Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday urged members of President Trump's Cabinet to strip him of his powers under the 25th Amendment, citing his remarks about wiping out Iran's civilization. The California Democrat posted her demand on X, escalating a pattern of confrontation she first attempted during Trump's first term, and one that carries no more constitutional plausibility now than it did then.
Pelosi framed the call as a matter of national safety. In a post on her SpeakerPelosi account, she wrote:
"Donald Trump's instability is more clear and dangerous than ever."
She followed that with a second demand aimed at congressional Republicans:
"If the Cabinet is not willing to invoke the 25th Amendment and restore sanity, Republicans must reconvene the Congress to end this war."
The remarks that triggered Pelosi's outburst centered on Trump's threat to wipe out a "whole civilization" if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened. House Democrats had warned that the president's plans to bomb infrastructure in Iran could constitute war crimes if carried out. But Pelosi went further than most of her colleagues, reaching for the most dramatic constitutional remedy available, one that requires the vice president and a majority of the sitting Cabinet to declare a president "unable to discharge" his powers and duties.
The 25th Amendment was designed for genuine incapacity, a president in surgery, in a coma, or otherwise physically unable to govern. Pelosi's use of it as a political weapon is not new. She previously pushed for the same remedy during Trump's first term, touting support from other lawmakers at the time. That effort went nowhere.
This time, the odds are even longer. There are no signs that anything resembling a 25th Amendment effort is underway inside Trump's Cabinet. The vice president would need to agree, and a majority of Cabinet secretaries would need to sign on. Even then, if the president objected, which any functioning president would, Congress would have to vote, and a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate would be required to sustain the removal of presidential powers.
In a Congress where Republicans hold the majority in both chambers, that threshold is not a long shot. It is a fantasy. Pelosi knows this. The call is not a serious constitutional proposal. It is a messaging exercise, and one that tells voters more about the Democratic opposition's posture than about any genuine threat to the presidency.
Pelosi's recent public appearances have drawn their own share of criticism, but she remains one of the most visible figures in the Democratic caucus and clearly intends to stay that way.
The backdrop to Pelosi's demand is an active and fast-moving standoff with Iran. Trump set an 8 p.m. EDT deadline on Tuesday. Around midday, Pakistan asked for an extension on that deadline. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president had received Pakistan's proposal and would respond soon.
It was not clear as of Tuesday evening whether Trump would proceed with more intense bombing of Iran. The uncertainty itself has fueled anxiety on Capitol Hill, not just among Democrats, but among some Republican lawmakers as well. GOP members of Congress have been growing more anxious over the Iran conflict, though they appear unlikely to force Trump's hand.
That anxiety is real, and it deserves honest debate. But honest debate is not what Pelosi offered. She offered a constitutional shortcut that does not exist, wrapped in language designed for cable news and social media engagement. The 25th Amendment is not a vote of no confidence. It is not a policy disagreement tool. And treating it as one cheapens the document it comes from.
Pelosi has spent the post-speakership phase of her career positioning herself as a senior party voice willing to make the sharpest possible attacks on the Trump administration. She has endorsed candidates and inserted herself into primaries across the country, maintaining influence even without the gavel.
Her willingness to invoke the 25th Amendment, twice, across two different Trump terms, raises a question about whether the Democratic leadership has any tool in its kit besides escalation. When every policy disagreement becomes an existential crisis, the language of genuine crisis loses its meaning.
She is not alone in the tendency. Some Democrats have openly admitted their party has failed the moment and called for new leadership. Whether Pelosi's approach represents that failure or simply illustrates it is a question her own party will eventually have to answer.
Pelosi's fallback demand, that Republicans reconvene Congress to end the Iran conflict, acknowledges, implicitly, that the 25th Amendment gambit is performative. If she believed the Cabinet would act, she would not need a backup plan in the same sentence.
Republican lawmakers face a genuine tension. Some are uneasy about the scope of military action against Iran. But unease is not the same as opposition, and GOP members have shown little appetite for a public break with the president on foreign policy. Occasional bipartisan friction on national security questions has surfaced in recent months, but it has not translated into the kind of organized congressional pushback Pelosi is demanding.
The two-thirds threshold in both chambers makes Pelosi's ask a nonstarter even if a handful of Republicans broke ranks. She is asking for something she knows will not happen, then blaming Republicans for not delivering it.
Meanwhile, Pelosi continues to shape Democratic primary contests behind the scenes, a reminder that her influence operates on multiple tracks at once, some visible, some less so.
For readers unfamiliar with the mechanics: the 25th Amendment allows the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to transmit a written declaration to Congress stating that the president is unable to discharge his powers and duties. The vice president then immediately assumes acting presidential authority.
If the president disputes the declaration, which he may do by sending his own written statement to Congress, the vice president and Cabinet have four days to reassert their claim. Congress then has 21 days to vote. A two-thirds majority in both chambers is required to keep the president sidelined. Anything short of that, and the president resumes his powers.
The amendment was ratified in 1967, in the shadow of the Kennedy assassination and concerns about presidential succession. It was not designed as a partisan override mechanism. Pelosi's repeated attempts to repurpose it as one reflect a broader Democratic instinct to treat constitutional tools as political levers when the normal democratic process does not deliver the result they want.
There are legitimate debates to be had about the scope of presidential war powers, the proper role of Congress in authorizing military action, and the strategic wisdom of any given foreign policy. Those debates matter. They deserve serious legislators making serious arguments grounded in law and strategy.
