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.
Only ten U.S. senators voted against the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, a bipartisan bill that restricts large institutional investors from buying single-family homes and requires investors to sell build-to-rent properties within seven years. Every one of those senators received tens of thousands, and in some cases hundreds of thousands, of dollars in 2024 election-cycle campaign contributions from groups whose profits could shrink if the bill becomes law.
The data, pulled from political donation tracker OpenSecrets, paints a picture that invites easy outrage. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina topped the list at $468,916, with Blackstone Group as his leading donor. Sen. Todd Young of Indiana followed at $291,755. The rest of the holdouts, including Sens. Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Rick Scott, Rand Paul, Ted Budd, Ron Johnson, Tommy Tuberville, and lone Democrat Brian Schatz, received amounts ranging from $48,650 to $159,459.
The framing practically writes itself: bought senators kill populist housing bill to protect Wall Street, landlords. But the story is more complicated than the donation receipts suggest, and conservatives should resist the impulse to let dollar signs replace actual policy analysis.
Several of the dissenting senators offered substantive reasons for their votes, and those reasons track with longstanding conservative principles, not corporate marching orders, Just the News reported.
Sen. Cruz laid out the most detailed objection. On the bill's restriction requiring build-to-rent homes to be sold within seven years, he argued the provision would backfire:
"I agree with President Trump that large banks should not be buying single-family homes. Unfortunately, this legislation goes beyond that principle and restricts those hoping to build new rental housing for Americans by requiring build-to-rent homes to be sold within seven years. Restricting the supply of newly built rental units should not be enshrined in law."
That's not a hedge. It's a policy distinction. There is a real difference between stopping Wall Street from gobbling up existing family homes and discouraging new rental construction. The bill, by Cruz's reading, collapses both into one blunt instrument.
Cruz also flagged the bill's grant of authority to the Department of Housing and Urban Development over zoning and land-use frameworks:
"Additionally, giving the Department of Housing and Urban Development authority to develop zoning and land-use frameworks raises serious concerns. Washington bureaucrats should not dictate zoning decisions for local communities like my hometown of Houston."
And he identified a sleeper provision that should concern anyone who remembers the pandemic-era eviction moratorium:
"The bill also risked giving a future Democratic administration the ability to impose policies like a rent moratorium by granting the Treasury Secretary broad authority to rewrite key provisions through the regulatory state."
That last point deserves serious weight. Bills don't just govern under the administration that passes them. They become tools for every administration that follows. Handing broad regulatory discretion to a future Treasury Secretary is exactly how conservative policy victories get dismantled by executive fiat.
A spokesperson for Sen. Lee offered a similarly grounded explanation, stating the senator voted his convictions because the bill "expanded HUD programs eliminated in previous budget requests by President Trump, directed taxpayer dollars to progressive advocacy networks, pushed the federal government further into local zoning and land-use decisions, and failed to deliver the extensive reforms federal public housing programs require."
Sen. Paul called the bill "the surrender of property and contract rights." Sen. Johnson's spokeswoman stated flatly that neither the senator nor anyone in his office was contacted by the donors in question, and that his opposition centered on the government "imposing itself into the marketplace and artificially reducing the demand, the number of buyers, and the price homeowners can obtain when they sell their homes."
Young's office pointed to his own legislative alternative, the Identifying Regulatory Barriers to Housing Supply Act, suggesting his objection was less about killing reform than pursuing a different path to the same goal.
None of this proves that money played no role. But it does prove the "no" votes weren't intellectually empty.
Here's the tension at the heart of this story: campaign donation data can tell you who gave and how much, but it cannot tell you why a senator voted the way he did. Correlation and causation remain different things, no matter how satisfying the implication.
Consider the numbers more carefully:
Tuberville's office indicated his vote wasn't even about the bill's substance. He believed the Senate should prioritize passing the SAVE America Act, an unrelated Republican voter ID bill, before turning to housing. That's a procedural objection, not a policy one.
And then there's Schatz, the only Democrat on the list, who had previously told lawmakers that the institutional investor provisions would "demonize people who want to build rental housing for folks." When a Hawaii Democrat and a Kentucky libertarian land on the same side of a vote, the explanation probably isn't as simple as corporate capture.
The populist instinct here is correct at its core. Institutional investors buying single-family homes at scale is a genuine problem. It prices out families, concentrates property ownership, and transforms neighborhoods into revenue streams managed from Manhattan. President Trump has said large banks shouldn't be doing it. Conservatives across the spectrum agree.
