Minnesota Governor Tim Walz wants you to know he is furious about the massive fraud scandal plaguing his state. He also wants you to know that the federal government's efforts to do something about it amount to political punishment. He delivered both messages at the same press conference on Thursday, apparently without noticing the contradiction.
Walz announced a package of state legislation aimed at combating fraud, positioning himself as the man who will finally clean up a mess that festered on his watch. He simultaneously accused the Trump administration of "targeted retribution against a state that the president doesn't like" for taking its own steps to address the problem.
Pick a lane, Governor.
Walz opened his Thursday remarks with a plea for trust. The Daily Caller reported.
"You can trust me on this. The person who's angriest about this fraud is me."
He continued by insisting there was no political incentive for him to tolerate fraud:
"There is certainly no political upside to having fraud in your state and it undermines the very program I have spent a lifetime advocating for and trying to implement and we have got criminals."
That much is true. There is no political upside. Which raises a fair question: if the fraud is this severe and Walz is this angry, why is the state legislature only now seeing a legislative package to address it? Walz has been governor since 2019. The fraud didn't materialize overnight. It metastasized under his administration's nose, and his anger apparently reached legislative urgency only after the federal government forced the issue.
Vice President JD Vance announced Wednesday that the Trump administration had "decided to temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding" going to Minnesota. Vance said the administration "takes its obligation seriously to be good stewards of the American people's tax money."
That's a straightforward statement of fiscal responsibility. If a state is hemorrhaging federal dollars to criminals, pausing the flow while accountability measures are established is not punishment. It's common sense.
Walz sees it differently. He framed the Medicaid funding halt as the latest salvo in a political vendetta, lumping it together with Operation Metro Surge, the Department of Homeland Security initiative launched in December 2025 to ramp up federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota for the purpose of deporting illegal immigrants.
"They used false pretense to come in on Metro Surge and we saw the catastrophic damage that was done and the deaths."
He then pivoted to the funding halt:
"Now we're seeing them turn to this … they're gonna freeze the money because of fraud. What specific fraud? What did you see that the state didn't knew [sic]?"
The grammatical stumble is the least of the problems with that statement. Walz spent the first half of his press conference acknowledging that organized criminals exploited Minnesota's generosity. He then demanded to know what specific fraud the federal government could be concerned about. The governor told the public the house was on fire, then asked the fire department why it showed up.
Walz attempted to spread responsibility as broadly as possible. He claimed fraud exists in every state and that "the numbers are bigger in other states because they're bigger." He accused Republicans of "standing with the criminals," a claim so detached from the actual policy debate that it barely warrants a response. It was the Trump administration that halted funding over fraud concerns and launched immigration enforcement operations. That is the opposite of standing with criminals.
He also tried to flip the corruption charge back onto the president, claiming Trump "has pardoned people who took part in Medicaid fraud, who were responsible for paying back almost $300 million." Walz offered no case names, no documentation, no specifics. He then declared:
"This is some type of upside-down world where we need the adults in the room."
The adult-in-the-room posture is a heavy lift for a governor presiding over a fraud crisis of this scale. Walz's own characterization of the problem was damning enough:
"For the last several years, an organized group of criminals have sought to take advantage of our state's generosity. And even as we make progress in the fight against the fraudsters, we now see an organized group of political actors seeking to take advantage of the crisis."
"For the last several years." That's Walz's tenure. Those are his years. The criminals didn't exploit some abstract bureaucracy. They exploited programs administered under his leadership, in a state where he set the policy tone and controlled the executive apparatus. Now that the federal government has stepped in, the organized criminals have been joined in Walz's rhetoric by "political actors" who are apparently just as dangerous for wanting accountability.
The political context here matters. Walz, Kamala Harris's 2024 running mate and a failed vice presidential nominee, ended his reelection bid for a third term in early January. In a January 5 statement announcing his exit, he told MS NOW that he plans to "never run for an elected office again."
So this is a lame duck governor, with no future campaign to run, announcing a legislative fraud package years too late while simultaneously attacking the federal officials actually applying pressure. The legislation may be worthwhile on its merits. But the timing reveals the motive. This isn't a man who woke up angry about fraud. This is a man who needs to look angry about fraud because someone else started fixing it.
Walz referenced the fatal January shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by federal immigration personnel as evidence that Operation Metro Surge caused "catastrophic damage." Those deaths deserve serious scrutiny and full transparency. But invoking tragedy to delegitimize an entire enforcement operation is a tactic, not an argument. One does not cancel the other.
The most revealing moment of the press conference was Walz's complaint that the federal government offered "not one single grain" of evidence for the fraud justifying the Medicaid funding halt. This is from the governor who, moments earlier, described years of organized criminal exploitation of state programs. The federal government's justification is sitting in Walz's own prepared remarks.
When a governor acknowledges a fraud crisis and then calls the federal response to that crisis "retribution," he is not governing. He is performing. The anger is real, but it's pointed in the wrong direction. Walz isn't furious that criminals stole from Minnesota. He's furious that someone noticed.
The U.S. men's ice hockey team capped its Olympic gold medal celebration with a whirlwind tour through Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, complete with an Air Force flight into the capital, a visit with President Trump in the Oval Office, and a standing ovation at the State of the Union address. It was, by any measure, a triumphant homecoming for a group of Americans who just won gold representing their country on the world stage.
Naturally, the internet found something to be angry about.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt shared a photo on social media posing with deputy director of communications Margo Martin and several members of Team USA, including Boston Bruins goalie Jeremy Swayman, Winnipeg Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck, Jack Hughes, Quinn Hughes, and Buffalo Sabres forward Tage Thompson. Most of the players wore red and white USA hats. Thompson chose a different one.