What they do not need is a former Speaker reaching for the constitutional equivalent of a fire alarm every time she disagrees with the commander-in-chief. The 25th Amendment is not a policy tool. Treating it as one does not constrain the president. It only reveals how little the opposition has left to offer.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday opened a 104-bed medical unit at Bellevue Hospital for jail inmates, a facility equipped with a basketball hoop, a library, and what officials called "therapeutic settings", at a cost of $241 million to city taxpayers. The unit, tucked inside a secure wing on Bellevue's second floor in Kips Bay, will begin receiving prisoners transferred from Rikers Island on Wednesday, the New York Post reported.
The mayor framed the opening as the first concrete move toward shuttering Rikers for good. City Hall called it a "major step" in a plan that has already blown past its original deadline and ballooned 57 percent beyond its projected budget.
That plan, born from a 2019 City Council law to close Rikers and replace it with borough-based jails by 2027, now carries an estimated price tag of $13.7 billion. The full project will not be finished until 2032, five years late. The earliest any new jail site is expected to open is a Brooklyn facility in 2029.
The Bellevue unit is designed for inmates with what City Hall described as "complex medical needs." A press release said it will serve patients with "serious conditions such as cancer and congestive heart failure who do not require hospitalization but face heightened risks in a traditional jail setting."
Correctional Health Services clinicians will serve as the primary care providers, "working in close coordination with Bellevue specialists," City Hall said. Officials promised a "full range of specialty services," including oncology, cardiology, and neurology. Clinicians will deliver care on-site "with enhanced monitoring and support in a therapeutic environment designed to improve health outcomes."
The amenities extend beyond clinical care. The facility includes a basketball court and a library, features that may strike ordinary New Yorkers, many of whom struggle to afford basic health coverage, as generous for a jail ward.
Simple math puts the per-bed cost at roughly $2.3 million. For context, that figure exceeds the median home price in most American cities. Whether those dollars translate into meaningfully better outcomes for inmates, or whether they represent another monument to New York's appetite for spending other people's money, remains an open question.
Mamdani did not let the ribbon-cutting pass without a jab at his predecessor. He told reporters the Bellevue unit was completed in 2025 but sat closed for more than fifteen months before his administration moved to open it. He laid the blame squarely on former Mayor Eric Adams.
"The previous administration delayed the construction of borough based jails and dragged their feet on the opening of therapeutic health facilities like this one."
That accusation fits a pattern. Mamdani, a former state assemblyman who has drawn scrutiny for ducking tough media questions, has positioned himself as the mayor who will finally deliver on promises the city has been making since 2019.
City Hall's own press release acknowledged the delay in unusually direct language: "This unit is finally opening after years of delays, reflecting a renewed focus on delivering long-promised improvements to the City's correctional health system."
Yet blaming the Adams era only raises another question: if the facility was ready more than a year ago, why did it take Mamdani's administration this long to flip the switch? The timeline suggests the new mayor was not exactly racing to the finish line either.
The Bellevue opening is one piece of a much larger, and much more expensive, puzzle. The 2019 law envisioned closing Rikers entirely and replacing it with smaller, borough-based jails. That original deadline was 2027. It has already slipped to 2032.
The cost trajectory is even more alarming. At $13.7 billion, the project now runs 57 percent above the original projection. New York taxpayers are funding one of the most expensive correctional overhauls in American history, and the city has not yet opened a single replacement jail.
Mamdani's administration has also announced plans for two additional "outposted therapeutic housing units", one with 144 beds at Woodhull Hospital and another with 92 beds at North Central Bronx Hospitals. Neither has opened yet. Meanwhile, the city intends to close the 500-bed North Infirmary Command at Rikers, which currently houses inmates with acute medical needs.
The infirmary at Bellevue will be moved under the supervision of the Department of City Administrative Services in June, adding another layer of bureaucratic transition to a project already marked by delays.
Mamdani, whose administration has faced questions over his deputy mayor appointments, cast the moment in sweeping terms.
"Today, we are charting a different course, one that diverts from the path of neglect and begins the process of closing Rikers Island once and for all."
The rhetoric from City Hall leans heavily on the language of compassion and progress. But the numbers tell a different story, one of chronic delays, spiraling costs, and a city government that cannot seem to finish what it starts on time or on budget.
Consider the sequence: the City Council passed the Rikers closure law in 2019. The Bellevue unit was finished in 2025. It sat empty for over fifteen months. It opens now, in a city where the earliest replacement jail won't be ready until 2029 and the full project stretches to 2032. The bill has grown by billions.
Mamdani told reporters the opening marks the beginning of closing Rikers "not with promises, but with action." Fair enough. But a $241 million, 104-bed hospital ward with a basketball court, opened more than a year after construction ended, is a peculiar definition of urgency.
The broader pattern of Democratic governance in New York continues to follow a familiar script: grand ambitions, generous spending, missed deadlines, and taxpayers left holding the tab. Even some Democrats have begun acknowledging their party's failures of delivery on the promises that matter most to ordinary citizens.
Mamdani himself has not been immune to political friction. He has struggled to advance his tax agenda and has faced uncomfortable questions about his inner circle. Opening a luxury medical ward for inmates may play well with the progressive base, but it does little to answer the kitchen-table concerns of the New Yorkers footing the bill.
No one disputes that inmates with cancer or heart failure deserve medical care. That is a basic obligation of any government that holds people in custody. The question is whether $241 million for 104 beds, complete with recreational amenities many law-abiding New Yorkers cannot access, reflects sound stewardship or ideological indulgence.
