Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger stepped into the original historic House of Burgesses at the head of Colonial Williamsburg's Duke of Gloucester Street to deliver the official Democratic response to the State of the Union, and the irony of the setting was apparently lost on her.
The new governor, elected in November to succeed conservative Gov. Glenn Youngkin, used her national platform to hammer President Trump on tariffs and costs while her own blue legislature back in Richmond moves to enact or raise new taxes in multiple forms. She asked Americans whether the president is "working to make life more affordable" for their families. Virginians watching at home might have the same question for her.
Spanberger structured her response around a simple frame: costs. She blamed Trump's tariff policies for increasing prices on "housing, healthcare, energy, and childcare," warning they would "make your life more expensive," Fox News reported.
Then she offered herself as the contrast:
"But here in Virginia, I am working with our state legislature to lower costs and make the Commonwealth more affordable."
She went further, claiming the effort extends beyond the Old Dominion:
"And it's not just me. Democrats across the country are laser-focused on affordability — in our nation's capital and in state capitals and communities across America."
Laser-focused. On affordability. While supporting the legislative Democrat majority's slew of taxes, from new sales taxes to a levy on fantasy football operators. Virginia Democrats are pushing scores of new taxes, and their governor chose this moment to lecture the country about costs.
That is the kind of contradiction that doesn't need a punchline. It is the punchline.
Spanberger also slammed Trump over his mass deportation operations, a line that tracks perfectly with the Democrat playbook of treating immigration enforcement as something to apologize for rather than execute. The new governor has already drawn criticism from Republicans on immigration policy, with former RNC chairman Reince Priebus among those publicly criticizing her approach.
This is the familiar two-step: oppose enforcement, then blame the consequences of non-enforcement on someone else. Spanberger recounted her 2025 election season traveling around Virginia, apparently hearing concerns about costs and safety, then delivered a response that offered no serious answer on either front beyond blaming the sitting president.
The speech leaned heavily on setting and symbolism. Spanberger invoked the House of Burgesses, where in 1705 the colony first gathered with what she called the "extraordinary task of governing themselves." She referenced George Washington's Farewell Address, quoting his warning about "cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men" rising to power.
The implication was not subtle.
She also borrowed Washington's language about uniting in "a common cause," pivoting to a call for collective action:
"That is our charge once more. And that is what we are seeing across the country. It is deeply American and patriotic to do so, and it is how we ensure that the State of our Union remains strong, not just this year but for the next 250 years as well."
Meanwhile, inside the actual Capitol, House Speaker Mike Johnson wielded George Washington's gavel for the first time in State of the Union history. One leader used Washington as a rhetorical device. The other brought his gavel into the room. Draw your own conclusions about who treated the moment with more substance.
In a detail that will likely live online longer than any policy point she attempted, Spanberger appeared to briefly lose her place on the teleprompter during the address. It was a small stumble on a big stage, and while it shouldn't overshadow policy substance, it doesn't inspire confidence from a governor trying to introduce herself as the face of Democratic opposition.
Strip the Colonial Williamsburg backdrop, the Washington quotes, and the rhetorical flourishes, and the speech reduces to a familiar formula: Trump is making things expensive, Democrats care about your wallet, trust us.
The problem is the receipts. Virginia's Democrat legislature isn't cutting costs. It's piling on new taxes. Spanberger isn't vetoing them. She isn't fighting them. She's "working with" the same lawmakers who are reaching deeper into Virginians' pockets while she stands at a national podium and talks about affordability.
Spanberger closed with a lofty appeal:
"Because 'We the people' have the power to make change, the power to stand up for what is right, and the power to demand more of our nation."
Virginians might start by demanding more of their governor. Specifically, they might demand that the woman lecturing the country about affordability explain why her own state government is making their lives more expensive.
The House of Burgesses was built for self-governance. What it got Tuesday night was a campaign speech dressed in colonial linen.
Robert Scrivner stood before cameras this week and did something no child should ever have to do: publicly accuse his own father of abuse, then explain how the state of California helped that father walk free.
Speaking for the first time at a press conference held by State Senator Shannon Grove, Robert branded California's mental health diversion law a "flawed system." His father, former Kern County Supervisor Zack Scrivner, was charged last February with child abuse and possession of assault weapons. He avoided harsher charges of child sexual assault because he was under the influence of drugs at the time and instead entered a mental health diversion program.
Robert Scrivner did not mince words:
"My own father, who is an elected official in Kern County, assaulted my siblings and myself and was granted mental health diversion."
That single sentence carries more indictment of California's criminal justice priorities than a thousand policy papers ever could.
Under California law, mental health diversion allows eligible defendants with diagnosed mental health disorders to receive treatment instead of jail time, the New York Post reported. The program dates back to 2018, and critics have warned for years that it functions as a get-out-of-jail-free card for serious offenders.
The Scrivner case illustrates exactly how. Zack Scrivner was accused of climbing into bed with a pre-teen child in April 2024 and touching her inappropriately. Because he was allegedly under the influence of drugs during the incident, the charges were reduced. Instead of facing the full weight of what he allegedly did to children, he entered a diversion program.
Think about the logic at work here. A man is accused of sexually assaulting a child. Because he was high at the time, the system treats the crime as less serious. Being intoxicated during an alleged assault on a minor becomes a mitigating factor rather than an aggravating one. The drugs don't compound the horror; they dilute the accountability.