He wore a Make America Great Again hat. And for that, the outrage machine cranked to life.
Social media critics descended on the photo almost immediately. Thompson faced special criticism online, with critics flocking to the comments on his recent Instagram post to attack him for wearing the MAGA hat. The backlash was described as widespread, though, as with most online outrage cycles, the fury was loud but thin on substance.
Think about what actually happened here. An American athlete won an Olympic gold medal for his country, visited the White House at the invitation of the sitting president, and put on a hat bearing the president's campaign slogan while standing in the president's house. The scandal, apparently, is that he didn't seem embarrassed about any of it. Fox News reported.
This is the state of progressive cultural enforcement in 2026. You can win gold for America, but you'd better not act too American while celebrating it.
Trump invited both the men's and women's gold medal teams to the White House and extended an invitation to the State of the Union address. The men's team accepted and made the trip. The women's team did not attend, citing schedule conflicts.
During Tuesday's address, Trump said the women's gold medal team would make a trip to the White House, though he did not say when.
In a video of the president's phone call with the men's team immediately after their win, Trump joked that if he didn't invite them, he would "probably be impeached." It's the kind of lighthearted moment that used to be unremarkable when athletes visited the White House. A president congratulates champions. Champions shake hands. Everyone moves on.
But the rules changed somewhere around 2017, and they only seem to apply in one direction. When athletes visited Barack Obama's White House wearing his campaign gear, no one demanded they apologize. No one swarmed their social media accounts. The expectation now is that athletes must perform a careful neutrality in the presence of a Republican president, or face digital punishment from strangers who weren't on the ice, didn't win anything, and contribute nothing beyond their indignation.
What the online mob wants you to focus on is the hat. What they don't want you to notice is the picture underneath it: a group of young American men who just beat the world, standing in the White House, grinning. Leavitt welcomed them. The president hosted them. They received a standing ovation at the State of the Union. That's the story.
The MAGA hat outrage reveals something the left would rather not confront. These athletes weren't coerced. Thompson wasn't tricked into putting on the hat. He's a professional hockey player, not a hostage. He made a choice, and the response from progressives tells you everything about how they view personal expression when it cuts against their preferences.
Dissent is celebrated, but only the approved kind. Wearing a Pride flag to the White House is brave. Wearing the sitting president's hat to the White House is a betrayal. The standard isn't the principle. It's allegiance.
The tradition of championship teams visiting the White House exists for a simple reason. These athletes represented the United States. They won. The president, whoever he is, congratulates them on behalf of the country. It's one of the few remaining civic rituals that should transcend partisan bickering.
The men's team showed up. They took the Air Force flight. They shook hands in the Oval Office. They stood for the State of the Union and received the ovation they earned. Some wore USA hats. One wore a MAGA hat. All of them wore gold medals.
The people screaming about Tage Thompson's hat didn't win anything on Tuesday. He did.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told reporters Tuesday morning that he plans to sit down with embattled Texas GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales, who faces mounting calls from within his own party to resign over allegations of an affair with a former district staffer who later took her own life.
"I'll talk to Tony today," Johnson told Politico reporter Meredith Lee Hill.
The meeting comes after Johnson struck a more cautious tone just one day earlier, telling reporters Monday he didn't think "it's time" to call for Gonzales to step down. He urged patience instead.
"I think we have to wait for more of the facts to come out."
The facts already public are grim enough.
Gonzales is accused of having an affair with Regina Santos-Aviles, his former regional district director. The San Antonio Express-News obtained alleged text messages between the two from May 2024, in which Gonzales reportedly requested a "sexy pic" and asked about her "favorite" sexual position.
Santos-Aviles allegedly replied in one exchange:
"This is going too far boss."
That word, "boss," carries weight. This was not a relationship between equals. It was a congressman and his staffer, with all the power dynamics that arrangement implies. The texts were provided to the Express-News by Adrian Aviles, Santos-Aviles' widower.
On September 14, 2025, Regina Santos-Aviles committed suicide by setting herself on fire.
News 4 and Fox SA have also obtained a series of text messages related to the situation. No one should rush past the human devastation at the center of this story. Whatever the full picture turns out to be, a woman is dead, a family is shattered, and the man she worked for in Congress has serious questions to answer.
Multiple Republican members of Congress have already called for Gonzales to resign, The Daily Caller noted. The list is bipartisan in temperament if not in party, spanning populist firebrands and more conventional conservatives alike:
Mace has been the most vocal. In a long-form post on X Monday, she made her position unambiguous:
"Texans deserve a congressman who does not prey on women."
By Tuesday, she had moved beyond words. Mace announced she filed a resolution to publicly release all alleged sexual harassment violations by members of Congress. Not just Gonzales. All of them.
Mace framed her resolution as a response to something larger than one congressman's scandal. She pointed to the institutional rot that lets these situations fester in the first place.
"No one is held accountable here in Congress."
She went further, leveling a charge that should make members on both sides of the aisle uncomfortable: "Both sides protect each other."
That accusation stings because it rings true. Congress has a long and inglorious history of closing ranks when its members face misconduct allegations. Secret settlements paid with taxpayer money. Ethics investigations that drag on until the public loses interest. Quiet retirements dressed up as personal decisions. The pattern is well established, and voters are rightly sick of it.
What makes the Republican response here notable is the speed. There was no circling of wagons, no coordinated messaging operation to buy Gonzales time. Within days of the allegations gaining traction, five GOP members publicly demanded his resignation. That's not how Washington usually works.
The Speaker's position is understandable but precarious. Johnson holds a narrow majority, and every seat matters for the Republican legislative agenda. Calling for a member's resignation before all the facts emerge sets a precedent that could be weaponized later. His instinct toward caution is not unreasonable.
