An NYPD narcotics sergeant has been convicted of second-degree manslaughter after he hurled a cooler filled with drinks at a fleeing drug suspect, killing the man when he crashed his motorized scooter and slammed into a tree. Sgt. Erik Duran, 38, now faces up to 15 years in prison.
Judge Guy Mitchell delivered the verdict on Friday in Bronx criminal court following a bench trial — no jury, just a judge weighing the facts alone. The conviction makes Duran the first NYPD officer in years to be tried for killing someone while on duty. He has already been dismissed from the department.
Sentencing is scheduled for March 19.
On August 23, 2023, authorities say 30-year-old Eric Duprey sold drugs to an undercover officer in the Bronx and then fled the scene on a motorized scooter. Duran, part of the narcotics unit conducting the operation, grabbed a nearby red cooler packed with ice, water, and sodas, and threw it at Duprey as he rode away.
Duprey — who was not wearing a helmet — lost control of the scooter, crashed into a tree, landed on the pavement, and slid beneath a parked car. Prosecutors said he sustained fatal head injuries and died almost instantaneously.
Security footage captured Duran grabbing and hurling the cooler.
Duran testified in his own defense this week, telling the court he acted in a split-second to protect himself and fellow officers from the oncoming scooter:
"He was gonna crash into us. I didn't have time. All I had time for was to try again to stop or to try to get him to change directions. That's all I had the time to think of."
He also said he immediately tried to render aid after seeing the extent of Duprey's injuries. The judge wasn't persuaded. Mitchell convicted Duran of second-degree manslaughter while dismissing the assault charge, finding that prosecutors had failed to show Duran intended to hurt Duprey. He did not deliver a verdict on the lesser criminally negligent homicide charge, having already found Duran guilty on the more serious count, as NY 1 reports.
Mitchell's statement from the bench was pointed:
"The fact that the defendant is a police officer has no bearing. He's a person and will be treated as any other defendant."
On its face, this sounds like equal justice. In practice, it strips away the entire context of why Duran was on that street in the first place — executing a narcotics operation against a man who had just sold drugs to an undercover officer and was actively fleeing. Duran didn't wander into a confrontation. He was doing the job the city asked him to do.
That doesn't automatically excuse the cooler throw. But to say the badge "has no bearing" is to pretend that policing doesn't involve split-second decisions in chaotic, dangerous environments that civilians never face. A construction worker who throws a cooler in a parking lot dispute and a narcotics officer trying to stop a fleeing suspect are not in the same situation, no matter how badly the court wants to flatten the distinction.
The Sergeants Benevolent Association called the conviction a "miscarriage of justice" and said it still believes Duran was innocent. In a statement, the union laid out what many officers across the city are likely thinking:
"The verdict rendered by Judge Mitchell is clearly against the weight of the credible evidence. Verdicts such as this send a terrible message to hard-working cops: should you use force to defend yourself, your fellow police officers or the citizens of the City, no matter how justified your actions, you risk criminal charges and conviction."
That message will land whether city leaders want it to or not. Officers already working in a department demoralized by years of anti-police rhetoric, progressive prosecution, and revolving-door criminal justice now watch a colleague face 15 years for a decision made in seconds during an active narcotics bust. The calculus for every cop in New York just shifted — not toward better policing, but toward less policing. Toward hesitation. Toward doing nothing and letting the suspect ride away.
That's the incentive structure this conviction creates, regardless of whether it was legally sound.
The case was prosecuted by the office of State Attorney General Letitia James, who stated after the verdict:
"Though it cannot return Eric to his loved ones, today's decision gives justice to his memory."
James has built her career on high-profile prosecutions with political resonance. Her office taking the lead here — rather than the local district attorney — is itself a statement about the kind of cases Albany wants to pursue. Prosecuting an NYPD officer for a death that occurred during a drug bust against a suspect who was actively fleeing fits neatly into a progressive framework where police force is treated as inherently suspect and criminal suspects are treated as inherently sympathetic.
Eric Duprey's death is a tragedy. A 30-year-old man is dead. His wife, Orlyanis Velez, spoke outside the courthouse:
"I was waiting for justice just like everybody, but when the moment happens, you can't believe it's happening. It's been a lot of time. These people been killing citizens, been killing everybody. They don't give no reason."
Her grief is real. But the broader narrative her words were woven into — that police officers are systematically "killing citizens" without reason — is the same narrative that has driven anti-police policy in New York for years. Duprey was not stopped at random. He was not an innocent bystander. He had, according to authorities, just completed a drug sale to an undercover officer and was fleeing a narcotics operation.
None of that means he deserved to die. But the refusal to acknowledge even the basic circumstances of the encounter — a drug deal, a flight from law enforcement, a split-second response — tells you everything about how this case will be used politically.
The NYPD confirmed Duran's dismissal in a statement citing New York State Public Officers Law:
"Pursuant to New York State Public Officers Law, a public officer who is convicted of a felony automatically ceases to hold that position."
Automatic. No review, no appeal within the department. A felony conviction and the career is over by operation of law. Duran's attorney and police union representatives had not responded to requests for comment on potential appeals at the time of reporting.
Duran faces sentencing on March 19, where a judge will decide how many of those 15 possible years he'll serve. The decision will be watched closely — not just by Duran's family, but by every officer in the NYPD, weighing whether the risks of proactive policing are still worth taking.
New York asked its officers to get drugs off the street. One of them did, and now he's a felon. The next officer won't throw a cooler. He also won't chase the suspect. He'll stand there, watch the scooter disappear, and file a report that nobody reads.
That's the city Letitia James is building.
Nancy Pelosi is throwing her weight behind Jack Schlossberg, the 32-year-old grandson of President John F. Kennedy, in the Democratic primary for New York's 12th Congressional District. The 85-year-old former House Speaker's endorsement lands in a crowded field vying for the Manhattan seat vacated by Rep. Jerold Nadler, who announced his retirement after more than three decades in Congress.
The district stretches from Union Square to the Upper West Side and Upper East Side — some of the most expensive real estate in America, populated by some of the most reliably Democratic voters in the country. And yet the primary way to represent them has turned into something genuinely entertaining.
Pelosi's statement, obtained by The Post, was prepared by Schlossberg's own campaign — a detail worth pausing on. The statement highlights Schlossberg's:
The language reads less like an independent endorsement and more like a press release the candidate wrote about himself and handed to a famous person to sign. That's not unusual in politics, but it tells you something about how much of this race runs on brand rather than substance, as New York Post reports.
Pelosi served in Congress alongside several members of the Kennedy family — the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, former Rep. Joe Kennedy, and former Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III. The dynasty connection runs deep, and Pelosi is betting it still means something to Manhattan Democrats.
Schlossberg has been branded a "nepo baby" since launching his run, and it's not hard to see why. His mother is Caroline Kennedy, former U.S. ambassador to Japan and Australia. His political résumé consists largely of being a political commentator and delivering a speech at the Democratic National Convention. He is 32 years old, running for a seat held for decades by a 78-year-old career legislator, in a district where name recognition is currency.
