President Trump seized on a moment of accidental honesty from Senate Democrat leader Chuck Schumer, posting a video clip to Truth Social on Sunday morning that captured the New York senator calling for the funding of the very agency his party has spent weeks trying to starve.
During a Saturday speech on the Senate floor, Schumer was arguing for an end to the partial government shutdown when he blurted out the quiet part loud.
"We must fund ICE, we must fund TSA."
He corrected himself quickly. Not quickly enough.
Trump's response was characteristically direct:
"Schumer got 'discombobulated' in the Senate yesterday, and said, 'WE MUST FUND ICE,' prior to correcting himself. Thank you Chuck, I agree!"
It was a light moment, but it landed because the underlying politics are anything but light. Democrats have held up funding for the Department of Homeland Security over the operations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the resulting partial shutdown has real consequences that are getting harder for the left to spin.
The latest effort to fund the entire department failed to achieve the required 60-vote threshold on Friday, the Daily Caller reported. That means the impasse continues, and the DHS has been forced into emergency measures affecting the TSA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Customs and Border Protection.
The shutdown's effects have been most visible at airports, where TSA employees have reportedly been calling out of work or quitting, leading to long lines. This is the tangible cost of Senate Democrats choosing political posturing over operational governance. They want to punish ICE for enforcing immigration law, and they're willing to let airport security and border protection degrade to do it.
That's the contradiction Schumer's slip accidentally exposed. His party's position requires pretending that you can defund immigration enforcement while keeping the rest of homeland security humming along. You can't. These agencies exist under the same department for a reason. Holding DHS hostage to hamstring ICE means everything else suffers, too.
Schumer knows this. His mouth just got ahead of his talking points for half a second.
The standoff over ICE funding comes against a backdrop that makes the Democrat position even harder to defend. Hundreds of federal agents have been deployed to Minnesota following the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in January, along with reports about welfare fraud involving Somali migrants and the agency's clashes with groups opposed to federal immigration enforcement operations.
This is the environment in which Senate Democrats have decided that the hill to die on is preventing ICE from doing its job. They're not offering an alternative vision for immigration enforcement. They're not proposing reforms. They're simply blocking funding and hoping the public blames someone else for the consequences.
Meanwhile, the machinery of government continues to move forward where it can. Trump's nomination of Republican Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin to replace DHS Secretary Kristi Noem advanced to a final vote in the Senate, with Democrat Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico bucking their party in favor of the nominee.
That's worth noting. When even members of the opposing party break ranks to confirm your DHS pick, it suggests the Democrat leadership's blanket obstruction is more about politics than principle.
Schumer's verbal stumble wouldn't matter if it weren't so perfectly illustrative. The Democrat messaging on this shutdown requires a careful rhetorical dance: express concern about TSA and FEMA, insist you support "border security" in the abstract, but never, ever concede that ICE should be funded to do what ICE does.
For one unscripted moment, Schumer dropped the choreography. He said what every serious person already knows. ICE needs funding. TSA needs funding. The Department of Homeland Security needs to operate. The only question is whether Senate Democrats will continue holding all of it hostage to make a political point about immigration enforcement that the majority of Americans don't share.
Trump didn't need to deliver a lengthy rebuttal. He just hit repost and added a thank you. Sometimes the other side makes your argument for you.
Federal investigators have descended back into the Catalina Foothills neighborhood where 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie vanished seven weeks ago, knocking on doors and pressing residents with a new round of questions. The focus this time: a property near Guthrie's home that was vacated shortly before she disappeared, and the construction workers who had access to the area in the days leading up to her abduction.
Guthrie, the mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie, was last seen on the night of February 1 after being dropped off at her Arizona home following a family dinner. No suspect has been identified. No arrests have been made. And now, nearly two months later, the FBI is retracing its steps.
NewsNation correspondent Brian Entin, who has tracked the case closely, broke the news on his podcast "Brian Entin Investigates." He confirmed through sources that agents returned to the neighborhood within the last day and began asking pointed questions about specific properties.
"There's one neighbor who moved out before Nancy disappeared, and they have been asking more questions about that situation. Not to say that that has anything to do with what happened, but that is something that the FBI agents are asking about."
Entin was careful to note that investigators are not directly linking the empty home to the crime. But the interest is notable. Retired Pima County SWAT commander Bob Krygier, in an interview with Parade, explained why vacant or partially occupied properties routinely draw scrutiny in abduction investigations. Such locations can allow a suspect to observe a target without attracting notice, offer cover for surveillance, and provide a place to store equipment or monitor daily routines, as Newsweek reports.
The second line of inquiry may prove even more telling. Agents have been asking residents specifically for the names of contractors and workers on nearby construction projects.
