Twenty-five Mexican National Guardsmen are dead. So is one prison guard and an innocent woman. Their deaths came not in a single battle but across a wave of coordinated terror that swept through at least 18 states throughout Mexico, all because one cartel kingpin was finally put down.
The Government of Mexico confirmed the toll following the killing of Ruben Nemesio "El Mencho" Oseguera Cervantes, the leader of the Cartel Jalisco New Generation, or CJNG. El Mencho died Sunday after a high-stakes raid by special forces soldiers from Mexico's Army. Two others, including his son-in-law, also died while being airlifted from the scene.
The cartel's answer was immediate and savage. Shootings, carjackings, blockades, buildings, and convenience stores were set ablaze. Forty cartel gunmen were killed in the violence. Authorities made 70 arrests during the day.
By Monday morning, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that her forces had cleared all blockades and that life could return to normal.
Consider what "return to normal" means in Mexico. It means a country where a single cartel can paralyze 18 states simultaneously because its boss was killed. It means the death of one man triggers a paramilitary response across a nation of 130 million people. Normal, in this context, is not a reassurance. It is an indictment.
The CJNG did not scramble to organize this response. The infrastructure for nationwide terror was already in place: the vehicles, the weapons, the personnel, the communications networks, the gasoline. All of it is ready to deploy on command. This is not an insurgency that materialized overnight. It is a standing army that the Mexican government has tolerated for years. Breitbart reported.
American policymakers who still treat Mexico as a functional partner in border security should study this weekend carefully. A government that cannot prevent a cartel from waging war across the majority of its own territory is not a government that can be trusted to manage migration flows, interdict fentanyl shipments, or honor bilateral enforcement agreements.
Mexico's Secretary of Defense General Ricardo Trevilla Trejo spoke about the operation in which Mexican soldiers fought El Mencho's forces. He appeared to choke back tears when he talked about the 25 National Guardsmen who died in the attacks.
The emotion would land differently if not for the history. Breitbart Texas has previously reported on a close friendship between Trevilla Trejo and El Mencho, a relationship that dates to Trevilla Trejo's time serving as a regional head of the Mexican Army in Michoacan. The nature and extent of that friendship remain questions that Mexican authorities have never adequately answered.
Meanwhile, Mexico's top security official Omar Garcia Harfuch revealed that the operation against El Mencho was based on intelligence that included tracking down the cartel boss's mistress in an attempt to locate him. That is a detail worth noting: Mexico's most wanted man was found not through the kind of sustained institutional pressure that dismantles organizations, but through a single intelligence thread tied to a personal relationship. It raises an obvious question about why this couldn't have happened years ago.
The left's preferred framing on cartel violence centers on "root causes" and American culpability. We are told the problem is gun trafficking flowing south, or insufficient economic aid, or American drug demand. This framing serves one purpose: to shift accountability away from the Mexican government and onto American taxpayers.
The facts from this weekend tell a different story. The CJNG operates as a parallel state within Mexico. It fields soldiers. It controls territory. It conducts coordinated military operations across 18 states on a few hours' notice. No amount of American foreign aid addresses that. No "root causes" program in Washington fixes a sovereignty crisis in Mexico City.
What does matter is what happens at the border. Every failure of the Mexican state is a force multiplier for illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and cartel operational reach into American communities. The worse things get south of the border, the more critical American enforcement becomes. Not as a complement to Mexican efforts, but as a substitute for them.
Twenty-five guardsmen. One prison guard. One woman who had nothing to do with any of it. These are the numbers that matter most and will be forgotten fastest. They died because a cartel had the capacity and the will to punish an entire country for the loss of a single leader.
Sheinbaum says the blockades are cleared. Life can return to normal. But the 27 families burying their dead this week know what normal costs in Mexico. And so should we.
A 22-year-old medicine technician at a Maryland senior living facility has been charged with first-degree murder after police say he shot and killed 87-year-old Robert Fuller, a millionaire philanthropist and retired lawyer from Maine, inside the man's own apartment on Valentine's Day.
Montgomery County Police announced at a Feb. 25 news conference that officers took Marquise James into custody during a traffic stop the previous day, after he allegedly shot at a Maryland State Trooper. He now sits behind bars without bond.
Fuller was found unresponsive inside his apartment at the facility after emergency services responded around 7:34 a.m. on Feb. 14. Life-saving measures were attempted. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Police noticed Fuller appeared to have head trauma, and homicide detectives alleged he had been shot.
The sequence of events paints a grim picture of what happened inside a facility where elderly residents are supposed to be safe.
Detectives said surveillance video from Feb. 14 showed someone entering the building through an exterior door around 5:05 a.m. Around ten minutes later, the person allegedly exited through the same door and disappeared off-frame while running. Roughly two and a half hours passed before emergency services arrived and found Fuller dead in his apartment.
As reported by The Daily Caller, the police released the surveillance footage on Feb. 20, six days after the killing. Then came another alarming detail: on Feb. 23, a facility employee allegedly discovered James inside the building during an overnight check, after his shift had ended at 11:00 p.m. James fled when confronted over it.
He was in custody within days. But the timeline raises an obvious question: how does someone allegedly commit a murder inside a senior living facility and remain employed there for more than a week afterward?