The city's press release emphasized "improved health outcomes." But outcomes are measured over years, not press conferences. And with the Rikers replacement plan already billions over budget and half a decade behind schedule, the track record does not inspire confidence that this investment will be managed any better than the rest.
Revelations about the mayor's personal orbit have only deepened public skepticism. Resurfaced social media posts from Mamdani's wife have raised questions about the judgment and values at the center of this administration, questions that do not vanish when the mayor stands in front of a new building and talks about progress.
New York's taxpayers deserve to know exactly how $13.7 billion in correctional spending will be tracked, audited, and justified. They deserve timelines that mean something. And they deserve leaders who treat public money with the same care they would treat their own.
A basketball court for inmates is a nice touch. Accountability for the people spending a quarter of a billion dollars on it would be nicer.
A body discovered in a remote ravine on Gran Canaria has been identified as Annabella Lovas, a 32-year-old Hungarian reality television star and influencer, after a year-long investigation that relied on dental records and tattoo matching to confirm her identity.
Lovas, who appeared on the fourth season of the Hungarian Bachelor franchise, A Nagy Ő, in 2021, was found on March 6, 2025, at Berriel Ravine, a remote hiking location on the island. She had been found naked from the waist down and without personal belongings or identification. Police were unable to identify her at the time.
The location where Lovas was discovered proved nearly inaccessible to investigators. Police chief Pablo Fernandez Sala told island daily La Provincia that the case had been "hard and intense," and described just how treacherous the site was, according to the Daily Mail:
"Colleagues tried to reach the natural pool to reconstruct her last steps and carry out a visible inspection on the ground but it was impossible."
Sala made clear this was no ordinary hiking trail:
"You would have needed to be a professional climber, not just any hiker, to reach the spot."
With no identification on the body and no way to easily access the scene, investigators were left with almost nothing. Sala noted the only early lead they had:
"All we had to go on initially were some strange tattoos she had on her shoulder and back."
Police ultimately confirmed Lovas's identity by matching those tattoos and cross-referencing dental records. According to Spanish newspaper El Periódico, an autopsy and DNA evidence had initially been inconclusive. A separate autopsy ruled out a violent death, strangulation, and sexual assault. Despite that, police have not determined a cause of death.
A police spokesperson told El Periódico that investigators believe she may not have died where she was found:
"We think she may have died in another area, either from an accident or suicide, and that the floodwaters swept her to El Berriel."
Lovas had moved to Gran Canaria after a battle with cancer, which reportedly affected her mental health. On the Hungarian version of The Bachelor, she was among a cast of women who competed to win over Olympic canoeist Dávid Tóth's heart.
Her disappearance was not sudden. According to Hungarian newspaper Blikk, Lovas first went missing in November 2024. Her family did not know her whereabouts for two weeks. She also wiped her social media accounts during that period. She was eventually found safe in a hotel on the island.
Days later, she was reported missing again by her family. That second disappearance ended with her body being found in Berriel Ravine months later.
There is something particularly haunting about a case where a young woman vanishes twice, in a place far from home, and the answers still don't come, even after the body is found. An autopsy that rules things out but doesn't rule anything in. Terrain so hostile that trained officers couldn't retrace her steps. Floodwaters that may have carried her to where she was ultimately discovered.
What's left is a family that reported her missing twice, and a 32-year-old woman whose final chapter played out on a volcanic island thousands of miles from Hungary. The investigation may have identified the body, but the central question, how Annabella Lovas died, remains unanswered.
Sometimes a story doesn't arrive with a villain or a policy failure or a political angle. Sometimes it's just a life that ended too soon, in a place too remote, with too little left behind to explain why.
Shots rang out near the White House late Saturday night while President Donald Trump was inside the executive mansion for the Easter weekend, prompting the Secret Service to launch an investigation and temporarily lock down several blocks of Northwest D.C.
Officers rushed to the area surrounding Lafayette Park just after midnight on Sunday after reports of gunfire. A sweep of the park and nearby streets turned up no suspect. Investigators are now hunting for a vehicle and a person of interest while coordinating with U.S. Park Police and the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department.
Anthony Guglielmi, the Secret Service's chief of communications, confirmed the investigation in an X post on April 5:
"We are investigating overnight gunfire in the area of Lafayette Park in conjunction with @DCPoliceDept and @usparkpolicepio. Anyone with information is urged to call DC Police at 202-727-9099 or text 50411."
Guglielmi said that security around the executive mansion had been reinforced, but day-to-day operations continued without interruption.
The facts at this hour remain thin, the Daily Caller reported. Several blocks in Northwest D.C., including portions of H Street, I Street, and 16th Street, were temporarily sealed off overnight. Those restrictions were lifted before 8:30 a.m. Police officers responded to the scene the night of April 4 and conducted an extensive canvass of the surrounding blocks, according to WJLA.
No information has been released about who fired the shots, what type of weapon was used, or where exactly the gunfire originated beyond the general vicinity of Lafayette Park. The vehicle and person of interest that investigators are pursuing remain undescribed publicly.
Lafayette Park has been closed behind fencing for weeks, which may account for the absence of bystanders at the time of the incident.
Gunfire within earshot of the White House is not a routine matter. It is an event that activates the full weight of federal law enforcement for a reason. The president of the United States was inside. His family Easter dinner was scheduled for Sunday. The proximity alone demands answers, and the fact that no suspect has been identified hours later demands urgency.
This incident occurs against a backdrop that should concern every American who takes presidential security seriously. The Secret Service has faced intense scrutiny over protection failures in recent years, and the agency's credibility rests on its ability to prevent threats from materializing anywhere near the president. Reinforcing security after the fact is the minimum. Identifying who discharged a firearm from the most protected residence on earth is the standard.