"This I found to be particularly interesting: there are several houses that are under construction in the neighborhood, and they are asking specifically for names of contractors and workers who were working in the neighborhood on those houses, on those construction projects."
Entin added that agents wanted granular detail, not just company names, but individual workers. Former FBI agent Steve Moore, appearing on Entin's program, offered a straightforward read: "Obviously, it means they're retracing steps."
The FBI Phoenix Field Office, for its part, offered nothing. A spokesman told Newsweek via email:
"We typically don't respond or reply to independent reporting. Additionally, as a DOJ rule, we don't comment on ongoing investigations."
The known sequence of events on the night Guthrie disappeared remains deeply unsettling in its precision.
Fewer than five hours separated a grandmother closing her garage door for the night and her pacemaker going silent. Whoever did this moved with purpose.
Authorities believe the abduction was targeted, not random. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, speaking to NBC News, made that much clear while stopping short of certainty:
"We believe we know why he did this, and we believe it was targeted, but we're not 100 percent sure. So it would be silly to tell people, 'Yeah, don't worry about it. You're not his target.' Don't think for a minute that because it happened to the Guthrie family, you're safe. No, keep your wits about you."
That statement carries a deliberate tension. Nanos used the word "he," suggesting investigators have at least a working profile. But his refusal to assure the community that the threat has passed tells you something about where this investigation stands. They have a theory. They may even have a suspect in mind. What they don't have is enough to close the case.
The FBI's return to the neighborhood signals an investigation that is still very much active but clearly grinding. Recanvassing a neighborhood you've already canvassed means either new information has surfaced or old answers weren't good enough. The granularity of the questions, down to individual worker names on construction sites, suggests agents are building a web of who had access, who had opportunity, and who had eyes on that street in the weeks before Guthrie vanished.
Construction crews cycle through residential neighborhoods constantly. They see routines. They know which houses are occupied and which sit empty. They blend in. That doesn't make any of them suspects, but it makes them witnesses worth finding.
Authorities have urged anyone with information to contact the FBI. The search remains active.
An 84-year-old woman walked into her garage on a Saturday night and never walked out again. Seven weeks later, the people tasked with finding her are still knocking on doors. Someone in that neighborhood knows something.
Carley Shimkus broke the news herself, live on "FOX & Friends First" Friday morning: she's pregnant with her second child, a boy, due at the end of July.
The New York Post reported that the Fox News host told viewers she is five and a half months along, 22 weeks, and feeling great. Her husband and their 3-year-old son, Brock, will soon welcome another boy into the family.
"My husband and I and Brock … are so excited."
In an era when pregnancy announcements from public figures are often stage-managed through publicists and Instagram posts, something is refreshing about Shimkus sharing the news the old-fashioned way: on live television, with her colleagues, in real time. No curated photo shoot. No exclusive magazine deal. Just genuine excitement on a morning news set.
Shimkus said she had a feeling about the baby's gender before it was confirmed.
"When I got the news … I just knew I was having another boy."
She admitted, with the kind of honesty that makes her relatable to millions of parents, that she had briefly entertained another possibility before the reveal.
"I was thinking, wouldn't it be nice to have like a sweet little girl who likes to color?"
But any fleeting thoughts about a calmer household were quickly overtaken by gratitude. Shimkus described her second child as "such a blessing from God" and said she prays her two boys "are going to be the best of friends throughout their whole life."
Anyone who has raised a toddler boy knows exactly what Shimkus means when she talks about Brock's energy level. She put it plainly.
"I am continually shocked by his energy level and behavior."
She followed that with the kind of perspective that comes naturally to parents who see their children as gifts rather than inconveniences, calling Brock's boundless energy "a blessing" and marveling at "how much of a zest for life he has."
Now multiply that by two.
Shimkus even joked about the logistics of a growing family, noting that a friend had sent her a home listing in Massapequa, prompting her to quip to co-host Brian Kilmeade that they could become neighbors on Long Island.
There's a reason stories like this resonate with conservative audiences in a way that transcends celebrity gossip. Shimkus didn't frame her pregnancy as a disruption to her career. She didn't agonize publicly about work-life balance or treat motherhood as a concession. She called it a blessing. Twice.
"I knew this baby is just such a blessing from God. And I'm so excited to have a second child."
That language matters. In a culture that increasingly treats children as optional accessories to be scheduled around professional milestones, a woman on national television expressing unfiltered joy about expanding her family sends a quiet but powerful message. Not a political one. A human one.
Shimkus also thanked Fox for being "so supportive of my family and me," a detail worth noting at a time when corporate America loves to talk about supporting working parents but often means something very different by it.
Support, in this case, appears to look like what it should: letting a talented woman do her job and celebrate her family without pretending those two things are in conflict.