The details that have emerged since the arrest are striking. Police executed a pair of Baltimore County search warrants and allegedly found numerous wigs, according to Fox News Digital. The surveillance footage from Feb. 14 reportedly showed the suspect entering and exiting in what appeared to be a woman's wig.
Then there is the matter of the door. The exterior door's alarm sensor was allegedly last functional on Jan. 9. Video shows James used the same exterior doorway twice that day, according to WBFF. That means the alarm that was supposed to monitor access to a building full of vulnerable elderly residents had been non-functional for more than five weeks before Fuller was killed.
A broken alarm. A worker who knew the building's layout. An 87-year-old man was shot inside his own apartment before sunrise. The facts speak plainly enough.
Fuller was not just any resident. He was a philanthropist and lawyer from Maine, known for his contributions to Cony High School's Alumni Field complex, the Maine General Medical Center, and Kennebec Valley YMCA, among others. He spent decades building institutions and giving back to his community. He spent his final moments in a facility that was supposed to protect him.
Officials said they do not know why James allegedly killed Fuller, according to Fox News Digital. No motive has been publicly established. The absence of explanation makes the crime feel even more senseless.
James faces a wall of criminal charges. Prosecutors charged him with:
He told detectives he had worked the night before Fuller's death and had provided medicine to both Fuller and his roommate, WBFF reported. The man trusted with dispensing medication to elderly residents is now accused of executing one of them.
This case will inevitably fuel a conversation that too many families have already been forced to have: who, exactly, is watching over our parents and grandparents?
Senior living facilities charge substantial fees and promise safety, supervision, and dignity. Families entrust the most vulnerable people in their lives to these institutions. When a door alarm sits broken for five weeks, when a worker can allegedly re-enter a building after hours without immediate detection, the system has failed at its most basic function.
The criminal justice system will handle Marquise James. But the broader failure here extends beyond one defendant. Robert Fuller survived 87 years, built a legacy of generosity across an entire state, and died in a place that was supposed to keep him safe while someone ran into the dark.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz wants you to know he is furious about the massive fraud scandal plaguing his state. He also wants you to know that the federal government's efforts to do something about it amount to political punishment. He delivered both messages at the same press conference on Thursday, apparently without noticing the contradiction.
Walz announced a package of state legislation aimed at combating fraud, positioning himself as the man who will finally clean up a mess that festered on his watch. He simultaneously accused the Trump administration of "targeted retribution against a state that the president doesn't like" for taking its own steps to address the problem.
Pick a lane, Governor.
Walz opened his Thursday remarks with a plea for trust. The Daily Caller reported.
"You can trust me on this. The person who's angriest about this fraud is me."
He continued by insisting there was no political incentive for him to tolerate fraud:
"There is certainly no political upside to having fraud in your state and it undermines the very program I have spent a lifetime advocating for and trying to implement and we have got criminals."
That much is true. There is no political upside. Which raises a fair question: if the fraud is this severe and Walz is this angry, why is the state legislature only now seeing a legislative package to address it? Walz has been governor since 2019. The fraud didn't materialize overnight. It metastasized under his administration's nose, and his anger apparently reached legislative urgency only after the federal government forced the issue.
Vice President JD Vance announced Wednesday that the Trump administration had "decided to temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding" going to Minnesota. Vance said the administration "takes its obligation seriously to be good stewards of the American people's tax money."
That's a straightforward statement of fiscal responsibility. If a state is hemorrhaging federal dollars to criminals, pausing the flow while accountability measures are established is not punishment. It's common sense.
Walz sees it differently. He framed the Medicaid funding halt as the latest salvo in a political vendetta, lumping it together with Operation Metro Surge, the Department of Homeland Security initiative launched in December 2025 to ramp up federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota for the purpose of deporting illegal immigrants.
"They used false pretense to come in on Metro Surge and we saw the catastrophic damage that was done and the deaths."
He then pivoted to the funding halt:
"Now we're seeing them turn to this … they're gonna freeze the money because of fraud. What specific fraud? What did you see that the state didn't knew [sic]?"
The grammatical stumble is the least of the problems with that statement. Walz spent the first half of his press conference acknowledging that organized criminals exploited Minnesota's generosity. He then demanded to know what specific fraud the federal government could be concerned about. The governor told the public the house was on fire, then asked the fire department why it showed up.
Walz attempted to spread responsibility as broadly as possible. He claimed fraud exists in every state and that "the numbers are bigger in other states because they're bigger." He accused Republicans of "standing with the criminals," a claim so detached from the actual policy debate that it barely warrants a response. It was the Trump administration that halted funding over fraud concerns and launched immigration enforcement operations. That is the opposite of standing with criminals.
He also tried to flip the corruption charge back onto the president, claiming Trump "has pardoned people who took part in Medicaid fraud, who were responsible for paying back almost $300 million." Walz offered no case names, no documentation, no specifics. He then declared:
"This is some type of upside-down world where we need the adults in the room."
The adult-in-the-room posture is a heavy lift for a governor presiding over a fraud crisis of this scale. Walz's own characterization of the problem was damning enough:
"For the last several years, an organized group of criminals have sought to take advantage of our state's generosity. And even as we make progress in the fight against the fraudsters, we now see an organized group of political actors seeking to take advantage of the crisis."