The Kennedy name is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Strip it away, and you have a young commentator with no legislative record, backed by an octogenarian former Speaker, competing in a primary against candidates who have actually held office or built careers outside their family trees.
Among the other contenders: state Assemblyman Micah Lasher, former journalist Jami Floyd, and — in one of the more surreal entries — George Conway, described as a former Republican and the ex-husband of former Trump White House counselor Kellyanne Conway. Manhattan Democrats now get to choose between a Kennedy scion, a man whose chief public identity for years was opposing his own wife's boss, and an assemblyman who probably wonders how he ended up as the boring option.
The most interesting subplot isn't the primary itself — it's the family fracture the campaign spotlights. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Schlossberg's cousin, serves as Health and Human Services Secretary. Schlossberg called him:
"A rabid dog."
The White House pushed back on the remark. So here is the Kennedy family in 2026: one member running for Congress as a Democrat with Pelosi's blessing, another serving in a Republican administration, and the candidate publicly savaging his own relative to prove his partisan bona fides.
This is what happens when a political dynasty outlives its unifying figure. The Kennedys no longer represent a coherent political vision. They represent a last name that different family members cash in from opposite sides of the aisle. Schlossberg needs Democratic voters to see him as the "real" Kennedy — the one who stayed loyal to the party — while RFK Jr. charts his own course entirely. The family Christmas must be something.
Schlossberg's family also suffered a genuine tragedy in late December when his sister, Tatiana Schlossberg, died at age 35 from leukemia. That loss is real and deserves recognition regardless of political disagreement.
The NY-12 primary is a miniature portrait of the modern Democratic Party. The establishment — embodied by Pelosi — rallies behind legacy and celebrity. The progressive base hasn't coalesced around an alternative. And the field is cluttered with candidates whose qualifications range from "state legislator" to "famous last name" to "divorced a Republican."
For conservatives watching from the outside, the race offers a useful reminder: Democrats don't run on policy in districts where policy differences between candidates are negligible. They run on pedigree, endorsements, and who can most convincingly perform outrage at the other side. Schlossberg's signature policy contribution so far is calling his own cousin a rabid dog.
Pelosi's endorsement won't decide this race, but it reveals who the Democratic establishment wants carrying the torch — someone young, photogenic, and named Kennedy. Whether Manhattan voters want the same thing, or whether they've finally grown tired of dynasties, is the only interesting question left.
The Kennedys once inspired a generation. Now they're splitting Thanksgiving over cabinet appointments.
A wind turbine at the University of Minnesota's Eolos Wind Energy Research Field Station in Dakota County struck and killed a bald eagle, dismembering the bird into three pieces. The lower torso and tail were discovered first. The head and wings weren't found until over a month later.
Fox News reported that the U.S. Department of the Interior issued a violation notice in January, citing the university for breaking the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act by killing the eagle without an incidental take permit. The proposed civil penalty: $14,536. The turbine's construction was funded by a $7.9 million grant from the Obama Department of Energy, awarded in 2010.
The grant traces back to one of Barack Obama's first major legislative achievements — the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which appropriated roughly $90 billion to, as a Center for Climate and Energy Solutions report put it, "lay the foundation for a clean energy economy of the future." The Department of Energy received $35.2 billion of that pot.
Some foundation.
DOI spokesperson Matthew Middleton made the administration's position clear in comments to Fox News Digital. Under President Trump and Secretary Burgum, he said, the department:
"is enforcing the law to protect these iconic birds and demand accountability from an industry that has jeopardized these protected species."
Middleton didn't mince words about what that eagle represented — or what the wind industry has treated it as:
"America's bald eagles are a national treasure, not collateral damage for costly wind experiments. Wind companies will no longer get a free pass as this administration safeguards bald eagles and advances energy policies that prioritize affordability and strengthen America's economy."
The University of Minnesota, for its part, offered all the urgency of a faculty senate subcommittee. A university spokesperson confirmed the school had received the DOI's notice and said it is "currently under review." No substantive response. No explanation. No accountability. Just bureaucratic stalling dressed up as process.
The DOI's violation notice also revealed that the university was in the process of testing its collision detection sensors when the incident occurred. The sensors were supposed to prevent exactly this. The eagle died anyway — torn apart by the very machine that was allegedly being calibrated to protect it.
The University of Minnesota isn't alone. In January, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finalized fines totaling $32,340 against Ørsted Onshore North America for two bald eagles killed by Ørsted turbines — one in Nebraska, one in Illinois.
Fox News Digital had reported on those proposed fines months earlier. The January notice of violation against the university does not indicate it has since obtained an incidental take permit, and the Fish and Wildlife Service sent a letter urging the school to reassess the turbine's danger to eagles and consider applying for a long-term permit.
That the federal government has to write a university suggesting it may think about whether its giant spinning blades pose a threat to birds tells you everything about how seriously the green energy sector has taken wildlife protections.
For years, the wind industry operated under a kind of moral immunity. If your energy source carried the "clean" label, regulators looked the other way. Eagles died. Enforcement languished.
The tradeoff was always implicit: the climate mission mattered more than the birds. Nobody in Washington wanted to be the person who slowed down a wind farm to save a raptor — not when there were press conferences to hold and subsidies to distribute.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has been one of the most direct voices on the broader dysfunction behind projects like the Eolos facility. Appearing on Jesse Watters Primetime in June, Burgum called out the entire ideological apparatus propping up these ventures:
"When you think about the green new scam, it was pro-China, and it's anti-American, and it's also unaffordable and unreliable."
Burgum has also characterized solar and wind projects as "destabilizing our grid and driving up prices." That's not rhetoric — it's a description of what ratepayers across the country experience every time an unreliable energy source demands backup from the natural gas plants that were supposed to be retired.
The Eolos facility is a case study in how this works. Billions in taxpayer dollars flow through federal legislation into grants. Those grants fund research stations and experimental turbines. The turbines kill protected wildlife. The operators shrug. And the taxpayer foots the bill twice — once for the construction, and again when the fines come due at a public university funded by state dollars.
Nobody in the Obama administration's Department of Energy asked whether a $7.9 million wind turbine in Dakota County might pose a risk to bald eagles. Or if they did, the answer didn't matter enough to change the plan. The ARRA's $90 billion clean energy push was about speed and symbolism, not stewardship. Move fast. Build turbines. Claim credit. Let someone else deal with the carcasses.
What's changed is that the current administration treats the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act as something more than a suggestion. The combined enforcement actions against both the University of Minnesota and Ørsted signal a shift that the wind industry should study carefully. The days of treating eagle kills as an acceptable externality — a quiet cost of doing green business — are over.
A $14,536 fine won't bankrupt the University of Minnesota. But the principle it establishes carries real weight. If a research university running an experimental turbine funded by a federal grant can be held accountable, so can every commercial wind operation spinning blades across the Great Plains.