Washington, D.C., meanwhile, continues to grapple with violent crime that city leadership has struggled to contain. The nation's capital recorded gunfire near the seat of executive power on a holiday weekend. That is not a statistic. It is a security environment.
The coordination between the Secret Service, U.S. Park Police, and D.C. Metropolitan Police suggests the investigation is being treated with the seriousness it warrants. The public should expect more information as the canvass of the area and pursuit of the person of interest develop.
For now, the president hosted Easter dinner as planned. Operations at the White House proceeded. That is how it should be. But somewhere in Washington, someone fired a weapon close enough to the White House to trigger a federal investigation, and as of this writing, that person is still unidentified.
The answers matter. Every hour without them says something.
Usha Vance is expecting the couple's fourth child this coming July, a baby boy who will make the Vances the first vice-presidential family to welcome a baby while in office in well over 100 years. The last time it happened was 1870.
In a recent interview with NBC News' Kate Snow, the Second Lady talked about what pregnancy looks like when your home address is the Naval Observatory, how she and J.D. Vance keep life normal for their three young kids, and a new project she's quietly launched that deserves more attention than it will probably get.
Vance was candid about the obvious contrasts between this pregnancy and her previous ones. Her answer was refreshingly human:
"There's some differences obviously. I have to dress up a lot more. My last pregnancy, there were a lot of sweatpants."
It's a small detail, but it says something. The Vances didn't grow up in political dynasties. They arrived in Washington because J.D. Vance wrote a book that told the truth about forgotten America, and voters responded. The sweatpants-to-Second-Lady arc isn't political theater. It's real life, as Parade reports.
When Snow pressed on whether Vance can still do normal things like walk into a grocery store, her response was telling:
"We do that. We have our neighborhood shops and our Costco membership."
A Costco membership. The Second Lady of the United States shops at Costco. That one line communicates more about who this family is than any campaign ad ever could.
Snow noted that Vance stopped working in 2024 when her husband was chosen for the role of Vice President. That's no small thing. Usha Vance is a trained lawyer. She walked away from a professional career to support her husband's service and raise their family during one of the most consequential political chapters in modern history.
Vance acknowledged the adjustment honestly:
"Oh, certainly. It was disorienting at first to lose that…But it was an opportunity. There are things that I really care about and want to do, and when the time comes, I mean, I do intend to work."
There's no grievance in that answer. No performative martyrdom. She made a choice, she's clear-eyed about the tradeoffs, and she plans to return to professional life when the season is right. That kind of grounded pragmatism is vanishingly rare in Washington, where every personal decision gets filtered through ideological scorekeeping.
The cultural left has spent years insisting that a woman's value is measured exclusively by career achievement. Vance's decision to step back, raise her children, and invest in something meaningful on her own terms is the kind of choice feminists claim to support but rarely celebrate when it doesn't fit the approved script.
The most substantive part of the interview was about Vance's new project: a children's podcast called "Storytime with the Second Lady." It already has three episodes, one of which features racecar driver Danica Patrick doing a dramatic reading of a Disney fan favorite.
Vance described it simply as "sort of just an advertisement for reading." But her reasons for launching it go deeper than that:
"I have a long-standing interest in education. It seemed like a really natural fit because we have young children…As I was teaching them to read, I was starting to see some statistics about the decline in literacy rates, and this is a long-term trend and worrisome."
She's right, and this is a cause that should transcend politics but somehow doesn't. Declining literacy rates among American children represent a genuine crisis, one that gets buried under debates about school funding formulas and equity frameworks while kids still can't read at grade level.
Vance isn't proposing a federal program. She isn't demanding new bureaucratic infrastructure. She's reading books to children and encouraging parents to do the same. It is the kind of initiative that starts at the kitchen table, not in a committee hearing room. Conservatives have always understood that culture is upstream of policy. A Second Lady using her platform to promote literacy through something as simple as storytime is exactly the right instinct.
The Vances are raising three kids already: eight-year-old Ewan, six-year-old Vivek, and four-year-old Mirabel. A fourth arrives in July. That's a full house by any standard, and a particularly full one when your daily life includes Secret Service details and state dinners.
What comes through in the interview is a family that treats public life as something they navigate together rather than something that defines them. The Costco runs, the library trips, the hands-on parenting. None of it is revolutionary. All of it is countercultural in a Washington that rewards ambition over presence.
The Vance family is about to make history this summer. Not the loud, contentious kind. The quiet kind, where a baby is born, and a family grows, and the country gets a reminder of what its leaders look like when they live the values they talk about.
A Merrick, New York, father who has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars chasing an experimental cure for his five-year-old son's rare genetic disorder got the break he had been waiting for Friday, when House Speaker Mike Johnson signed the bipartisan Small Business Innovation Research Act and sent it to President Trump's desk.
Andrew Jedlicka, an NYU business professor, has watched his son undergo treatment at a Queens lab for the past five months, treatment for KBG syndrome, a disorder so rare that only about 800 cases are known worldwide. Experts believe the true number is higher because the condition is widely underdiagnosed. The lab in Long Island City is, by Jedlicka's account, the only facility on the planet capable of treating and possibly curing the disorder.
Without renewed federal funding through the Small Business Innovation Research program, that lab's future is in serious doubt. And until Friday, Congress had let the program sit dead for months.