"For the last several years." That's Walz's tenure. Those are his years. The criminals didn't exploit some abstract bureaucracy. They exploited programs administered under his leadership, in a state where he set the policy tone and controlled the executive apparatus. Now that the federal government has stepped in, the organized criminals have been joined in Walz's rhetoric by "political actors" who are apparently just as dangerous for wanting accountability.
The political context here matters. Walz, Kamala Harris's 2024 running mate and a failed vice presidential nominee, ended his reelection bid for a third term in early January. In a January 5 statement announcing his exit, he told MS NOW that he plans to "never run for an elected office again."
So this is a lame duck governor, with no future campaign to run, announcing a legislative fraud package years too late while simultaneously attacking the federal officials actually applying pressure. The legislation may be worthwhile on its merits. But the timing reveals the motive. This isn't a man who woke up angry about fraud. This is a man who needs to look angry about fraud because someone else started fixing it.
Walz referenced the fatal January shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by federal immigration personnel as evidence that Operation Metro Surge caused "catastrophic damage." Those deaths deserve serious scrutiny and full transparency. But invoking tragedy to delegitimize an entire enforcement operation is a tactic, not an argument. One does not cancel the other.
The most revealing moment of the press conference was Walz's complaint that the federal government offered "not one single grain" of evidence for the fraud justifying the Medicaid funding halt. This is from the governor who, moments earlier, described years of organized criminal exploitation of state programs. The federal government's justification is sitting in Walz's own prepared remarks.
When a governor acknowledges a fraud crisis and then calls the federal response to that crisis "retribution," he is not governing. He is performing. The anger is real, but it's pointed in the wrong direction. Walz isn't furious that criminals stole from Minnesota. He's furious that someone noticed.
Deep State operatives inside the Department of Homeland Security secretly downloaded surveillance software onto Kristi Noem's phone and laptop, the agency chief revealed Wednesday on the PBD Podcast. The spyware was designed to record her meetings and monitor top political appointees across the department.
Noem said Elon Musk's deputies helped her identify the culprits.
"They helped me identify [the Deep State allies who] downloaded software on my phone and my laptop to spy on me, to record our meetings."
The surveillance wasn't limited to Noem. Multiple political appointees had their devices compromised. When DHS brought in outside technology experts to audit laptops and phones across the department, the scope of the operation became clear. The department's own internal tech teams had either missed it or weren't looking.
"They had done that to several of the politicals, and so we ended up bringing in [outside tech] people … [and we] didn't have those technology experts here in the department looking at all of our laptops and our phones and recognizing that kind of software."
According to Breitbart, this is what institutional resistance looks like when it stops being theoretical.
The surveillance software wasn't the only discovery. Noem said she recently stumbled onto a hidden SCIF, a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, tucked away on the DHS headquarters campus. The room contained files that no one in her leadership circle knew existed, staffed by individuals working on what Noem described as "some of these most controversial topics."
The discovery was almost accidental. An employee walked past a door, got curious, and started asking questions. That thread led Noem's team to a facility operating in the shadows of their own building.
"I just found the other day a whole room on this campus that was a secret SCIF secure facility that had files nobody knew existed."
Noem said she has turned the facility and its contents over to attorneys and is working to determine exactly what was happening inside.
Think about that for a moment. The person running DHS, a cabinet-level agency with sweeping authority over immigration, cybersecurity, and national security, did not know about a classified facility operating on her own campus. The people inside that room knew it existed. The people who put them there knew it existed. The person in charge did not.
That's not a bureaucratic oversight. That's a parallel command structure.
For years, the phrase "Deep State" drew eye rolls from the Washington establishment. Career bureaucrats were just doing their jobs. Institutional resistance was just institutional memory. Conservatives who warned about unelected officials undermining elected leadership were treated as conspiracy theorists.
Noem herself acknowledged the gap between what she expected and what she found:
"I always believed when people talked about the deep state before that it existed: I never would have dreamed that it was as bad as it is."
This is a sitting cabinet secretary saying that entrenched actors inside her own department deployed surveillance tools against the political leadership installed by a democratically elected president. Not foreign adversaries. Not hackers in a basement overseas. People drawing federal paychecks, using federal infrastructure, to spy on the people voters sent to run the agency.
Noem described an ongoing effort to root out what she characterized as disloyal actors embedded not just at DHS but throughout the federal government.
"I'm still every day trying to dig out people who don't love America, not just [those] who work at this department, but also work throughout the federal government."
Noem also disclosed that she is investigating ties between scientists at national laboratories under DHS jurisdiction and the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. She said her team is examining travel records and work connections between American researchers and the Chinese lab at the center of the COVID-19 origin debate.
"I also have national labs under my jurisdiction, they [have] scientists that participated with that [China-based] Wuhan lab. [We're studying] how they were traveling back and forth between each other, and working on those experiments."
This line of inquiry matters beyond the lab leak question itself. If American scientists under DHS oversight were collaborating with a Chinese government-linked facility, and that collaboration was never properly surfaced to political leadership, it raises the same structural problem the bugged phones do: a bureaucracy that operates independently of the people constitutionally empowered to oversee it.
The attorney review of the secret SCIF is underway. The tech audits have exposed the surveillance tools. The Wuhan travel records are being compiled. Each revelation is a thread, and every thread leads back to the same question: who authorized it?