This is what California built.
Christina Scrivner, Zack's estranged wife, also spoke at the press conference in favor of the proposed legislation. Her words captured the particular cruelty of a system that asks victims to come forward, then fails them when they do:
"We tell our children to speak up, speak up for yourselves, tell the truth, be honest. My children were and they did."
And then she described what followed:
"Their answer to their plea, their cry for help, was a stark reality of a broken system under mental health diversion."
Christina called her children "courageous" and "honorable" for sharing the truth of their abuse. She described the trauma as "inexplicable." What she did not call it was surprising. For anyone who has watched California's progressive criminal justice experiments play out over the past decade, none of this is surprising. The pattern is familiar. Lenient frameworks designed with sympathetic hypotheticals in mind collide with grotesque real-world cases, and the system shrugs.
Grove used the press conference to announce Senate Bill 1373, which would set limits on which crimes qualify for mental health diversion. She was direct about its purpose:
"My bill will ensure that those who commit violent crimes, such as attempted murder of a child, assault resulting in death and domestic violence, are no longer eligible for a mental health diversion program."
The bill represents a straightforward correction. Violent crimes against children, attempted murder, and domestic violence should never have been eligible for diversion in the first place. That they were tells you everything about the philosophy that produced the 2018 law: the offender's therapeutic journey matters more than the victim's safety.
Assemblymember Dr. Jasmeet Bains, who specializes in family and addiction medicine, added her voice to the effort. Her framing was notably blunt for a California Democrat:
"It was designed to help people get treatment and rehabilitation in appropriate cases, not to provide an escape hatch to sexually assault children."
Bains called it the "Epstein loophole," a term that has attached itself to this provision because of how neatly it captures the dynamic: powerful people exploiting therapeutic language to escape consequences for predatory behavior.
California has spent the better part of a decade reimagining criminal justice around the idea that incarceration is the problem rather than the response to a problem. Proposition 47 downgraded theft. Proposition 57 eased early release for "nonviolent" offenders through classifications that strained the meaning of the word. Zero-bail policies turned arrest into a revolving door. Mental health diversion was supposed to be the humane, evidence-based alternative to a system the left insisted was irredeemably punitive.
But humane for whom? Not for Robert Scrivner. Not for his siblings. Not for the pre-teen child Zack Scrivner allegedly climbed into bed with.
Every one of these reforms shares the same structural defect. They center the accused. They treat the system's response to crime as the injustice worth fixing, rather than the crime itself. And when the inevitable horror story emerges, the architects of these policies express shock that anyone would use a loophole as a loophole.
The fact that it took a former county supervisor's own son going public to generate enough pressure for a legislative fix tells you how entrenched these frameworks are. How many cases without a press conference never get corrected at all?
Senate Bill 1373 faces the gauntlet of California's legislature, where criminal justice reform has historically meant making enforcement softer, not harder. Whether Grove can build enough coalition support to carve out these exclusions remains an open question. Bains's involvement as a physician and assemblymember lends bipartisan credibility, but Sacramento has killed commonsense public safety measures before.
The Scrivner family did what the system told them to do. The children spoke up. The mother believed them. They told the truth. And California's answer was to send the man accused of abusing them to a treatment program instead of a cell.
Robert Scrivner had to stand at a podium and say his father's name out loud to change that. No child should carry that weight. But in California, the state made sure someone had to.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) rose to her feet for Donald Trump on Tuesday night. Read that again.
The progressive icon from Massachusetts gave the president a standing ovation during his State of the Union address after he called on Congress to pass the Stop Insider Trading Act. Other Democrats similarly stood in applause. The moment was brief, bipartisan, and deeply telling.
Trump's appeal was direct and left little room for evasion:
"As we ensure that all Americans can profit from a rising stock market, let's also ensure that members of Congress cannot corruptly profit using inside information. Pass the Stop Insider Trading Act without delay."
The chamber responded. Warren, who has long backed similar legislation, was among the Democrats who couldn't stay seated. She was cheering him on.
Trump noticed. And he couldn't resist.
"They stood up for that — I can't believe it."
Then came the knife. "Did Nancy Pelosi stand up for that?" the president asked. His own answer: "Doubt it."
There's a reason Trump singled out the former House speaker, the New York Post reported. Republicans have long needled Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) over well-timed trades both she and her husband have made over the years. Her net worth sits at more than $269 million, according to Quiver Quantitative. That's a staggering sum for someone whose career has been in public service.
The Stop Insider Trading Act would bar lawmakers, their spouses, and dependent children from buying publicly traded stocks. It also mandates that lawmakers, their spouses, and dependent children give a seven-day public notice before selling off a stock. The bill has cleared a House committee but is awaiting a full vote in the lower chamber.
Pelosi, for her part, glared at Trump. She sat next to Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), took some notes, and wore a "Release the Files" button. She did not, apparently, stand.
The visual contrast told the whole story. Warren, the leftist firebrand who has built a brand on fighting corporate greed, applauds a Republican president. Pelosi, the woman whose household has profited handsomely from the stock market while she helped write the rules governing it, sat stone-faced.
If you ever wanted proof that congressional stock trading reform cuts across ideological lines and threatens the right people, Tuesday night was it.
Warren's moment of agreement didn't last long. She later ripped into President Trump's State of the Union address. The standing ovation was a momentary concession to policy reality before the partisan programming kicked back in.