But good instincts still require good legislation. A bill that addresses institutional homebuying while simultaneously expanding HUD's reach into local zoning, funding progressive advocacy networks, and handing future administrations rent-control levers is not a clean win. It's a Trojan horse with a populist paint job.
The real question isn't whether these senators took money from interested parties. Every senator takes money from interested parties. The question is whether the bill, as written, actually solves the problem it claims to solve without creating five new ones.
The U.S. House has yet to take up the Senate-passed legislation, and cautionary comments from Rep. Bill Huizenga and House Financial Services Chairman French Hill suggest the bill faces a tough crowd in the lower chamber. Cruz said he remains optimistic that Hill can address his concerns through the conference process.
Conservatives who care about housing affordability, and they should, need to engage with the policy details rather than settling for donation-driven outrage. Tillis and Scott didn't respond to requests for comment, and that silence is fair game for criticism. If you're going to vote against a popular bill, you owe your constituents an explanation.
But the senators who did respond offered arguments rooted in property rights, federalism, and skepticism of bureaucratic expansion. Those aren't talking points manufactured by Blackstone's lobbying shop. They're the same principles conservatives apply to every other policy debate.
The housing crisis is real. The anger at institutional investors is justified. But legislation that smuggles federal zoning authority and progressive spending into a populist wrapper deserves scrutiny, not a free pass because the headline sounds good.
Money in politics is always worth watching. But so is what's actually in the bill.
Two middle school students are dead, and multiple others were airlifted to trauma centers after a school bus carrying more than 20 children on a field trip collided with a Tennessee Department of Transportation dump truck and a passenger vehicle on Friday afternoon.
The crash occurred at around 12 p.m. local time on Highway 70 in Carroll County, Tennessee. The bus was transporting students and staff from Kenwood Middle School in Montgomery County. The Tennessee Highway Patrol confirmed the collision involved three vehicles: the school bus, a TDOT dump truck carrying two adults, and a passenger vehicle with one person inside.
Five adults and more than 20 students were on board the bus. Nine air ambulance helicopters responded to the scene. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.
The Tennessee Highway Patrol described the crash as "serious," a clinical word that barely touches what unfolded on that rural highway. THP Major Travis Plotzer confirmed the passenger counts at a press conference on March 27. The Carroll County Sheriff's Office, Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, and several other law enforcement and emergency medical teams also responded, as People reports.
A THP spokesperson shared a statement with PEOPLE that captured the gravity of the moment:
"Our hearts are with the families impacted by this devastating loss. This is every parent's worst nightmare, and it has shaken our close communities."
The spokesperson also acknowledged the emergency response, saying the agency was "grateful to the first responders, EMS, and flight crews whose quick actions helped save lives."
Nineteen patients were treated at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Carroll County, according to WSMV 4 Nashville. Four pediatric patients were taken to Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville. A Vanderbilt Health spokesperson confirmed all four were in stable condition. That is the only good news in this story.
The two children killed were students at Kenwood Middle School. Their names and ages have not been made public. The identities of others involved in the crash also remain unreleased.
There is no political angle to the death of a child on a school bus. There is no partisan lesson. Some parents sent their kids on a field trip on Friday morning and will never hold them again. That fact requires no editorializing. It requires silence, and then it requires answers.
The Clarksville-Montgomery County School System released a statement that did not attempt to soften the blow:
"Our hearts are shattered at the tragic loss of two young lives."
CMCSS added that the Kenwood Middle community "will need our continued support" and pledged to "share opportunities to assist families as details are confirmed."
Montgomery County Mayor Wes Golden posted a statement on Facebook that carried the tone of a man searching for words he knows don't exist:
"This tragedy has shaken our community, and there are no words that can truly ease the pain of such an unimaginable loss."
"We are keeping every family, student, educator, and first responders in our prayers — asking for comfort, strength, and peace in the days ahead."
The Tennessee Highway Patrol said it is "working to gather all facts before releasing additional details." That investigation will determine what happened on Highway 70, whether it was mechanical failure, driver error, road conditions, or something else entirely. Until those facts emerge, speculation serves no one.
What we know now is that a routine school field trip ended in catastrophe. A bus full of children met a dump truck on a two-lane highway, and the physics of that collision were merciless. Nine helicopters. Nineteen hospital patients. Two children who will never come home.