Not who installed the software. Not who staffed the hidden room. Who decided that the political leadership of a federal agency should be treated as the adversary rather than the authority?
Noem summed it up simply:
"It's been eye-opening."
For the rest of the country, it should be something stronger than that. A government that spies on its own appointed leaders isn't a government that answers to the people who elected them. It's a government that answers to itself.
Sens. Josh Hawley and Jeff Merkley announced the Homes for American Families Act on Thursday, a bipartisan bill that would prohibit large institutional investors from buying single-family homes, townhouses, and condominiums across the United States. The legislation arrives on the heels of President Trump's State of the Union address this week, where he urged Congress to make his executive order banning the practice permanent.
The bill is simple in its logic: American families should not have to outbid hedge funds for a starter home. That this requires legislation at all tells you how far the housing market has drifted from its original purpose.
During his address, Trump put a face on the problem. He introduced Rachel Wiggins, a mother of two from Houston, who placed bids on 20 homes and lost every single one to institutional investors who bypassed inspections and paid all cash. Trump told the chamber:
"Stories like this are why last month I signed executive order to ban large Wall Street investment firms are buying up in the thousands single family homes. And now I'm asking Congress to make that ban permanent, because homes for people, really that's what we want, we want homes for people, not for corporations. Corporations are doing just fine."
Twenty bids. Not two. Not five. Twenty. Everyone lost to a firm that converted the property into a rental. This is the housing market that millions of Americans now navigate, one where a young family with a mortgage pre-approval letter is competing against entities with bottomless capital and no intention of ever living in the home. Breitbart reported.
Hawley framed the legislation in terms that cut straight to the core of the issue:
"Families deserve to be able to buy their own homes and achieve the American dream without competing with big investment companies that irrevocably drive up housing prices. That's why I am introducing legislation to ban Wall Street from buying single family homes once and for all."
Merkley, the Oregon Democrat, struck a similar tone, calling houses in American communities "homes for families, not profit centers for hedge funds." He also acknowledged the political landscape clearly, noting that the bipartisan support gives the effort "wind in our sails."
The two senators have also updated their previous legislation, known as the HOPE for Homeownership Act, which would incentivize Wall Street firms and hedge funds to divest their existing holdings of single-family homes. Together, the measures represent a two-pronged approach: stop the buying, then unwind what's already been bought.
There is a particular kind of economic dislocation that occurs when the most basic unit of American wealth building, a home, gets absorbed into an institutional portfolio. This isn't a niche libertarian debate about free markets. It is a question about what kind of country we intend to be.
When a hedge fund buys a three-bedroom house in a Houston suburb, it doesn't plant roots there. It doesn't join the PTA. It doesn't maintain the property with the care of someone who watches their kids play in the backyard. It extracts rent, defers maintenance to whatever the spreadsheet allows, and moves on to the next acquisition. Multiply that across thousands of homes in hundreds of communities, and you get neighborhoods that look occupied but feel hollow.
Homeownership has been the primary vehicle for middle-class wealth accumulation in this country for generations. The equity a family builds in a home funds retirements, college educations, and small businesses. Every house that disappears into an institutional portfolio is one fewer rung on that ladder.
The push by Trump was reportedly one of the few moments at his State of the Union address that saw both Republicans and left-wing Democrats, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, stand and cheer. That alone signals how deeply this issue resonates across ideological lines.
And it should. The conservative case here is straightforward: families and communities are the building blocks of a stable society, and a financial system that systematically prices families out of ownership in favor of institutional landlords undermines both. This isn't hostility toward capitalism. It's a recognition that capital without guardrails can hollow out the very institutions that make free markets worth defending.
Trump signed the executive order last month. Congress now has the chance to write it into law. The bipartisan support exists. The public anger is real. The only question is whether Washington can move at a pace that matches the urgency families like the Wiggins family feel every time they lose another bid.
Rachel Wiggins lost twenty times. The country shouldn't have to lose once more.
Republican senators are pressing Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Justice Department to release every file related to Jeffrey Epstein that mentions President Trump's name, after media reports this week revealed that documents released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act did not include FBI memos summarizing interviews with a woman who made claims in 2019 against both Epstein and Trump involving an incident from the 1980s.
The DOJ publicly released an index indicating the FBI conducted four interviews related to the woman's claims and wrote separate summaries. But the summaries themselves were not among the published files.
The message from GOP lawmakers has been simple: the law says release everything, so release everything.
Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, a member of the Judiciary Committee, was characteristically blunt:
"Release the documents. Redact the names of the victims. Don't release photographs, naked or otherwise, of minors. Release the documents. This is not going to go away until there is full disclosure."
Kennedy followed up with a line that left no room for interpretation:
"I don't know how else to say it: Release the documents."
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley echoed the sentiment without hesitation:
"I think when we pass a law that says that all documents need to be put out, it seems to me all documents need to be put out."
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine noted that withholding files mentioning a sitting president "would seem to be contrary to the intent of the law," while acknowledging she didn't know whether legitimate reasons existed for redactions. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina called it "concerning" if true, though he added he hadn't yet confirmed the reporting himself. Sen. Joni Ernst said she had believed all files were already released and called it "definitely something I'd want to look into." The Hill reported.
