Eight sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide during a grueling deployment that stretched past 280 days at sea, a crisis the administration had earlier dismissed as exaggerated reporting.
Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao confirmed the attempts in a letter to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), dated September 22, putting an official number on what had been weeks of disputed reports about deteriorating conditions aboard one of the Navy's premier warships. No sailors died by suicide during the deployment, but the confirmed count, and the details surrounding it, raises hard questions about how long the military can push service members before the human cost becomes unacceptable.
One sailor went overboard in early August and had to be rescued by helicopter. A second tried to go overboard in March but was stopped by shipmates. The remaining six attempts were confirmed without public detail on method or timing. Of the eight, only "just a few" occurred while the strike group was actively deployed in the Middle East; the rest happened while the group was stationed at port.
The Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group 3 departed San Diego in November and arrived in the Middle East in January, spending more than 260 consecutive days at sea, a modern-day record for an aircraft carrier. The full deployment ran 307 days, well beyond the typical six-to-nine-month standard. The mission, originally planned for seven months, was extended and redirected to the Arabian Sea in support of combat operations against Iran under Operation Epic Fury.
That extension meant sailors who had already endured months of separation, limited privacy, and round-the-clock operations were told to keep going. Family members who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation and other outlets described food shortages, a decline in morale, burnout, and long waits for mental health appointments aboard the ship.
The wife of one sailor gave a window into what families were hearing. Anabelle Loma, whose husband served aboard the Lincoln, told reporters about the fear gripping crew members who were breaking down under the strain.
"He's scared. He thinks he'll get a dishonorable discharge and, just because he was burnt out, his 13-year career is ruined, just like that."
That quote, reported by Just The News, captures a dynamic the Pentagon's official statistics do not: sailors afraid that admitting they are struggling will end their careers.
On August 13, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth publicly addressed reports about the crisis aboard the Lincoln. He did not deny the reports outright, but he characterized them as distorted.
"It's completely misrepresented. Listen, we make sure that every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment."
Four days later, on August 17, President Trump went further, referring to the situation as "fake news reporting from CNN." He also said the strike group had been deployed "not nearly long enough." The full context of those remarks was not published beyond those fragments.
Hegseth has faced mounting questions about his leadership at the Pentagon on several fronts. A bipartisan impeachment push has gained traction in the Senate, and separate reporting has raised questions about internal Pentagon dynamics under his watch.
CENTCOM Commander Admiral Brad Cooper visited the Lincoln in August to assess conditions firsthand. On August 16, Cooper posted a statement to X pushing back on the narrative of a mental health crisis.
"Of the U.S. Navy's 11 active carriers, the Lincoln currently has the lowest number of cases related to mental health."
A CENTCOM representative also told the Daily Caller News Foundation that "sailors are choosing to stay with the strike group after their deployment ends," adding that "the reports of bad mental health conditions don't match the numbers." CENTCOM cited statistics showing the Lincoln strike group had the highest sailor retention rate of all strike groups in the Navy and that, on average, other carrier strike groups reported higher numbers of suicide attempts.
The gap between CENTCOM's August reassurances and the Navy Secretary's September letter is striking. Cooper said the Lincoln had the lowest mental health caseload of any active carrier. Six weeks later, Cao's letter confirmed eight suicide attempts, a figure that, regardless of how it compares to other ships, represents eight service members in enough distress to try to end their own lives.
Whether "lowest number of cases related to mental health" refers to per-capita rates or absolute numbers remains unclear. CENTCOM did not specify. And the retention statistic, sailors choosing to stay, does not speak to the experiences of those who were struggling. Retention can coexist with crisis if the sailors in crisis are a small fraction of a large crew.
Hegseth has also rejected reports about instability in Pentagon leadership, but the confirmed suicide attempts add weight to broader concerns about whether the department is being candid about conditions facing deployed troops.
An unnamed naval officer who has deployed on multiple aircraft carriers offered a more grounded perspective to the Daily Caller News Foundation, describing the rhythm of deployment life and when sailors are most vulnerable.
"Down periods are the most horrible parts of deployment and when my sailors struggled most. Once you get into gear of your job and in the groove of things at sea, that's when morale is the highest."
That account aligns with the detail that most of the eight attempts occurred not during active Middle East operations but while the strike group was stationed at port, the "down periods" the officer described.
The crisis aboard the Lincoln did not emerge from nowhere. A 2025 study published in a military medicine journal found that naval personnel report the highest rates of serious psychological distress compared with all other branches of the U.S. Armed Forces. The study identified long separation from family, lack of privacy, and limited access to mental health care as significant contributors.
The researchers also noted a basic gap in the military's own knowledge base: "Little research has examined the experiences of service members in the U.S. Navy, and even less so the unique experiences of sailors assigned to Navy ships."
A separate 2024 study in the journal Military Psychology found that only 3.2 percent of relevant research focused solely on deployed Navy personnel. The authors wrote that understanding mental health patterns among sailors was essential "for improving well-being, readiness, and the development of effective prevention, treatment, and policy support." In other words, the Navy has known for years that it lacks the data to understand, let alone prevent, the kind of crisis that unfolded aboard the Lincoln.
The Pentagon's approach to communicating directly with junior troops has been a stated priority for Hegseth, but the Lincoln deployment suggests the gap between leadership messaging and lived conditions at sea remains wide.
Sen. Gillibrand posted to X on September 24, hours before the Daily Caller News Foundation published its report, framing the confirmed suicide attempts as a vindication of the concerns the administration had waved off.
"What Trump and Secretary Hegseth dismissed as 'fake news' turned out to be serious and deteriorating conditions for our service members. Our troops and their families make immense sacrifices every single day, yet the president dismissed them with open disrespect."
The New York Post reported that the full text of Gillibrand's statement also criticized the administration for finding "endless taxpayer dollars for bombs, ballrooms, and billionaires" while failing to care for service members.
Gillibrand's political instincts are predictable. But the underlying failure she is pointing at did not start with this administration. The 2024 and 2025 studies both predate the current deployment, and the chronic underinvestment in sailor mental health research spans multiple administrations and Congresses. The senator's own chamber has had years to fund the research and mandate the care that might have prevented what happened on the Lincoln.
Scrutiny of Pentagon leadership has intensified on multiple fronts in recent months, including questions about internal management at the department. The confirmed suicide attempts aboard the Lincoln add a human dimension to what has largely been a political fight over personnel and process.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to the Department of War and the Navy for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
Several critical questions remain open. The full text of Cao's letter to Gillibrand has not been publicly released. The specific dates of the eight attempts, beyond the August overboard incident and the March intervention, are unknown. The current medical status of the sailor pulled from the water has not been disclosed. And the precise nature of the combat operations the strike group supported against Iran, beyond the designation Operation Epic Fury, has not been detailed publicly.