A baby boy is due at the end of July. A big brother who will almost certainly show him the ropes at full speed. And a mother who seems to understand something that no amount of cultural messaging can undo: that a family growing is a family blessed.
Congratulations to the Shimkus family. The country could use more news like this.
Jeff Webb, the man who built modern cheerleading into a multibillion-dollar industry and later channeled his entrepreneurial energy into conservative media, died unexpectedly on Thursday. He was 76.
Varsity Spirit confirmed Webb's death in a statement on Instagram, honoring the founder who transformed a niche sideline activity into a globally recognized athletic discipline spanning more than four decades.
Webb created Varsity Spirit in 1974 and grew it from the ground up into a franchise that shaped how generations of Americans experienced competitive cheerleading. His fingerprints are on virtually every element of the modern sport, from organized competitions to the international governing structures that now seek Olympic inclusion.
Webb's career arc tells a distinctly American story: identify something with unrealized potential, pour everything into it, and build an institution that outlasts you. That's what he did with Varsity Spirit, and it's what he was doing in conservative media when his life ended.
Webb previously owned Human Events and The Post Millennial, two outlets with deep roots in the conservative movement. He sold both last fall to Just The Network, the parent company of Just the News. Even after the sale, Webb wasn't coasting. John Solomon, founder and CEO of Just the News, said Thursday night that Webb was working with the company to help build a new events business and a new weekly television show.
Solomon captured the man in a single phrase:
"Jeff was a brilliant businessman and entrepreneur and a joyful warrior who made everyone around him better."
That word, "joyful," matters. The conservative movement has no shortage of fighters. It has fewer builders, and fewer still who manage to be both without burning out or becoming bitter. Webb, by all accounts, stayed constructive to the end.
The scale of what Webb built in cheerleading is easy to underestimate if you weren't paying attention. A Varsity Spirit spokesperson laid it out plainly:
"Jeff played a pivotal role in shaping cheerleading as it exists today and in building a community that has impacted generations of athletes, coaches, and teams."
His work extended well beyond American gyms and football stadiums. Webb's involvement with the International Cheer Union helped the organization achieve full recognition by the International Olympic Committee in 2021. That's not a symbolic gesture. Full IOC recognition opens the door to Olympic competition, a milestone that would have been laughable when Webb started Varsity Spirit in the mid-1970s.
Varsity's Instagram tribute noted that Webb "built a community that will continue to inspire generations to come." Given the infrastructure he left behind, that's not corporate sentiment. It's a statement of fact.
Webb's pivot into media ownership reflected a pattern increasingly common among successful conservative entrepreneurs: the recognition that cultural and informational infrastructure matters as much as any single policy fight. Owning Human Events and The Post Millennial wasn't a vanity play. It was an investment in the ecosystem that sustains conservative ideas.
Solomon pointed to Webb's deeper motivations:
"He had a passion for ensuring America's next generations could carry on the torch of liberty, whether through the creation of the Varsity franchise or through his friendship with Charlie Kirk. He will be sorely missed."
That thread connecting Varsity Spirit to conservative media to mentoring the next generation isn't random. Webb understood something fundamental: institutions shape culture, culture shapes politics, and someone has to do the unglamorous work of building those institutions from scratch.
No cause of death has been disclosed. What's been disclosed is a legacy that spans competitive athletics, conservative media, and international sports governance. Not many people leave footprints in one of those arenas, let alone all three.
Jeff Webb built things that lasted. The movement could use more like him.
Andrew Rice, a deputy commonwealth's attorney in Virginia Beach, crushed Democrat Cheryl Smith in the special election for Virginia House of Delegates District 98, capturing 62.46 percent of the vote to Smith's 37.5 percent with more than 11,000 votes counted as of 1 a.m. Eastern.
The margin wasn't close. It was a blowout.
The seat became vacant after Republican Barry Knight died last month, triggering a special election to cover the last two years of his term. When that seat was last contested in 2025, Knight won with 56.6 percent, and Smith took 43.2 percent. Rice didn't just hold the seat. He widened the gap by nearly six points against the same Democratic opponent.
Rice addressed supporters after the race was called:
"I'm so thankful for their support and I can't wait to get to work for them in Richmond."
Democrats have spent months constructing a narrative around special elections. After picking up 13 seats in the Virginia House during the November 2025 elections, the story practically wrote itself: voters were recoiling from Republicans, the political winds had shifted, and the party was riding an unstoppable wave into the 2026 midterms.
District 98 just punched a hole in that storyline, Newsweek reported.
Voter turnout in the district hit only 18 percent, with more than 11,700 ballots cast. Low-turnout special elections are often where enthusiasm shows itself most clearly. The voters who bothered to show up chose the Republican by a commanding margin, in a race where Democrats had every reason to believe the environment favored them.