The wind industry spent years wrapping itself in moral authority. Clean energy. Carbon reduction. Saving the planet. But moral authority has a way of evaporating when your product shreds the national bird into three pieces and your best response is that the matter is "currently under review."
The Fish and Wildlife Service has urged the University of Minnesota to reassess and to pursue a long-term incidental take permit. Whether the university complies — or continues to stall behind vague statements about internal review — will test whether institutions that benefited from Obama-era green energy largesse are willing to meet even the most basic standards of environmental accountability.
The bald eagle that died at Eolos didn't have a lobby. It didn't have a press team or a federal grant. It had a law — one that existed long before the clean energy gold rush, and one that this administration has decided to enforce.
That eagle was torn apart by a machine the taxpayers built. The least anyone can do is hold someone responsible.
Zubayr Al-Bakoush — described as one of the architects of the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya — touched down at Andrews Air Force Base at 3 a.m. Friday in American custody. He will face prosecution on charges of arson, murder, attempted murder, and terrorism in a DC federal court.
The New York Post reported that an eight-count indictment, filed in November 2025 and unsealed Friday afternoon, charges him with conspiring to provide and actually providing material support to terrorists, including himself, and using those resources to kill U.S. officials, injure others, and set fire to buildings.
He is the third Islamic extremist arrested in connection with the Benghazi assault. Fourteen years after four Americans were killed on sovereign U.S. soil in Libya, one of the men who allegedly led the attack now sits in a federal holding facility.
Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the arrest at DOJ headquarters Friday alongside FBI Director Kash Patel and DC U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro — both of whom had been on the tarmac at Andrews in the early morning hours to receive the prisoner personally.
"Zubayr Al-Bakoush landed at Andrews Air Force Base at 3 a.m. this morning. He is in our custody. He was greeted by Director Patel and US Attorney Jeanine Pirro."
Bondi vowed prosecution "to the fullest extent of the law." She did not mince words about why it mattered.
Bondi drove straight at one of the most infamous moments in the Benghazi saga — former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's dismissive response during a 2013 congressional hearing, when Sen. Ron Johnson pressed her on the failures that led to the attack.
"Hillary Clinton famously once said about Benghazi, 'What difference, at this point, does it make?' Well, it makes a difference to Donald Trump. It makes a difference to those families."
"And 14 years later, it makes a difference to law enforcement."
That line landed in a room that understood its weight. Clinton's remark became shorthand for an entire governing philosophy — one that treated accountability as an inconvenience and the deaths of Americans abroad as a political problem to be managed rather than a crime to be avenged. For more than a decade, it served as a kind of permission structure: if the people at the top didn't care, why should the bureaucracy beneath them?
Bondi's message on Friday was the opposite.
"Let this case serve as a reminder. If you commit a crime against the American people anywhere in this world, President Trump's Justice Department will find you. It might not happen overnight, but it will happen. You can run, but you cannot hide."
The 13-page indictment lays out the timeline of an attack that unfolded over hours, hours during which help never arrived.
According to the indictment, Al-Bakoush and others violently breached the Mission's gate around 9:45 p.m. on September 11, 2012, and set fire to its buildings, including a villa housing Ambassador Chris Stevens, State Department information management officer Sean Smith, and diplomatic security agent Scott Wickland. Stevens and Smith died trapped inside the compound. Wickland survived.
Roughly half an hour after the initial breach, the attackers retreated and began firing on the complex with handguns, AK-47 assault rifles, and rocket-propelled grenades. They re-entered the Mission around 11:45 p.m. In the early morning hours of September 12, they turned mortars on the nearby CIA annex, killing CIA contractors Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods and seriously injuring State Department Assistant Regional Officer David Ubben and CIA facility security officer Mark Geist.
The indictment identifies Al-Bakoush and 19 co-conspirators who also allegedly intended to plunder property from the Mission, including documents, maps, and computers containing sensitive information. A confidential federal informant described Al-Bakoush in January 2020 court filings as one of "two key leaders of the Mission attack."
Four Americans are dead. A diplomatic compound in ashes. Classified materials looted. And for 13 hours, the people inside waited for a rescue that never came.
DC U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro framed the arrest against the original failure — not just of security, but of will.
"An American ambassador, elite military personnel and a State Department employee were all violently murdered. The American cavalry never came. For 13 hours, they waited for help that never came."
A select House committee investigation found that Obama administration officials failed to deploy military assets to Libya despite intelligence warnings of growing danger to American interests. Instead of confronting that failure, the administration constructed a cover story. Five days after the attack, then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice went on national television and attributed the violence to a spontaneous reaction to an internet video.
"What sparked the recent violence was the airing on the Internet of a very hateful, very offensive video that has offended many people around the world."
No diplomatic security agents in Benghazi attributed the attack to a video or a protest. It was a coordinated assault carried out by members of the Al Qaeda-linked group Ansar Al Sharia, armed with rifles, RPGs, and mortars. The video narrative was a fabrication — not a misunderstanding, not a premature assessment, but a deliberate choice to mislead the American public weeks before a presidential election.
That context matters now because it explains why accountability took 14 years. When the priority is political survival rather than justice, investigations stall, leads go cold, and terrorists walk free.
Al-Bakoush is the third suspect brought to account. Ahmed Abu Khatallah, described as the attack's leader, was arrested in Libya in June 2014 and initially sentenced in June 2018 to 22 years in prison — a sentence a federal appeals panel called "unreasonably low." He was resentenced in September 2024 to 28 years during the Biden administration. Mustafa al-Imam was captured by U.S. special forces in October 2017 and sentenced in January 2020 to 19 years and eight months.
Two convictions in over a decade. Twenty co-conspirators were named in the indictment. Pirro made clear the work isn't finished.
"The Benghazi saga was a painful one for Americans. It has stayed with all of us. And let me be very clear, there are more of them out there."
"Time will not stop us from going after these predators, no matter how long it takes, in order to fulfill our obligation to those families who suffered horrific pain at the hands of these violent terrorists."
Pirro said her team "will not stop" hunting down other attackers who remain at large, and that she and Patel had kept in touch with family members of the four Americans killed.
FBI Director Kash Patel, who noted he worked on the Benghazi case as a young prosecutor, was on the airfield for the formal foreign transfer of custody.
"When an act of terrorism of this magnitude strikes at the heart of our nation, we go to work."
"I was at the airfield with US Attorney Pirro earlier this morning when we did the formal, foreign transfer of custody of Bakoush into US custody to face prosecution. And her office and the Department of Justice are going to execute justice for the fallen."
Patel declined to disclose where Al-Bakoush was apprehended, citing the need to protect the integrity of the investigation. The operation involved the FBI's New York Field Office, the DOJ's National Security Division Counterterrorism Section, the Department of War, the State Department, and the CIA.
A CIA spokesperson said Director Ratcliffe was "deeply grateful" for the efforts of the DOJ and the FBI:
"CIA and the Nation will never forget the extraordinary sacrifices of Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, who gave their lives in defense of others and exemplified the very best of our Agency."