The Lincoln's crew endured 307 days of deployment, including at least 40 days of continuous combat operations, in service to their country. Eight of them reached a point where they tried to end their lives. The Navy confirmed it. The question now is whether anyone in Washington will treat that fact with the seriousness it deserves, not as a political weapon, and not as fake news, but as a failure that demands a fix.
Sen. Eric Schmitt introduced legislation to make the Trump administration's National Fraud Enforcement Division permanent, and now Senate Democrats must decide whether to join a crackdown that even House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries supported.
Schmitt, a Missouri Republican who leads the Senate's Anti-Fraud Taskforce, filed the bill Tuesday night when the Senate reopened for business. A companion measure had already cleared the House with bipartisan support, putting the spotlight squarely on Senate Democrats who have so far refused to participate in anti-fraud efforts on Capitol Hill.
The legislation would embed the National Fraud Enforcement Division permanently inside the Department of Justice, ensuring the unit survives beyond the current administration. President Trump created the division in January 2026 following reports of widespread fraud in Minnesota, a scandal that unfolded in the backyard of Gov. Tim Walz. Vice President JD Vance chairs the division, and Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald runs its day-to-day operations. Then-acting Attorney General Todd Blanche officially launched the unit.
Its stated mission: targeting fraud affecting the federal government, federally funded programs, and private citizens.
Schmitt told Fox News Digital he was surprised that Democratic offices turned down his invitation to join the Senate Anti-Fraud Taskforce when he launched it in June. The taskforce remains an all-Republican body. Not a single Democrat accepted.
"I was a little surprised. I think some offices took a look at it and, for whatever reason, didn't want to be part of the effort. I don't understand that."
He added that the offer remains open but questioned why any lawmaker would sit out an effort to protect taxpayers from criminals.
"But, you know, of course, the offer remains open if anybody wants to. I just think that this is something that our people back home expect us to work together on. And I don't understand why you wouldn't want to be a part of an anti-fraud task force."
The refusal stands in contrast to what happened in the House, where the bill to make the division permanent passed with support from Democrats, including Jeffries himself. That vote makes the Senate's Democratic resistance harder to explain to voters who expect both parties to oppose fraud.
The Trump administration has moved aggressively on multiple fronts to reshape federal enforcement priorities. The DOJ has also charged noncitizens across eight states as part of a broader voter roll crackdown, signaling that fraud in all its forms is a top-tier concern for the current White House.
Schmitt did not hold back about why he believes Democrats have been reluctant to join the anti-fraud push. He pointed to the Minnesota fraud scandal and suggested that some on the left allowed ideological sympathies to override common sense.
"They're very defensive about it, and you know the fact is that you had, maybe it had something to do with this sort of toxic empathy or suicidal empathy [they] have done on immigration where you had these Somali fraudsters and maybe, maybe their instinct to defend every group of people that came here from somewhere else, even if they're defrauding the American people, overrode their logic."
That is a pointed accusation, that Democratic leadership prioritized identity-group solidarity over the interests of the taxpayers footing the bill. Whether or not every Senate Democrat would own that framing, the fact remains that none of them joined Schmitt's taskforce.
The pattern extends beyond fraud enforcement. HHS recently pulled federal funding from New York's Medicaid fraud unit over its dismal prosecution record, another case where a blue-state institution failed to hold fraudsters accountable and the Trump administration stepped in.
Schmitt is not the only one noticing the gap. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, one of the progressive leaders of the Democratic Party, has warned that Democrats ceded ground on issues like quality of life and rooting out waste and fraud. Mamdani cautioned that finding waste had taken hold as a "right-wing concern" rather than an issue Democrats could champion.
That admission from a progressive mayor carries weight. If even the left flank of the party recognizes the problem, the Senate Democrats who refused Schmitt's invitation look less like principled opponents and more like politicians unwilling to hand the other side a win, even when the win protects taxpayers.
Mamdani's own record on cooperation with federal policy is mixed at best. The mayor recently signaled defiance of a Supreme Court ruling on immigration, vowing the city would "not ever accept" the decision. So his warning about Democrats losing credibility on fraud and accountability lands with a certain irony, even progressives who see the problem are not always willing to act on it.
The Missouri senator argued that making the division permanent matters more than any single investigation. Administrations change. Priorities shift. A unit that exists only by executive action can be dismantled by the next president with a stroke of a pen.
Schmitt framed the legislation as a safeguard against that possibility.
"Having permanence in the Department of Justice will be important so that, no matter who is president, that this remains a focus."
He also made a direct appeal across the aisle, though his tone suggested he did not expect much uptake.
"I know that we live in a hyper-partisan age, I get that. But there are some things I don't think should be partisan. Saving taxpayer money should be something we're all focused on."
The Trump administration has shown a willingness to reshape federal agencies to match its enforcement priorities, and Schmitt's bill would give one of those reshaping efforts the force of statute rather than executive discretion.
Schmitt was clear about who the division is designed to pursue.
"I mean these are criminals who, you know, are stealing from American taxpayers and the potential beneficiaries of important programs."
That framing matters. Fraud does not just drain the Treasury. It steals from the people who actually qualify for federal programs, the veterans, the elderly, the disabled, by diverting money to criminals who game the system. Every dollar stolen is a dollar that does not reach someone who earned it.
Schmitt summed up the stakes plainly.
"To me, this shouldn't be a partisan issue at all. But sadly, we live in a world where Democrats aren't as focused on this, but I think we've got an administration that is."
The Senate is, as the article noted, a different political body than the House. Whether enough Democrats cross over to pass the bill, or whether they filibuster a measure their own House colleagues supported, will say more about the party's priorities than any press conference ever could.
When one party votes to protect taxpayers from fraud and the other party will not even join the committee, voters do not need a press release to figure out who is on their side.
Florida gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds has stripped prominent Trump endorsement banners from his campaign website and reshuffled his policy priorities, a move his team insists is about kitchen-table issues, not distance from the president.
The redesign replaced a top-of-page banner that once read "Chip in to Support Trump Endorsed Byron Donalds" with a cleaner layout that tucks the president's endorsement into a box alongside nods from SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, The Hill reported. The old site also featured "TRUMP-ENDORSED" in bold text and a second bar with a photo of the president that appeared when visitors scrolled down. Both are gone.
The policy section got a makeover, too. Where the previous layout led with "Enact the Trump Agenda," the new version lists affordability first, a shift that tracks with the pocketbook anxiety gripping voters as gas prices sit at $4.47 a gallon, per AAA figures released Tuesday.
A campaign spokesperson framed the overhaul as a pivot toward state-level concerns, not a retreat from the president.