The Small Business Innovation Research program lapsed in October 2025 after Congress failed to reauthorize it. The program channels federal dollars to small businesses and research labs conducting advanced medical research, exactly the kind of work underway at the Long Island City facility where Jedlicka's son receives care.
The total cost of the boy's treatment has already topped $1.2 million. Jedlicka told the New York Post he has personally covered hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket. The lab, he said, would need roughly another million dollars just to stay afloat.
That is not a rounding error for a university professor. It is the kind of financial burden that makes a family's survival dependent on whether Washington can get a bipartisan bill across the finish line, a task that, in this case, took half a year longer than it should have.
Jedlicka put the stakes plainly:
"If the lab closes, everything stops, and we don't get the cure."
The Senate passed the reauthorization bill on March 3. The House followed on March 17. But the bill then sat, unsigned by the speaker, for weeks, even as the lab's funding clock kept ticking.
Rep. Laura Gillen, a Long Island Democrat, said she had been urging Johnson to push the legislation to the president. On Wednesday, two days before Johnson finally signed, Gillen wrote to the speaker pleading for him to move the bill along. Johnson's office did not respond to the Post's request for comment.
The delay fits a broader pattern. Johnson has faced repeated pressure from multiple directions over the pace and sequencing of legislation reaching the president's desk. His handling of the recent DHS funding fight drew criticism from Freedom Caucus conservatives who felt he moved too slowly, or in the wrong direction, on homeland security spending.
Gillen framed Friday's signing as a hard-won result:
"I'm proud to have helped push this funding for vital medical research through Congress after months of a partisan stalemate in the Senate and weeks of inaction by the speaker of the House."
She added that every day without reauthorization "threatened to end lifesaving treatment for Long Islanders and others across the country."
The Small Business Innovation Research Act, if signed into law by President Trump, would restore funding to dozens of small businesses and research labs across the country conducting cutting-edge medical work. For Jedlicka, it would mean the Queens lab treating his son could continue operating.
But the bill's arrival on the president's desk does not guarantee a signature. The White House did not respond to the Post's request for comment. And broader budget pressures loom: Trump's 2027 budget proposal includes cuts to federal health and research funding, a reality that could complicate the long-term outlook for programs like this one even if the reauthorization becomes law.
The tension between fiscal discipline and research funding is real, and reasonable people can disagree about where to draw the line. But the specific case of a five-year-old boy with one of the rarest genetic disorders on earth, receiving treatment at the only lab in the world that can provide it, is not an abstraction. It is a concrete test of whether Washington can deliver results for the people who need them most.
Congressional dysfunction over funding has become a recurring theme in recent months. The House passed a DHS funding bill earlier this year on a narrow vote while the Senate stalled, and the broader pattern of legislative gridlock has left agencies and programs in limbo well past their deadlines.
Jedlicka's son was diagnosed with KBG syndrome last year. The condition is genetic, and the family turned to the Long Island City lab for an experimental treatment that has now been underway for five months. Jedlicka has not publicly identified his son, and the specific nature of the experimental therapy has not been disclosed.
What is clear is the financial weight. More than $1.2 million in total treatment costs. Hundreds of thousands from the family's own pockets. And a lab that needs roughly a million more dollars to keep going.
Jedlicka told the Post he was relieved the bill finally reached the president's desk:
"I'm relieved that it finally reached the president's desk, and I hope that it is signed into law very soon so that we can continue the great work we're doing for the KBG community."
Relief is the right word. Not celebration. The program lapsed in October. The Senate acted in March. The House followed two weeks later. And the speaker's signature came only after a public plea from a congresswoman. That is not a system working well. That is a system that nearly let a child's treatment collapse while a bipartisan bill gathered dust.
The broader funding battles in Congress, including Senate Democrats declaring House stopgap measures dead on arrival, have consumed enormous amounts of legislative energy. Partisan stalemates over homeland security, immigration enforcement, and agency budgets have dominated the calendar. Meanwhile, a straightforward reauthorization of a small-business research program sat idle for months.
That is a failure of prioritization, not ideology. The Small Business Innovation Research program is bipartisan. It passed both chambers. No one opposed it on principle. It simply was not important enough to move quickly, until a father's story and a congresswoman's letter forced the issue.
Johnson has faced pressure from all sides on the sequencing of legislation this session. His decision to reject Democratic attempts to strip ICE and Border Patrol funding from DHS bills was the right call on the merits. But the sheer volume of funding fights has created a backlog where even noncontroversial bills can languish.
The Small Business Innovation Research Act awaits either President Trump's signature or a veto. For a Merrick family with a five-year-old son and a treatment that cannot wait, the answer matters more than most things Congress does in a given week.
Earlier this year, Johnson predicted a quick resolution to a government shutdown that dragged on far longer than expected. The pattern is familiar: optimistic timelines, slow execution, and real people left waiting.
When a bipartisan bill that funds lifesaving research for children takes six months to clear a Congress that passed it overwhelmingly, the problem is not partisanship. It is a government that has forgotten who it works for.
The last remaining criminal charge against pro-life journalist David Daleiden was dismissed Wednesday, closing the book on a nearly decade-long California prosecution that targeted the undercover reporters who exposed the abortion industry's trafficking in fetal body parts.
The case against Daleiden and fellow journalist Sandra Merritt, both affiliated with the Center for Medical Progress, has been fully expunged. No prison time. No fines. No penalties.
The state of California walked away with virtually nothing to show for ten years of legal warfare against two people whose actual offense was making powerful institutions uncomfortable.