The investigation will produce a report. The report will produce recommendations. Somewhere in that process, the bureaucratic machinery will do what it does. But none of it will undo what happened at noon on a Friday in Carroll County.
The families of Kenwood Middle School deserve answers. More immediately, they deserve the prayers and support their community has already begun to offer. Mayor Golden closed his statement with four words that said everything left to say:
"To the Kenwood community, we stand with you."
Tiger Woods was arrested Friday after his Range Rover SUV flipped onto its side in Jupiter, Florida, clipping the rear end of a pressure-washing vehicle in a two-vehicle rollover crash shortly after 2 p.m. The Martin County Sheriff's Office said Woods showed signs of impairment at the scene and was arrested after refusing a urine test.
The Daily Mail reported that neither Woods nor the driver of the other vehicle was injured. Woods was alone in his car and crawled out of the passenger side door. He will remain behind bars for at least eight hours, according to the police department.
President Donald Trump, traveling to Mar-a-Lago just 22 miles from the crash site, broke his silence on the incident after stepping off his limousine. He told reporters plainly:
"There was an accident and that's all I know. Very close friend of mine. He's an amazing person, amazing man. But, some difficulty."
Trump added, "I feel so bad," and then said, "I don't want to talk about it."
The connection between Trump and Woods is not new and not superficial. Trump awarded Woods the Presidential Medal of Freedom during his first term in office. Woods is currently dating Vanessa Trump, the President's former daughter-in-law. The personal ties run deep enough that Trump's visible discomfort in addressing the situation carried its own weight.
Earlier in the week, Trump addressed Woods' status regarding the Masters in an interview on Fox News. He was direct about it:
"I love Tiger, but he won't be there. He'll be there, but he won't be playing in it."
Woods himself had recently said he was "trying" to play in the tournament and planned to attend the Champions Dinner. That prospect now looks far more complicated.
The crash came just days after Woods returned to competitive golf for the first time since 2024. On Tuesday night, he competed at The Golf League in Palm Beach, playing alongside Tom Kim and Max Homa. Their side lost 9-2 to a team featuring Justin Rose, Sahith Theegala, and Tommy Fleetwood.
It was supposed to be a story about a comeback. The golf legend, battling years of physical deterioration, is stepping back onto the competitive stage. That narrative lasted roughly 72 hours.
The facts here are straightforward, and they are serious. A man showed signs of impairment, refused a chemical test, and was arrested at the scene of a rollover crash in broad daylight. The Martin County Sheriff's Office laid that out publicly. There is no ambiguity to spin.
Woods has faced this kind of moment before, and the pattern is familiar to anyone paying attention. The public sympathy, the carefully worded statements from representatives, and the rehabilitation tour. American celebrity culture has a well-worn playbook for these situations, and it almost always prioritizes brand management over accountability.
What matters now is whether this gets treated like what it is: a man who allegedly drove impaired in the middle of the afternoon on a public road where other people were present. The driver of the pressure-washing vehicle walked away uninjured. That outcome is luck, not mitigation.
Trump's restraint in his remarks was notable. He acknowledged the friendship, expressed sympathy, and declined to elaborate. That is what loyalty looks like when the facts are still settling. It is also, frankly, what more public figures should do in the first hours after an incident like this: say less, not more.
But sympathy from a friend and accountability from the justice system are not mutually exclusive. Woods crawled out of a flipped SUV on a Friday afternoon in Jupiter, Florida. Someone else was on that road. The system should treat him exactly as it would treat anyone else behind the wheel under those circumstances.
Nothing less. Nothing more.
A Portland jury on Wednesday acquitted Angella Lynn Davis, the 47-year-old Vernonia, Oregon, woman known as "Crowtifa" for her black bird costume, on charges of second-degree disorderly conduct and offensive physical contact. The charges stemmed from an October confrontation near an Antifa-affiliated encampment adjacent to Portland's Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, where Davis allegedly chased and helped surround independent journalist Nick Sortor while brandishing a stick.
Davis celebrated the verdict outside the courthouse. Her parting words to reporters captured the spirit of the whole affair.
"Um, you two know what I want to say, f*ck ICE."
Sortor, who traveled from Washington, D.C. to document unrest tied to federal immigration enforcement, was less amused.
"This verdict is basically a green light for leftists to attack conservative reporters with complete impunity in Portland. Truly messed up."