"Our campaign website reflects Byron's focus on the issues that matter most to Floridians, affordability, insurance costs, and government transparency. He's running to be the next Governor of Florida, is proud to have President Trump's endorsement, and has real policy proposals to tackle those issues."
A separate campaign source pushed back harder, telling The Hill that Trump is still "all over the website" and that the endorsement "is worth its weight in gold, and we are grateful to have it."
The insistence rings partly true. Trump's name has not vanished from the site entirely. But the difference between a banner headline and a box shared with three other endorsers is not cosmetic. It is a deliberate editorial choice about what a visitor sees first, and what Donalds wants associated with his candidacy heading into a competitive gubernatorial race.
The archived version of the old layout, captured on August 19 by the Wayback Machine, shows just how central Trump branding used to be. The president's name appeared before Donalds's own in the donation banner. The redesign flips that hierarchy.
Donalds is not operating in a vacuum. An Economist/YouGov poll released Tuesday put Trump's approval rating at 35 percent, a low point that creates real tactical problems for Republican candidates who need both the president's base and persuadable voters to win statewide.
That number helps explain why other GOP candidates are recalibrating their public posture. Rep. Ashley Hinson, the Republican Senate candidate in Iowa, on Monday criticized the war in Iran for driving up energy costs stateside. Former Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate nominee in Michigan, went further, calling for an end to the conflict. "Michigan families can't afford to wait," Rogers said.
Neither Hinson nor Rogers broke with the president by name. But both chose to lead with voter pain rather than presidential loyalty, the same instinct visible in Donalds's website refresh. The pattern is worth watching as midterm positioning accelerates. The Cook Political Report recently shifted Kansas and South Carolina Senate races toward Democrats, a sign that Trump's efforts to consolidate Republican support face growing resistance from the broader electorate.
Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane for oil exports, has pushed gas prices higher in recent months, handing Democrats a domestic grievance and forcing Republicans to decide whether to defend the administration's foreign policy or channel voter frustration. Donalds, Hinson, and Rogers each chose the second option.
The White House did not treat the Donalds redesign as trivial. Spokesperson Davis Ingle responded to The Hill with a statement that read less like reassurance and more like a reminder of who runs the party.
"President Trump is the unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party."
That language, "unequivocal," "unmatched", carries an implicit message to any Republican thinking about creating daylight: the president notices. The question for candidates like Donalds is whether that notice helps or hurts in a general election where the president's approval has sunk to 35 percent.
Donalds has long been described as a close Trump ally, and nothing in the website changes amounts to a public break. He still lists the endorsement. He still credits the president. But the shift from top billing to shared billing is the kind of calibration campaigns make when they believe the brand math is changing. Rep. Maria Salazar's recent public warning to Trump about losing Hispanic voters reflects a similar instinct, allies who remain loyal in substance but adjust their public framing to protect their own races.
Florida's gubernatorial contest will test whether that calibration works. Donalds needs Trump's base to turn out, but he also needs suburban voters who may be souring on the president. Leading with affordability and insurance costs instead of "Enact the Trump Agenda" is a bet that issue-first messaging can thread that needle.
The broader dynamic playing out across Republican campaigns is not disloyalty. It is triage. Candidates in competitive states are reading the same polls, watching the same gas-price ticker, and making the same calculation: how close is too close when the president's numbers are underwater?
That calculation will shape races from Florida to Iowa to Michigan. JD Vance's own positioning for 2028 shows how even the most prominent Trump allies are thinking about the long game, staying loyal enough to inherit the base while building an identity that can stand on its own. Donalds appears to be running the same playbook at the state level.
None of this is unusual in American politics. Candidates have always adjusted their public alignment with a sitting president based on approval numbers. What makes this cycle different is the speed and visibility of the adjustment. A website redesign is not a speech or a leaked memo, it is a permanent, searchable artifact that voters, reporters, and the White House can compare side by side with the archived version.
Donalds's team clearly anticipated the scrutiny. The dual response, a formal spokesperson statement and a separate unnamed source insisting the endorsement is "worth its weight in gold", suggests a campaign that wants to have it both ways. Marco Rubio's recent deflection of 2028 questions reflects the same instinct among Republican officeholders: stay focused on the job in front of you, avoid the Trump loyalty litmus test, and hope the issue environment shifts before November.
Whether that strategy holds depends on factors no campaign website can control, gas prices, the war in Iran, and whether 35 percent is a floor or a waypoint on the way down.
When your strongest endorsement moves from the marquee to a sidebar, the message is not hard to read, no matter how many times the campaign says the president is still "all over the website."
Patrick Clancy, the father whose three children were killed by his ex-wife Lindsay Clancy in January 2023, revealed in his first televised interview that he has remarried and is expecting a child, a step forward from a grief few can imagine.
Clancy sat down with CBS correspondent Ross Douthat for a 60 Minutes special that aired Sunday on CBS News, his first on-camera appearance since his ex-wife's murder trial ended in a mistrial. His new wife, Dr. Rachel Danis, a fertility doctor, appeared alongside him. The next morning on CBS Mornings, Douthat confirmed that Danis is pregnant.
The interview covered the worst night of Clancy's life, the conspiracy theories that followed, his decision to forgive the woman who killed his children, and the panic attack that nearly ended his testimony at trial. For a man who once said he did not expect to survive to his 35th birthday, the news of a coming child marks a turn that even he seemed to approach with a mixture of wonder and weight.
On the evening of January 24, 2023, Patrick Clancy left home to pick up food and prescriptions. When he returned, he found his three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and Callan, 8 months, in the basement. Lindsay Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, had admitted to killing all three. She then jumped from a second-floor window.
Cora and Dawson were declared dead that night. Callan was airlifted to Boston Children's Hospital, where he clung to life for four more days.
Clancy described those four days in terms that no parent should ever have to use. He held out hope that his youngest son would survive.
"I remember just thinking, 'Just gimme one. Just gimme one kid,' and I would raise him as best I could, and I would give him the best life I possibly could. I'd tell him about his brother and sister. And I was holding out hope for that."
But when he arrived at the hospital and saw the doctor's face, he knew. Callan died in his father's arms. Clancy said he spent those final days writing tributes to each of his three children while holding Callan's hand.
Patrick Clancy was the first witness called at Lindsay Clancy's murder trial. The experience nearly broke him physically. On the second day of his testimony, prosecutors played the 911 call from the night of January 24th, a recording Clancy said he knew would be "just horrific."
He described what happened next in plain terms:
"I went to a back room, and I started having this massive traumatic panic attack. My heart was pounding. And they put me in an ambulance. They offered me some medication, but I said, 'I, I don't want it, 'cause I want to go back and I want to finish this so I can be done with this.' And I went back and I finished the testimony."