But that's exactly what makes the moment valuable. Warren has long backed similar legislation. She knows the issue polls well. She knows the public is furious about lawmakers trading on information unavailable to ordinary Americans. When Trump put it on the table in front of 50 million viewers, she couldn't pretend otherwise.
Warren was also seen standing after Trump said that Iran can't be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. Two standing ovations for Trump in one night from a woman who has made opposing him a central feature of her political identity. The issues were simply too popular, and the audience too large, to sit through.
That's the power of picking the right fights. When you champion policies that Americans overwhelmingly support, you force your opponents into uncomfortable positions. They can either applaud and concede the point or sit on their hands and explain to voters why they oppose banning congressional insider trading.
Not every Democrat handled the evening with Warren's pragmatism, however brief it was.
For the second year in a row, Rep. Al Green was ejected from the House chamber during Trump's speech, this time for waving around a sign that read, "Black People Aren't Apes!" The interruption was a stunt in search of a moment that existed only in Green's imagination. No one in the chamber called anyone an ape. The sign responded to an argument no one was making.
Reps. Ilhan Omar(D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) left early after repeatedly heckling Trump throughout the speech. They interrupted, they shouted, and then they walked out.
This is the state of the Democratic caucus in 2026. One faction stands and applauds when the president champions popular reform. Another faction waves signs, screams into the void, and storms out of the building. The serious members and the performative members are increasingly impossible to tell apart from a distance, which is precisely the problem for a party trying to rebuild credibility with the American middle.
The Stop Insider Trading Act deserves a vote. It's sitting in the lower chamber right now, already through committee, waiting for leadership to bring it to the floor. The policy is straightforward:
This isn't complicated. Americans understand, instinctively and correctly, that the people writing regulations for industries shouldn't be trading stocks in those same industries. The fact that it took this long to get a serious push tells you everything about who benefits from the status quo.
Pelosi's 2020 State of the Union moment was tearing up Trump's speech in full view of the cameras. In 2026, she sat silently while her colleagues applauded a bill designed to end the exact kind of trading that made her household fabulously wealthy.
Some protests are louder when they're quiet.
Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar (MN) and Rashida Tlaib (MI) began screaming during President Trump's State of the Union address on Tuesday, only to have their outbursts swallowed whole by Republican lawmakers chanting "U-S-A, U-S-A" across the House Chamber. Texas Democrat Al Green was ejected after brandishing a placard reading "Black people aren't apes." The joint session of Congress, meant to showcase a president's agenda, instead became the latest stage for Democratic theatrics.
The disruptions started early and escalated fast. As Trump spoke about domestic accomplishments from his first year in office, cameras caught Omar appearing distraught, almost overcome with emotion, before she and Tlaib began yelling. The pair shouted "You have killed Americans" and called the president a liar, their voices competing with, and ultimately losing to, the rolling "U-S-A" chants from the Republican side of the chamber.
Trump did not flinch. He branded the two members of Congress a "disgrace" and told them plainly from the podium:
"You should be ashamed."
The moment that appeared to trigger the outburst was Trump's direct remarks about fraud in Minnesota, the state Omar represents, according to the Daily Mail. The president did not mince words:
"When it comes to the corruption that is plundering America, there has been no more stunning example than Minnesota, where members of the Somali community have pillaged an estimated $19 billion from the American taxpayer."
He went further, arguing that the pattern of corruption in Minnesota illustrates a broader problem with immigration policy:
"Importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings those problems right here to the USA."
Omar, who represents Minneapolis and is herself Somali, took the remarks personally. That much was obvious from the cameras. But taking remarks personally and refuting them are two different things. The $19 billion figure Trump cited has been a subject of ongoing scrutiny in Minnesota, and screaming from the House floor is not the rebuttal that a serious legislator would offer if the numbers were wrong.
If Omar had data showing the president was mistaken, a press conference would have been the appropriate venue. A written rebuttal. A hearing request. Instead, she chose a primal scream on national television, which tells you everything about whether the goal was to inform or to perform.
Before the address even got underway, the evening had already been beset by protests. Al Green brought a sign into the chamber reading "Black people aren't apes," a reference to a recent Trump social media post featuring an AI video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as primates.
GOP Senators Markwayne Mullin and Roger Marshall moved swiftly to stand in front of Green, blocking his sign from view. Trump kept walking. Green was subsequently ejected from the chamber.
Whatever one thinks of the social media post in question, the State of the Union is not a protest rally. There are rules governing decorum in the House Chamber, and Green knew them. The placard was designed for a camera, not for a conversation. He got his clip. He also got escorted out.
There was a time when the so-called Squad commanded enormous media attention simply by existing. Omar, Tlaib, and their allies were treated as the ideological vanguard of the Democratic Party, their every tweet amplified, their every accusation treated as moral authority. That era is visibly ending.
What played out on Tuesday was not powerful dissent. It was impotence dressed up as courage. The heckling accomplished nothing legislatively. It changed no votes. It persuaded no one who wasn't already persuaded. And it was physically overwhelmed by the opposing chant, a metaphor so on-the-nose it barely needs articulation.
Consider what voters actually saw:
The optics were brutal for Democrats. Not because conservative media will frame them that way, but because the footage speaks for itself. One side looked like it was governing. The other looked like it was melting down.