Breitbart noted that Daleiden confirmed the dismissal on social media, noting that the expungement came after what he described as a last-ditch effort by Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation to reverse the state's agreement:
"As promised, the final charge has been DISMISSED and the case completely expunged — after a couple months' administrative delay, and a truly bizarre last-minute 'April Fool's' attempt by @PPFA and @NatAbortionFed to overturn the State's agreement."
The case originated from undercover recordings Daleiden and Merritt made of abortion industry officials discussing the sale and harvesting of fetal body parts. The recordings were explosive. Rather than investigate the practices the videos revealed, California's Department of Justice turned its sights on the journalists who captured them.
Steve Cooley, Daleiden's defense attorney and a former prosecutor with five decades of legal experience, did not mince words about what the case represented:
"In my five decades as an attorney, 40 years of which were as a prosecutor, I have never seen such a blatant exercise of selective investigation and vindictive prosecution."
Cooley went further, saying the California Attorneys General who initiated and sustained the prosecution for nearly ten years "should be ashamed for weaponizing their office to pursue people who were merely exposing illegality associated with the harvesting and sale of fetal body parts."
That framing matters. The undercover recordings didn't fabricate anything. They captured abortion industry figures, in their own words, discussing practices that shocked the conscience of millions of Americans. The state's response was not to hold the industry accountable. It was to prosecute the messengers.
Sandra Merritt's legal team at Liberty Counsel was equally direct. The organization said the resolution "ends an unjust criminal case by dropping these baseless criminal charges without any prison time, fines, or other penalties." Liberty Counsel also noted that California had never criminally prosecuted undercover journalists "for surreptitious recordings made in the public interest" before this case.
That fact alone tells you everything about the motivation behind the charges. Undercover journalism is a well-established tradition in American media. Hidden cameras have brought down corrupt politicians, exposed nursing home abuse, and revealed food safety violations. Journalists who do this work are typically celebrated. They win awards. They get book deals.
Unless they target the abortion industry.
Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, put a fine point on it:
"Sandra Merritt did nothing wrong. She did the right thing by exposing the depravity of the abortion industry. This plea agreement ends an unjust criminal case by dropping these baseless criminal charges without any prison time, fines or other penalties. Sandra deserves to be applauded and acclaimed for revealing these horrors and then enduring this selective and vindictive prosecution as a result."
Staver added that the state of California "deserves to walk away virtually empty-handed," which is precisely what happened.
If there were any remaining doubt about whether this prosecution was about law enforcement or politics, California Attorney General Rob Bonta erased it with his own statement. Rather than acknowledge the collapse of a case his office spent years pursuing, Bonta tried to reframe the outcome as a win:
"While the Trump Administration is issuing pardons to individuals convicted of harming reproductive health clinics and providers, my office is securing criminal convictions to ensure that Californians can exercise their constitutional rights to reproductive healthcare."
Read that again carefully. The final charge was dismissed. The case was expunged. There was no prison time and no fines. And Bonta is claiming he "secured criminal convictions." That is a remarkable spin on what amounts to total capitulation.
Bonta then added a warning that his office "will not hesitate to continue taking action against those who threaten access to abortion care — whether by recording confidential conversations or other means." The quiet part is now fully audible: in California, filming abortion industry officials discussing the sale of baby body parts is treated as a threat to "abortion care." The recordings are the crime. The practices they revealed are not.
This case was never really about California's recording consent laws. It was about deterrence. The message was clear from the beginning: investigate the abortion industry, and the state will come after you with everything it has. It doesn't matter if it takes a decade. It doesn't matter if the charges ultimately collapse. The process itself is the punishment.
Daleiden and Merritt spent years of their lives under indictment. They spent untold sums on legal defense. They endured the weight of a state apparatus aligned against them, backed by some of the most powerful and well-funded political organizations in the country. Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation were apparently still trying to keep the case alive even as the state was ready to let it go.
Consider what that reveals about institutional priorities. The videos showed senior abortion industry officials casually discussing the procurement of fetal organs over lunch. They discussed pricing. They discussed logistics. The public reaction was revulsion. Congressional investigations followed. But in California, the only people who faced criminal consequences were the ones who held up the mirror.
The dismissal is a victory, and Daleiden deserves credit for enduring a prosecution designed to break him. His defense team at Steve Cooley & Associates earned this outcome against, as Daleiden put it, "powerful, government-funded special interests." But the broader system that allowed this to happen remains intact. California's attorney general is openly promising more of the same.
Daleiden hinted that the Center for Medical Progress "has been quietly working on a big new project to release soon." Whatever it is, the abortion industry and its allies in state government now know that ten years of prosecution, millions in legal costs, and the full weight of California's justice system were not enough to silence him.
That should worry them far more than any undercover recording.
Bipartisan leaders of the House and Senate have formally invited King Charles III to address a joint meeting of Congress on April 28, 2026. The invitation, confirmed by reporter Jake Sherman on April 1, arrives while the Department of Homeland Security has been shut down for 46 days, hundreds of TSA agents have quit their jobs, and Congress is on a two-week vacation, which shows no urgency to cut short.
The priorities here are not subtle.
Whatever your feelings about the Special Relationship, the optics of congressional leaders coordinating a royal address while refusing to return to Washington to fund the agency responsible for airport security and border enforcement tell you everything about where their attention is. They found bipartisan agreement on one thing: the pomp.
The partial DHS shutdown began on Feb. 14. Congress left town for a two-week vacation and is not expected to return until April 13. That means lawmakers will have been gone for roughly half the shutdown's duration before they so much as sit back down at their desks.