That a grieving father had to be loaded into an ambulance during his own testimony, and then walked back in to finish, says more about what this case has demanded of Patrick Clancy than any editorial observation could. The trial ultimately ended in a mistrial after the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict.
Lindsay Clancy's defense team argued that postpartum psychosis left her unable to appreciate her actions. She acknowledged strangling her three children but claimed the episode was beyond her control. An anonymous juror who spoke publicly after the mistrial admitted she had originally believed Clancy was guilty but changed her vote, citing "significant doubt" and what she called gray areas in the case. The jury deliberated for more than 36 hours over seven days before Judge William Sullivan declared the mistrial.
That juror's candid admission, "Originally, I felt as though she was guilty and she was criminally responsible for it. And maybe I still believe that in a certain way", captured the deep division the case produced. A single holdout juror prevented what would have been a unanimous not-guilty verdict, leaving the case in legal limbo.
One of the most striking moments in the 60 Minutes interview came when Clancy addressed forgiveness. Asked whether Lindsay had ever sought it, he was direct.
"No. But I gave it to her."
He rejected the labels that had followed his ex-wife through the press. According to Fox News's coverage of the interview, Clancy said Lindsay had described her memory of the killings as "dreamlike", remembered "much in the way you would remember a dream after waking up."
Clancy himself pushed back on the tabloid framing:
"I saw headlines that said, you know, 'Killer Mom,' and 'Baby Murderer,' 'Monster.' And none of 'em were accurate. I believe that it was her mental illness that caused that. So I shared those words."
He added that forgiveness was partly self-preservation: "I also felt that if I didn't get there, I would be eaten up inside forever." Whether one agrees with his view of Lindsay Clancy's culpability or not, his reasoning was clear-eyed and unsentimental. He was not excusing what happened. He was refusing to let it consume the rest of his life.
Lindsay Clancy has been held at a state-run hospital since 2023. She still faces murder charges, and the question of whether prosecutors will seek a retrial remains open. The case has drawn intense public attention, including calls from elected officials for severe punishment and a broader national debate about how the justice system handles defendants who claim severe mental illness.
Clancy used the interview to confront online conspiracy theories that have accused him of involvement in his children's deaths. He called them "deeply harmful to the legacy of my children" and a distraction from what he believes is the real issue, perinatal mental health.
"It's painful to see. It makes it difficult to be in public, and it's possible that some of those people, after seeing lie after lie after lie, they start to believe it, and that's what we're left with."
His lawyer has warned of legal action against those spreading the theories, though no specific names or lawsuits were disclosed. The intense public scrutiny surrounding the trial, including incidents involving jurors themselves, has made the case a flashpoint for misinformation and online harassment.
Clancy framed the conspiracy theories not as a personal grievance but as a public harm: "It is a huge distraction from what really matters here, which is perinatal mental health. And it's done real harm to real people, myself included but also others."
Patrick Clancy met Dr. Rachel Danis at a running club in New York in January 2024, almost exactly a year after the killings. Danis, a fertility doctor, described learning about his children in the most ordinary of settings.
"Pat pulled out his phone to pay, and I noticed this adorable photo of children as the wallpaper. And I just asked, 'Who are those cuties?' And Pat said, 'Those are my kids.' And then I think I asked if they live in Massachusetts, and Pat said, 'They died.' And this is just at the cashier."
She said she was overwhelmed: "I guess I had so many questions, and yet at the same time I didn't know exactly what to ask." The couple married in April. When Douthat asked on the 60 Minutes broadcast whether they were "starting a family," Danis answered simply: "Yeah."
Douthat later acknowledged on CBS Mornings that his phrasing had been understated. "Maybe starting a family was too coy a way of asking it," he said, before confirming directly: "They are having a child."
Clancy spoke about his future children with the same directness that marked the rest of the interview. He said he still dreams about Cora, Dawson, and Callan, "it's like I'm lucid in those dreams", and that he looks forward to telling any new children about the siblings they will never meet.
"I think every parent can agree, you have different relationships with your kids, but they're all your kids. And I can't wait to tell them about their brothers and sister."
Clancy did not minimize how close he came to giving up. He told Douthat flatly that after losing his children, he did not expect to survive.
"I didn't think I would live to see my 35th birthday. And I was completely fine with it."
That he is now married, expecting a child, and sitting for a national television interview does not erase what happened on January 24, 2023. Nothing will. But Patrick Clancy's willingness to speak, about the worst night of his life, about the system that could not reach a verdict, about the strangers online who accuse him of crimes he did not commit, reflects a man who has decided that survival itself is an act of loyalty to the three children he lost.
No amount of forgiveness, no new marriage, and no future child will bring back Cora, Dawson, and Callan. But choosing to keep living, and to say so publicly, is the kind of courage that doesn't make headlines as easily as outrage does.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin dismissed Rep. Pramila Jayapal's assertion that the majority of recent immigration arrests involved people posing "absolutely no threat", calling the argument political and defending ICE's record-setting enforcement pace.
Mullin appeared on Fox News' "Saturday in America" to respond directly to Jayapal, the Washington state Democrat who serves as ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Integrity, Security, and Enforcement. During a congressional hearing the prior week, Jayapal had argued that the Trump administration's immigration crackdown was sweeping up people with no criminal history while the number of arrestees with actual criminal convictions had dropped. Mullin rejected that framing in blunt terms, defending ICE's enforcement priorities and the administration's refusal to release anyone caught entering the country illegally.
The exchange laid bare a fundamental disagreement over what immigration enforcement is supposed to accomplish, and who counts as a threat.
Jayapal's hearing-room comments centered on a specific claim: that this summer marked the first time a majority of people arrested by DHS had no public safety record to justify detention. She also argued that the number of people with criminal convictions arrested by ICE had actually fallen, not risen, under the current enforcement push.
She attributed the shift to what she described as a misallocation of federal resources. Jayapal told lawmakers:
"That's because when DHS expends all of its energy to go after parents, longtime friends, neighbors, when [Homeland Security Investigations] agents who are supposed to investigate serious crime and human trafficking are instead being moved to street sweeps and riding [along with local police] for random traffic stops, we are less safe, not more safe."
The argument follows a pattern. Jayapal has long characterized ICE operations in aggressive terms, and she has shown no sign of softening that language despite pushback from the White House and Republican lawmakers. In a separate exchange reported by Breitbart, Jayapal said she had "no rhetoric that I regret" and doubled down on calling ICE a "militarized force" that has "kidnapped and detained people."
Fox News Digital reached out to Jayapal's office for comment on Mullin's rebuttal but did not receive an immediate response.
Mullin did not engage with Jayapal's framing on its own terms. Instead, he pointed to DHS's enforcement numbers and restated the administration's position: anyone who entered the country illegally is, by definition, a lawbreaker who should be removed.