Virginia wasn't the only bright spot. In Pennsylvania, Republican Catherine Wallen is projected to beat Democrat Todd Crawley in a special election for the state's 193rd House District, according to Decision Desk HQ. That seat has been represented by a Republican since 1972, so the hold itself isn't surprising. But in a cycle where Democrats have been claiming the political landscape is shifting beneath Republican feet, holding ground matters.
Republican State Leadership Committee President Edith Jorge-Tuñón framed the results in no uncertain terms:
"Last night's results shatter Democrats' so-called 'special election momentum.' In states like Pennsylvania and Virginia, voters rejected the claim that Democrats have a better handle on the issues that matter most and pushed back on the failed policies they continue to champion. These wins prove Republicans can break through and compete in tough environments, and the RSLC is building momentum to win nationwide in 2026."
There is a familiar pattern in how media and political operatives treat special elections. When Democrats win them, the results are treated as referendums on the national mood, bellwethers of what's to come, proof that the public has rendered its verdict. When Republicans win them, the caveats arrive immediately: low turnout, local dynamics, district composition, the usual disclaimers.
Republicans themselves have rightly noted that these races have never been predictive of general elections. That's fair. But what's also fair is applying the same standard in both directions. If Democratic special election wins were evidence of a national backlash during President Donald Trump's second term, then Republican wins in the same cycle deserve the same interpretive weight.
You don't get to cherry-pick which results count.
The next major test comes in California, where the seat left vacant by Republican Representative Doug LaMalfa, who died in January at age 65, will be filled through an election set by California Governor Gavin Newsom. A primary is scheduled for June 2, with the general election on August 4. California's 1st Congressional District presents a different kind of battleground, but the results in Virginia and Pennsylvania give Republicans evidence that their voters are engaged and willing to show up even in off-cycle contests.
The November 2026 midterms remain the prize. Democrats will continue to spin their preferred narrative, and the media will continue to amplify it. But narratives don't survive contact with actual vote totals.
In District 98, the voters spoke clearly. Andrew Rice won by nearly 25 points. No amount of "momentum" talk changes that math.
Judge Brian Murphy blocked Trump administration vaccine policies on Monday, issuing a sweeping preliminary injunction from the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts just hours after a federal appeals court slapped down his previous attempt to halt deportation operations. Two rulings. One judge. Same pattern.
The vaccine case, brought by medical organizations against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., resulted in Murphy finding that Kennedy likely broke the law by overhauling the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's vaccine policies. Murphy granted preliminary relief by staying a January 2026 immunization schedule that reduced the number of vaccine requirements for children and invalidated a newly appointed vaccine advisory committee and the committee's decisions while the lawsuit proceeds.
Earlier that same Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit paused Murphy's decision blocking the Department of Homeland Security's third-country deportation policy, a decision that had prevented DHS from deporting what court papers said could be thousands of illegal immigrants.
So the scoreboard reads: reversed in the morning, back at it by the afternoon.
This is not the first time Murphy has found himself on the wrong end of a higher court's patience, according to Fox News. He first gained headlines when the Supreme Court stayed his injunction over the third-country deportation policy in a 6-3 order last June. That alone would be a notable rebuke for any federal trial judge.
What happened next was extraordinary. A week later, the Supreme Court issued a rare 7-2 order admonishing Murphy for flouting its decision. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley observed at the time that Murphy had given "a stiff arm" to the Supreme Court. Turley did not mince words about the systemic implications:
"Regardless of your views on the merits, this system cannot function with such rogue operators at the trial level."
A string of high-profile decisions by Murphy have been later reversed on appeal. The 1st Circuit's Monday intervention was simply the latest in a sequence that now looks less like judicial disagreement and more like judicial defiance.
In his vaccine ruling, Murphy quoted Carl Sagan, calling science "the best we have." It's a fine sentiment. It is also, in context, remarkably selective.
University of Minnesota law school professor Ilan Wurman questioned what he viewed as the judge's double standard:
"When I litigated COVID cases against the government, the courts regularly said they had to defer to the public health experts."
Then came the sharper edge:
"I assume there's a good reason for the double standard here? Or are there some health experts federal judges in Massachusetts like more than others?"
The point lands because it does not need to be exaggerated. During the COVID era, courts across the country treated government health pronouncements as functionally unreviewable. Challenges to mandates, lockdowns, and school closures were waved away with near-religious deference to "the experts." Now, a single district judge in Massachusetts has decided he knows better than the sitting HHS Secretary about vaccine scheduling for children.
Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., drew the connection even more bluntly:
"Progressive district court judges claim RFK's vaccine policies aren't based on science yet had no problem with Biden's radical gender policies. Seems like they're the ones not following the science."