There is a reason Benghazi never faded from public memory the way the political class wanted it to. It wasn't partisanship. It wasn't a talking point. It was the image of Americans abandoned by their own government — fighting through the night on a rooftop in a hostile country while Washington deliberated and then lied about what happened.
Chris Stevens. Sean Smith. Glen Doherty. Tyrone Woods. They deserved better from the people who sent them there, and they deserved better from the people who spent years deflecting blame rather than hunting down the men who killed them.
Pirro put it plainly:
"President Trump will make sure that the cavalry comes for Americans, no matter where they are in this world."
Fourteen years late, the cavalry arrived at Andrews Air Force Base at 3 a.m. with a prisoner in tow. That's what difference it makes.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn is demanding Chief Justice John Roberts open an investigation into Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson after the Supreme Court justice attended the 68th Grammy Awards in Los Angeles—an event where attendees wore "ICE Out" lapel pins, and winners declared "No one is illegal on stolen land" and "F— ICE" from the stage.
Fox News reported that Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to Roberts urging the chief justice to determine whether Jackson's attendance violated the Supreme Court's Code of Conduct and whether her participation would require recusal from cases coming before the Court.
The timing is not incidental. The Supreme Court is slated to take on cases revolving around the Trump administration's agenda, including birthright citizenship and immigration—precisely the issues that turned the January 29 ceremony into a political rally.
Jackson attended the 2026 Recording Academy Honors presented by The Black Music Collective, where she had been nominated for narrating the audiobook version of her memoir, "Lovely One." What she walked into—or chose to stay for—went well beyond a celebration of musical achievement.
Attendees pinned "ICE Out" buttons to their lapels. Winners used their platform to attack U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Critics said Jackson clapped as various speakers criticized ICE. The rhetoric was not subtle. It was not coded. It was profane, direct, and aimed squarely at the federal government's enforcement of immigration law.
A sitting Supreme Court justice sat in that audience. That fact alone deserves scrutiny. That the Court will soon adjudicate immigration cases involving the very agency being denounced makes it something more.
Blackburn's letter does not mince words. She draws a clear line between attendance and implication, arguing that Jackson's presence at an overtly political event raises legitimate questions about judicial impartiality.
"While it is by no means unheard of or unusual for a Supreme Court justice to attend a public function, very rarely—if ever—have justices of our nation's highest Court been present at an event at which attendees have amplified such far-left rhetoric."
That distinction matters. No one argues that justices should be confined to their chambers. They attend galas, give speeches, and appear at universities. But there is a difference between attending a cultural event and sitting through what amounted to a political demonstration against a federal law enforcement agency—one whose work will land on your desk in a matter of months.
Blackburn pressed the point further, calling on Roberts to act:
"To that end, in the interest of a fair-minded, impartial, and independent federal judiciary, I urge you to initiate an investigation into Justice Jackson's attendance at this event and if her participation in any way would require recusal from matters that will come before the Court."
The senator is not asking for Jackson's removal. She is asking whether a justice who attended—and by some accounts applauded—an event dripping with hostility toward ICE can credibly sit in judgment on cases involving that same agency. It is a reasonable question. The Code of Conduct exists precisely for moments like this.
For years, Democrats and their media allies mounted sustained campaigns against Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Sens. Dick Durbin and Sheldon Whitehouse wrote to Roberts demanding that Alito recuse himself from cases related to the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. The basis? Alito's wife had put up a Revolutionary War-era flag at their home.
A flag. Hung by a spouse. At a private residence.
That was enough for Democrats to demand recusal, launch news cycles, and question the legitimacy of the Court itself. The apparatus of outrage cranked to full volume over fabric on a pole.
Now a liberal justice personally attends a public awards show where performers and winners openly cursed a federal agency, where the crowd wore protest pins, and where the political messaging was unmistakable—and the question is whether anyone will apply the same standard.
Blackburn drew the comparison explicitly:
"Unlike these meritless claims against Justice Alito and Justice Thomas, there are serious questions regarding Justice Jackson's participation in such a brazenly political, anti-law enforcement event and her ability to remain an impartial member of the Supreme Court."
The left built this framework. They insisted that even the faintest suggestion of political sympathy—a flag, a friendship, a vacation—disqualified conservative justices from hearing cases. They demanded investigations, recusals, and resignations on evidence that would not survive a hallway conversation. They wrote the rules of engagement.
The question now is whether those rules apply to everyone or only to justices appointed by Republican presidents.
This is not an abstract debate about judicial etiquette. The Supreme Court's upcoming docket includes cases directly tied to the Trump administration's immigration enforcement—including birthright citizenship. These are cases where ICE's authority, its operations, and its legal mandate will be central questions.
Jackson did not attend a jazz concert that happened to get political. She attended an event where opposition to immigration enforcement was the dominant cultural message of the evening. If the standard Democrats established means anything—if proximity to political expression creates an appearance of bias—then Jackson's attendance is a textbook case for recusal review.
The Court adopted its formal Code of Conduct relatively recently, after years of Democratic pressure. It would be deeply ironic if the first real test of that code involved a Democratic-appointed justice—and the institution simply looked away.
As of now, neither the Supreme Court nor Blackburn's office has publicly responded to press inquiries about the letter. Jackson herself has offered no public comment on the controversy.
That silence is its own kind of statement. When Thomas and Alito faced similar—and far thinner—allegations, the demand from the left was immediate transparency, public explanation, and institutional action. Opinion pages lit up. Cable news ran chyrons. Senators held press conferences.
The Grammy Awards aired on a Sunday. Jackson was there. The anti-ICE rhetoric was loud, public, and profane. And the response from the usual guardians of judicial ethics has been conspicuously quiet.
Roberts now holds Blackburn's letter. Whether he acts on it will signal something important about the Court's willingness to apply its own standards evenly. The chief justice has historically guarded the institution's independence from political pressure on both sides. This is a moment where that independence gets tested—not by an outside attack, but by the conduct of one of his own colleagues.
Blackburn has done what the Senate Judiciary Committee exists to do: exercise oversight and demand accountability from the judiciary. She has not called for impeachment. She has not questioned Jackson's fitness for the bench. She has asked, plainly, whether sitting through a political event hostile to federal law enforcement creates a conflict of interest in pending cases. The letter is measured. The question is direct.
The left spent years insisting that the appearance of impartiality matters as much as impartiality itself. They said the standard must be rigorous. They said the Court's legitimacy depended on it. They were right about that much.
Now we find out if they meant it.
A unanimous federal appeals panel ruled Friday that President Trump's executive orders eliminating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs across federal agencies and contractors can go into effect — vacating a preliminary injunction that had kept the orders on ice.
The New York Post reported that the three-judge panel at the Richmond-based Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals didn't mince words: the president has the authority to set his own policy priorities, and DEI isn't one of them.
The ruling marks the second time this same panel has swatted down attempts to block the orders. It won't be the last legal battle. But it is the clearest signal yet that the judiciary isn't going to serve as a shield for the institutional left's favorite patronage system.