DHS reported that ICE arrested nearly 51,000 illegal immigrants nationwide in August alone, a figure the department described as the highest monthly total on record. Since President Trump took office, ICE has deported more than 2,000 known or suspected terrorists, according to the department. Those numbers represent a scale of enforcement that dwarfs even the large-scale operations that drew national attention earlier this year.
Mullin also referenced the administration's zero-release policy, which DHS says has been in effect for 16 straight months. Under that policy, individuals identified as having entered illegally are not released back into the public while their cases are processed.
On the question of whether enforcement should focus only on immigrants with violent criminal records, Mullin was direct:
"If we're going to have national security in this country, we [need to] know everybody that's entered this country. And so, I'm not going to release you back into the public once we know that you entered this country illegally. It's time for you to go home."
Mullin pressed hardest on the consequences of nonenforcement, the cases where illegal immigrants who had not previously been convicted of violent crimes went on to commit them. He invoked the families of victims, often referred to as "angel families," whose loved ones were killed by people who should not have been in the country.
"All the [angel families] that lost their loved ones at the hands of an illegal is 100% preventable, because that illegal shouldn't be in our country to begin with."
He then offered a specific scenario to illustrate the gap in Jayapal's logic. Someone who enters the country illegally and causes a fatal car accident may not have had a prior criminal record, but they still broke the law by entering, and someone is still dead as a result.
"When you have a car accident, and you came... into this country legally, and the Democrats want to say, you're not a criminal and you kill somebody. Yes, you were a criminal and now... you ruined somebody else's life, and now you're a murderer at the same time."
The argument cuts directly against the framework Jayapal used. By her standard, a person without a prior criminal conviction poses "absolutely no threat to public safety." By Mullin's standard, the illegal entry itself is the threat, because every person in the country unlawfully is someone the government cannot vet, track, or hold accountable until something goes wrong.
That distinction is not academic. It is the core policy divide between the two parties on immigration enforcement, and it has been for years. Democrats like Jayapal want enforcement resources concentrated on immigrants with existing criminal records. The Trump administration treats the act of illegal entry as sufficient cause for arrest and removal, regardless of whether additional crimes have been committed.
Jayapal's characterization of ICE as a force that "kidnaps" people is not new. The White House has previously named her specifically in statements blaming Democratic rhetoric for hostility toward immigration enforcement officers. After a shooting at an ICE facility in Texas, the White House pointed to Jayapal's language as contributing to the climate that produced the attack.
Jayapal rejected that connection entirely. She told reporters she had said nothing that incites violence and argued that the White House should instead focus on a Republican Arizona state representative who she claimed had called for her execution. The pattern is consistent: Jayapal escalates her language about ICE, draws criticism, and responds by deflecting blame to Republicans. It is a cycle that has played out across multiple Squad-related controversies in recent years.
Mullin dismissed the broader Democratic argument as politically motivated. "It's political for them," he said. "They want to say this every day."
He then restated the administration's enforcement posture in terms that left no room for ambiguity:
"When you decide you're going to break our immigration policies, and you're going to cut the line, you're going to step across our southern border, you're going to step across our northern border. You're still a criminal. We're still gonna arrest you."
DHS regularly publicizes arrests and deportations involving illegal immigrants convicted of serious crimes, including murder, child pornography, sexual assault, and drug trafficking. That public-facing record is part of the administration's effort to build the case that enforcement is focused on dangerous individuals, directly contradicting Jayapal's claim that resources are being wasted on people who pose no risk.
Jayapal cited no specific data source or methodology for her claim that a majority of summer DHS arrestees posed no public safety threat. She did not define what standard she used to determine threat level, and her office did not respond to press inquiries. That leaves her headline claim, the one Mullin was responding to, without a verifiable foundation in the public record.
DHS, for its part, has not published the underlying report or dataset behind its 51,000-arrest figure for August or its count of more than 2,000 deported terror suspects. Both numbers are attributed to the department as an institution, not to a specific published document. The 16-month zero-release claim also lacks a publicly identified start date or source document.
When politicians on both sides make sweeping statistical claims about immigration enforcement without releasing the data behind them, the public is left to choose which set of unsupported numbers to believe. That is not accountability. It is theater, and the people living with the consequences of border policy deserve better from both the enforcers and the critics.
Jayapal's argument asks Americans to believe that arresting people who broke federal law to enter the country is a waste of resources. Mullin's record, 51,000 arrests in a single month, 2,000 deported terror suspects, and a policy of zero releases, suggests the administration has a different definition of "no threat." For the families who have buried loved ones killed by someone who should never have been here, the distinction is not political. It is personal.
When a lawmaker argues that enforcing immigration law makes the country less safe, the burden of proof belongs to her, and so far, she has not met it.
President Donald Trump says Hasan Piker has become a liability for Democrats, as the streamer’s rhetoric follows a Michigan Senate candidate onto the campaign trail.
Trump called Piker a “terrible liability” during a Friday news conference in the Oval Office, The National Desk reported. The president also labeled him a communist, though the report offered no independent basis for that description.
The political risk reaches beyond online debate. Piker has appeared with Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, and Republican-aligned groups are putting that association before voters.
Piker, a Twitch streamer and YouTube personality with a large following, describes himself as a socialist. He recently told Axios that the United States had committed more terrorism than al-Qaida “pound for pound.”
Piker said he was analyzing American policy and did not mean all Americans were terrorists. El-Sayed later distanced himself from the remark as he faced wider scrutiny around his campaign.
El-Sayed told Axios that he disagreed with Piker and did not place much weight on comments from a social media streamer. That response left the candidate trying to separate his campaign from someone with whom he had already appeared.
Republican-aligned groups have spent millions of dollars on advertisements linking the two men, Axios reported. The available account did not name the groups or provide an exact spending total.
Trump argued that Piker holds sway over at least part of the Democratic Party. His criticism comes as Democratic infighting grows over the party’s direction and emerging leaders.
Speaking about Piker, Trump said:
“He’s a terrible liability. He’s got a power over some of these Democrats.”
Trump followed with a direct label: “I mean, he’s a communist.” He added, “There’s no question about it.”
Piker’s own description of himself as a socialist supports the broader ideological dispute, but it does not by itself establish Trump’s communist label as fact. The president’s underlying political point is clearer: Democrats risk owning the rhetoric of prominent activists they embrace.
Piker’s large audience gives him reach beyond ordinary campaign surrogates. But candidates cannot claim the benefits of that attention and then treat his words as irrelevant once opponents place them in advertisements.
That tension has surfaced across Democratic politics as party figures compete for influence. It can be seen in fights over endorsements, ideological loyalty and the role of powerful insiders, including Pelosi’s campaign involvement in a Rhode Island primary.
Trump also broadened his criticism beyond Piker. He said it was “not possible” for Jewish or Black Americans to vote Democratic “in a world of rationality.”