What's notable is not just what Omar and Tlaib said, but what the broader Democratic caucus did not say. No Democratic leader appears to have condemned the disruptions or called for decorum. No one from the party stepped to a microphone to distance themselves from the spectacle.
This is the trap that progressive theatrics set for the larger party. When your most vocal members turn a joint session of Congress into a shouting match, and your leadership says nothing, voters draw a reasonable conclusion: this is who you all are.
Trump told them they should be ashamed. The chants drowned out the screaming. And somewhere in that chamber, the Democratic Party's moderates, if any remain, watched their brand shrink a little further.
Four people are dead, and a fifth, the suspect, was shot and killed by deputies after a violent stabbing spree erupted on a residential street in Purdy, Washington, on Tuesday morning. The small community, about an hour southwest of Seattle and roughly 20 minutes northwest of Tacoma, became the site of a massacre that unfolded in less than an hour.
The 32-year-old male suspect, who has not been publicly identified, killed three victims at the scene. A fourth was pronounced dead at the hospital. Authorities have not released the identities of any of the victims.
What makes the timeline even more chilling is what preceded the bloodshed.
The Pierce County Sheriff's Office received a call just after 8:45 a.m. about a man entering a Purdy home in violation of a no-contact order. Deputies were dispatched to serve the order. But by the time the law arrived to enforce the piece of paper, the killing had already begun, according to Fox News.
At about 9:30 a.m., multiple witnesses reported a man was "stabbing people" outside the house. Just three minutes later, responding deputies shot and killed the suspect at the scene.
Three minutes. That's how quickly law enforcement ended the threat once they arrived. It is a grim reminder of a truth that plays out again and again in these situations: the police cannot be everywhere, and protective orders are only as strong as the willingness of violent people to obey them.
The investigation is still in its early stages. The Pierce County Force Investigation Team is leading the probe, and officials did not immediately respond to inquiries from Fox News Digital. It remains unclear what led to the attack or what relationship, if any, the suspect had to all four victims.
We know a no-contact order existed. We know it was violated. We know four innocent people are dead.
The gap between the 8:45 a.m. call and the 9:30 a.m. witness reports raises unavoidable questions. What happened during those 45 minutes? Were deputies en route the entire time? Could a faster response have changed the outcome? These are not accusations. They are the questions that any community deserves to have answered when four of its members are slaughtered in broad daylight.
No-contact orders serve a purpose. They establish a legal boundary and create a mechanism for enforcement. But they are reactive instruments, not shields. They work when the person subject to them has enough respect for legal consequences to comply. When that person has already decided to kill, the order is meaningless.
This is a reality that conservatives have long understood and that policymakers too often ignore. The debate over how to protect vulnerable people from violent individuals cannot begin and end with court filings. It must include an honest conversation about the tools available to potential victims for their own defense, the speed and capacity of law enforcement response, and the criminal justice system's track record of keeping dangerous people away from the people they've threatened.
Every time a protective order fails catastrophically, the same cycle plays out. Shock. Grief. Calls for reform. Then silence until the next one.
Credit where it belongs: responding deputies neutralized the threat within three minutes of the first witness reports. That is fast, professional, and decisive policing. Four people were already dead, which is a tragedy. But the body count could have been higher. The officers who pulled the trigger under pressure did exactly what the public expects of them in the worst possible moment.
In an era when law enforcement is routinely second-guessed, scrutinized, and politically undermined, it is worth stating plainly that these deputies ran toward a man with a knife who had just murdered four people, and they stopped him.
Purdy is a small, unincorporated community. It is not the kind of place that expects to make national news for a mass killing on a Tuesday morning. The victims were adults. Their names have not been released. Somewhere in Pierce County, families are learning the worst news of their lives.
The investigation will eventually fill in the gaps. The suspect's identity, his connection to the victims, the history behind the no-contact order, and whatever warning signs were missed or ignored. Until then, four people are dead because a violent man decided a court order was just a piece of paper.
He was right. It was.
The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 on Tuesday that a Texas woman cannot sue the United States Postal Service over claims that mail carriers intentionally refused to deliver her mail because she is Black. The decision, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, holds that federal law exempts USPS from such lawsuits even when mail carriers deliberately withhold delivery.
The ruling threw out a lower court decision that had allowed the lawsuit to proceed. Whatever you think of the underlying claim, the case raises a question that conservatives should find deeply familiar: What happens when a sprawling federal bureaucracy is functionally immune from accountability?
Lebene Konan, a Texas real estate agent and landlord, claimed that USPS employees conducted what she called a "racially motivated harassment campaign" against her for years. Her allegations were not casual. According to court records, she filed more than 50 administrative complaints. She alleged that postal officials changed the lock on her post office box, declined to deliver mail to one of her properties, and at one point taped a sign to her mailbox announcing they would not deliver mail to her tenants, according to CNN.
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals described her situation bluntly:
"Instead, the facts present a continued, intentional effort not to deliver Konan's mail over a two-year period."
That appeals court had reversed a district court's dismissal of the case and allowed the lawsuit to move forward. The Supreme Court's Tuesday decision reversed the appeals court in turn.
At issue is a provision in the Federal Tort Claims Act. Congress waived sovereign immunity for most federal agencies so citizens could sue over wrongful conduct, but it carved out an exception for claims involving the "loss, miscarriage, or negligent transmission" of mail. The majority held that this exception covers even intentional withholding of delivery.