The inconsistency is the argument. When the executive branch was run by Democrats, judicial deference to agency expertise was treated as a constitutional obligation. Now it's optional. The principle didn't change. The president did.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche responded on X with a directness that has become characteristic of this administration's approach to judicial overreach:
"How many times can Judge Murphy get reversed in one year?"
Blanche noted the timing with evident incredulity: the same day the 1st Circuit stayed Murphy for "repeatedly refusing to follow the law," the judge turned around and issued another sweeping injunction. Blanche made the administration's posture clear:
"The same day he is stayed for repeatedly refusing to follow the law, he issues another activist decision. We will keep appealing these lawless decisions, and we will keep winning."
He added one final question: "How much embarrassment can this Judge take?"
It is a fair question. The Supreme Court has rebuked Murphy in orders supported by supermajorities of justices, including some appointed by Democratic presidents. The 1st Circuit has now intervened as well. The appeals will continue, and the administration's record on reversals suggests confidence is warranted.
The deeper problem here extends well beyond one judge in Massachusetts. Murphy's deportation ruling alone could have blocked the removal of thousands of illegal immigrants. His vaccine injunction reaches into every pediatrician's office in the country. A single unelected jurist, confirmed a year before these rulings, is barely attempting to set national policy from a district court bench.
This is the structural vulnerability that critics across the political spectrum have identified, but that only seems to generate outrage when it cuts in one direction. When a Trump-appointed judge in Texas issued nationwide injunctions during the Biden years, the legal left treated it as a constitutional crisis. When a Biden-appointed judge in Massachusetts does the same thing, repeatedly, even after the Supreme Court tells him to stop, the reaction from those same voices is silence or celebration.
The hierarchy of the federal judiciary exists for a reason. District courts are bound by circuit courts. Circuit courts are bound by the Supreme Court. When a trial judge treats that structure as a suggestion, the entire system strains. It does not matter whether you agree with Kennedy's vaccine policies or the administration's deportation framework. What matters is whether one district judge gets to override the executive branch, ignore the Supreme Court, and functionally govern by injunction.
Murphy's answer, delivered twice on Monday, appears to be yes.
The Supreme Court has already answered differently. The question is whether anyone will make it stick.
President Donald Trump revealed Monday that Rep. Neal Dunn (R-FL) had been diagnosed with terminal heart disease, a diagnosis so severe that, in Trump's words, the Florida congressman would have been dead by June without intervention.
Trump shared the story at a convening of the Trump-Kennedy Center Board at the White House, with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) seated directly to his right. Johnson confirmed the gravity of the situation, acknowledging that the diagnosis had never been made public.
"I think it was a terminal diagnosis."
That was Johnson's unvarnished assessment. When Trump pressed him on the details, Johnson conceded with a half-laugh: "OK, that wasn't public, but yeah, OK." Then, more soberly: "It was grim, that's what I was going to say."
Trump said Johnson first brought Dunn's condition to his attention, according to the Washington Examiner. What happened next moved fast. After calling two White House doctors, they went to see Dunn and had him on the operating table in what Trump described as "two hours."
Johnson filled in the sequence from there:
"Within a number of hours, they took him to Walter Reed emergency surgery."
Trump described the procedure as extensive. "It was a long operation; they gave him more stents and more everything that you could have," he said, adding with characteristic directness, "I think he's got everything that you could have."
Then the call came from the doctors: "Sir, I think he'll be fine."
Trump's reaction: "You've got to be kidding."
What struck both Trump and Johnson wasn't just the medical outcome. It was what Dunn did afterward.
Dunn announced earlier this year that he plans to retire at the end of his term. But he didn't walk away from the job when the diagnosis hit. Trump noted that most people in that position would tell the Speaker they were done immediately. Dunn didn't.
"Most of them are going to say, 'Mike, I'm retiring immediately.' That's the end. He didn't do that. It really is really impressive."
Trump was candid about his dual concerns when he first learned of Dunn's condition. "No. 1, it was bad because I liked him," he said. "No. 2, it was bad because I needed his vote." The honesty landed the way Trump's honesty usually does: bluntly, without apology, and with the kind of self-awareness that his critics never credit him for.
Johnson expanded on the story, describing the moment Dunn walked back into a conference meeting after surgery. The reaction from colleagues captured the scale of what had happened:
"The man has a new lease on life. He acts like he's 30 years younger, and he walked into the conference meeting, and we thought we'd seen a ghost, and I spoke with him over the weekend, and he's encouraged and thankful, and he thanks the president for his leadership and intervention."
That last detail matters. Dunn credits the president. Not vaguely. Not as a formality. As the man who picked up the phone, called his doctors, and put the machinery of Walter Reed into motion before a terminal diagnosis became a death sentence.