The president framed those voting choices as difficult to understand:
“It is not possible, in a world of rationality, that somebody who is Jewish, that somebody who is Black, could vote to be a Democrat, could vote for a Democrat.”
The remarks reflected the larger partisan clash surrounding Trump, including repeated Democratic efforts to challenge his presidency. That conflict was visible when 147 Democrats backed impeachment efforts even as the House rejected the resolution.
Trump’s sharpest case against Piker rests on a simple political fact. A Democratic Senate candidate appeared with a streamer whose words later forced that candidate to create distance, while outside groups spent millions making sure voters noticed.
Political influence brings political accountability. Democrats cannot welcome an activist’s audience, dismiss his rhetoric and expect voters to ignore the connection.
Naugatuck, Connecticut's second-highest-ranking police officer was arrested Friday by officers from a neighboring town's department, and neither agency will say why.
Deputy Police Chief Daniel Norck was taken into custody by Thomaston police on September 18, 2026, WTNH News 8 reported. The Naugatuck Police Department confirmed the arrest and immediately placed Norck on administrative leave pending the completion of an internal affairs investigation. No charges were disclosed. No explanation was offered. The department declined to comment on the reason for the arrest.
That silence leaves the public, and the officers who serve under Norck, with nothing but an arrest and a closed door. A deputy chief holds one of the most sensitive positions in any municipal police force, overseeing personnel, investigations, and day-to-day operations. When the person in that chair gets arrested by cops from another jurisdiction, the community deserves more than a boilerplate statement about an internal review.
Thomaston is a small town in Litchfield County, roughly twenty miles northwest of Naugatuck in Connecticut's central valley. The fact that Thomaston police, not Norck's own department, made the arrest raises immediate questions about what happened and where.
Did the alleged conduct occur in Thomaston? Was the arrest the result of a complaint filed there, or did Thomaston officers act on a warrant originating elsewhere? None of those details appear in any public statement so far. Norck's custody status, whether he was booked and released or remains held, is also unknown.
The Naugatuck department's decision to open an internal affairs investigation suggests officials believe the arrest may bear on Norck's fitness for duty. But the scope of that investigation, and whether it concerns the same conduct that led to the criminal arrest or a separate matter, remains undisclosed.
Norck himself has made no public statement, and no attorney has spoken on his behalf.
Police leaders occupy positions of extraordinary public trust. They carry badges, firearms, and the authority to deprive citizens of their liberty. When one of them is arrested, the ordinary citizen is entitled to at least as much information as the department would release about any other suspect. The refusal to name charges or describe the underlying conduct falls short of that standard.
This is not the first time a law enforcement officer's arrest has tested the public's patience with institutional silence. In Louisiana, a Jefferson Parish deputy was fired and arrested on domestic abuse and DWI charges after a nine-year career, a case where the department at least disclosed the allegations promptly.
Across the country, officials entrusted with public authority have faced arrest in recent years on charges ranging from fraud to bribery. A Massachusetts mayor was arrested on federal wire fraud charges over an alleged COVID loan scheme, and a Mississippi district attorney pleaded guilty in a federal bribery sting before resigning. Each case reinforced the same lesson: when public servants face criminal allegations, swift disclosure, not stonewalling, is what preserves institutional credibility.
Naugatuck residents pay Norck's salary. They fund his department. They are governed by the laws he is sworn to enforce. Telling them nothing more than "administrative leave, internal investigation pending" treats accountability as an afterthought.
WTNH labeled the report a developing story at the time of publication. The outlet posted its initial account at 3:45 p.m. Eastern on Friday and updated it just after 6:50 p.m., though the substance of any update was not specified.
Whether additional details emerge will depend in part on whether court filings, an arrest warrant, or a police report become publicly available. Connecticut law generally treats adult arrest records as public information, so the current information vacuum may not last. But the longer it persists, the more it invites speculation, and the harder it becomes for the department to maintain community trust.
The pattern is familiar. When arrest records of public figures surface, whether in politics or law enforcement, the cover of silence rarely holds. The facts come out eventually. The only question is whether the institution gets ahead of the disclosure or gets dragged behind it.
Citizens who follow the law have every right to expect the people enforcing it to meet the same standard, and to expect a straight answer when one of those people lands in handcuffs.
The White House has withdrawn Richard Schroyer's nomination to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement after a fellow Republican senator blocked the pick from advancing, leaving the agency without a Senate-confirmed director for the eighth straight year.
Schroyer, who had been serving as a senior adviser to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, was tapped by President Trump in June to run ICE as assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. His nomination never made it past the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The reason: Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Republican, demanded details about investigations into agent-involved shootings in Minnesota before he would allow the pick to move forward.
Paul got his way. The nomination stalled, and the White House eventually pulled it. A presidential action document posted on the White House website formalized the withdrawal.
Paul's office offered a careful statement: the senator "has not expressed opposition to Schroyer." That distinction, between opposing a nominee outright and simply refusing to let him advance, may matter inside the Senate. It matters far less to the federal agents waiting for permanent leadership at one of the government's most important law-enforcement agencies.
The withdrawal extends a vacancy that has stretched across two administrations. ICE has not had a Senate-confirmed director since 2017. For nearly a decade, the agency charged with interior immigration enforcement has been led by a rotating cast of acting officials and senior staffers filling the role on a temporary basis.
The latest in that line is David Venturella, who became the senior official performing the duties of ICE director after Todd Lyons announced his departure from the top post in April. Lyons had previously held the role in an acting capacity. Venturella now occupies the same limbo, running the agency day to day without the authority or permanence that Senate confirmation provides.
That revolving door matters. ICE has been at the center of the administration's enforcement agenda, carrying out large-scale operations targeting illegal immigrants across the country. An agency executing that mission deserves stable, accountable leadership, not a placeholder whose authority can be questioned by every federal judge who wants to slow things down.
Paul's stated reason for blocking Schroyer, a demand for information about agent-involved shootings in Minnesota, raises its own set of questions. Neither the senator's office nor the available reporting specifies which incidents Paul was referencing, what investigative details he sought, or why those questions needed to hold up an entire nomination rather than proceed through normal oversight channels.
Senators have every right to demand accountability from federal agencies. But using a nominee as leverage, while simultaneously insisting you don't oppose him, is a familiar Washington maneuver that costs more than it gains. The result here is straightforward: the administration lost its pick, ICE lost its chance at a confirmed leader, and Paul's questions about Minnesota remain unanswered anyway.
The White House and DHS did not respond to requests for comment on the withdrawal. Whether the administration plans to put forward a replacement nominee remains unclear. So does the broader question of whether any ICE nominee can clear a Senate where a single member's procedural hold can derail the process entirely.