Thomas wrote that the practical consequences of ruling otherwise would overwhelm the system. Given that USPS delivered more than 116 billion pieces of mail to more than 166 million delivery points in fiscal year 2023, allowing tort suits for mail delivery disputes would open a floodgate:
"Given the frequency of postal workers' interactions with citizens, those suits would arise so often that they would create a significant burden for the government and the courts."
Justice Alito, who joined the majority, had previewed this concern during oral arguments in October, asking whether such litigation would drive up the cost of postage. "Is the cost of the first-class letter going to be $3 now?" he asked.
Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett also joined the majority.
Justice Sotomayor dissented, joined by Justices Gorsuch, Kagan, and Jackson. That's an unusual coalition. Sotomayor argued the majority stretched the postal exception well beyond its intended scope:
"The majority concludes that the postal exception captures, and therefore protects, the intentional nondelivery of mail, even when that nondelivery was driven by malicious reasons."
She continued:
"Because this interpretation expands the scope of the exception beyond what it can reasonably support, and undermines the FTCA's sweeping waiver in the process, I respectfully dissent."
The fact that Gorsuch landed on the same side as three liberal justices is worth noting. It suggests this case doesn't split neatly along the usual ideological lines. It's less about left versus right and more about how much latitude you give federal agencies to shield themselves from their own misconduct.
The Justice Department told the Supreme Court that Konan's mail was withheld for a technical reason: she was required to maintain a directory of her current tenants and failed to do so. Whether postal officials were justified in withholding the mail was not at issue before the Supreme Court, and that question will now be decided by lower courts.
But here is the core problem. Even if lower courts determine that the postal officials acted improperly, Tuesday's ruling means Konan has no tort remedy against USPS. She can pursue administrative channels. She can file complaints. She already filed more than 50 of them. The system absorbed everyone and kept going.
Conservatives are rightly skeptical of lawfare and litigation run amok. No one wants every misdelivered package to become a federal case. Thomas and Alito are correct that a nation processing 116 billion pieces of mail a year cannot function if every dispute becomes a lawsuit.
But conservatives also understand something else: federal agencies that cannot be sued are federal agencies that cannot be checked. Sovereign immunity exists to protect the government's ability to function. It was never meant to be a blanket permission slip for bureaucratic misconduct.
The Postal Service is the federal government at its most local. It shows up at your door. It holds your bills, your medications, and your correspondence. When USPS fails, it fails in the most personal, tangible way a government agency can.
Konan's allegations describe something beyond routine incompetence. A sign taped to a mailbox announcing that delivery would be refused is not a clerical error. More than 50 complaints ignored is not a backlog. Two years of intentional nondelivery, as the 5th Circuit characterized it, is not a system working as designed.
Whether race motivated the conduct remains unresolved. But the institutional question doesn't require settling that debate. A federal agency allegedly targeted one citizen's mail for two years, weathered dozens of complaints without correction, and now stands behind a legal shield that prevents the courts from providing a remedy. That should concern anyone who believes government power requires accountability.
The administrative state does not reform itself through internal complaint forms. Fifty of them proved that much.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told reporters Tuesday morning that he plans to sit down with embattled Texas GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales, who faces mounting calls from within his own party to resign over allegations of an affair with a former district staffer who later took her own life.
"I'll talk to Tony today," Johnson told Politico reporter Meredith Lee Hill.
The meeting comes after Johnson struck a more cautious tone just one day earlier, telling reporters Monday he didn't think "it's time" to call for Gonzales to step down. He urged patience instead.
"I think we have to wait for more of the facts to come out."
The facts already public are grim enough.
Gonzales is accused of having an affair with Regina Santos-Aviles, his former regional district director. The San Antonio Express-News obtained alleged text messages between the two from May 2024, in which Gonzales reportedly requested a "sexy pic" and asked about her "favorite" sexual position.
Santos-Aviles allegedly replied in one exchange:
"This is going too far boss."
That word, "boss," carries weight. This was not a relationship between equals. It was a congressman and his staffer, with all the power dynamics that arrangement implies. The texts were provided to the Express-News by Adrian Aviles, Santos-Aviles' widower.
On September 14, 2025, Regina Santos-Aviles committed suicide by setting herself on fire.
News 4 and Fox SA have also obtained a series of text messages related to the situation. No one should rush past the human devastation at the center of this story. Whatever the full picture turns out to be, a woman is dead, a family is shattered, and the man she worked for in Congress has serious questions to answer.
Multiple Republican members of Congress have already called for Gonzales to resign, The Daily Caller noted. The list is bipartisan in temperament if not in party, spanning populist firebrands and more conventional conservatives alike:
Mace has been the most vocal. In a long-form post on X Monday, she made her position unambiguous:
"Texans deserve a congressman who does not prey on women."
By Tuesday, she had moved beyond words. Mace announced she filed a resolution to publicly release all alleged sexual harassment violations by members of Congress. Not just Gonzales. All of them.
Mace framed her resolution as a response to something larger than one congressman's scandal. She pointed to the institutional rot that lets these situations fester in the first place.
"No one is held accountable here in Congress."
She went further, leveling a charge that should make members on both sides of the aisle uncomfortable: "Both sides protect each other."
That accusation stings because it rings true. Congress has a long and inglorious history of closing ranks when its members face misconduct allegations. Secret settlements paid with taxpayer money. Ethics investigations that drag on until the public loses interest. Quiet retirements dressed up as personal decisions. The pattern is well established, and voters are rightly sick of it.