According to The Daily Caller, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that President Donald Trump called on Congress to end their vacation and reconvene to reopen DHS. Trump has not waited for them to act. On Friday, he signed an executive order mandating that TSA agents be paid while the shutdown continued. He also deployed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to major airports to assist TSA agents, a direct operational response to the hemorrhaging of airport security personnel.
Hundreds of TSA agents have quit since the shutdown began. That is not a bureaucratic inconvenience. It is a security gap at every major airport in the country, and the White House moved to address it while Congress drafted stationery for Buckingham Palace.
The reason DHS remains shuttered is not a mystery. Senate Democrats issued a list of demands on immigration reforms as their price for reopening the department. Among those demands: prohibiting ICE agents from racial profiling and wearing masks.
Consider what that means in practice. Democrats are holding airport security funding hostage to impose restrictions on immigration enforcement officers. TSA agents are walking off the job, travelers are facing mounting disruptions, and the Democratic caucus wants to negotiate the dress code of ICE agents before they'll vote to turn the lights back on.
This is not governing. It is leveraging a crisis they are sustaining in order to extract concessions on an unrelated policy fight they have been losing. The shutdown is not an accident; Democrats are trying to solve it. It is a pressure campaign they are choosing to maintain.
The invitation letter to King Charles leans heavily on the history between the two nations. It references Queen Elizabeth II's 1991 address to Congress, invoking her words about a shared "spirit of democracy" and "a commitment to the fundamental values of individual freedom, consent of the governed, and the rule of law."
Fine words. But the rule of law includes funding the agencies that enforce it. Individual freedom includes the freedom to board a plane without wondering whether the skeleton crew running your security checkpoint got a paycheck this month.
There is nothing wrong with inviting a foreign head of state to address Congress. The U.S.-U.K. alliance is real and worth honoring. But the bipartisan enthusiasm for scheduling a ceremonial event while the same leaders cannot muster the bipartisan will to end a shutdown affecting millions of Americans reveals a Congress that is fundamentally unserious about its responsibilities.
They can coordinate across party lines to plan a joint session. They can agree on a date, draft a letter, and handle the logistics of hosting a king. They cannot, apparently, agree to fund the department that secures the homeland.
Congress returns, presumably, on April 13. King Charles addresses the body on April 28. If the shutdown persists until then, members of Congress will sit in the chamber applauding a foreign monarch while the department charged with protecting American borders and airports remains unfunded. The TSA agents still on the job will be working under an executive order because their own legislature couldn't be bothered.
Trump has done what the executive branch can do: ordered pay for the agents still working, surged ICE personnel to fill the gaps, and publicly demanded Congress come back. The ball is where it has been for 46 days. On Capitol Hill, where the lights are off but the invitations are going out.
A federal judge ordered construction of President Trump's White House ballroom project halted on Tuesday, granting a preliminary injunction sought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The Department of Justice filed a notice of appeal later that afternoon to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon sided with the preservation group, which argued the project required congressional authorization before moving forward. Leon wrote that the group is likely to succeed on the merits of its case, stating:
"No statute comes close to giving the President the authority he claims to have."
The judge delayed enforcement for fourteen days, leaving a narrow window for the appeals process to begin. He also noted that construction could resume if Congress explicitly approves the project or authorizes funding.
The proposed ballroom, slated for the site of the former East Wing of the White House, will span 90,000 square feet. It is being funded through private donations, not taxpayer money. According to Fox News, President Trump blasted the lawsuit on Truth Social, calling the National Trust for Historic Preservation a "Radical Left Group of Lunatics."
"The National Trust for Historic Preservation sues me for a Ballroom that is under budget, ahead of schedule, being built at no cost to the Taxpayer, and will be the finest Building of its kind anywhere in the World."
Trump also argued that the ruling requiring congressional approval "has never been given" for projects like this, pushing back on the premise that the executive branch lacks the authority to move forward.
The president shared visual renderings of the proposed ballroom early last month on Truth Social. The project is one of several Washington, D.C. renovation and beautification efforts Trump has spearheaded since re-entering office, including upcoming construction slated for July on the "Trump-Kennedy Center."
There's something worth noting about the preservation group's legal theory. The ballroom costs taxpayers nothing. It is privately funded. It is, by the president's account, ahead of schedule and under budget. The National Trust for Historic Preservation is not arguing that the building is ugly, structurally unsound, or harmful to the surrounding grounds. They are arguing that the president of the United States cannot improve the White House without asking Congress for permission first.
That's a sweeping claim about executive authority over the president's own residence and workplace. And Judge Leon appears to have embraced it without identifying a specific federal statute that the project allegedly violates. His ruling rests on the assertion that no statute authorizes the construction, effectively flipping the burden: instead of the government needing to prove the project breaks the law, the president must prove he has explicit permission to build on White House grounds with private money.
This framework, if sustained on appeal, would set a remarkable precedent. Every future renovation, addition, or improvement to the White House complex could become a litigation target for any advocacy group with standing and an agenda.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation brands itself as a nonpartisan organization dedicated to protecting America's historic places. But filing suit to block a privately funded improvement to the most famous house in the country raises obvious questions about selective enforcement of that mission.
Where was the Trust when previous administrations altered the White House grounds? When were the lawsuits demanding congressional authorization for past renovations? The organization's sudden interest in executive overreach coincides neatly with the identity of the current occupant.
Trump's characterization of the group as politically motivated may lack diplomatic nuance. It does not lack a factual basis.
