley told The Times she would be willing to speak with police, offering a telling caveat in the process.
"I would rather talk to the police than the press, not that I would have much to tell them."
That last clause may prove to be the understatement of the year.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, stripped of his royal titles and now referred to by his legal name, was arrested on February 19 on suspicion of misconduct in public office in relation to his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. The investigation, dubbed Operation Ironville, has since widened. Current and former staff are being questioned by police. And Manley, who held her position from 1996 through 2003 and frequently accompanied Andrew on trips abroad during his tenure as the U.K.'s special representative for trade and investment, sits at the center of it all.
British broadcaster and photographer Helena Chard told Fox News Digital this week that Manley is the "talk of the town" and that those connected to Andrew "are feeling increasing public expectation and pressure to come forward." Chard described Manley as a "dutiful British citizen" and predicted she would "offer a few gems which will lead to further investigation and more people coming forward."
One gem in particular has already attracted scrutiny: a £75 cheque Manley signed from Buckingham Palace funds to pay a masseuse. The Times reported the massage was arranged by Ghislaine Maxwell in 2000 and paid for from a Buckingham Palace account. The masseuse in question, Monique Giannelloni, a woman who ran a massage clinic in London, told The Daily Mail last year that she was "embarrassed" when Andrew appeared nude for the appointment.
"He did not do anything or suggest anything untoward, but I was very uncomfortable, and a bit shocked that he had acted like that."
Royal expert Ian Pelham Turner cautioned that the "innuendo of a masseur is a euphemism for a sexual act as similar to the Epstein stories, but in reality it could have been a normal massage by a trained professional for an injury." He noted Andrew goes horseback riding most mornings and might simply be prone to back pain. Fair enough. But a massage arranged by Ghislaine Maxwell, paid with palace money, and signed off by a secretary who now wants to cooperate with police does not exactly scream routine physiotherapy.
Royal expert Hilary Fordwich suggested Manley could share details about Andrew's off-camera behavior during trade envoy trips abroad, where she accompanied him frequently. Fordwich raised pointed questions about "who approved payments linked to travel, hospitality, or services arranged by Maxwell's network." She also suggested Manley "might attempt to reshape the narrative, shifting from Epstein introductions to patterns of palace-enabled impropriety."
Perhaps most significantly, Fordwich said Manley likely maintained detailed logs of Andrew's activities during her years of service, records that could help authorities corroborate other allegations and reveal "how access to Andrew was arranged and who facilitated such."
Fordwich added that Manley "might well feel compelled by a sense of duty" now that King Charles III has publicly stated the "law must take its course." That royal endorsement of full cooperation changes the calculus for anyone sitting on information. Loyalty to Andrew is one thing. Loyalty to a man your own king has declined to shield is quite another.
The investigation's blast radius now extends well beyond Andrew himself. Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams said Andrew's daughters, princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, are "increasingly to be moving into the line of fire as more details of their parents' links to Epstein emerge." Fitzwilliams noted that Eugenie has already stepped down as patron of Anti-Slavery International, a move that carries its own grim irony given the nature of the allegations surrounding her father's associates.
Fitzwilliams added that The Mail reported neither princess will join the royal party at Royal Ascot or appear at royal events "foreseeably," calling it what it likely is:
"This almost certainly marks the beginning of the end of their royal appearances. Questions are also being asked about how their jet-set lifestyle was funded in earlier years."
Royal commentator Meredith Constant went further, citing a source who said the palace is planning to distance itself from both daughters. Constant said she was told, "they wouldn't be surprised if titles for the girls and the use of royal housing were stripped." She also raised a question that has apparently circulated for some time.
"There have been people sounding the alarm for years that Andrew and Sarah might have gotten their daughters involved in some of the family business."
Constant framed the core issue plainly: "What it comes down to, as it does with every Royal, quite frankly, is financial transparency. Is everything above board? Where is the money coming from and why?"
The scale of the institutional damage is becoming difficult to contain. Turner described the situation as the "biggest mess of the twenty-first century for the Royal family," noting that both King Charles and Prince William were heckled by protesters at the Commonwealth service in London on Monday. The crowd voiced not just anger over the Andrew affair but broader calls for the end of the monarchy itself.
Turner called the police questioning of current and former royal staff "an unprecedented move that has ever happened before," adding that it "just goes to show how seriously this investigation is being treated by the authorities."
And there lies the uncomfortable truth for anyone still invested in the institution. For decades, the British establishment operated on the assumption that proximity to the crown carried a kind of ambient immunity. Scandals could be managed. Embarrassments could be absorbed. Awkward friendships could be explained away with enough time and enough silence.
That assumption died on February 19.