The confrontation unfolded in October outside Portland's ICE facility, where Sortor had gone to document protests, according to The Daily Caller. Prosecutors said Davis "aggressively pursued" Sortor, chasing and helping surround him while brandishing a stick. Footage showed her moving in coordination with others. She shouted, "Get the f*ck out of here." Sortor fell to the ground during the encounter.
Fox News reporter Bill Melugin reported that Sortor had been surrounded and verbally threatened by protesters the night before and feared he would be arrested if he defended himself. That fear proved prescient. Sortor was himself briefly arrested that night by Portland police on a disorderly conduct charge. Prosecutors later dropped those charges.
During the incident, Sortor had extinguished an American flag that had been set on fire. He testified at the three-day trial, telling the court he didn't want to escalate.
"I don't ever want to do that, especially when I'm way outnumbered."
Another individual arrested during the same incident, Son Mi Yi, pleaded guilty in November after striking Sortor with an umbrella. Yi agreed to remain at least 300 feet from the ICE facility for one year. So the attack happened. Someone already pleaded guilty to part of it. And yet a jury still acquitted Davis.
Davis' defense attorneys, Anthony Chavez and Benjamin Scissors, did not dispute that a confrontation occurred. Instead, they flipped the script. Chavez called Sortor "an out-of-state provocateur" who came to Portland to "harass" and "doxx" protesters. Scissors criticized Sortor's credibility, portraying him as an online influencer who seeks to take down left-leaning activists. He presented video footage showing Sortor defending himself at other protests in cities such as New Orleans. The defense argued protesters reacted after Sortor filmed them without masks.
A witness aligned with Antifa also testified. Three Portland police officers took the stand. Judge Chanpone P. Sinlapasai presided over the three-day trial.
The defense strategy is worth examining because it reveals something about how Portland's legal culture processes these cases. The argument was not "she didn't do it." The argument was "he deserved it." A journalist with a camera becomes the aggressor. A woman in a bird costume, brandishing a stick, becomes the victim. The presence of a camera, in this framework, constitutes provocation. Filming a protest is recast as harassment. Documenting public behavior is reframed as doxxing.
This is the inversion that has defined Portland's relationship with political violence for years. The people setting flags on fire are exercising their rights. The person who puts out the fire is the provocateur.
None of this happens in a vacuum. Portland has spent years cultivating an ecosystem where left-wing street violence faces minimal legal consequence. Charges get dropped. Juries acquit. Prosecutors tread carefully. The message filters down: if you wear the right costume and target the right people, the system will look the other way.
Consider the full picture of this single incident:
Sortor got arrested. His attacker got acquitted. The person who actually pleaded guilty to striking him received nothing more than a requirement to stay 300 feet from the ICE facility for a year. That's the Portland justice system working exactly as designed.
Sortor has said he plans to sue the City of Portland for wrongful arrest. Good. Civil litigation may be the only accountability mechanism left in a city where the criminal justice system has made its sympathies clear.
The broader concern extends well beyond one journalist and one woman in a crow costume. When a legal system consistently fails to protect members of the press from political violence, it sends a signal to every reporter considering whether to cover the next protest, the next encampment, the next confrontation. That signal is simple: stay away, or accept the consequences. The people who chased Nick Sortor understood that. Now a jury has confirmed it.
Andrea Delmastro, Italy's justice undersecretary and a member of Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy party, resigned Tuesday after revelations that he held a stake in a Rome restaurant linked to the mafia. He had been a business partner with the daughter of Andrea Caroccia, a man convicted of ties to the Camorra, the Naples-based organized crime syndicate.
Delmastro was not the only one to go. Giusi Bartolozzi, the justice ministry's chief of staff, also stepped down. Prime Minister Meloni accepted both resignations and then called on tourism minister Daniela Santanche "to make the same choice." By Wednesday evening, Santanche's resignation was confirmed.
Three officials out in two days. That is not a government in crisis. That is a leader who cleans house.
According to Sky News, Delmastro says he sold his stake as soon as he learned his 18-year-old business partner's father had been linked to the Camorra. The problem is that a 2023 photo later surfaced showing Delmastro alongside Caroccia himself, suggesting the relationship between the two men extended beyond any arm's-length transaction.
It also came to light that Delmastro never disclosed his stake to parliament. For a man serving as justice undersecretary, the irony writes itself.