None of these senators hedged on the principle. Congress passed a transparency law. The expectation is compliance.
The DOJ initially told The New York Times that "the only materials that have been withheld were either privileged or duplicates," later adding that some documents may have been held back because of "an ongoing federal investigation."
On Wednesday night, the Department issued a more detailed statement acknowledging that individuals and news outlets had flagged files related to documents produced to Ghislaine Maxwell in discovery during her criminal case:
"As with all documents that have been flagged by the public, the Department is currently reviewing files within that category of the production. Should any document be found to have been improperly tagged in the review process and is responsive to the Act, the Department will of course publish it, consistent with the law."
That statement strikes the right note. If files were improperly tagged, fix them. If a legitimate privilege or investigative need applies, explain it. Transparency laws don't come with a footnote that reads "unless politically inconvenient."
The White House has repeatedly said Trump did nothing wrong about Epstein, and the DOJ has previously described the allegations in question as having no credibility. If that's the case, releasing the files only reinforces that position. Withholding them does the opposite.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer held a press conference Thursday in the Capitol, and his rhetoric made clear that Democrats see this as a political weapon, not a transparency cause:
"Let me be blunt, there is a massive coverup going on in the Justice Department to protect Donald Trump and people associated with Jeffrey Epstein."
He vowed an "all-out oversight effort," promised to "pull on every thread" and "chase every lead," and said Democrats plan to travel to the DOJ in the coming days to review unredacted files. Democrats also asked the DOJ and FBI to preserve all records related to decisions on redacting and withholding Epstein documents.
This is Schumer doing what Schumer does: wrapping partisan ambition in the language of justice. The man who spent four years enabling the weaponization of the DOJ against Trump's political allies now demands the same institution answer to him. His concern for transparency is recent and selective.
Rep. Robert Garcia of California, ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, claimed Tuesday that the DOJ "appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews" with the woman who made the allegations.
The Democrats' framing here deserves scrutiny. They aren't simply asking for documents. They're pre-loading the conclusion: that any gap in the record is proof of a conspiracy. That framing is designed to ensure that no matter what the files contain, the narrative of a "cover-up" persists.
Here's the political reality. If files are released and contain nothing damaging, Democrats will claim the real documents were destroyed. If files are withheld for legitimate legal reasons, Democrats will call it a cover-up. And if anything ambiguous emerges, it will be treated as a conviction in the court of cable news.
This is why Republicans are smart to get ahead of it. By demanding full release themselves, GOP senators eliminate the Democratic monopoly on the transparency argument. Kennedy, Grassley, Collins, Tillis, and Ernst aren't breaking with the administration. They're protecting it by making the obvious point: sunlight is the best disinfectant, and the law already requires it.
Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act with broad bipartisan support. The premise was straightforward: the American public deserves to know who was involved in Epstein's operation and why certain people were never prosecuted. Kennedy framed it precisely:
"This is not going away until there's full disclosure and the American people want to know, and they're entitled to know, who if anyone, did Epstein traffic these women to … and why they weren't prosecuted."
That question doesn't become less important when it touches powerful people. It becomes more important. The entire justification for the law was that the Epstein case represented a grotesque failure of the justice system, one in which wealth and connections shielded predators for decades. If the DOJ now carves out exceptions to the transparency mandate, it validates every suspicion the law was meant to address.
Grassley hasn't decided whether to hold a hearing on DOJ compliance. He should. Not to grandstand, but to establish a clear record of what was withheld, why, and on whose authority. Independent journalist Roger Sollenberger first reported on the missing pages. The press did its job. Now Congress needs to do its job.
The DOJ says it's reviewing the flagged files. Good. The review should be swift, the results public, and the explanations specific. Vague invocations of privilege and ongoing investigations won't satisfy a law written to override exactly those kinds of institutional reflexes.
The American people passed this test once before: they demanded the files. They'll demand them again. The only question is whether the Justice Department treats a transparency law as binding or optional.
The Department of War is moving U.S. military assets toward Iran and putting options in front of President Donald Trump, according to press secretary Kingsley Wilson, who said the goal is to make clear that America “means business” as negotiations with Iran intensify.
Wilson told The Daily Caller that the Department of War’s role is to prepare, not posture. The message to Tehran, she suggested, is that diplomacy is on the table, but it is not the only tool in the box.
Speaking “at the White House’s media row” following the president’s State of the Union address, Wilson framed the military buildup as readiness built for a commander in chief who sets the direction, then expects the bureaucracy to execute. The Daily Caller shares.
Wilson put it plainly:
"At the Department of War, our job is to plan. We have contingency plans for every operation and every scenario. If the president says go, we need to be ready to go whatever option he chooses. So we are presenting options to the president,"
That is how serious governments operate. They do not outsource national security to vibes. They do not confuse speeches with strategy. They plan, they position, and they ensure the president has credible choices in real time.
Wilson emphasized that Trump’s instincts run toward peace and diplomacy, but she also made the Department of War’s mission clear: prepare for whatever comes next, including the possibility that Iran refuses to deal.