But caution has a shelf life. The alleged texts are specific. The woman at the center of the story is dead. The widower himself brought the messages to reporters. This is not an anonymous accusation from an unnamed source. It has names, dates, and words on a screen.
Johnson's meeting with Gonzales today will reveal whether the Speaker views this as a situation to manage or a situation to resolve. The distinction matters. Managing it means buying time. Resolving it means making a decision that prioritizes institutional credibility over one member's career.
Gonzales has not publicly commented on the allegations based on available reporting. The Caller reached out to Johnson's office for comment but did not receive a response before publication. Silence, at this stage, is its own kind of statement.
Mace's resolution to release all sexual harassment violations could reshape the conversation entirely. If it gains traction, the Gonzales situation becomes less about one man and more about a system that has shielded misconduct for decades.
That's a fight worth having, regardless of which names end up on the list.
Republicans have spent years arguing that they are the party of accountability, the party that doesn't tolerate the kind of institutional corruption that Democrats excuse or ignore. This is where that claim gets tested. Not in a press release. Not in a campaign ad. In a hallway conversation between a Speaker and a member whose conduct may have contributed to a woman's death.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants you to bring your papers if you want to pick up a shovel. Just don't ask him to apply the same standard at a polling place.
As a winter storm bore down on the city over the weekend, Mamdani urged New Yorkers to sign up as emergency snow shovelers. The pitch sounded neighborly enough. During a Saturday press briefing, the mayor laid out the opportunity:
"For those who want to do more to help your neighbors and earn some extra cash, you too can become an emergency snow shoveler."
Then came the fine print. The New York Sanitation Department requires applicants to bring two forms of ID, plus copies and a Social Security card. According to the New York Post, there are no fewer than five forms of identification to bring to your local sanitation garage before you're cleared to push snow off a sidewalk.
Five forms of ID. To volunteer with a shovel.
According to the New York ABC affiliate, the backlash was immediate, and it wrote its own punchlines. Comedian Jimmy Failla captured the mood on X, mocking the mayor for "requiring TWO forms of ID to be a voluntary shoveler for the blizzard" and dubbing the whole affair "Jim SNOW 2.0."
But the sharpest criticism came from Indiana GOP Rep. Marlin Stutzman, who called Mamdani's request what it plainly is: hypocritical. Stutzman posted on X:
"Mamdani opposes the SAVE America Act for requiring ID at the polls — but sees nothing excessive about requiring proof of citizenship AND multiple forms of ID to volunteer part-time SHOVELING SNOW!?"
He followed up with a pointed conclusion:
"Liberal hypocrisy! This is why we need to establish consistency across states' voting laws."
Stutzman's point doesn't need much embellishment. The SAVE America Act would require identification to vote in federal elections. That's it. And yet politicians like Mamdani treat such proposals as unconscionable barriers to democratic participation, the kind of requirement that supposedly disenfranchises entire communities. But clearing snow? That apparently demands a full dossier.
This is the pattern that keeps repeating in progressive governance. Identification requirements are an unbearable burden when they apply to something the left wants to keep loose, like election integrity. But the moment a city bureaucracy needs to process paperwork for a temporary snow removal gig, suddenly IDs are a perfectly reasonable ask.
The contradiction isn't incidental. It reveals the actual principle at work: identification isn't the problem. Control is the point. Progressive leaders are perfectly comfortable with documentation requirements when they're the ones administering the program. They only object when ID mandates might tighten a system they'd prefer to keep porous.
Consider what Mamdani is actually communicating to New Yorkers. If you want to participate in civic life by casting a ballot, asking for your ID is suppression. If you want to participate in civic life by shoveling a public sidewalk, you'd better show up with two forms of ID, copies, and your Social Security card. The city needs to know exactly who you are before it hands you a snow shovel, but it bristles at knowing who's filling out a ballot.
The Libs of TikTok account on X piled on with a broader critique, noting that "mountains of snow and garbage were left on the streets for weeks" in New York City. It's a familiar story for residents who have watched city services deteriorate while the bureaucratic apparatus grows ever more demanding of the citizens trying to help.
This is modern progressive municipal governance in miniature. The city can't keep its own streets clear. It turns to volunteers. Then it buries those volunteers in paperwork before they can lift a shovel. The instinct to regulate, document, and process overtakes the simple objective of getting snow off the ground.
Mamdani told New Yorkers to "show up at your local sanitation garage with your paperwork, which is accessible online." Accessible online. For an emergency snow shoveling program during a storm. The bureaucratic reflex is so deeply embedded that even a crisis can't override it.
House Republicans were among those highlighting the absurdity, and the reason is obvious. The voter ID debate has been one of the clearest fault lines in American politics for years. The left insists that requiring identification to vote is discriminatory, burdensome, and unnecessary. Meanwhile, you need an ID to board a plane, buy cold medicine, open a bank account, pick up a prescription, and now, apparently, to shovel snow in New York City.
At some point, the "ID is a barrier" argument collapses under the weight of every other context in which progressives accept identification as routine. Mamdani just added the most absurd data point yet to that growing list.
New York City residents who want to vote won't be asked for their papers. But residents who want to clear their neighbor's sidewalk will need to assemble a small portfolio first. That's not a policy. It's a confession.
King Charles was warned six years ago that Prince Andrew's business entanglements were damaging the Royal Family, according to a whistleblower email now at the center of a widening scandal that has already landed the ex-Duke of York in police custody.
The Mail on Sunday revealed that in August 2019, a whistleblower sent an email to Charles, then Prince of Wales, through the royal lawyers Farrer & Co. The message was blunt: David Rowland, the controversial millionaire financier orbiting Andrew for years, had "abused the Royal Family's name."