The dysfunction is bipartisan in origin, the eight-year vacancy spans both the Trump and Biden years, but the current impasse lands squarely on the Senate's doorstep. The same body that routinely demands executive-branch accountability is the one preventing the executive branch from installing accountable leadership at a critical agency. Meanwhile, the administration has continued to press forward on policy decisions across multiple federal agencies, making the ICE leadership gap all the more conspicuous.
Schroyer's withdrawal leaves the administration in the same position it has occupied for months: relying on an acting official to run an agency at the sharp end of its most visible domestic priority. David Venturella may be competent. He may be doing the job well. But "senior official performing the duties of" is not a title that carries the weight of Senate confirmation, and every stakeholder, from field agents to federal courts, knows it.
Law enforcement across the capital region and beyond continues to operate at a high tempo. Federal agents recently arrested suspects targeting national landmarks in Washington, and ICE operations have expanded in scope and scale. The men and women carrying out those missions deserve a director who went through the confirmation process and came out the other side with the full authority of the office.
The Senate's inability to confirm an ICE director for eight years running is not a quirk of the calendar. It is a failure of governance, one that leaves a frontline federal agency permanently weakened, no matter how aggressive the policy agenda behind it. If Republicans cannot get out of their own way long enough to confirm a Republican president's nominee to a Republican priority agency, the problem is not the nominee. It is the institution.
Congress passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 by overwhelming margins in both chambers, and the White House says President Trump will sign it into law.
The House voted 262-159 on Tuesday to approve the sprawling sanctions package, with 53 Democrats crossing party lines to join 203 Republicans in favor. Only seven Republicans voted against it. The bill had already cleared the Senate 86-11, giving it one of the strongest bipartisan showings on foreign policy legislation in years. It now heads to the president's desk, where White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed Trump intends to sign it.
The legislation targets Russia's war economy, Iran's weapons and energy sectors, and countries that prop up the Kremlin's military effort in Ukraine. It authorizes tariffs of up to 500 percent on Russian imports and up to 100 percent on goods from the top five nations purchasing Russian energy, a list that includes China and India.
Speaking on ABC's This Week, Sanders said the administration had worked directly with both chambers to reshape a bill it originally considered poorly drafted. The final product, she said, reflected those negotiations.
"We were able to work with the House and Senate, and the administration is happy with the ability to do that and make those changes that were necessary, and we support where the legislation is now."
Host George Stephanopoulos pressed for a direct answer on whether Trump would put his signature on the bill. Sanders did not hedge. Stephanopoulos himself called it news: "So the president will sign that bill. That's a little news right there."
The bill also limits the president's ability to lift sanctions on Russia unilaterally and layers new penalties on North Korea, broadening the package well beyond a single-theater response. For an administration that has emphasized leverage in negotiations with Moscow, the provision constraining future sanctions relief is notable. Trump's team evidently decided the trade-off was worth it.
The legislation bears the name of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who championed tough Russia sanctions for years before his death. Rep. Michael McCaul, the Texas Republican who led the House fight for passage, framed the vote as a tribute to Graham's legacy and a test of American resolve.
"This is a critical time in history, a time my friend Lindsey Graham described as a magic moment, a moment that we cannot afford to waste."
McCaul also made the case that tariffs would succeed where traditional sanctions had fallen short. Russia, he argued, had spent years learning to dodge financial restrictions. Tariffs hit differently.
"You can evade sanctions, which the Russians have done for years. But you cannot evade tariffs."
That argument carried weight with enough Democrats to produce a lopsided result. Fifty-three House Democrats broke with their caucus to vote yes, a Fox News report described the crossover as Democrats "begrudgingly" handing Trump a victory on tariff authority they might otherwise oppose. The dynamic echoed earlier fractures within the Democratic caucus on the same legislation, when two House Democrats broke ranks with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to give Republicans a procedural win on the sanctions bill weeks before the final vote.
The Senate had already done its part. An 86-11 vote gave the bill a supermajority well beyond what was needed, signaling that opposition in either party was confined to the margins. The New York Post reported that the combined Senate and House tallies made the Graham Act one of the most broadly supported foreign policy measures of the Trump presidency.
McCaul did not hold back about the stakes. "Evil is on the march, history is calling, and now is the time to act," he told colleagues on the House floor. He added: "I can think of no better way... to honor his life and his legacy than by passing these tough sanctions."
The bill's scope extends beyond Russia. It reinserts sanctions targeting Iran's weapons and energy sectors, provisions that had lapsed or weakened under prior policy frameworks. By bundling the Russia and Iran tracks together, sponsors made it politically costly for opponents to vote no on either piece without rejecting both.
The tariff provisions may prove to be the legislation's sharpest teeth. Authorizing levies of up to 500 percent on Russian goods and up to 100 percent on energy purchases by third-party nations gives the president a tool that bypasses the banking channels Moscow has learned to navigate. Countries like China and India, which have increased Russian energy imports since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, now face a direct cost for continuing that trade.
For Trump, the signing will cap a stretch of consequential executive and legislative action. The administration has moved aggressively on domestic policy as well, including the One Big Beautiful Bill, which the GAO found drove a 17 percent surge in tax refunds after taking effect.
The 159 House members who voted no included a mix of progressive Democrats who objected to the tariff authorities and a handful of Republicans skeptical of the sanctions framework. But the opposition was scattered and lacked a coherent counter-argument strong enough to slow the bill's momentum. The Washington Examiner noted that 58 Democrats ultimately crossed party lines, a slightly higher count than some tallies, reflecting the breadth of the defection from Democratic leadership's preferred position.
The bipartisan margin stands in contrast to the partisan trench warfare that has defined much of this Congress. Just weeks ago, the House voted along sharply partisan lines to kill an impeachment resolution brought by Rep. Al Green, with 147 Democrats trying to keep it alive. On Russia sanctions, the political math flipped entirely.
Graham, who represented South Carolina in the Senate for two decades, was among the most vocal hawks on Russia in either party. He pushed for punishing sanctions long before the 2022 invasion made the issue mainstream. Naming the bill after him was both a tribute and a signal: the legislation carries the weight of a senator whose hawkish foreign policy views commanded respect across the aisle.
The Newsmax report on the bill's passage aligned with the broader coverage of a bipartisan landslide headed for Trump's signature. The president has shown a willingness to sign major legislation when the political conditions are right, as he demonstrated with executive orders targeting birth tourism and birthright citizenship earlier in his term.
Sanders's confirmation that Trump will sign removes the last real uncertainty. The question now is whether the tariff authorities change behavior in Beijing, New Delhi, and other capitals that have treated Russian energy as a discount opportunity. McCaul bet the answer is yes. Moscow's sanctions-evasion playbook, he argued, has no chapter on tariffs.