Trump also offered a broader window into how he uses the medical talent surrounding the presidency. "White House doctors are incredible, and they've helped me with other people," he said, before adding: "They're helping me with people right now, people that are very sick. They're miracle workers."
It's a side of the presidency that rarely makes headlines. The commander in chief has access to some of the best physicians in the country, and Trump, by his own account, deploys them not just for himself but for people around him who need urgent help. There's no bureaucratic committee. No six-month wait for a referral. A president who sees a problem and acts on it.
Neal Dunn was facing a terminal prognosis. Now he's walking into meetings looking, by Johnson's account, like a man three decades younger. The doctors did the surgery. But someone had to make the call.
Trump made the call.
Nancy Guthrie, the mother of Today show co-host Savannah Guthrie, has been missing for almost six weeks after she was last seen at her Arizona home on January 31. She was reported missing the following day. Authorities believe she was kidnapped, and drops of her blood were found on the front porch of her house.
The FBI last month released surveillance images of a masked man on Nancy Guthrie's porch on the night she disappeared. Authorities have not publicly identified the person, whom they called a suspect, but described him as a male about 5-foot-9 or 5-foot-10 with an average build carrying a 25-liter Ozark Trail Hiker Pack backpack. Alleged ransom notes were sent to multiple news outlets. The family is offering a $1-million reward for information leading to her recovery, with a separate reward of more than $200,000 for information about her whereabouts or that could lead to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved.
Nancy Guthrie also needs vital daily medication, adding an urgent medical dimension to an already desperate situation.
This week, retired FBI agent Maureen O'Connell offered a striking analysis of the blood evidence found at the scene, telling NewsNation's Brian Entin that the pattern of the droplets suggests Guthrie did not leave on her own.
"What I do believe is she was carried out. I don't believe she walked out. I believe she was carried out by two people and I say that because of the blood droplets, the fact that there's no void, the fact that there's no footprints, it's almost like two guys carried her and her head tilted in some way shape or form and it just came out right there."
That analysis, if accurate, reshapes the picture considerably. It implies planning, coordination, and at least two perpetrators. It also suggests violence occurred inside the home before Guthrie was removed from it.
Meanwhile, April Stonehouse, a forensics professor at Arizona State University and a former DNA analyst for government crime laboratories, told Entin she was "hopeful" investigators would find usable DNA samples from the scene. She noted that blood, semen, and saliva are the most useful substances for DNA analysis and described the presence of biological evidence as "a good thing" for the investigation.
Stonehouse acknowledged the limitations, noting that "you are at the mercy of what the suspect left behind," but said investigators would be looking for items that they think the suspect handled or used.
"I would be hopeful that they found at least a few items of evidence. It's just a matter of locating it and finding it."
She also referenced the use of DNA analysis in the Golden State killer case, a reminder that even cold trails can eventually yield identifications when the forensic work is thorough.
On February 27, the Pima County Sheriff's Department issued a statement signaling a shift in how it is allocating resources to the case, according to Newsweek:
"This remains an active investigation and will continue until Nancy Guthrie is located or all leads have been exhausted. The Pima County Sheriff's Department is refocusing resources to detectives specifically assigned to this case. As leads are developed and resolved, resource allocation may fluctuate. PCSD will maintain a patrol presence in the Guthrie neighborhood."
Read that carefully. "Refocusing resources to detectives specifically assigned" is bureaucratic language for tightening the circle. It can mean the department is moving from a wide canvas to a more targeted pursuit, which could indicate they have leads worth concentrating on. It could also mean exactly what critics might fear: the visible, large-scale response is being scaled back.
Either way, six weeks into a kidnapping case with blood evidence, surveillance footage of a suspect, and no recovery, the pressure on law enforcement is enormous. The public has a right to expect urgency that matches the severity of the crime.
Last week, Savannah Guthrie posted on Instagram with a message that was equal parts gratitude and plea:
"We feel the love and prayers from our neighbors, from the Tucson community and from around the country.…Please don't stop praying and hoping with us. bring her home."
There is nothing political about a daughter asking the country to help find her mother. There is nothing partisan about the expectation that law enforcement will devote every available resource to bringing a kidnapped woman home alive. But the case raises questions that conservatives have been asking for years about public safety, the adequacy of local law enforcement resources, and whether communities across America can count on swift and sustained investigative attention when violent crime strikes.
It seems as though despite the time that has passed, someone knows something about what happened to Nancy Guthrie. The question is, will investigators discover it before it's too late?