Andrew was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He was released under investigation eleven hours later. The charge carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, though he has not been formally charged.
The question now reverberating through British politics is simple: what did the Palace do with that warning, and why did it take a police arrest to force the issue?
As reported by the Daily Mail, the August 2019 email did not mince words. Addressed to Charles through Farrer & Co, it laid out what the whistleblower described as a pattern of financial entanglement between Andrew and David Rowland that put the monarchy's reputation at risk.
"HRH the Duke of York's actions suggest that his Royal Highness considers his relationship with David Rowland more important than that of his family."
A second email, sent directly to David Rowland, copied in Charles's private secretary Clive Alderton and the late Queen's solicitor Mark Bridges at Farrer & Co. That message was even more direct:
"The evidence provided unequivocally proves that you have abused the Royal Family's name."
The whistleblower alleged that Rowland "paid HRH The Duke of York to procure a Luxembourg Banking Licence" for his private bank, Banque Havilland. That bank had its licence withdrawn in 2024 by the European Central Bank, a decision it is currently appealing.
So by 2019, the Palace had a documented warning. Andrew's name was already radioactive thanks to the now infamous photograph of him with 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre and his links to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. And yet the wheels of accountability barely turned.
The financial relationship between Andrew and the Rowland family stretches back decades. Messages seen by the Mail on Sunday appear to show that Andrew allowed Jonathan Rowland, David's son, to effectively join in with his official duties as a taxpayer-funded trade envoy between 2001 and 2011.
The details are striking:
Andrew once told Epstein that Rowland was his "trusted money man." Let that sink in. A member of the Royal Family, serving as a taxpayer-funded trade envoy, allegedly blended his official diplomatic duties with the private financial interests of a man he vouched for to a convicted paedophile.
Jonathan Rowland, responding to the revelations, dismissed the allegations. He said the emails were "stolen" and had been "extensively reported" previously, adding: "You can't procure a banking licence, that's an idiotic suggestion." He claimed "no recollection" of other matters and offered "no idea" when pressed further.
On Saturday, MPs called for police to study the evidence acquired by the Mail on Sunday. The responses crossed party lines, which tells you how politically toxic Andrew has become.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp did not hold back:
"These explosive new MoS findings are shocking, but not surprising. The police should investigate them at once. Andrew has acted disgracefully and deserves nothing less than to face justice over his deals, something which has been denied to Epstein's victims for too long. No one is above the law."
Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel struck a similar tone, noting that "each day new revelations appear and they are all horrific" and calling for urgent police investigations.
Reform UK's Treasury spokesman Robert Jenrick was equally forceful:
"The police must investigate the latest revelation urgently. No stone must be left unturned to establish the truth. Andrew has done his best to wreck Britain's reputation on the world stage through his association with Epstein."
There are now growing calls for the Government to introduce legislation to remove Andrew from the line of succession. He remains eighth in line to the throne. Defence minister Luke Pollard said stripping him of his right to succession was the "right thing to do."
The Metropolitan Police has started the process of identifying and contacting former and serving officers who may have worked closely with Andrew in a protection capacity. The force asked those officers to consider carefully whether anything they saw or heard during their period of service might be relevant to ongoing reviews.
"They have been asked to consider carefully whether anything they saw or heard during that period of service may be relevant to our ongoing reviews and to share any information that could assist us."
The Met refused to confirm how many current and former staff members were involved. A British ambassador reportedly warned the Government more than two decades ago about Andrew's associations. A British diplomat in Moscow also raised concerns. The warnings piled up. The action did not.
Buckingham Palace's response to the whistleblower revelations was characteristic. A Palace source said that "given the ongoing police investigation into Andrew, it would not be possible to give any comment on the whistleblower's email." The source added that "any relevant material in the possession of the MoS should be shared with the appropriate authorities."
That is a remarkable posture for an institution that received a direct, documented warning in 2019 about one of its own members allegedly selling access and blending royal duties with private financial schemes.
Gloria Allred, a lawyer who has represented 27 Epstein victims, urged the King and the Prince and Princess of Wales to give statements to police. Speaking to the BBC, she laid out the stakes plainly:
"King Charles and all the members really of the Royal Family have said that they support the victims. The best way is for them to also do interviews with the police if they are requested to do so. Or they could volunteer to do so. I would respectfully request that they speak out about what Andrew may have ever told them about his role with Jeffrey Epstein."
The Andrew saga is not just a story about one reckless royal. It is a case study in how institutions prioritize self-preservation over accountability. The warning signs were everywhere. A whistleblower put them in writing. Diplomats raised alarms. The financial entanglements were not subtle. A man paying off your £1.5 million loan while you carry the title of trade envoy is not a grey area.
For years, the British establishment treated Andrew's behavior as an embarrassment to be managed rather than a potential crime to be investigated. The same instinct that kept Epstein's network intact across multiple countries, the instinct to look away because the names involved are too important, operated in plain sight within the monarchy itself.
Now that an arrest has been made, every institution that received a warning and filed it away will face a reckoning. The emails exist. The timeline is clear. The question is no longer what Andrew did. It is who knew, when they knew it, and why they chose silence.
A Republican strategist went on MSNBC this weekend and did something the network's hosts probably didn't expect: he defended Jasmine Crockett.
Matthew Bartlett, appearing on MS NOW's "The Weekend" on Saturday, argued that Democratic staffers and the team behind "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" had "done Jasmine Crockett dirty" in a sequence of events surrounding a Texas Democratic Senate primary that has become a case study in friendly fire.
The controversy centers on state Rep. James Talarico, Crockett's opponent in the primary, who appeared on "The Late Show" on Tuesday. That appearance triggered a mess. Colbert accused CBS of blocking the interview from airing, citing what he described as the FCC's crackdown on the longstanding equal candidate time rule. CBS flatly denied it.