Now the cheques are being traced, the logs are being requested, and the secretary who signed the paperwork says she's ready to talk. Some people close to Andrew worry, as Constant put it, that he "will evade accountability like he has his entire life." Operation Ironville appears to be testing that theory.
Charlotte Manley spent seven years managing Andrew's schedule, his finances, and his travel. She knows where the money went. She knows who arranged the meetings. And she knows what happened behind closed doors at Buckingham Palace when the cameras were off, and the masseuse arrived.
The police, it seems, would very much like to hear about it.
Dr. Mehmet Oz fired back at New York Attorney General Letitia James in a March 10 letter, defending NYU Langone Medical Center's decision to permanently shut down its transgender youth health program and dismantling James's threat to force the hospital to restart it.
The letter landed one day before a deadline James herself had imposed. Her office gave NYU Langone until Wednesday, March 11, to resume the procedures or face legal action. Oz made clear that wouldn't be happening without a fight.
"Our children are not guinea pigs."
That was the centerpiece of Oz's message, and it framed everything that followed: a methodical, medically grounded rejection of the attorney general's claim that canceling these interventions amounts to unlawful discrimination.
According to the New York Post, NYU Langone permanently axed its transgender youth health program in February, after the Trump administration threatened to pull federal funding from the hospital if it continued providing gender-affirming care for minors. James responded on February 25 with a letter accusing the hospital of abandoning patients.
"NYU Langone appears to be suddenly and indefinitely cancelling transgender children's future appointments thereby jeopardizing access to medically necessary healthcare for some of the most vulnerable New Yorkers."
That phrase, "medically necessary," is doing an enormous amount of work in James's argument. It presumes settled science where none exists. It treats an active, international medical debate as though one side has already won. And it forms the entire legal basis for the attorney general of New York to threaten a major medical institution into performing procedures on children.
Neither the AG's office nor NYU Langone officials returned requests for comment.
Oz didn't just disagree. He went after the foundation of James's position, calling it both scientifically irresponsible and ethically indefensible. His letter cited a report ordered by the Trump administration and pointed to the growing body of evidence from European health authorities that have pulled back from the same interventions James wants to compel.
"Given that emerging medical evidence continues to demonstrate the harm these procedures inflict on children, it is both irresponsible and false to declare the other side of this ongoing scientific debate definitively 'medically necessary.'"
He went further, addressing the coercion directly:
"It is worse still to compel doctors to perform procedures that remain the subject of substantial dispute. It is also unethical. Your claim that discontinuing these interventions constitutes unlawful discrimination is irresponsible."
Oz described the procedures in question as "surgical and chemical interventions on vulnerable children with potentially irreversible consequences." He called NYU Langone's decision "a serious and necessary course correction." And he made his position unambiguous: "My office stands behind NYU's decision."
One of the most devastating elements of Oz's letter is the international comparison. Several European health authorities acknowledged years ago what American progressives still refuse to concede. The UK, for example, imposed restrictions on prescribing puberty blockers. Other European governments followed suit.
Oz noted that those decisions weren't driven by politics:
"Those governments framed their decisions as grounded in formal evidence reviews and evolving assessments of the clinical data — not politics and baseless pressure campaigns."
The irony is sharp. The American left routinely invokes European models when it suits them: healthcare systems, climate policy, labor protections. But when Sweden, Finland, and the UK conduct rigorous evidence reviews and conclude that these interventions on minors lack sufficient scientific support, suddenly, Europe has nothing to teach us.
That selective deafness tells you everything about what's actually driving this debate.
Strip away the legal language, and what you have is a state attorney general attempting to override medical judgment at a private hospital. James isn't arguing that NYU Langone committed malpractice. She isn't alleging fraud. She's arguing that a hospital choosing not to perform contested procedures on children is, in itself, discrimination.
Think about what that standard would mean if applied broadly. Any hospital that declines a disputed treatment based on evolving evidence could face legal action from a state AG with a political agenda. Medical institutions would not be free to follow the science. They would be compelled to follow politics.
Oz put it plainly:
"As a doctor, I am appalled that your office would attempt to force a hospital to perform potentially life-altering medical procedures on children that are not solidly grounded in science to make a political point."
James's self-imposed deadline has arrived. Whether her office follows through with legal action remains to be seen. But the dynamics have shifted. NYU Langone now has explicit federal backing. The Trump administration has made its position clear through both funding threats and the report Oz cited. And the medical evidence continues to accumulate on the side of caution.
James is welcome to take this to court. She should be prepared to explain to a judge why the attorney general of New York knows better than NYU Langone's medical staff, better than European health authorities, and better than the growing chorus of clinicians who are raising alarms about irreversible procedures performed on children who cannot fully consent to them.