"This is a president who seeks peace and who always pursues diplomacy first, but it is our job to make sure that we’re prepared should he choose a different course of action, and we have to have the assets in place to do it,"
The sequence matters. Diplomacy is not “forever talks.” It is talks backed by consequences. In the real world, the credibility of your diplomacy depends on whether your adversary thinks you can and will act.
The White House is “trying to make a nuclear deal with Iran,” and it is not pretending that America is out of options if Iran declines to commit.
In a comment to Reuters, the White House warned that if no deal is made, it “will have to do something very tough like last time,” a reference to “the June strikes on the country’s nuclear facilities.”
That is not inflammatory language. It is an attempt to restore a basic reality that too many foreign regimes and too many American elites forgot: U.S. warnings are supposed to mean something.
Wilson argued that Iran’s leadership, and the Iranian people, are not guessing about what American power can look like when it is actually used. She said the administration is moving aircraft and other assets so the message lands before a shot is fired.
"We’ve got a lot of assets over there, a lot of aircraft over there, and we’re going to make sure that the Iranian people know we mean business, and the regime and the mullahs there particularly, know we mean business. They remember midnight hammer and the success of that operation. They also, like the rest of the world and our enemies, watched the Maduro raid,"
The specifics of “midnight hammer” and “the Maduro raid” are not spelled out in the provided material, but Wilson’s intent is unmistakable. She is invoking recognizable demonstrations of U.S. capability to shape Iran’s decision-making now.
Deterrence is not a slogan. It is a reputation that has to be maintained. When it fades, adversaries test you. When it is restored, they start looking for exits.
The center of gravity in this story is Trump’s red line. The material states that during his Tuesday State of the Union address, Trump “drew a red line on negotiations with Iran” and said Iran must commit to not building a nuclear weapon.
Wilson echoed that and urged Iran to choose the deal while it can:
"They see what the United States military, and only the United States military is capable of doing so, it would be very wise for them to make a deal with this president. And I would also add that the president has been clear, whether on the campaign trail or throughout his entire presidency, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. That is a red line, and we at the Department of War are in full support of that initiative,"
This is what serious leadership looks like. A line is drawn, publicly, and the apparatus of the state is aligned behind it.
America can debate tactics. It should. But a nuclear Iran is not the kind of problem you solve with clever messaging or another round of bureaucratic process. You prevent it, or you live with the consequences.
Wilson’s comments also land as an indictment of a broader habit in Washington: to treat hard problems as permanent, and to treat American strength as something embarrassing that must be apologized for before it is deployed.
Here, the posture is different. The Department of War says it is moving assets. The White House says Iran must commit. And the administration is signaling that if diplomacy fails, decisions will not be deferred indefinitely.
That does not guarantee an outcome. It does restore leverage.
And in a world where adversaries watch for hesitation, leverage is the difference between peace through strength and chaos through wishful thinking.
The regime in Tehran is being handed a choice, and the clock is not going to stop for another round of talking points.
Hillary Clinton abruptly ended a press exchange Thursday after a reporter asked her a simple question: Why was Ghislaine Maxwell invited to Chelsea Clinton's wedding?
Clinton had just finished a closed-door House deposition related to Jeffrey Epstein. She was speaking to reporters when the question landed.
"Can I ask, why was Ghislaine Maxwell invited to your daughter Chelsea Clinton's wedding?"
Clinton's answer was brief and careful. She said Maxwell "came as the plus one, the guest of someone who was invited." Then she offered a quick "Thank you all" and stopped taking questions.
The reporter didn't let the moment pass without context, noting that Maxwell had already been named in a civil lawsuit by Virginia Giuffre before the wedding and that Jeffrey Epstein had already been convicted.
Clinton didn't respond to that. She was already walking away.
Chelsea Clinton married on July 31, 2010, in Rhinebeck, New York. Multiple outlets reported that Maxwell attended. Photos from the event show her among the guests. Maxwell herself said she attended with her then-boyfriend, tech billionaire Ted Waitt.
By that date, the public record on Epstein was not exactly thin. In 2009, Giuffre filed a lawsuit against Epstein under the pseudonym "Jane Doe 102," alleging she had been trafficked as a minor. In that lawsuit, Giuffre alleged Maxwell recruited and groomed her for Epstein. The Daily Caller reported.
So when the Clintons welcomed Maxwell to one of the most high-profile social events of the decade, these allegations were already part of the legal landscape. Not a rumor. Not gossip. Court filings.
Giuffre later sued Maxwell directly for defamation in 2015. That case was settled in Maxwell's favor in 2017.
Clinton's appearance on Thursday was not voluntary in spirit, even if it was technically consensual. The Clintons consented to appear on Feb. 2 to answer questions about their connections to Epstein.
The timing mattered. Just one day earlier, the Department of Justice made public a new batch of records that mentioned former President Bill Clinton. Those records included an image depicting him in a hot tub with Epstein. Federal officials distributed the materials in batches under requirements set by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which President Donald Trump enacted in November.
That sequence tells its own story. The documents drop. The next day, the Clintons sit for a deposition. And when a reporter connects the obvious dots, Hillary Clinton offers one sentence and leaves.
There's a pattern with the Clintons and the Epstein question that has persisted for years. Every answer is technical. Every response is minimal. Every exit is swift.