"THE LATE SHOW was not prohibited by CBS from broadcasting the interview with Rep. James Talarico."
So someone wasn't telling the truth. And in the wreckage of that contradiction, Bartlett argued, it was Crockett who got buried.
The story that circulated earlier in the week was simple: Trump was supposedly behind the suppression of Talarico's interview, wielding federal power to silence a Democratic candidate through broadcast regulators. It had all the ingredients the left loves. A villain. A victim. A chilling effect on free speech, as Fox News reports.
Bartlett wasn't buying it. He told Jonathan Capehart on Saturday:
"This notion [that] Trump [was] going to stop Colbert in order to stop Talarico — people kind of went with this narrative."
Then he landed his point:
"I'm not sure it's true. I think, candidly, they've actually done Jasmine Crockett dirty."
When Capehart pressed him on who "they" referred to, Bartlett pointed the finger at Colbert's media team and Democratic staffers connected to Talarico.
Here's the timeline that tells the real story. On Tuesday, Crockett told MS NOW's Jen Psaki that she "received a phone call" informing her CBS had been told "they could go ahead and move forward with the interview of James Talarico," provided that Crockett and the other candidate in the race, Ahmad Hassan, received equal time.
That sounds reasonable on paper. Equal time is a standard broadcast obligation when candidates are involved. But by Friday, Crockett said she had still not been invited to appear on Colbert's show.
So Talarico got his national television moment. Crockett got a phone call and a promise. And the promise evaporated.
Crockett herself seemed to grasp the dynamic, telling Psaki on Tuesday that the entire controversy probably gave her opponent "the boost he was looking for." Which is exactly what Bartlett argued. Talarico, he noted, got a nice little bump in fundraising from the whole episode. The victim narrative worked, just not for the person who was actually victimized.
What makes this worth watching isn't the specifics of a Texas primary. It's the pattern.
The left built a narrative around Trump suppressing the media to protect itself from accountability, then used that narrative to elevate one Democratic candidate at the expense of another. The supposed censorship story became the campaign ad. And when CBS publicly denied that the interview was ever blocked, nobody paused to recalibrate. The story had already done its work.
Bartlett summarized it cleanly:
"Everyone likes to be the victim. I'm not sure Talarico is the victim of Trump's suppression. I think Jasmine Crockett might be the victim of a false media narrative."
Talarico's campaign, for its part, declined to comment when asked about the situation. Silence is a choice.
There's a deeper irony here that conservatives should note. The FCC's equal time rule exists precisely to prevent broadcasters from tipping the scales in elections. It's supposed to be a safeguard. But in this case, the rule's invocation became the story itself, a vehicle for generating sympathetic coverage for one candidate while the other waited by the phone for an invitation that never came.
The rule didn't protect Crockett. It was used to frame a narrative around her opponent's appearance, generate outrage, drive donations, and then quietly ignored when it came time to actually provide her the platform she was owed.
Conservatives have long argued that the mainstream media and the Democratic establishment function as a single organism. This episode doesn't disprove that theory, but it does complicate it in an instructive way. The machine doesn't just target Republicans. When a Democratic primary gets competitive, the same apparatus can be turned on any candidate who isn't the preferred choice.
Crockett is no conservative. She's a reliable progressive vote in Congress. But reliability, it turns out, doesn't earn you loyalty within the party infrastructure. It earns you a phone call on Tuesday and silence by Friday.
A GOP strategist had to go on MSNBC to point it out. That tells you everything about who's actually paying attention.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a full stay on Thursday, halting California's ban on masks for federal law enforcement agents, temporarily preventing the state from enforcing a law that would have made it a misdemeanor for ICE agents to conceal their identities during operations.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the ruling on X:
"The 9th Circuit has now issued a FULL stay blocking California's ban on masks for federal law enforcement agents."
The stay keeps the law frozen while litigation continues, marking the second consecutive legal defeat for Sacramento in its effort to dictate how federal officers conduct immigration enforcement on California soil.
Newsmax reported that California's law took effect Jan. 1 and made it a misdemeanor for many law enforcement officers, including federal agents, to wear a mask or other disguise while interacting with the public during official duties.
Medical protection, such as N95 respirators, was exempted, but the thrust of the law was clear: strip federal immigration agents of the operational anonymity they use to protect themselves during enforcement actions.
Supporters dubbed the legislation the "No Secret Police Act." California state Sen. Scott Wiener authored the bill, and Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it into law.
The framing tells you everything. Sacramento wasn't concerned about transparency in policing. It was building another legal obstacle between federal agents and the illegal immigrants California has spent years shielding from enforcement.
Masked federal immigration operations drew protests and public scrutiny in 2025, and California's Democratic leadership responded not by cooperating with federal law but by criminalizing the agents enforcing it.
The Justice Department sued California in November, arguing the state cannot regulate federal officers' duties and that the law violates the Constitution's Supremacy Clause. The Trump administration argued the measure would endanger agents and intrude on federal authority.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder in Los Angeles blocked California from enforcing the mask restrictions against federal officers. Snyder concluded that the law unlawfully discriminated against the federal government.
She did allow California to enforce a separate state requirement that law enforcement officers display visible identification showing their agency and badge number, except when working undercover.
Newsom called Snyder's decision upholding the identification requirement "a clear win for the rule of law." A partial ruling that still stripped the core of his own legislation, rebranded as a victory. That's Sacramento in a sentence.