The Empire State's chief lawyer set a deadline. The answer came back a day early, and it wasn't the one she wanted.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson used a rare public appearance alongside Justice Brett Kavanaugh on Monday to forcefully criticize how the Supreme Court has handled emergency applications, calling the court's increasing willingness to intervene "a real unfortunate problem." Kavanaugh, sitting beside her at the federal courthouse in Washington, pushed back and defended the court's actions.
The hourlong event, attended by lawyers and judges, including Chief Judge James E. Boasberg, laid bare the internal fault lines on a court that has repeatedly stepped in to unblock the Trump administration's agenda after lower courts tried to stop it.
According to NBC News, Jackson did not hold back. She characterized the court's emergency docket work as fundamentally flawed, arguing that it distorts the judicial process itself.
"I just feel like this uptick in the court's willingness to get involved ... is a real unfortunate problem."
She called the emergency proceedings "a warped kind of proceeding" and declared flatly that the practice is "not serving the court or this country well." Her proposed solution was straightforward: if the court were "stingier about granting them," the filings would drop. She also claimed the uptick "affects how lower court judges approach cases," suggesting the court's emergency interventions ripple downward through the entire judiciary.
This is a revealing complaint. What Jackson frames as a procedural concern is, at bottom, frustration that the court's conservative majority keeps clearing the path for lawful executive action. The lower courts she worries about "approaching cases" differently are, in many instances, the same courts that have issued sweeping injunctions to stall presidential authority. When the Supreme Court steps in to lift those blocks, the system is working exactly as designed. The problem Jackson identifies is not a broken process. It is a process producing outcomes she opposes.
Kavanaugh offered a measured but pointed rebuttal. He noted that government emergency applications to the court are "not unique to Trump," pointing out that the Biden administration made similar requests, "albeit at a lower rate." He also identified the structural cause that Jackson conspicuously ignored: presidents in recent years have relied more heavily on executive orders because persuading Congress has become increasingly difficult. Those orders are then immediately challenged in court, which generates the very emergency filings Jackson objects to.
In other words, the uptick in emergency applications is not a symptom of a rogue Supreme Court. It is the predictable result of an executive branch governing through its constitutional authority and a sprawling legal apparatus rushing to the nearest friendly courtroom to stop it.
Kavanaugh insisted on institutional neutrality:
"We have to have the same position regardless of who is president."
Jackson said she agreed with that statement. Whether her broader critique is consistent with it is another question entirely.
In the last year, the Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to fire thousands of federal workers, assert control over previously independent federal agencies, and implement key elements of its immigration policy. Each of these actions had been blocked by lower courts. Each time, the Supreme Court's conservative majority intervened to let the executive branch function.
This is what Jackson calls a problem. But consider what the alternative looks like: a single district judge, sometimes hundreds of miles from Washington, issuing a nationwide injunction that freezes the agenda of a president elected by tens of millions of Americans. The Supreme Court stepping in to restore executive authority is not an abuse of the emergency docket. It is the court performing its most basic function, ensuring that one branch of government does not strangle another.
The left has grown comfortable with judge-shopping as a governing strategy. When a policy they oppose survives the legislative or electoral process, they route it through the judiciary. When the Supreme Court clears the obstruction, they call the process broken.
Both justices acknowledged the rising temperature around the judiciary. Jackson expressed concern about "the increase in violent threats against judges," calling it "unfortunate because it relates to a lack of understanding about judicial independence." Kavanaugh praised Chief Justice John Roberts, saying he had "picked his spots" in responding to criticism. Roberts recently put out a statement rebuking suggestions that judges should be impeached for ruling against the administration.
Notably, Chief Judge Boasberg, one of the judges some Republicans want to impeach, was among those at Monday's event. His presence added a layer of gravity to the discussion that neither justice could ignore.
Threats against judges are unacceptable regardless of the source. That principle is not complicated, and it does not require elaborate framing about "judicial independence" to state clearly. But the conversation about accountability is a separate one. Judges who issue sweeping injunctions against the elected executive should expect scrutiny. Scrutiny and threats are not the same thing, and conflating them serves only those who want to insulate the judiciary from any public accountability at all.
Kavanaugh noted that the court has, in some cases, opted to hear full oral arguments and issue longer written rulings in response to criticism of the shadow docket. That is a reasonable concession to transparency. But the core dynamic is not going to change. As long as lower courts continue issuing aggressive nationwide injunctions against executive action, the Supreme Court will continue fielding emergency applications. And as long as the conservative majority holds, it will continue lifting those injunctions when the law supports it.
Jackson acknowledged as much, conceding that "there's no easy answer, for sure." She is right about that, though perhaps not in the way she intended. The answer is not for the Supreme Court to stop intervening. The answer is for lower courts to stop overreaching.
Until that happens, expect more hourlong public events where liberal justices call the process broken and conservative justices explain, patiently, that it is working.