Delmastro offered a statement on his way out:
"Although I did nothing wrong, I made an error of judgment, which I corrected as soon as I became aware of it. I take responsibility for that."
He also insisted he had "always fought crime and achieved concrete, important results." Perhaps so. But the concrete result that matters right now is the photo, the undisclosed stake, and the resignation.
Bartolozzi's departure carries a different flavor. She had controversially urged voters to back a referendum to reform Italy's judiciary, telling them the reform would help the country "get rid of" a judiciary she described as a "firing squad." The referendum failed on Monday, with 54% of Italians rejecting the proposal.
When you stake your credibility on a public campaign, and the public says no, the political math gets unforgiving fast. Bartolozzi's exit was less about scandal and more about a mandate that never materialized.
For Meloni's right-wing coalition, the referendum result marked the first significant political defeat since taking power. Meloni and Justice Minister Carlo Nordio have resisted calls to resign over the loss, and rightly so. A single referendum defeat is a setback, not a collapse. But it did expose the limits of the government's ability to push structural reform through direct popular appeal, and it created the political oxygen that made the Delmastro revelations land harder than they otherwise might have.
Every government faces moments like this. What separates the serious from the doomed is the speed and clarity of the response.
Meloni did not equivocate. She did not launch a months-long internal review. She did not hire consultants to manage the optics. She accepted two resignations, publicly pressured a third official to follow, and had the matter resolved within 48 hours.
Compare that to the standard playbook on the left, where scandal is met with defiance, defiance is repackaged as principle, and the embattled official remains in place until the news cycle moves on. The contrast is instructive. When your stated mission is law and order, a justice undersecretary with undisclosed mafia-adjacent business ties is not a complication you can tolerate. Meloni did not try to tolerate it.
The coalition faces real headwinds. The judiciary reform push stalled at the ballot box. Three officials are gone in the span of a week. The Italian press will treat this as evidence of institutional rot rather than institutional accountability, because that is what the press does.
But the facts tell a simpler story. An official's past caught up with him. His boss acted. The official left. In a political era defined by leaders who cling to power past the point of credibility, that sequence is rarer than it should be.
Meloni's challenge now is straightforward: fill the gaps with people who do not have 2023 photos waiting in someone's archives. The judiciary reform question will return in some form. The coalition's credibility on law enforcement, the very issue that makes the Delmastro story sting, depends on the next appointments being clean.
Three resignations in two days bought Meloni something more valuable than a news cycle. It bought the right to say she means it.
Democrat Brian Nathan, a Navy veteran and union leader, defeated Republican state Rep. Josie Tomkow on Tuesday to win Florida Senate District 14, a Tampa-area seat that Republicans had comfortably held. The result, called by Decision Desk HQ, hands Democrats a pickup in a district that includes part of Hillsborough County, a county that went for President Trump by 3 points just last year.
The seat was previously held by Jay Collins, now Florida's lieutenant governor, who won it in 2022 by 9 percentage points over Democrat Janet Cruz. Collins vacated the seat after Gov. Ron DeSantis tapped him to serve as his second in command.
That 9-point margin evaporating in a single cycle should command Republican attention in Tallahassee and beyond.
This result lands amid what observers describe as a growing number of Democratic overperformances and flipped seats in recent months. Special elections are imperfect barometers, but they are not meaningless ones. They measure enthusiasm, organization, and which side is showing up when the stakes feel lower and the spotlight is dimmer.
Democrats have been showing up. And in a state that Republicans have spent years turning into a fortress, that matters.
Florida held a handful of other special elections for the state Legislature on Tuesday, The Hill reported. But the Senate District 14 result is the one that stings. A district anchored in a county President Trump carried, previously won by a Republican by nearly double digits, now belongs to a Democrat. No vote totals or margins have been provided, which makes the raw trajectory even harder for Republicans to explain away with turnout excuses.
Republicans have a recurring vulnerability in special elections, and it's not complicated. The GOP coalition, particularly in the Trump era, is built for high-turnout, high-energy general elections. When the former president is on the ballot, Republican voters mobilize. When he isn't, the coalition thins.
Democrats, by contrast, have invested heavily in the kind of ground-level infrastructure that performs in low-turnout environments. Union networks, local organizing, and early-vote operations. Brian Nathan's background as a union leader fits that mold precisely. These are not glamorous operations, but they win seats when the other side stays home.