Wiener said after the district court ruling that he would move quickly to revise the law to apply more uniformly across law enforcement agencies. In other words, the law was so poorly drafted that a federal judge found it singled out the federal government for unique burdens, and the author's response was to promise a second attempt.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli weighed in Thursday with a pointed reminder:
"The state of California needs to familiarize itself with the Supremacy Clause. It does not have the authority to regulate federal agents. This is another key win for the Justice Department."
This is not a close constitutional question. States do not get to dictate the operational protocols of federal law enforcement. They do not get to decide which protective equipment federal agents wear. They do not get to impose misdemeanor charges on officers executing federal warrants.
The Supremacy Clause exists precisely to prevent states from waging guerrilla legal warfare against the enforcement of federal law.
California keeps pretending otherwise, and the courts keep telling them no.
Bondi framed the stakes plainly:
"Law enforcement officers risk their lives for us, only to be doxxed by radical anti-police activists. Unacceptable."
That's the part of this story that doesn't make it into the "No Secret Police Act" branding. Federal agents conducting immigration operations in hostile jurisdictions face real threats. Their names and faces, once exposed, become targets for harassment, intimidation, and violence.
Masks aren't theatrical props. They are protective measures for officers working in communities where local politicians have spent years encouraging resistance to federal immigration law.
California created an environment where agents need anonymity, then passed a law stripping it away. The contradiction isn't accidental. It's the strategy.
Bondi added:
"This crucial ruling protects our brave men and women in the field. We will not stop fighting bad laws like these in California and across the country."
The dispute is the latest flashpoint in a long-running clash between the Trump administration and California's Democratic leadership.
Sacramento has turned obstruction of federal immigration enforcement into something between a governing philosophy and a hobby. Sanctuary policies, non-cooperation mandates, and now criminal penalties for the equipment federal agents wear.
Each new law forces the Justice Department to spend time and resources in court rather than in the field. Each new law signals to illegal immigrants that California will fight to keep the federal government from enforcing the law. And each new law, when it inevitably fails in court, gets quietly revised and resubmitted.
The 9th Circuit, not historically known for siding with federal enforcement priorities, issued a full stay. When even the 9th Circuit tells California it has gone too far, the overreach speaks for itself.
Sacramento will try again. The DOJ will be waiting.
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on April 1 in Trump v. Barbara, the case challenging President Donald Trump's executive order that denies birthright citizenship to certain children born on U.S. soil. It is the first time the high court has agreed to directly confront the scope of the 14th Amendment's citizenship clause in the modern immigration context.
The executive order, signed on January 20, 2025, applies to children born after February 19, 2025, whose parents are either illegally present in the United States or here on temporary visas. The question before the justices is deceptively simple: what does "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" actually mean?
For decades, the political establishment treated birthright citizenship as settled law, a constitutional given that no serious person would question. That consensus is now before the nine justices, and the legal arguments supporting the challenge are far more grounded in history than critics would like to admit.
According to Just the News, the entire case turns on five words in the 14th Amendment: "subject to the jurisdiction thereof." The amendment was ratified to provide citizenship to formerly enslaved African Americans. Its application to the children of foreign nationals, including those here illegally, rests not on the amendment's text or its framers' intent, but on subsequent judicial interpretation.
Second Circuit Judge Steven Menashi has noted that the clause refers to being born under the protection of, and owing allegiance to, a sovereign. That framing matters enormously. If jurisdiction requires allegiance, the automatic extension of citizenship to children of illegal immigrants is not a constitutional command. It is a policy choice dressed up as one.
Ilan Wurman, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, argued that English common law, on which America's founding documents were modeled, tied citizenship to a reciprocal relationship between sovereign and subject. Permission to be present was linked to protection, and protection was linked to jurisdiction. As Wurman put it:
"Permission was relevant to protection and protection, as it turns out, was relevant to jurisdiction."
That framework draws a clear line between those lawfully admitted to the country and those who entered or remained in violation of its laws. Wurman also noted the historical understanding of how sovereignty operated on families:
"The sovereign operated on children through the parents, which, of course, makes sense because parents have a natural authority over their children."
If the parents have no lawful permission to be here, the logic follows that their children are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States in the constitutional sense the 14th Amendment contemplated.
Yale law professor Keith Whittington offered a nuanced point that undercuts the left's position even on its own terms. He traced the concept of sovereign jurisdiction back to English legal tradition, where a king's decision not to remove a foreign national still placed that person under the crown's governing authority. Whittington explained:
"If the king chooses to tolerate your presence in the country and does not take active steps to remove you, then the assumption is you are under the full governing authority of the king and should be treated accordingly."
At first glance, this might seem to support birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants. If you're here, you're under jurisdiction. But Whittington connected this directly to the Trump administration's enforcement posture, which targets the "worst of the worst" among those here illegally. The implication is significant: a government actively working to deport someone has not chosen to tolerate their presence. The reciprocal relationship that historically undergirded jurisdiction simply does not exist.
Whittington elaborated on what tolerance actually means in practice:
"If you're not being actively removed from the country, then you are expected to play by the rules of the local jurisdiction and the government will continue to place demands on you and also expect that you will abide by local laws until the moment comes when we choose to actually take action and deport you."
This is not an argument for blanket birthright citizenship. It is an argument that jurisdiction is contingent, not automatic. And in an era of active enforcement, the category of people whose presence the government has chosen to tolerate is narrower than the open-borders crowd would prefer.
Both Wurman and Whittington agreed that the justices should not read the 14th Amendment as automatically extending citizenship to every child born on American soil to foreign parents. But they also pointed to a glaring institutional failure: Congress has never bothered to clarify the amendment's definitional ambiguities.
Whittington suggested that if Congress genuinely cared about phenomena like birth tourism, it had the authority to act:
"If Congress really cared about this, they can take steps to try to minimize how often it happens, but that's the extent of their authority to be able to do something about it."