Chief Judge Albert Diaz, who wrote the panel's opinion, framed the matter with unusual directness:
"President Trump has decided that equity isn't a priority in his administration and so has directed his subordinates to terminate funding that supports equity-related projects to the maximum extent allowed by law."
"Whether that's sound policy or not isn't our call. We ask only whether the policy is unconstitutionally vague for funding recipients."
The answer, evidently, was no. All three judges — Diaz, Judge Pamela A. Harris, and Judge Allison Jones Rushing — concurred that Trump has the power to do exactly what he did. The panel stated plainly that the president:
"may determine his policy priorities and instruct his agents to make funding decisions based on them."
That's not a radical legal proposition. It's the basic architecture of the executive branch. A president sets priorities. Agencies execute them. Funding follows policy. The only thing unusual here is that anyone tried to argue otherwise.
Maryland federal judge Adam B. Abelson had granted a nationwide injunction blocking the orders, which were struck down in March 2025 by the same three-judge panel. Undeterred, Judge Abelson then granted a preliminary injunction. The Fourth Circuit has now vacated that one too, finding that Abelson "erred in granting a preliminary injunction blocking the order."
The pattern is worth noting. A single district judge issued sweeping, nationwide relief against a sitting president's policy directives — not once, but twice — and was reversed both times by the same appellate panel.
The lower court didn't just disagree with the administration's policy preferences. It attempted to substitute its own judgment for the president's on a question of executive priority-setting. The Fourth Circuit said that's not how it works.
The plaintiffs challenging the executive orders included Baltimore's mayor and city council, the American Association of University Professors, and the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education. They claimed Trump's orders violated provisions of the First and Fifth Amendments.
Consider the plaintiff list for a moment. A city government, an academic lobbying organization, and a trade association for the very bureaucrats whose jobs depend on DEI's continued existence. These aren't disinterested constitutional scholars. They are the ecosystem — the people who staff, fund, and benefit from the programs the president ordered dismantled.
Justice Department attorneys argued that the DEI programs and initiatives ran afoul of federal civil rights legislation. The Fourth Circuit didn't need to reach that question to rule in the administration's favor, but the DOJ's framing underscores a deeper point: these programs were never the neutral, benign initiatives their defenders claim. They sorted Americans by race. That has a name in law, and it isn't "equity."
Here's the detail the left would prefer you skip over: Chief Judge Albert Diaz was appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama. This wasn't a panel of Trump-appointed judges running interference for their benefactor. It was an Obama appointee reading the law and concluding that the president of the United States can, in fact, direct how the executive branch spends money.
Diaz even wrote a brief concurring opinion consoling "those disappointed by the outcome," urging them to "keep the faith" and "depend on the Constitution, which remains a beacon."
It's a gracious note, and it reveals something important. Diaz clearly has personal misgivings about the policy. He described the administration's approach in pointed terms:
"The Administration's obsession over so-called 'woke' DEI programs appears to know no bounds."
And yet he ruled the way the law demanded. That's what judicial restraint looks like — deciding cases based on what the Constitution permits, not on what a judge wishes it said. The left spent years celebrating judicial activism when courts blocked policies they opposed. Now they're learning what happens when even sympathetic judges refuse to play along.
Diaz included a lengthy footnote about Secretary of State Marco Rubio's directive ending the use of Calibri font in official State Department documents. Diaz noted that Rubio had adopted Times New Roman for what the judge considered sound reasons:
"for the entirely defensible reasons that (1) his preferred choice … present a more professional and formal typography for diplomatic correspondence, and (2) use of the Calibri font had … not meaningfully improved reader accessibility."
Diaz even added, with dry humor, that the court itself favors Rubio's font choice. But Diaz took issue with what came next — Rubio's characterization of the prior font selection as an "illegal, immoral, radical [and] wasteful [diversity initiative]." Diaz wrote:
"Had the Secretary left it there, I would applaud him, particularly since our court favors his font choice." "But leave it there, he couldn't. Instead, the Secretary lashed out at his predecessor for imposing yet another 'illegal, immoral, radical [and] wasteful [diversity initiative]' before ordering Calibri's demise."
It's a footnote about fonts. It's also a window into how thoroughly DEI had metastasized through federal agencies — to the point where even typeface selections carried ideological freight. When everything becomes a diversity initiative, nothing is safe from becoming one.
Trump signed the first of these orders on Day One, directing federal departments to cut equity-related grants and contracts. A subsequent order mandated that federal contractors certify they don't promote DEI. Both orders now stand unencumbered by judicial intervention from the Fourth Circuit.
The plaintiffs will almost certainly seek further review. The DEI industry — and it is an industry, with trade associations, dedicated officers, and billions in federal funding — doesn't surrender quietly.
But the legal terrain has shifted. Two rulings from the same appellate panel, both unanimous, both finding that the lower court overstepped. That's not a close call. That's a pattern of judicial correction.
For years, DEI programs operated in a zone of institutional untouchability. To question them was career suicide in academia, corporate America, and the federal bureaucracy. The programs multiplied not because they proved effective, but because no one with authority was willing to say stop.
Someone finally said stop. And the Fourth Circuit — led by an Obama appointee — just confirmed he had every right to say it.
A longtime Biden aide just pulled back the curtain on the Democratic Party's social media operation—and what she revealed is a case study in political malpractice. Stefanie Feldman, who served in numerous campaign and official roles with Joe Biden for more than a decade, publicly shared a meme that Biden's 2020 digital team wanted to post from the official campaign account: a cartoon rabbit holding a sign that read "JUSTICE FOR GEORGE FLOYD."
Feldman vetoed it. And the fact that anyone on a presidential campaign thought it was a good idea tells you everything about where the Democratic Party's digital brain trust has been operating for years.
Newsweek reported that the disclosure arrived as former Vice President Kamala Harris rebranded her 2024 campaign account "Kamala HQ"—which boasts millions of followers on X—into a new entity called "Headquarters."
The rebrand, announced Thursday, sparked a broader reckoning among Democrats about whether their entire approach to social media has been a vanity project dressed up as strategy.
Feldman didn't mince words about the post she killed. She shared the image publicly and laid out her reasoning in plain terms:
"Here's my fav example of something the Biden 2020 digi team wanted to tweet out from the Biden campaign account. I vetoed it bc it is such an outrageously unserious reaction to a serious moment and not Biden brand. Lots of digi ppl were upset w me!"
A cartoon rabbit. For George Floyd. From the account of a man running for President of the United States.
Commentator Anthony LaMesa captured the reaction succinctly:
"This is the kind of thing that you'd imagine a white supremacist might post to ironically mock George Floyd's tragic death. Truly unbelievable. Reflects well on @StefFeldman that she wisely vetoed it."
Feldman's post was viewed 1.7 million times—far more engagement, one suspects, than most of the content the Biden digital team actually published. The irony writes itself.