Tennessee Republicans are advancing a bill that would make it a state-level crime for illegal immigrants to remain in the state more than 90 days after receiving a final federal deportation order. The measure, sponsored by Tennessee House Majority Leader William Lamberth, would classify the offense as a Class A misdemeanor and would also apply to those who intentionally enter the state after being ordered removed.
The bill includes a trigger mechanism: it would activate only if federal law changes or the Supreme Court overturns its 2012 ruling in Arizona v. United States, which limited state authority over immigration enforcement. In other words, Tennessee is loading the legal chamber now and waiting for the Court to hand it the green light.
Lamberth made no apologies for the approach during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
"When someone has exhausted all their options and they've been told to leave the country, it is illegal for them to stay, both under federal law, and if this bill passes, it would be a misdemeanor for them to enter in, or remain in, the state of Tennessee."
When pressed about constitutionality under the Arizona precedent, he didn't flinch: "I like our track record with the U.S. Supreme Court."
He has reason for that confidence. Tennessee has already watched the Court uphold conservative state policies, including its ban on gender-affirming care for minors and a post-Roe abortion trigger law. The trigger mechanism in this immigration bill follows the same playbook. Lamberth described it as a design that "respects constitutional boundaries while ensuring we are prepared if states' authority is restored."
The immigration advocacy complex responded on cue. Spring Miller, senior legal director at the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, told Newsweek that the bill would produce "a chilling impact" and characterized it as unconstitutional overreach, as Newsweek reports.
"Established law dating back well over a century prohibits states creating their own immigration laws, but Tennessee legislators are attempting to create a state-level immigration regime with this bill that would lead to chaos and disorder throughout the country."
Miller also argued the bill would be nearly impossible to enforce, claiming there is no centralized database tracking everyone who has received a final order of removal and that some people with such orders could be adjusting their status through legal pathways.
State Representative Gloria Johnson offered a more colorful objection, calling it a "Stephen Miller bill" and warning the committee that "everything that I've read, everyone that I've talked to, said that this is currently unconstitutional."
Notice the framing. Opponents aren't arguing that people with final deportation orders should be allowed to stay. They're arguing that Tennessee isn't allowed to do anything about it. The distinction matters.
The constitutionality objection rests entirely on Arizona v. United States, a 2012 ruling that struck down parts of Arizona's immigration enforcement law on preemption grounds. It's a real precedent. Nobody disputes that.
But the legal landscape has shifted considerably since 2012. The current Supreme Court has shown a willingness to revisit settled assumptions about federal supremacy when states present compelling interests. Tennessee's trigger mechanism is a direct acknowledgment of that reality. The bill doesn't pretend Arizona doesn't exist. It positions the state to act the moment the legal door opens.
Miller argued that taxpayer resources would be diverted from healthcare and education to "imprison people for simply being or passing through the state and having been issued a piece of paper that they may or may not have been aware of."
A final order of removal is not "a piece of paper." It is the conclusion of a legal process in which an immigration judge has determined that an individual has no legal right to remain in the United States. Describing it as something someone "may or may not have been aware of" is the kind of rhetorical sleight of hand that reduces the rule of law to an inconvenience.
Tennessee is not acting in isolation. It joins a growing bloc of states that have decided the federal government's failure to enforce immigration law does not require them to sit idle.
The Immigrant Legal Resource Center called this a "dangerous trend" in a 2024 policy assessment. Dangerous to whom? Not to the citizens of these states, who have watched for years as the federal government treated enforcement as optional. The trend is dangerous only to the legal fiction that states must remain passive while federal authorities decline to act on their own deportation orders.
The opposition to this bill, and to the broader state-level enforcement movement, ultimately rests on a single premise: that only the federal government may enforce immigration law, and if the federal government chooses not to, then nobody does.
That's not a legal principle. It's a policy preference dressed up as constitutional law.
For decades, the left has relied on federal inaction as a de facto amnesty mechanism. The federal government issues a deportation order. The individual ignores it. No one enforces it. Time passes. Advocates then argue the person has "built a life" and enforcement would be cruel. The cycle repeats. States like Tennessee are trying to break that cycle by removing one of its key ingredients: the guarantee that nothing happens when you ignore a judge's order.
Johnson accused the legislature of advancing this bill "at taxpayer expense," as if the cost of enforcing the law is an argument against having laws. By that logic, every criminal statute is a waste of money.
The bill's trigger mechanism makes it legally disciplined. It doesn't dare the courts to strike it down tomorrow. It plants a flag and waits. If the Supreme Court revisits Arizona v. United States, or if Congress acts to expand state enforcement authority, Tennessee's law snaps into effect without another vote.
Lamberth is betting that the legal window will open. Given the Court's trajectory and the growing political consensus around enforcement, it's not a bad bet.
Opponents will file lawsuits. Advocacy groups will issue press releases about "chilling impacts." Cable news panels will debate whether states can do what the federal government won't.