When 262 House members, 86 senators, and a Republican White House all land on the same page, the message to Moscow is plain enough: the free ride on half-enforced sanctions is over.
Two moderate House Democrats defied Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on a critical procedural vote Tuesday evening, siding with Republicans to advance a Russia sanctions bill, and drawing threats of "a serious response" from their own leadership.
Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington crossed party lines on what is known as a rule vote, the procedural step that allows the House to bring legislation to the floor for debate. Their votes gave Republicans the margin they needed to move forward on a package of bills that included sanctions targeting Russian oil revenue. Without the two Democratic defections, the rule vote was on the verge of failing.
The break was not a one-time lapse. Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez did the same thing several weeks earlier, voting against their caucus on a separate rule. That first defection prompted Jeffries and his top deputies to issue a joint statement calling the move "a significant breach of trust" and referring the matter to the Committee on Caucus Rules, the internal body that governs Democratic members' conduct. Whether any punishment followed remains unclear.
Now the pair has done it again, and Jeffries faces a caucus revolt he cannot seem to contain.
Both members offered straightforward explanations rooted in policy, not party loyalty. A spokesman for Golden told Fox News Digital:
"Congressman Golden has been a consistent supporter of America's allies in Ukraine. He didn't want to see the Russia sanctions bill die in a rule vote after passing with overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate."
Gluesenkamp Perez posted her own explanation on X, framing the vote as a matter of conscience for her district. She represents a Washington state congressional district that is home to what she described as one of the largest Ukrainian communities in America.
"I'm proud to represent one of the largest Ukrainian communities in America-people who have lost fathers, mothers, sons and daughters in the fight to defeat fascism. I'll always stand with my community's values, and am grateful for the 86 senators who voted to send this bill to the house. My vote today gets us one step closer to enacting these sanctions into law and I look forward to voting tomorrow to cut off the flow of Russian oil money fueling this war."
Eighty-six senators backed the sanctions bill before it reached the House, a bipartisan supermajority that makes the Democratic leadership's fury over a procedural vote look less like a principled stand and more like a power play. The bill already had broad support. Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez simply refused to let a procedural maneuver kill it.
Jeffries saw it differently. He and his top deputies issued a statement after the earlier rule-break that left no ambiguity about how leadership viewed the defections:
"The decision by two of our colleagues to blindside the entire House Democratic Caucus and join with the Republican majority to pass a procedural rule on the brink of failing represents a significant breach of trust. It is an action that necessitates a serious response, and we have asked the Committee on Caucus Rules to take this up in short order."
Jeffries later appeared on "The Don Lemon Show" to discuss the threatened response, though no direct quote from that appearance has been reported. Fox News Digital reached out to Gluesenkamp Perez's office for comment on the latest vote; no response was reported.
The political math behind the defections is not complicated. Golden is retiring from Congress at the end of the current year. He has no reelection campaign to protect and no reason to swallow a procedural vote that would sink a sanctions bill he supports on the merits.
Gluesenkamp Perez faces a different calculus, and a harder one. Her Washington state district voted for President Donald Trump in 2024. She is heading into what has been described as her toughest election yet against a Republican challenger, with November midterms approaching. Voting to block a bipartisan Russia sanctions bill on procedural grounds would hand her opponent an easy attack ad. Voting her district's values, even if it meant crossing Jeffries, was the obvious survival move.
That is the bind Jeffries has built for himself. His caucus strategy depends on total procedural unity, every Democrat voting against every Republican rule, regardless of the underlying legislation. The goal is to force Republicans to pass rules entirely with their own votes, exploiting any internal GOP divisions. But that strategy works only if members in swing districts are willing to take politically toxic votes for the sake of party tactics.
Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez decided they were not. And Jeffries' response, threatening punishment rather than acknowledging that a bipartisan sanctions bill with 86 Senate votes might deserve a floor vote, reveals priorities that have less to do with policy than with control.
This is not the first time Jeffries has struggled to hold his caucus together. More than 100 House Democrats broke with him on a separate high-profile vote involving aid to Israel, a fracture that exposed deep ideological divisions within the minority.
For readers unfamiliar with House procedure, a rule vote is the gateway that determines whether a bill reaches the floor for debate and a final vote. The majority party typically passes rules with its own members, and the minority party votes against them as a bloc, not necessarily because they oppose the bill, but because blocking the rule denies the majority a legislative win.
It is a tactical weapon, not a policy statement. And that distinction is exactly what Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez exploited. By voting for the rule, they allowed a bipartisan sanctions bill to advance. By doing so, they also handed Republicans a procedural victory that Jeffries had been counting on to deny.
The broader pattern is hard to miss. Democratic leadership faces pressure from multiple directions, progressives pulling left, moderates in swing districts pulling toward their voters, and a minority leader whose primary enforcement tool appears to be strongly worded statements and referrals to an internal committee that may or may not act.
The Russia sanctions bill itself underscores the absurdity. This was not some partisan wish-list item. It passed the Senate with 86 votes. Golden's spokesman described it as having "overwhelming bipartisan support." Gluesenkamp Perez called her vote a step toward cutting off Russian oil money. These are not rogue members sabotaging their party's agenda. They are members who chose substance over procedural gamesmanship.
Yet Jeffries treated their votes as a betrayal worthy of institutional discipline. The Committee on Caucus Rules was asked to take up the matter "in short order" after the first defection. No public outcome from that referral has been reported. Now the same two members have done it again.
The question is whether Jeffries can enforce unity heading into a midterm cycle where Democratic voters are already ousting incumbents at a striking pace. Members like Gluesenkamp Perez, who represent Trump-won districts, have every incentive to distance themselves from a leadership team that prioritizes procedural obstruction over popular legislation.
Golden's retirement removes one target from Jeffries' crosshairs entirely. A member who is not running again cannot be threatened with a primary challenge, a committee demotion, or a loss of fundraising support. He voted his conscience, and he will walk away from Congress without consequence.
Gluesenkamp Perez presents a different problem. Punishing a swing-district member for voting to advance a bipartisan sanctions bill, one that 86 senators supported, would be a gift to her Republican opponent. It would confirm the narrative that Democratic leadership cares more about partisan tactics than about governing. And it would signal to every other moderate Democrat in a competitive district that loyalty to Jeffries means taking votes that could cost them their seats.
That is not a formula for winning a midterm. It is a formula for shrinking a caucus. Democratic leadership is already searching for a midterm strategy that can hold together a coalition stretched between its progressive base and its vulnerable moderates.
Two members just showed how thin that coalition is. And Jeffries' answer, threats, referrals, and talk of "serious responses", suggests he has no better one.
When your best argument against two members of your own caucus is that they voted to advance a bill 86 senators already passed, the problem is not the rebels. The problem is the leadership.