Feldman's critique went deeper than one bad meme. She raised a structural problem that Democrats have been papering over with impressions counts and viral moments for years: nobody can actually prove that any of this works.
"I've yet to see digi folks measure success beyond views/likes. I've even seen them hype a post as 'effective' bc it had a huge # of impressions, when that post was ratio'd with neg content."
Think about that. Democratic digital operatives were celebrating posts that were going viral, specifically because people were mocking them—and counting that as a win. The engagement was real. The persuasion was nonexistent. But the budget kept flowing.
Feldman expanded on this point to Newsweek:
"I've seen some situations where the incentives for digital teams is just to rack up likes or impressions, and I think that spurs production of content like the piece I shared. I was asking whether anyone has figured out how to better measure the impact of digital work, because I certainly don't know the practices of every single digital shop."
This is the Democratic digital apparatus in a single paragraph: teams optimized for applause from other Democrats, producing content that makes the base feel clever while doing nothing—or worse than nothing—to persuade anyone outside the bubble. The rabbit meme wasn't an aberration. It was the logical endpoint of a machine built to generate likes rather than votes.
Into this wreckage steps Harris with her new "Headquarters" account. Lauren Kapp, who ran Harris' TikTok account during the 2024 race, previously told Newsweek the project signals deeper ambitions:
"This specifically just shows the Vice President's commitment to Gen. Z. This really is an investment into Gen. Z and people who are trying to reach young people. But this account is more than any one candidate or campaign."
An investment into Gen Z. From the party that just watched young voters shift toward Republicans in 2024. Harris foregoed a gubernatorial run in California this year and is viewed as a likely 2028 presidential candidate—polls currently show her as a top contender in the Democratic primary. So the rebrand isn't altruism. It's infrastructure for the next campaign, built on the same foundation that produced a cartoon rabbit for George Floyd.
Democratic strategist Matt Royer saw through it immediately:
"So in keeping with the same trend of Youth Engagement within Progressive and Democratic politics, we have made yet another Gen Z oriented organization that needs funding to work parallel to all of the other orgs that already exist and pull from the same funders? Be serious."
Even Democrats recognize the pattern: new branding, same dysfunction, another funding stream diverted into a parallel structure that duplicates existing efforts. The party's response to losing is always more apparatus, never better judgment.
Feldman said she hopes someone is working on solutions. She offered a generous assessment of the Headquarters effort:
"I am hopeful there are smart digital strategies people working on the solution right now."
"Maybe those people are even the people behind the new HQ account."
Maybe. But the evidence points in the other direction. Democrats lost in 2024 despite dominating social media engagement metrics. Kamala HQ generated enormous traffic—millions of followers, viral moments, the full suite of digital content that makes campaign staffers feel like they're winning. And they lost anyway. Kalshi betting odds currently give Democrats a 78 percent chance of taking the House and just a 36 percent chance of controlling the Senate. The digital machine keeps humming, and the actual results keep deteriorating.
Democratic strategist Andrew Mamo offered advice that landed like an epitaph for the entire operation:
"Be normal. Be yourself. Be real. If you wouldn't post it with your own two thumbs, don't let your team do it!"
Simple counsel. And yet "be normal" is the one directive the Democratic digital ecosystem seems structurally incapable of following. Normalcy doesn't generate impressions. A cartoon rabbit does—just not the kind of impressions that translate into anything resembling persuasion or electoral success.
The rabbit meme matters not because it was posted—it wasn't—but because it was proposed. It emerged from a professional campaign operation staffed by credentialed digital strategists who looked at a moment of genuine national crisis and reached for a cartoon animal. When Feldman vetoed it, they were upset with her. The instinct wasn't embarrassment. It was frustrating that the grown-up had intervened.
This is what happens when a party's digital culture rewards performance over persuasion. You end up with teams that treat politics like content creation—optimized for shares, stripped of substance, and completely untethered from the actual voters they need to reach. The content gets more polished. The memes get sharper. The losses get bigger.
Feldman deserves credit for saying the quiet part out loud. Democrats, she argued, need "to figure out better ways to measure whether social media is helping Democrats win." It's a remarkable admission: after years of being told that the left owned the internet, one of Biden's own people is standing in the wreckage asking if any of it mattered.
The rabbit held a sign demanding justice. The voters delivered a different verdict entirely.
Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha, were jeered by spectators on Friday when their faces appeared on the Jumbotron during the Winter Olympic Games' opening ceremony at Milan's San Siro stadium. The New York Post reported that the crowd, which had cheered U.S. athletes moments earlier during the Parade of Athletes, turned hostile when the vice president — holding small American flags beside his wife — was displayed on screen.
The boos landed exactly where they were cultivated.
For weeks leading up to the Games, local officials and international commentators worked to set a tone — not of sportsmanship, but of political theater.
That the jeering materialized on cue tells you everything about what the Milan Olympics have already become: less a celebration of athletic excellence and more a stage for European left-wing posturing against the United States.
The hostility didn't come from nowhere. Earlier this month, Milan Mayor Giuseppe Sala — a member of a left-wing political party — publicly declared he did not want members of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security in his city to provide security for the Games. His language was not subtle:
"It's a militia that signs its own permits to enter people's house, like we signed our own permission slips at school, except it's much more serious."
A "militia." That's how an Italian mayor describes American federal law enforcement officers tasked with protecting American officials and athletes abroad. Sala didn't stop there:
"They're not welcome in Milan. Can't we just say 'no' to Trump for once?"
There it is. Not a policy disagreement. Not a jurisdictional concern. A political dare — wrapped in the language of resistance, delivered from the safety of a mayoral office in a country that depends on American security guarantees through NATO.
Sala framed the entire question of U.S. participation in the Games as a referendum on whether European politicians are brave enough to defy an American president. And he did it while his city was hosting American athletes who trained their entire lives for this moment.
When you spend weeks telling your citizens that American officials are unwelcome occupiers, don't feign surprise when the crowd boos the Vice President of the United States.
IOC President Kirsty Coventry acknowledged the risk earlier in the week when asked about the possibility of jeering. Her response:
"I hope that the opening ceremony is seen by everyone as an opportunity to be respectful of each other."
"I hope." Not "we expect." Not "we will enforce decorum." Not "we have spoken with local officials about the inflammatory rhetoric coming from the mayor's office." Just a hope — the thinnest possible gesture toward the Olympic ideals the IOC claims to steward.
The Olympics are supposed to represent a truce. A space where geopolitics yields, however briefly, to shared human achievement. That ideal has always been aspirational, sometimes naive. But it has never before been so openly sabotaged by a host city's own elected leader. Coventry's mild plea for respect amounted to bringing a napkin to a food fight someone else organized.
One detail deserves emphasis: the spectators cheered U.S. athletes during the Parade of Athletes. The boos were reserved specifically for Vance and his wife. This wasn't anti-American sentiment in the broad sense — it was targeted political contempt, directed at the representatives of an administration that European progressives have decided to treat as illegitimate.