Meanwhile, people with final deportation orders will still be in Tennessee. The only question is whether that will remain consequence-free.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has reportedly backed out of a scheduled interview with CBS News, and the reason tells you everything you need to know about how the new Democratic mayor handles scrutiny.
According to Vanity Fair, Mamdani had been in discussions to sit down with Robert Costa on "CBS Sunday Morning." Those discussions collapsed after CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss reacted on social media to pointed remarks from Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist, activist, and new CBS News contributor. Weiss's offense? She posted a fire emoji.
That single emoji, sources told Vanity Fair, was the "nail in the coffin" for the interview.
Fox News reported that on Feb. 28, during CBS News' breaking news coverage of the conflict, Alinejad slammed Mamdani's condemnation of Operation Epic Fury against the Iranian regime. She urged the mayor to shift his "hatred" away from President Donald Trump and toward the people who actually threatened her life. Her remarks were direct and personal:
"Mr. Mamdani, you are more than welcome to come to one of my safe houses."
Then she turned the mayor's own rhetoric against him:
"Where were you when they sent killers here in New York City? You were crying for your aunt because she has stopped using the subway for simply — in an illusionist statement you made saying she didn't feel safe, for wearing a hijab. Really? I stopped using subways because of the would-be assassins being sent to beautiful New York City by the Islamic Republic."
That's not a political pundit manufacturing outrage. That's a woman who lives under the constant threat of assassination by a theocratic regime, responding to a politician who chose to condemn American military action against that same regime. And when Weiss signaled approval of those remarks, Mamdani's team decided the interview was off, as Fox News reports.
Vanity Fair reported that Mamdani had already been "averse" to appearing on the Weiss-run network. The fire emoji simply gave his team the excuse they were looking for.
This is a familiar playbook from a certain strain of progressive politician. They demand media access when the cameras are friendly. They run the moment an interviewer might ask a question that requires more than talking points. Mamdani isn't avoiding CBS because he fears unfair treatment. He's avoiding it because he fears fair treatment.
A former CBS producer offered Vanity Fair this assessment:
"Bari and her people have a clear ax to grind with him."
The same producer then made a broader admission:
"It's not just Zohran. It's really hard now to get people to come on CBS."
Read that again. Since Weiss took over as editor-in-chief and signaled that CBS would pursue something closer to actual journalism, the people who benefited most from the old arrangement don't want to show up anymore. That's not an indictment of CBS. It's an indictment of the politicians who can only function inside a media ecosystem designed to protect them.
The deeper problem isn't a scheduling dispute with a Sunday morning show. It's where Mamdani's sympathies land when American forces are directed at a regime that exports terrorism and assassination plots to American soil.
Alinejad lives in safe houses. She stopped riding the New York City subway not because of generalized urban anxiety, but because the Islamic Republic sent operatives to kill her. When Mamdani condemned Operation Epic Fury, he placed himself opposite a woman whose life is in danger from the very government he chose to defend from American criticism.
That contrast is devastating, which is precisely why Mamdani doesn't want to sit across from anyone at CBS who might draw it out on camera.
There is something deeply unserious about a mayor of the largest city in America pulling out of a major network interview because the network's top editor posted a fire emoji. Not a hit piece. Not an editorial demanding his resignation. A single Unicode character.
If that's the threshold for retreat, New York is in for a very long administration. Governing a city of eight million people requires facing critics who do more than post emojis. It requires answering for your positions when the audience isn't pre-sorted to applaud.
Neither CBS News nor Mamdani's office responded to Fox News Digital's requests for comment. The silence is consistent. When the questions get uncomfortable, the mayor disappears.
The broader subplot here matters. For years, legacy network news operated as a de facto communications arm for progressive politicians.
Interviews were negotiated, questions were softened, and the final product rarely left a Democrat worse off than when they sat down. Bari Weiss's arrival at CBS disrupted that arrangement. Not because she turned CBS into a conservative outlet, but because she introduced the radical concept that journalists might challenge powerful people regardless of party.
The former CBS producer's complaint is revealing. The problem isn't that CBS is unfair. The problem is that CBS is no longer reliably favorable. Politicians who built their media strategies around sympathetic interviewers now face a network where an Iranian dissident can challenge a Democratic mayor on air, and the editor-in-chief won't pretend it didn't happen.
That's not an ax to grind. That's journalism recovering a pulse.
Mamdani can avoid CBS for as long as he wants. But the questions Alinejad raised aren't going away. Where was his outrage when the Islamic Republic targeted a woman on American soil? Why does his compassion extend to a regime that murders dissidents but not to the military operations aimed at stopping it?
He can dodge the interview. He can't dodge the record.