What makes the Republican response here notable is the speed. There was no circling of wagons, no coordinated messaging operation to buy Gonzales time. Within days of the allegations gaining traction, five GOP members publicly demanded his resignation. That's not how Washington usually works.
The Speaker's position is understandable but precarious. Johnson holds a narrow majority, and every seat matters for the Republican legislative agenda. Calling for a member's resignation before all the facts emerge sets a precedent that could be weaponized later. His instinct toward caution is not unreasonable.
But caution has a shelf life. The alleged texts are specific. The woman at the center of the story is dead. The widower himself brought the messages to reporters. This is not an anonymous accusation from an unnamed source. It has names, dates, and words on a screen.
Johnson's meeting with Gonzales today will reveal whether the Speaker views this as a situation to manage or a situation to resolve. The distinction matters. Managing it means buying time. Resolving it means making a decision that prioritizes institutional credibility over one member's career.
Gonzales has not publicly commented on the allegations based on available reporting. The Caller reached out to Johnson's office for comment but did not receive a response before publication. Silence, at this stage, is its own kind of statement.
Mace's resolution to release all sexual harassment violations could reshape the conversation entirely. If it gains traction, the Gonzales situation becomes less about one man and more about a system that has shielded misconduct for decades.
That's a fight worth having, regardless of which names end up on the list.
Republicans have spent years arguing that they are the party of accountability, the party that doesn't tolerate the kind of institutional corruption that Democrats excuse or ignore. This is where that claim gets tested. Not in a press release. Not in a campaign ad. In a hallway conversation between a Speaker and a member whose conduct may have contributed to a woman's death.
Kansas lawmakers pushed a slate of election integrity measures through the House this week, targeting everything from all-mail elections to noncitizen voter roll scrubbing to advanced voting timelines. The bills, driven largely by House Elections Committee chair Rep. Pat Proctor, a Leavenworth Republican running for secretary of state, passed with comfortable margins and now head to the Senate.
Six bills cleared the chamber. The most consequential would repeal the state's Mail Ballot Election Act, require public benefits agencies to share data on non-citizens with election officials, put citizenship status on driver's licenses, and tighten deadlines for mail-in and in-person advance voting. One passed without any opposition at all.
Democrats called it a solution in search of a problem. The vote tallies suggest Kansas Republicans disagree.
The centerpiece of the push is a set of interlocking measures designed to keep noncitizens off voter rolls in the first place. House Bill 2491, which passed 87-37 on Wednesday, would require that names, addresses, and other personal identification information of people without U.S. citizenship who receive public benefits be regularly shared with the Kansas Secretary of State's Office, according to the Kansas Reflector.
That builds on a bill passed last year requiring the Kansas Department of Revenue to send personal data to the Secretary of State's Office, where it is compared side-by-side with statewide voter rolls. House Bill 2448, which passed 77-41 on Feb. 12, would add citizenship status to driver's licenses, giving election officials another verification layer.
Proctor framed the effort not as conspiracy-chasing but as basic institutional hygiene. He acknowledged on the House floor that noncitizen voting is not rampant, then made the case that even rare occurrences demand systematic prevention:
"But we owe it to Kansans to be able to tell them with confidence, 'No, noncitizens are not voting, and we know because we have all these different ways of scrubbing the voter rolls to make sure they never get on the voter rolls in the first place.'"
The facts back up the concern enough to justify action. Clay Barker, general counsel to the Secretary of State's Office, confirmed at a Jan. 29 committee hearing that two people have been indicted for fraudulent voting-related crimes, a third indictment is on the way, and 10 people are being examined. It has been explicitly illegal for immigrants to vote in federal elections since 1996. The Heritage Foundation's database catalogues 77 instances of noncitizens voting between 1999 and 2023.
Proctor put it plainly:
"One is too many."
That's a hard line to argue with. Either you believe election integrity matters at every margin, or you believe some amount of illegal voting is an acceptable cost of convenience. Kansas Republicans chose the former.
Democrats marshaled the predictable counterarguments. Rep. Kirk Haskins, a Topeka Democrat and ranking minority member on the House Elections Committee, led the opposition. His critique leaned less on principle and more on logistics and cost:
"We're not going to address the fact that county election offices, they don't even know how much it's going to cost. But we do need more people. This is called by definition an unfunded mandate."
Haskins also pointed to the committee hearing for HB 2491, where three proponents and 12 opponents testified. He questioned why the legislature keeps "emphasizing we have an issue when it's been proven we don't time and time again."
Proctor anticipated this. He noted the familiar pattern of shifting goalposts from opponents of election integrity reform:
"We used to hear, 'This never happens. Noncitizens never vote.'"
Now the line has moved to "seldom happens" and "it's infrequent." The concession embedded in the retreat is the whole point. If it happens at all, the system failed. The question is whether you build safeguards or shrug.
As for the unfunded mandate argument: county clerks manage elections with public money to serve the public interest. Verifying that only eligible citizens vote is not an add-on to that mission. It is the mission.
House Bill 2503, which passed 72-50 on Thursday, would repeal the Mail Ballot Election Act entirely, removing the possibility for local entities to carry out elections solely with mail-in ballots. This does not eliminate mail voting. It eliminates the option for jurisdictions to make mail the only way to vote.