That distinction matters. It reveals the nature of the hostility. These spectators don't hate America. They hate that America elected leaders who enforce borders, challenge European free-riding on defense, and refuse to treat progressive consensus as settled international law.
The athletes get cheers because they're sympathetic. The vice president gets jeered because he represents democratic outcomes that Milan's political class finds intolerable.
Vance's Friday was not defined by the boos — even if that's the story international media wanted to tell. Before the ceremony, the vice president met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the Prefettura di Milano, a historic Milan palace now used as a government building. After the opening ceremony, he watched the opening session of the three-day team figure skating competition alongside his family and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
No dramatic walkout. No retaliatory tweet storm. The vice president attended the ceremony, represented the United States, met with an allied head of state, and watched Americans compete. That's what showing up looks like.
The contrast with Sala's theatrics couldn't be sharper. One man used the Olympics to grandstand against a foreign government. The other used it to conduct diplomacy and support his country's athletes. The crowd may have booed, but the schedule spoke louder.
What happened in Milan fits a pattern that has played out across European capitals — progressive politicians using international events as venues for anti-American performance art. It's cheap, it's easy, and it plays well with domestic audiences that have been marinated in years of media coverage portraying American conservatism as an existential threat to the liberal world order.
But it is worth asking what, exactly, Sala and those booing spectators are protesting. An American administration that:
These are the offenses that warrant a public humiliation of a vice president's wife at a sporting event. The proportionality tells you everything about the seriousness of the people involved.
Sala's rhetoric — calling American law enforcement a "militia," daring his countrymen to "say no to Trump" — isn't aimed at Washington. It's aimed at Italian voters who have watched Meloni govern as a pragmatic conservative and allied partner of the United States. Sala's performance is domestic opposition politics dressed in the language of international resistance. The Olympics just gave him a bigger microphone.
That a sitting mayor would actively undermine the diplomatic atmosphere of an event his own city is hosting reveals how thoroughly Trump Derangement Syndrome has migrated across the Atlantic. It is no longer an American media affliction. It is a Western progressive reflex — and it now overrides even the pretense of Olympic hospitality.
American athletes will compete. American diplomats will conduct meetings. The vice president attended the Games, met with the Italian prime minister, and watched figure skating with his family on a Friday evening in Milan. None of that required the crowd's approval.
The spectators who booed JD Vance on a Jumbotron will go home and forget about it by Monday. The diplomatic relationship between the United States and Italy — built on decades of shared security interests and economic ties — will not be renegotiated because a soccer stadium full of people followed the cues their mayor spent weeks laying down.
Giuseppe Sala told his city that Americans weren't welcome. A crowd of strangers booed a man and his wife holding small flags. And somewhere in that stadium, U.S. athletes prepared to compete for gold — unbothered, unbroken, and carrying a country that doesn't need permission to show up.
The Richmond-based Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled Friday that President Trump's executive orders eliminating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives across federal agencies and contractors can proceed. The New York Post reported that the three-judge panel vacated a preliminary injunction issued by a Maryland federal judge that had kept the orders on ice — a clean win for an administration that has made dismantling the DEI apparatus a signature priority.
The ruling landed with a clarity that the legal resistance to these orders has lacked from the start. Chief Judge Albert Diaz, an Obama appointee, wrote the opinion himself.
"President Trump has decided that equity isn't a priority in his administration and so has directed his subordinates to terminate funding that supports equity-related projects to the maximum extent allowed by law."
That's not a conservative pundit talking. That's the judge who ruled against the injunction, describing the executive orders in terms that sound a lot like a president simply doing his job.
Maryland federal judge Adam B. Abelson had blocked the orders not once but twice. He first granted a nationwide injunction, which this same Fourth Circuit panel struck down back in March 2025. Abelson then issued a preliminary injunction. The Fourth Circuit has now vacated that one, too.
The pattern is worth noting. A single district court judge repeatedly attempted to freeze a sitting president's policy directives — and was repeatedly told by the appellate court above him that he overstepped.
The lawsuit behind the injunction was brought by Baltimore's mayor and city council, the American Association of University Professors, and the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education. They argued the orders violated the First and Fifth Amendments.
The court was unpersuaded. The panel found that Trump "may determine his policy priorities and instruct his agents to make funding decisions based on them." Diaz posed the question plainly:
"Whether that's sound policy or not isn't our call. We ask only whether the policy is unconstitutionally vague for funding recipients."
The answer, evidently, was no.
The most revealing portion of the ruling wasn't in the body of the opinion — it was buried in a footnote. Chief Judge Diaz used a lengthy aside to take a shot at Secretary of State Marco Rubio over his directive ending the use of the Calibri font in official State Department correspondence.
Diaz acknowledged that Rubio's stated reasons were sound — that his preferred fonts offered more professional typography and that Calibri hadn't meaningfully improved reader accessibility. Then Diaz noted that Rubio didn't stop there:
"Had the Secretary left it there, I would applaud him, particularly since our court favors his font choice." "But leave it there, he couldn't. Instead, the Secretary lashed out at his predecessor for imposing yet another 'illegal, immoral, radical [and] wasteful [diversity initiative]' before ordering Calibri's demise."
Diaz also wrote that the "Administration's obsession over so-called 'woke' DEI programs appears to know no bounds."
It's a curious thing for a judge to do — rule in the administration's favor on the actual legal question and then use the margins of his opinion to editorialize about the administration's tone.
The footnote reads less like jurisprudence and more like a judge who wanted to make sure his friends knew he didn't enjoy ruling this way. He even consoled "those disappointed by the outcome," urging them to "keep the faith" and "depend on the Constitution, which remains a beacon."
That's an unusual amount of pastoral care from an appellate opinion. But the ruling itself is what matters — and on the merits, it wasn't close.
Trump signed his first DEI-related executive order on Day One of his presidency, directing federal departments and agencies to cut equity-related grants and contracts.
A second order followed, mandating that federal contractors certify they don't promote DEI. Together, the orders represent the most direct challenge to the DEI infrastructure that spread through federal agencies and into the private sector over the past decade.
Justice Department attorneys argued that DEI programs and initiatives ran afoul of federal civil rights legislation — a position that reframes the entire debate. For years, the DEI industry operated under the assumption that its programs were the natural fulfillment of civil rights law. The administration's legal position inverts that claim: these programs don't advance civil rights — they violate them.
The plaintiffs in this case are instructive. The National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education exists to promote the very positions these officers target.
Baltimore's city leadership has presided over one of the most troubled cities in America while prioritizing equity language in grant applications. The American Association of University Professors has spent years defending campus orthodoxies that treat dissent as harm.
These aren't neutral parties defending constitutional principles. They are institutions whose funding streams and professional relevance depend on the survival of DEI.
This is now the second time the Fourth Circuit has sided with the administration on these orders. The March 2025 ruling striking down the nationwide injunction sent a signal. Friday's ruling confirmed it wasn't a fluke. All three judges — Diaz, Pamela A. Harris, and Allison Jones Rushing — concurred.