The lesson is not that Florida is turning blue. It isn't. But Republican dominance in the Sunshine State has been built on years of disciplined candidate recruitment, aggressive campaigning, and a governor who treated every race like it mattered. When that intensity slips, even briefly, the openings appear.
One special election does not rewrite the political map of Florida. Republicans still hold commanding majorities in both chambers of the state Legislature, and the state's rightward shift over the past decade is real and durable. But durable is not the same as automatic.
Democrats will use this win to fuel fundraising pitches and recruit candidates for 2026. They'll frame it as proof that Florida is competitive again. That's mostly spin, but spin works when it's built on an actual result rather than wishful polling.
The smarter Republican response isn't panic. It's attention. Special elections are won and lost on basics: candidate quality, voter contact, and turnout operations. Josie Tomkow was a sitting state representative. She should have had the advantage. The fact that she didn't suggests the GOP apparatus in this district either underestimated the race or failed to execute.
Florida Republicans have the talent, the infrastructure, and the political environment to hold their ground. What they cannot afford is complacency. A 9-point seat doesn't flip because of a national wave. It flips because one side wanted it more on a Tuesday when most voters weren't paying attention.
That's the kind of loss that's entirely preventable, which makes it entirely unacceptable.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson accused the Republican National Committee on Monday of asking the Supreme Court to settle a question that belongs to Congress, as the justices heard oral arguments in Watson v. RNC, a case that could determine whether federal law prohibits states from counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day.
At issue is a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted even if they arrive up to five days late. The RNC argues that federal law setting Election Day preempts that practice. Jackson pushed back hard.
"The worry is that you want this court to decide the case rather than have Congress do it."
The case carries weight beyond Mississippi. A ruling against the state's law could have implications for 13 other states and the District of Columbia with similar provisions. The Court is expected to issue its decision by the end of June, just months ahead of the midterm elections in November.
Jackson built her case around congressional silence, the Washington Examiner reported. She noted that lawmakers are currently considering the Make Elections Great Again Act, associated with Rep. Bryan Steil (R-WI), which would specifically prohibit the counting of late-arriving mail ballots. If existing federal law already does that work, she argued, why would Congress bother drafting new legislation?
"But Congress is today considering an election-related statute that would specifically prohibit this, which means that Congress probably didn't understand its existing legislation to do this."
She also pointed to the fact that Congress has been aware of states counting late-arriving ballots and has not moved to stop it:
"They are obviously aware that there are states that are doing this. And they have not spoken to it. They have not specifically precluded it. Now, you say that maybe that's because they assumed that Election Day in the federal statutes that we're examining from 100 years ago does the work."
It's a clever rhetorical maneuver. But it rests on a familiar progressive assumption: that congressional inaction equals congressional approval. That's not how statutory interpretation works. Congress fails to act on countless issues for countless reasons, from political cowardice to simple gridlock. Reading silence as endorsement is a convenient tool when you like the status quo and a dangerous precedent when you don't.
RNC lawyer Paul Clement was direct in response. He argued that the Court isn't legislating by interpreting whether existing law preempts state late-ballot provisions. It's doing what courts do: reading a statute and applying it. The fact that Congress might also act doesn't strip the Court of its interpretive role.
Clement suggested the pending legislation exists precisely because lawmakers don't know how the Court will rule and want a legislative backstop regardless of the outcome. He also noted the obvious:
"However this court decides this case, Congress has the power to revisit it."
That's the key point Jackson's framing obscures. A Supreme Court ruling on what existing law means doesn't close the door to Congress. It opens it. If Congress disagrees with the Court's reading, it can pass a new statute. That's the system working as designed, not the judiciary usurping legislative power.
Strip away the procedural language, and the case is about something simple: does Election Day mean Election Day?
The federal statutes at issue are old, roughly a century old by the Court's own discussion. But their meaning isn't ambiguous because of their age. Election Day was established as a fixed point precisely to create uniformity. The question is whether states can effectively extend that day by five, allowing ballots to trickle in nearly a week after polls close.
For conservatives, the answer has always been clear. Election integrity depends on finality. When the counting window stretches beyond Election Day, it creates opportunities for confusion, disputes, and the kind of post-election chaos that corrodes public trust. Every additional day ballots can arrive is another day results remain unsettled and another day for litigation to multiply.
The left frames this as voter access. But access to what? Every voter in Mississippi had until Election Day to cast a ballot, whether in person or by mail. The question isn't whether voters can participate. It's whether the postal service's delivery timeline should override a federal statutory deadline. Those are very different things.