He also acknowledged that any legislation would likely contain its own loopholes, much like the amendment itself. This is an honest concession, but it doesn't excuse decades of legislative inaction. Congress has been content to let courts do its work, and courts have been content to let a post-hoc interpretation stand in for original meaning. The result is a citizenship framework built on assumptions rather than text.
The broader significance of Trump v. Barbara extends well past constitutional interpretation. Birthright citizenship as currently practiced creates a set of incentives that no rational immigration system would design on purpose:
Every other developed nation has moved away from unrestricted birthright citizenship or never adopted it in the first place. The United States clings to it not because of constitutional necessity, but because of political convenience. Democrats benefit from the demographic math. Republicans have lacked the institutional will to challenge it. Until now.
Much of the legal and media establishment will frame this case as radical, an assault on constitutional norms by an overreaching executive. That framing requires you to accept that a 19th-century amendment designed to secure the citizenship of freed slaves was always intended to grant automatic citizenship to the children of people who broke the law to be here. It requires you to believe the framers of the 14th Amendment imagined a world in which illegal entry would generate irrevocable legal rights for the next generation.
The scholars preparing the ground for this argument are not fringe voices. They are a federal appellate judge and professors at Yale and the University of Minnesota. Their reading of the text and its historical antecedents is serious, sourced, and difficult to dismiss on the merits.
The Supreme Court now has the opportunity to do what Congress wouldn't and what lower courts have avoided: read the 14th Amendment as it was written, not as decades of political convenience have wished it to read. April 1 is not just a date on the docket. It is the first honest examination of a question the country has been told, for far too long, was not allowed to be asked.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani is bringing back the very homeless encampment sweeps he campaigned on ending, a reversal forced by 19 deaths during a brutal cold stretch and more than 3,300 encampment complaints flooding the city's 311 system so far this year.
The sweeps are expected to restart as soon as Wednesday, with the Department of Homeless Services taking the lead on issuing notices. Cops and sanitation workers will still be on hand. The new process involves outreach workers visiting encampments repeatedly over seven days before the Department of Sanitation moves in to clear the site.
If that sounds familiar, it should. The approach mirrors what the city did under former Mayor Eric Adams.
Mamdani made ending encampment sweeps a centerpiece of his pre-office rhetoric, according to the New York Post. Back in December, he told reporters the practice was a failure that resulted in only a few people being placed into city shelters. When he took office on January 1, he moved fast: ordering DSNY and NYPD to leave encampments alone and not to touch anything resembling personal property nearby.
Then reality showed up.
Nineteen people died outside during the cold. Complaints poured in from every borough. City Council Speaker Julie Menin hauled the administration before a hearing last week and delivered a line that cut through the bureaucratic hedging:
"These New Yorkers should be alive today."
That's not a Republican talking. That's the City Council Speaker, a fellow Democrat, publicly holding Mamdani's feet to the fire over a policy that was supposed to be more compassionate than what came before it.
City Hall spokesperson Matt Rauschenbach framed the reversal the way spokespeople always do: not as a retreat, but as an evolution.
"When Mayor Mamdani took office, he paused the failed encampment sweep policies of the past, making clear that the city would no longer rely on approaches that simply moved people from block to block without real support."
Rauschenbach also described the new timeline as a feature, not a concession:
"The goal is to maximize placements into shelter and connect unhoused New Yorkers to the services they need so that when DSNY clears an encampment on day seven, meaningful progress has already been made."
Translation: we're doing the same thing the last mayor did, but we'd like credit for adding a week-long preamble. Mamdani's new budget does include 60 additional outreach workers, which is the administration's way of dressing the reversal in new clothes.
This is what happens when progressive governance collides with the unglamorous demands of running a city. The cycle is remarkably consistent:
An unnamed insider quoted in the reporting put it plainly:
"The fact they keep rolling back campaign promises shows they spent the summer only saying whatever made political sense."
That's not a conservative critique from the outside. That's coming from someone close enough to the operation to know how the sausage gets made. And what they're describing isn't a policy adjustment. It's the gap between what progressives say to win elections and what governing actually requires.
The fundamental problem with Mamdani's original approach wasn't administrative. It was philosophical. He treated encampment sweeps as inherently cruel, a system designed to harass the vulnerable. What he didn't reckon with is that leaving people in makeshift camps during a New York winter isn't mercy. It's abandonment with better PR.
Nineteen people are dead. The city received over 3,300 complaints from residents across all five boroughs, watching encampments grow unchecked. And the Department of Homeless Services was reportedly given no instructions on how to handle the situation after the sweeps were halted. The mayor removed the tool and offered no replacement.
This is the recurring flaw in progressive urban policy: conflating enforcement with cruelty, then discovering that the absence of enforcement doesn't produce compassion. It produces chaos, and sometimes death.
Mamdani now finds himself executing the Adams playbook while insisting it's something new. The seven-day outreach window and the 60 additional workers are real additions, but they sit on top of the same fundamental structure: the city identifies an encampment, sends people in, and eventually clears it. That's a sweep. Calling it something else doesn't change what it is.
The deeper question for New York is whether Mamdani's early months signal a mayor who learns from mistakes or one who simply retreats from them when the political cost gets high enough. The insider's observation about campaign promises rings true not because politicians break promises (they all do), but because this particular promise was so obviously untenable that making it in the first place suggests either naivety or cynicism.
Neither is reassuring when you're responsible for eight million people, and winter hasn't finished yet.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the self-described democratic socialist who now runs America's largest city, dropped a $127 billion preliminary budget proposal on Tuesday that includes a 9.5% property tax increase affecting roughly three million residential units and 100,000 commercial properties. The proposal represents an $11 billion increase over the current fiscal year's $115.9 billion budget.