The distinction matters. Conservatives have long argued that all-mail elections reduce the security and oversight that in-person voting provides. Repealing the act preserves mail as an option while ensuring voters always have access to a physical polling place.
House Bill 2453, passed 86-38 on Wednesday, restructures the advanced voting calendar:
Rep. Sandy Pickert, a Wichita Republican who sponsored HB 2453, was the only person to speak in support of the bill during its hearing in early February. The bill passed anyway, by 48 votes.
The logic here is straightforward. Tighter deadlines give election officials more time to verify ballots and less exposure to the logistical chaos that plagued elections in recent cycles. Earlier cutoffs also mean results come faster and with fewer outstanding ballots lingering in the count. Voters who care enough to participate can plan 25 days.
House Bill 2451, passed 88-36 on Wednesday, would bar government employees from advocating for or against proposed constitutional amendments or ballot questions. The bill drew bipartisan support, with Democratic Reps. Wanda Brownlee Paige of Kansas City and Angela Martinez of Wichita are joining Republicans.
This is a clean, good-government measure. Taxpayer-funded employees using their positions to influence ballot outcomes is a conflict of interest regardless of which side they advocate for. The public pays them to administer policy, not to campaign for it.
House Bill 2733, introduced by Rep. Bill Sutton, a Gardner Republican, passed the House on Tuesday without opposition. It requires certain elected officials to be residents of Kansas and their districts upon election and throughout their terms. That a residency requirement for elected officials needed to be codified at all tells you something about the state of modern politics.
Kansas has been here before. A previous law backed by Kris Kobach, then-Secretary of State and current Attorney General, required proof of citizenship to vote. It was struck down in court after preventing more than 30,000 Kansans from voting during the three years it was in effect.
That history looms over the current push. The new approach is notably different. Rather than imposing proof-of-citizenship requirements directly on voters at the point of registration, these bills work on the back end: cross-referencing public benefits data, flagging noncitizens through driver's license records, and giving the Secretary of State's Office tools to audit rolls proactively. It's a system designed to catch problems without creating a barrier that a court can paint as disenfranchisement.
Whether courts see it that way remains to be seen. But the legislative architecture is smarter this time, built to survive legal challenge by focusing on data-sharing between agencies rather than demanding documents from individual voters.
The bills now move to the Kansas Senate. Proctor, who is running for secretary of state, has made election integrity the signature issue of both his legislative work and his campaign. The margins in the House suggest the appetite for these reforms extends well beyond one ambitious lawmaker.
Kansas voters will eventually judge whether their elections are cleaner for it. The lawmakers who voted yes this week are betting they will.
Jordan James Parke, the British cosmetic surgery influencer who branded himself the "Lip King," is dead at 34 after what investigators believe may have been a cosmetic procedure gone wrong. Two people have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.
Parke, a native of Dudley, England, and a recurring presence on E!'s Botched, was found unconscious on Wednesday, February 18, at Lincoln Plaza in London's Canary Wharf district. The Metropolitan Police confirmed they were called by the London Ambulance Service regarding an unconscious 34-year-old man. He was declared dead at the scene.
A 43-year-old man and a 52-year-old woman were arrested on Friday, February 20, on suspicion of manslaughter. Both have been granted bail pending further investigation.
Police said his death "is currently being treated as unexplained," with an investigation underway, People magazine reported. Authorities have suggested that Parke may have undergone a cosmetic procedure before his death, though the official cause remains unknown.
Parke had reportedly spent over $150,000 on plastic surgery since beginning his cosmetic journey at age 19. The procedures included multiple nose jobs, filler in his neck, lips, and jawline, a Brazilian butt lift, and a chin implant. He appeared on Botched twice to address complications from his lip filler, liposuction, and the appearance of his nose.
In a 2016 interview on the British daytime show This Morning, Parke said he "never hated" himself but that plastic surgery had become a "hobby."
This was not the first time Parke's name appeared alongside a manslaughter investigation. In 2024, he was arrested after Alice Webb, a 33-year-old mother of five, died after becoming unwell following a non-surgical Brazilian butt lift, described as a "Liquid BBL," at a Gloucester clinic run by Parke and Jemma Pawlyszyn, according to the Daily Mail. Parke was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter in that case but was never charged. He was due to answer bail this March.
The symmetry is difficult to ignore. A man investigated for a client's death following a cosmetic procedure is himself found dead after what may have been another cosmetic procedure. The two cases may be entirely unrelated in their particulars, but they share a common thread: a largely unregulated corner of the cosmetic industry where the line between practitioner and patient blurs, and where accountability arrives only after someone stops breathing.
Stories like Parke's expose a growing and largely unaddressed problem. The market for non-surgical cosmetic procedures has exploded, fueled by social media influencers who serve simultaneously as walking advertisements and, in some cases, as the practitioners themselves. The regulatory framework has not kept pace. In the UK, non-surgical procedures like injectable fillers exist in a gray zone where oversight is minimal and qualifications are loosely defined.
This is what happens when a culture prizes aesthetics over caution and when governments treat the cosmetic industry as too niche to regulate seriously. Two people are now dead in cases connected to Parke's orbit. Parke himself is dead under circumstances that suggest the same industry claimed him, too.
The question is not whether society should allow adults to make choices about their own bodies. It should. The question is whether an industry where unlicensed or loosely credentialed individuals perform procedures that can kill should continue to operate in a regulatory vacuum. That is not a question of personal freedom. It is a question of basic public safety.