Maxwell was a "plus one." That's the explanation. Not an expression of regret. Not a concession that maybe the guest list should have been vetted more carefully, given that Epstein had already been convicted and Giuffre's allegations against Maxwell were already in the courts. Just a procedural deflection: she came with someone else.
The reporter's follow-up framed the issue precisely. Giuffre's lawsuit was filed in 2009. Epstein's conviction preceded the wedding. The information was available. The Clintons are not people who lack access to information, staff, or legal counsel. They are arguably the most connected political family in modern American history. The idea that Maxwell simply slipped through as an anonymous plus-one strains belief past its breaking point.
And yet the question remains one that apparently cannot be answered for more than eight words.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act exists because the American public grew tired of watching powerful institutions treat the Epstein case like something to be managed rather than resolved. The steady release of documents has kept the story alive in a way that quiet settlements and sealed records were designed to prevent.
Every new batch of records puts names back in the spotlight. Every deposition forces someone to sit in a chair and answer questions. That is what accountability looks like when it finally arrives, however late.
The Clintons consented to appear. They answered questions behind closed doors. But when the doors opened, and a reporter asked the most obvious question in the world, Hillary Clinton gave seven words and walked away.
The documents will keep coming. The questions won't stop. And "she was a plus one" is not an answer that ages well.
Two House Democrats are demanding the Justice Department appoint a special counsel to investigate Attorney General Pam Bondi, accusing her of perjury over her testimony that no evidence links President Trump to criminal conduct in the Epstein files.
Reps. Ted Lieu of California and Dan Goldman of New York sent a letter to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche requesting the probe. Their basis: Bondi's statement at a February 11 House Judiciary Committee hearing that "there is no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime," which they claim is contradicted by documents the DOJ itself has released.
The letter pulls no punches in its language:
"We request that you immediately appoint a special counsel to investigate Attorney General Bondi for committing perjury. America cannot have a liar and a criminal as our top law enforcement officer."
Bondi dismissed the effort entirely. "This is so ridiculous," she said, adding that Democrats are "trying to deflect from all the great things Donald Trump has done."
The dispute traces back to a heated exchange between Lieu and Bondi earlier this month. During the hearing, Lieu showed video footage of a younger Trump at a party alongside convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and asked whether underage girls were present. He also presented what was described as a document containing unverified allegations from a limo driver about Trump. The Hill reported.
Bondi held firm. When Lieu pressed her, she fired back:
"Don't you ever accuse me of committing a crime."
Goldman, for his part, pointed to a 21-page internal slideshow presentation released by the DOJ that summarized witness testimony. Democrats argue this material contradicts Bondi's blanket claim that no evidence exists. The DOJ has a different view of what constitutes "evidence" versus unverified accusations, a distinction the Democrats in question appear uninterested in drawing.
The controversy deepened when journalist Roger Sollenberger first reported that serial numbers tracking various documents showed a woman had spoken to the FBI four times and that roughly 50 pages related to her interviews were not publicly released. This fueled Democratic claims that the DOJ was suppressing material.
Rep. Robert Garcia, ranking member of the Oversight Committee, said he personally reviewed unredacted evidence logs at the Justice Department. His statement escalated matters considerably:
"Oversight Democrats can confirm that the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld FBI interviews with this survivor who accused President Trump of heinous crimes. Oversight Democrats will open a parallel investigation into this."
The DOJ responded directly, explaining that a file was temporarily removed for victim redactions and was backed up by Thursday. On X, the department pushed back hard against the Democratic narrative:
"Oversight Democrats should stop misleading the public while manufacturing outrage from their radical anti-Trump base. The Justice Department has repeatedly said publicly AND directly to NPR prior to deadline – NOTHING has been deleted."
The department further clarified that all responsive documents have been produced unless they fall into specific categories: duplicates, privileged material, or documents connected to an ongoing federal investigation.
The House Oversight Committee minority spotted what they believed was an opening. In a post on X, they wrote that records of FBI interviews with a woman who alleged Trump sexually assaulted her as a child "aren't duplicates or shouldn't be privileged," then asked pointedly whether DOJ was confirming an active, ongoing federal investigation into the president.
It was a rhetorical trap, designed to force DOJ into either admitting a live investigation or conceding that the files should be public. The DOJ did not take the bait. Instead, the department fired back at Lieu specifically:
"First: these salaciously insane accusations are in the library- UNredacted. Second: they were found to have ZERO credibility. Ted Lieu is a disgrace, who pushes baseless accusations to further his political ambition. Do better, Ted."
Lieu told The Hill that Bondi "should be prosecuted" and urged Blanche to act before it was too late. His framing was characteristically dramatic:
"If Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche doesn't want to be complicit in a cover up, and go down with his ship, then I sure hope he responds and appoints a special counsel."
Strip away the theatrics, and the picture comes into focus. Democrats have spent weeks trying to weaponize the Epstein file release, the very transparency they demanded, into a political bludgeon. The DOJ released the documents. It released the slideshow. It made unredacted accusations publicly available. And the department has stated plainly that those accusations were found to have zero credibility.
Yet Democrats are treating unverified allegations as though they are proven facts, then accusing the Attorney General of perjury for not treating them the same way. The logic is circular: the existence of an accusation is treated as "evidence," and anyone who distinguishes between an accusation and evidence is labeled a liar.