The catch: Mamdani says he doesn't actually want to raise property taxes. He wants the state to raise income taxes on the wealthy instead. If Governor Kathy Hochul and the state Legislature don't approve a 2% income tax increase on those earning more than $1 million, Mamdani warned he would be forced to impose the property tax hike on working and middle-class New Yorkers.
In other words, the mayor of New York City just used his own residents as hostages in a negotiation with Albany.
The city faces an estimated $5.4 billion budget gap, according to the New York Post. Mamdani's proposed property tax increase would generate approximately $3.7 billion, according to city officials. On top of that, he wants to draw more than $3.25 billion from the city's main reserves, plus additional millions from other savings accounts.
Governor Hochul pitched in $1.5 billion this week to help cover the deficit, but that barely dents a gap this size.
The budget also contains a few sizable cutbacks. Instead, it pours money into spending. The Department of Education alone would receive $38 billion, a $3 billion increase. The NYPD would get $6.38 billion, up $100 million. And the Law Department would receive $38 million to hire 200 new attorneys and 100 support staff.
Consider the math from a homeowner's perspective. A single-family home in Park Slope with a market value of $3.2 million and a city-assessed value of $44,000 would see its annual property taxes jump from roughly $8,700 to about $9,500. An Upper West Side condo assessed at $120,000 would go from $14,926 to $16,345 per year. The proposed rates break down as follows:
The last time New York City raised property taxes was after September 11, 2001. That increase came in response to a national tragedy and an unprecedented crisis. This one comes in response to a budget the mayor himself wrote.
Mamdani framed the entire exercise as a binary choice. At his press conference, flanked by First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan and budget director Sherif Soliman, he cast himself as reluctant:
"I do not want to raise property taxes."
Then he explained who he thinks should foot the bill instead:
"When faced with this crisis, the question is who should pay these taxes? I believe that it should be the wealthiest New Yorkers, the most profitable corporations. I believe that they can afford to pay a little bit more."
This is the socialist playbook dressed in moderate clothing. The preferred option is always a tax increase. The only question is which tax increase? Cutting spending, streamlining bureaucracy, and eliminating waste from a $127 billion budget: none of these appear to be serious considerations. The debate Mamdani wants is not whether to tax more, but whom to tax more.
And the political dynamics make the whole thing look like a theater. Hochul faces re-election this fall. She told reporters at an unrelated event on Tuesday that she was "not supportive of a property tax increase" and added, "I don't know that that's necessary." There has long been support among some state legislators for income tax hikes similar to what Mamdani proposed, but Hochul has voiced opposition to raising income taxes on the wealthy.
Political consultant George Arzt called it exactly what it is: "It's a strategy. It's posturing, for now." He added that Mamdani "is playing the same game every other mayor has played at this point in the budget process."
One unnamed Democratic insider was less diplomatic:
"It really is stunningly risky. Broad-based property tax increases are historically so deeply unpopular that he is essentially betting his political career on a game of chicken with Albany."
What makes this story remarkable is that the opposition isn't coming from Republicans. It's coming from Mamdani's own side.
City Comptroller Mark Levine warned that the property tax proposal would have "dire consequences" and said the city was under "the greatest fiscal strain since the Great Recession." His critique went further:
"Our property tax system is profoundly unfair and inconsistent, and an across-the-board increase in this tax would be regressive."
Regressive. That's a word progressives normally reserve for policies they accuse Republicans of supporting. Here, it's being lobbed at a democratic socialist mayor by his own comptroller.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin, who would need to approve any property tax increase, wasn't buying it either:
"At a time when New Yorkers are already grappling with an affordability crisis, dipping into rainy day reserves and proposing significant property tax increases should not be on the table whatsoever."
One unnamed source captured the mood among city insiders: "They all know Hochul isn't going to raise taxes. Even progressives are saying what the hell is this. This whole thing is a mirage." Another source went further, calling it "one of the most outrageous, fiscally irresponsible things" and adding that Mamdani "is causing panic."
Andrew Rein, executive director of the Citizens Budget Commission, offered the most succinct rebuttal:
"The mayor should ensure that every one of the people's $127 billion is used well, before asking them to dig into their pockets."
Here is what the entire debate misses. New York City does not have a revenue problem. It has a $127 billion budget. The question that no one in city government seems willing to ask is whether a city needs to spend $127 billion in the first place.
Mamdani's preferred solution is a 2% income tax hike on millionaires. His backup plan is a 9.5% property tax hike on everyone. His third option, draining the rainy day fund by more than $3.25 billion, would leave the city exposed the next time an actual emergency arrives. What none of these options involves is spending less money.
Rein put it plainly: "The best choice is to eliminate spending that does not improve New Yorkers' lives and make government more efficient and effective."
That sentence could serve as the governing philosophy for any competent executive. But efficiency is not what democratic socialism produces. It produces $38 billion education budgets, 200 new government lawyers, and ultimatums demanding that someone else pay for it all.
The timeline ahead is tight. Albany's state budget is due April 1, though the state has a long history of missing that deadline. New York City's finalized budget must land by June 5 and take effect July 1. Between now and then, Mamdani, Hochul, Menin, and the state Legislature will engage in the kind of high-stakes negotiation that New York's political class treats as sport.
Property taxes remain the only taxes the mayor can control without state approval. That makes the threat real, even if the strategy is cynical. If Albany doesn't blink, three million residential units and 100,000 commercial properties absorb the hit.
New Yorkers who already pay some of the highest taxes in America are watching their new mayor propose even higher ones, with the justification that someone wealthier should really be paying instead. And when that someone wealthier declines to stick around for the privilege, the bill will land exactly where it always does: on the people who can't leave.