The DOJ's appeal moves the fight to the D.C. Circuit, where the fourteen-day enforcement delay gives the administration room to seek a stay. The core legal question, whether a president can build on White House grounds with private funds absent explicit congressional approval, will likely receive more rigorous treatment at the appellate level.
Meanwhile, the ballroom sits unfinished. A project that costs the public nothing, funded entirely by private donors, designed to enhance one of America's most iconic buildings, is frozen because a preservation group convinced one judge that improving the White House is something a president needs permission to do.
Congress hasn't objected. Taxpayers aren't paying. The only people trying to stop it are the ones who claim to love historic buildings.
Scottsdale police confirmed Sunday that a body pulled from an Arizona canal belongs to 28-year-old Passion Schurz, a Native woman whose family reported her missing just one week earlier, and whose advocates say was denied a statewide alert designed to protect Indigenous people exactly like her.
Schurz's body was found Saturday, March 28, near Scottsdale and Indian Bend roads. Police said they identified her based on her tattoos and physical description. A medical examiner is now working on a full report, including toxicology results. The cause of death has not been determined.
The timeline is short and troubling. Schurz was last seen on March 19. Her family reported her missing to Salt River Police on March 22. Six days later, her body turned up in a canal. No suspect has been named. No indication of foul play, or the absence of it, has been publicly disclosed. What has been disclosed is that advocates tried and failed to get authorities to issue a Turquoise Alert, Arizona's specialized notification system for missing Indigenous people.
Leila Woodard, an employee of the Missing in America Network, told the Herald that Schurz's family contacted her after the young woman vanished. Woodard described the circumstances as immediately alarming.
"She left without her wallet and her purse, which she never did that. And so just the circumstances around her being missing was very concerning."
Woodard painted a picture of a woman deeply connected to her community and her children. Fox 10 Phoenix reported that Schurz's family reached out to Woodard after Schurz was last seen on March 19.
"She was very loved by her family and community in that she was a mother, you know, and this was very unusual."
The Scottsdale Police Department released a statement extending condolences but offering few details about the investigation itself.
"This is not the outcome anyone looking for Passion Schurz was hoping for. We extend our most heartfelt condolences to her family, friends, and community during this difficult time."
Police asked anyone with information about Schurz's disappearance and death to call the Scottsdale Police Department at 480-312-5000.
Arizona's Turquoise Alert system exists for one stated purpose: to help locate missing Indigenous people in a state that, by multiple accounts, faces a severe crisis of disappearances among Native communities. The missing person must be under 65 years old. Schurz was 28. Yet no alert was issued.
Woodard said advocates from the Missing in America Network "tried to work with the police to get a Turquoise Alert, but everyone was told she didn't meet the criteria." No further explanation of which specific criteria Schurz allegedly failed to satisfy has been made public.
That gap, between the system's stated mission and its application in a case like this, drew sharp frustration from Woodard. Missing persons cases involving mothers who vanish under unusual circumstances tend to generate enormous public attention, but advocates say Indigenous women rarely receive the same urgency.
"Turquoise Alert was intended to help the missing murdered Indigenous peoples crisis in our state and entire North America and whenever it's not utilized, we were really upset."
Woodard did not mince words about the scale of the problem. She described Indigenous women and girls going missing "at disproportionate rates" and stated they are "10 times likely to be found deceased in Arizona." She added that Arizona ranks second in the nation for missing people and missing Indigenous people.
"The missing and murdered Indigenous person crisis is a really big deal. Indigenous women and girls, especially, go missing at disproportionate rates. And they're 10 times likely to be found deceased in Arizona. We're No. 2 in the nation for missing people and missing Indigenous people. So, we have to kind of band together as a community."
The investigation is still in its early stages, and the list of unanswered questions is long. Police have not said whether they suspect foul play. They have not described any persons of interest. The medical examiner's full report, including toxicology, is pending.
The specific circumstances that led Schurz to leave home on March 19 without her wallet or purse remain unclear. The three-day gap between when she was last seen and when her family reported her missing to Salt River Police has not been publicly explained. Questions about the quality and speed of law enforcement response in missing-persons cases have surfaced repeatedly in Arizona in recent months.
Nor has anyone explained, beyond a vague reference to unmet criteria, why the Turquoise Alert system did not activate for a 28-year-old Indigenous mother who vanished under what her own family and an advocacy organization described as highly unusual circumstances. If a young Native woman who left home without her belongings and never returned does not meet the threshold, it is fair to ask what the threshold actually is, and whom the system is designed to serve.
Arizona Family reported the Scottsdale Police Department's statement on the identification. The case now sits with the Scottsdale police and the medical examiner's office, with no public timeline for when additional findings might be released.
The broader pattern Woodard described, Indigenous women disappearing at rates far exceeding other populations, with outcomes disproportionately fatal, is not new. What is new, each time, is the specific name. This time it is Passion Schurz, a 28-year-old mother.
Arizona created the Turquoise Alert precisely because lawmakers recognized that Indigenous people were going missing and dying at alarming rates. The system was supposed to be an answer. In Schurz's case, it was not deployed.
When public systems designed to protect vulnerable populations sit idle during the exact emergencies they were built for, the failure is not abstract. It lands on a specific family, in a specific community, with a specific outcome. Investigations into bungled searches and missing suspects have drawn scrutiny across Arizona before. This case may well join that list.
The facts here are still incomplete. The cause of death is unknown. The circumstances of the disappearance are murky. But the timeline, last seen March 19, reported missing March 22, found dead March 28, alert never issued, speaks clearly enough on its own.
A system that exists on paper but fails in practice is not a safety net. It is a brochure.