The unanimity matters. When an Obama-appointed chief judge writes the opinion vacating an injunction against a Trump executive order, the legal arguments against the order start looking thin.
The constitutional claims made by the plaintiffs — that directing federal funding priorities amounts to a First or Fifth Amendment violation — never carried the weight their proponents insisted they did. A president directing how federal money gets spent is not a constitutional crisis. It is governance.
The DEI industry had grown accustomed to operating as if its existence were constitutionally mandated — as if any attempt to defund or dismantle it were inherently unlawful. Courts are now systematically dismantling that assumption.
With the preliminary injunction vacated, the executive orders take effect. Federal agencies will resume implementing the directives to cut equity-related funding. Contractors will face certification requirements. The organizations that built their business models around DEI compliance are going to discover what happens when the federal spigot turns.
Judge Abelson has now been overruled twice on this issue by the same panel. Whether the plaintiffs seek further review remains to be seen, but the legal trend line is moving in one direction. The administration's position — that the president can set policy priorities and direct funding accordingly — is a principle so basic it's remarkable it required appellate litigation to affirm.
Chief Judge Diaz closed his concurrence by telling the disappointed to keep the faith. The faith he should have pointed them toward is simpler than he made it sound: elections have consequences, presidents set priorities, and courts interpret law — not feelings. The Fourth Circuit, to its credit, did exactly that.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a new executive order Friday morning that will require federal immigration authorities to obtain a judicial warrant before entering any city-owned property—a sweeping move designed to shield illegal immigrants from enforcement actions and cement the city's sanctuary status.
Mamdani announced at the city's Interfaith Breakfast, framing it as a matter of public safety and neighborliness. The order goes further than a simple warrant requirement.
The Washington Examiner reported that it directs city agencies to audit their policies related to interactions with immigration authorities, establishes a committee to respond to immigration-related situations, and orders the protection of New Yorkers' private data from federal government access.
In short, New York City is building a bureaucratic fortress around illegal immigrants and calling it compassion.
Mamdani described the executive order in soaring terms:
"This order is a sweeping reaffirmation of our commitment to our immigrant neighbors and to public safety as a whole. We will make it clear once again that ICE will not be able to enter New York City property without a judicial warrant."
He went further, casting the federal government as an intruder in the lives of ordinary New Yorkers:
"We will protect New Yorkers' private data from being unlawfully accessed by the federal government, and stand firmly against any effort to intrude on our privacy. No New Yorker should be afraid to apply for city services like child care because they are an immigrant."
Notice the sleight of hand. Mamdani conflates legal immigrants—who have nothing to fear from ICE—with those who are in the country illegally. The executive order isn't protecting "immigrants." It's protecting people who violated federal immigration law from the consequences of that violation. The language is designed to blur a distinction that matters enormously in law, even if progressive politicians pretend it doesn't.
Mamdani isn't operating in a vacuum. He is the latest in a growing line of Democratic leaders who have responded to federal immigration enforcement not by cooperating, but by actively obstructing it.
Consider the recent moves:
Read that last one again. A sitting governor wants citizens to photograph and catalog federal law enforcement officers doing their jobs. This is the kind of thing that would provoke bipartisan outrage if directed at any other category of law enforcement. Directed at ICE, it earns applause at Democratic fundraisers.
The Department of Homeland Security has been blunt about what these sanctuary policies actually produce. A DHS spokesperson previously told the Washington Examiner:
"7 of the top 10 safest cities in the United States cooperate with ICE."
That statistic alone should end the argument that sanctuary policies enhance public safety. It doesn't, because the argument was never really about safety. It's about signaling. It's about Democratic elected officials telling their progressive base that they will stand between the federal government and illegal immigrants—no matter the cost to their own communities.
The DHS spokesperson laid out the practical consequences with clarity:
"Our partnerships with state and local law enforcement are key to removing criminal illegal aliens including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members, and terrorists from American communities. When politicians bar local law enforcement from working with us, that is when we have to have a more visible presence so that we can find and apprehend the criminals let out of jails and back into communities."
This is the part that sanctuary city advocates never grapple with honestly. When local governments refuse to cooperate with ICE, they don't make enforcement disappear. They make it harder, more visible, and less precise. Officers who could have quietly transferred a criminal illegal immigrant from a local jail into federal custody must instead conduct operations in neighborhoods, workplaces, and public spaces. The very disruptions that sanctuary city proponents claim to oppose are a direct product of the policies they champion.
Mamdani's warrant requirement deserves scrutiny on its own terms. Requiring a judicial warrant for ICE to enter city property sounds reasonable until you realize what it accomplishes in practice: delay. Every hour spent obtaining a warrant is an hour a criminal illegal immigrant has to disappear into a city of eight million people. The warrant requirement isn't a safeguard—it's a stalling tactic dressed up as due process.
Federal immigration enforcement is already governed by constitutional protections. ICE agents don't operate outside the law. What Mamdani is doing is layering additional procedural obstacles on top of existing legal frameworks—not to protect anyone's rights, but to make enforcement functionally impossible on city property.
Zoom out and the pattern becomes unmistakable. Across blue states and blue cities, Democratic leaders are constructing an elaborate architecture of non-cooperation with federal immigration law. Hochul wants to dismantle 14 local partnerships in New York. Spanberger severed Virginia's agreement with a stroke of her pen. Sherrill is crowdsourcing surveillance of federal agents. And now, Mamdani is auditing every city agency to ensure no one accidentally helps ICE do its job.
This is not a series of isolated policy decisions. It is a coordinated political strategy—one that prioritizes the interests of people who are in the country illegally over the safety of citizens and legal residents who followed the rules. Every one of these leaders took an oath to uphold the law. Every one of them is now spending political capital to undermine it.
The irony is thick. These are the same leaders who insist that "no one is above the law" when the target is a political opponent. When the subject is immigration enforcement, the law suddenly becomes optional—a suggestion to be overridden by executive order whenever it conflicts with progressive orthodoxy.
Hochul's "Local Cops, Local Crimes Act" still requires passage through the state legislature, so its fate isn't sealed. But Mamdani's and Spanberger's executive orders are already in effect, and Sherrill's surveillance database is moving forward. The federal government now faces a growing bloc of states and cities that have made obstruction of immigration enforcement an official policy position.
The DHS spokesperson's warning bears repeating: when politicians refuse to cooperate, federal enforcement becomes more visible, not less. That means more agents in more neighborhoods conducting the operations that local cooperation was designed to handle quietly and efficiently. Democratic leaders have chosen confrontation over cooperation, spectacle over safety.
Mamdani told New Yorkers that no one should be afraid to apply for city services because they are an immigrant. He's right about that—legal immigrants have never had anything to fear. The people his executive order actually protects are those who broke the law to be here. He just doesn't want to say it plainly.
New York City's mayor wrapped obstruction in the language of compassion, announced it at a prayer breakfast, and dared the federal government to do something about it. The citizens of New York—the ones who pay taxes, obey laws, and expect their leaders to do the same—deserved better.