This is not oversight. It is opposition research dressed in subpoena power.
The call for a special counsel is itself revealing. Democrats know Todd Blanche will not appoint one. They know the legal threshold for perjury requires proof that a witness knowingly made a false statement, not that she characterized disputed, unverified claims differently than her political opponents would prefer. The demand exists to generate headlines, not indictments.
Consider the sequence:
Every step of compliance becomes the predicate for the next accusation. The goal is not truth. The goal is perpetual investigation.
Bondi said it plainly: "There is no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime." The DOJ, which has reviewed the actual files, says the accusations in question have zero credibility. Democrats can disagree with that assessment. But disagreement is not perjury, and an unverified allegation is not a conviction.
The special counsel's request will go nowhere. But it was never meant to arrive.
Federal prosecutors visited Nancy Guthrie's property in Tucson, Arizona, on Wednesday to assist the FBI with what the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona described only as a "routine legal process." Federal agents spent several hours at the home on Wednesday afternoon, with Fox News Digital's Flight Team capturing drone footage of agents walking in and out of the house and around the backyard. Several cars were observed going in and out of the driveway.
The 84-year-old Guthrie was last seen in late January. Investigators have not yet publicly identified a person of interest or suspect in her disappearance, and the vague "routine legal process" language from prosecutors offers little clarity about what, exactly, brought them to the property in force.
What is clear: the investigation is intensifying, and the Guthrie family is not waiting for the government to crack this alone.
On Tuesday morning, Savannah Guthrie, the NBC "Today Show" host and Nancy's daughter, posted an Instagram video announcing a family reward of up to $1 million for her mother's recovery. The family also pledged a $500,000 donation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Savannah Guthrie's words carried the weight of someone holding faith and grief in the same hand:
"I'm coming on to say it is day 24 since our mom was taken in the dark of night from her bed. And every hour and minute and second and every long night has been agony since then."
"We still believe, we still believe in a miracle. We still believe that she can come home. Hope begets hope. As my sister says, we are blowing on the embers of hope."
As reported by Fox News, she also acknowledged the possibility the family dreads most. Nancy Guthrie "may already be gone," Savannah said, and "may have already gone home to the Lord that she loves, and is dancing in heaven, with her mom and her dad and with her beloved brother Pierce, and with our daddy."
There is no spinning that. A daughter is publicly reckoning with the possibility that her mother has been murdered, while still summoning the strength to beg anyone with information to come forward. That deserves respect regardless of where you fall on any political spectrum.
The family's reward isn't just an act of desperation. Retired FBI Agent Jason Pack told Fox News Digital it has the potential to reshape the entire investigation. The math matters. The FBI had offered $100,000. The 88-Crime tip line stood at $102,500. The family just raised the price of silence to seven figures.
Pack laid out the tactical reasoning with precision:
"The $1 million announcement is also a direct market disruption. The FBI has a $100,000 reward. 88-Crime is at $102,500. By introducing a private family reward at $1 million, the Guthries just changed the calculus for anyone sitting on information: a driver who saw something, an accomplice having second thoughts, a family member of the suspect weighing loyalty against a million dollars. That is a number that can fracture criminal conspiracies."
He also explained the psychological dimension. The reward applies pressure on anyone involved in what investigators believe was Nancy Guthrie being taken from her home.
"It applies psychological pressure on any accomplices. Ransom schemes involving multiple people are inherently unstable. The more time passes, the more the financial disparity between holding out and collecting $1 million starts eating at the weakest link."
Pack's assessment boils down to a simple principle: loyalty is cheap until someone puts a price on it. A million dollars makes co-conspirators into competitors. It also generates a fresh news cycle, sending people "back to their phones scrolling through memories of anything unusual they saw in the Catalina Foothills in January."
The early results suggest it's working. According to NBC News, over 750 tips have poured in since Tuesday. Sources with knowledge of the family's thinking told Fox News Digital that tens of thousands of leads have been coming in organically.
The FBI previously released photos showing a "subject" on Nancy Guthrie's property, and investigators have been working to identify the clothing and other items visible in those images. Sources told Fox News Digital that one of the Nest doorbell camera images released by the FBI was taken on a different day than the others, though Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos pushed back on that reporting, dismissing it as "speculation."
The gap between what law enforcement knows and what it has shared publicly remains wide. No suspect. No person of interest. A "routine legal process" that required federal prosecutors and several hours inside the home of a missing woman. None of that language inspires confidence that this case is anywhere near resolution.
That gap is precisely why the family's decision to go public with a massive reward matters. When official channels move slowly, private initiative can change the equation. Pack called the $1 million figure a way to preserve "moral offramps" for anyone with information, sending a clear message to potential accomplices:
"The message is: your partners are not going to protect you. We will. It preserves moral offramps."
An 84-year-old woman was taken from her bed in the middle of the night. Nearly a month later, investigators still cannot publicly name who did it. The family has now done what families should never have to do: outbid the federal government's reward by a factor of ten to shake information loose.
The Guthrie family's faith, their willingness to spend significantly and plead publicly, and their refusal to surrender to despair represent something worth honoring. Savannah Guthrie spoke of blowing on the embers of hope. A million dollars is a lot of oxygen.
Someone in Tucson knows something. The question is whether the price just got high enough to make them talk.