Parke's sister Sharnelle wrote on Instagram that their family is "numb, shocked, and heartbroken" over his death.
Whatever one thinks of the choices Parke made or the industry he helped promote, a family lost someone. A 34-year-old man is dead. And somewhere, the people and systems that enabled the conditions of his death continue operating, waiting for the next client to walk through the door.
President Donald Trump announced Saturday that he is withdrawing his endorsement of Republican Colorado Rep. Jeff Hurd after the first-term congressman voted for H.J.Res.72, a resolution aimed at Trump’s emergency tariff authority.
Trump said he is backing Hope Scheppelman, a critical care nurse practitioner and U.S. Navy veteran, to challenge Hurd in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District.
Hurd was among six House Republicans who crossed the aisle earlier this month to pass H.J.Res.72, which would repeal Trump’s tariffs on Canada by terminating the national emergency used to justify them.
The vote landed at a volatile moment for U.S. trade policy. The day before Trump’s announcement, the Supreme Court struck down the bulk of Trump’s tariffs in a 6-3 ruling, finding his expanded use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act exceeded his authority. Trump, however, announced a new 15 percent global tariff and vowed to pursue trade policy through alternative legal channels, Newsweek noted.
This is not a subtle message from the president. In a party that campaigns on fighting for American workers, American producers, and American leverage, the question is no longer whether trade will be contested. It is those who are willing to take the political heat to contest it.
Trump framed the move as a direct response to Hurd’s posture on tariffs and what Trump sees as a failure to support an America First trade agenda. In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote:
"Based on a lack of support, in particular for the unbelievably successful TARIFFS imposed on Foreign Countries and Companies which has made America Richer, Stronger, Bigger, and Better than ever before, I am hereby WITHDRAWING my Endorsement of RINO Congressman Jeff Hurd, of Colorado’s 3rd District, and fully Endorsing Highly Respected Patriot, Hope Scheppelman, to take his place in Congress."
Trump also accused Hurd of misplaced priorities, arguing that the Colorado Republican was “more interested in protecting Foreign Countries that have been ripping us off for decades than he is the United States of America.”
And he made clear this is not how he prefers to operate. Trump described taking back an endorsement as “a difficult decision,” saying he has only done it once before, citing his 2022 withdrawal of support from Alabama Senate candidate Mo Brooks.
Hurd defended his vote in a statement released February 19, grounding his position in Congress’s constitutional authority over trade.
As Hurd put it:
"Today's vote is grounded first and foremost in the Constitution. Article I gives Congress the authority to regulate commerce with foreign nations and to levy tariffs. Those delegations were never intended to serve as a permanent vehicle for sweeping, long-term trade policy."
Hurd also warned about setting a precedent that future presidents could use, even in ways Republicans would oppose.
"If we normalize broad emergency trade powers today, we should expect that a future president — of either party — will rely on the same authority in ways many of us would strongly oppose."
That is the core clash: Trump is signaling that the economic fight with foreign competitors cannot be run with one hand tied behind the nation’s back, while Hurd is signaling that the method matters because precedent lasts longer than any one presidency.
Both arguments are serious. But only one of them is paired with a blunt political reality: the party’s voters are watching who actually stands with the president when the fight gets real.
Trump first endorsed Hurd for reelection in October of 2025, calling him “an Incredible Representative for the Great People” of Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District. The endorsement was part of a batch of 28 House Republican incumbents Trump backed in quick succession, and it marked the first time Trump had thrown his support behind the Grand Junction attorney, who was elected in 2024 by a comfortable margin in the Republican-leaning seat.
Hurd won that 2024 race after his primary opponent, Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, moved across the state to run in the heavily Republican 4th Congressional District, where she won election to a third term.
Now, Trump is placing his bet on Scheppelman, described as a former Colorado GOP vice chair, critical care nurse practitioner, and U.S. Navy veteran. Trump said she “knows the America First Policies required.” In the same Truth Social post, Trump listed the agenda he expects her to carry, including “Promote MADE IN THE U.S.A.,” “Champion American Energy DOMINANCE,” “Keep our Border SECURE,” and “Stop Migrant Crime.”
Hurd and Scheppelman are set to face off in the June 30 GOP primary for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District.
Trump’s decision to pull his endorsement marks only the second time he has withdrawn support from a sitting Republican lawmaker, according to the source material. The first, in March 2022, came after Mo Brooks urged voters to move past the 2020 election, which Trump called “going woke.” Brooks later lost his primary to Katie Britt.
Here, Trump is turning a policy dispute into a governing test: if the administration is moving to rebuild leverage on trade, it expects its own party to stop undercutting it, especially when the legal terrain is already contested, and the Supreme Court has narrowed the president’s authority under IEEPA.
Hurd, for his part, pointed to district-level economic concerns, including agricultural producers operating on tight margins and the presence of “the largest steel rail mill in the United States” located within Colorado’s 3rd, arguing that unpredictable trade policy affects “payrolls, investment decisions, and long-term planning.”
That is the tension Republican voters will have to referee: the desire for stable conditions at home versus a national strategy that uses tariffs as leverage abroad.
With Trump’s endorsement now behind Scheppelman, the primary race in Colorado’s 3rd District is set to intensify.
In the Trump era, endorsements are not ceremonial. They are enforcement.