The justices have heard several election-related cases during the current term. A majority appeared deeply skeptical during Monday's arguments, though the Court's questioning doesn't always predict its ruling.
Jackson's framing fits a broader progressive strategy: when the Court appears likely to rule in a way the left dislikes, recast the decision as judicial overreach. When it rules in their favor, it's principled jurisprudence. The inconsistency is the tell. Progressives celebrated the Court's willingness to find unenumerated rights in the Constitution for decades. Now, when the same institution is asked to read a statute plainly, it's suddenly doing Congress's job.
The Court will rule by the end of June. Whatever it decides, Congress retains the power to act. Clement said as much, and Jackson didn't dispute it. The question is whether the justices will read the law as written or treat congressional silence as a policy preference.
Election Day is either a deadline or a suggestion. The Court gets to decide which.
Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco seized more than 650,000 ballots from California's November 2025 special election this weekend, defying the state's secretary of state, attorney general, and the full weight of Sacramento's political establishment. His stated purpose is straightforward: count the physical ballots and compare the result to the official tally.
Bianco, a Republican candidate for California governor, launched the investigation into the state's special election on Proposition 50 after a third-party organization, the Riverside Election Integrity Team, flagged roughly 45,000 excess votes in the count. California elections officials dismissed the findings. Bianco did not.
Now the sheriff has the ballots. And Sacramento is furious.
At a press conference on Friday, Fox News reported that Bianco framed the investigation in terms that are difficult to argue with on their face:
"This investigation is simple: Physically count the ballots and compare that result with the total votes recorded."
That's it. Count them. See if the numbers match. If they do, the investigation ends, and confidence in the election is strengthened. If they don't, Riverside County has a very serious problem.
California Secretary of State Shirley Weber sees it differently. She has argued that Bianco has no authority to carry out a recount and issued a statement that managed to be both dismissive and patronizing in equal measure:
"The sheriff's assertion that his deputies know how to count is admirable. The fact remains that he and his deputies are not elections officials, and they do not have expertise in election administration."
Weber also claimed Bianco's office "has taken actions based on allegations that lack credible evidence and risk undermining public confidence in our elections." This is a familiar line. Every time someone asks to verify an election result, the mere act of asking is framed as a threat. Not the potential discrepancy. The question itself.
California Attorney General Bob Bonta has been working to shut down the investigation before the ballots can be counted. Bianco said Friday that his office had received multiple letters from Bonta ordering him to cease, according to the Desert Sun.
Bonta's office, in a statement to Fox News Digital on Sunday, cast its intervention as cooperative rather than adversarial:
"We have attempted to work cooperatively with the Sheriff's Office in order to better understand the basis for their investigation, including by reviewing the warrants themselves and by requesting the Sheriff's complete investigative file."
The office added that these requests were made "pursuant to the Attorney General's supervisory authority over county sheriffs." But the tone shifted quickly from cooperative to accusatory:
"During this time, the Sheriff has delayed, stonewalled, and otherwise refused to work with us in good faith. To date, the Sheriff has failed to provide most of the requested documentation. But, what we have been able to learn raises serious questions about the merits of this investigation. We are especially concerned with legal deficiencies in the affidavits underlying the warrants, including the omission of material facts."
So the state's top law enforcement officer is not interested in whether the ballot count is accurate. He is interested in whether the sheriff's paperwork is flawless. There is a word for that kind of priority, and it is not "cooperative."
Bianco, for his part, did not mince words about Bonta. He accused the attorney general of intervening in an active investigation and told Fox News Digital that the outrage over the probe itself was the real red flag:
"The outrage that an investigation was happening was extremely concerning to me, especially coming from someone who claims to be a law enforcement officer that is, I've said this a minimum of a thousand times, he's an embarrassment to law enforcement."
The dispute traces back to findings by the Riverside Election Integrity Team, which identified roughly 45,000 excess votes in the county's election data. Riverside elections official Art Tinoco rejected those findings earlier this month, telling county supervisors that initial intake logs by polling workers are meant to be estimates rather than exact tallies. Tinoco said the final tally was within 0.16% of the original estimate, a difference of 103 votes.
The Election Integrity Team maintains that its math is correct.
There is a simple way to resolve this disagreement. Count the ballots. That is precisely what Bianco intends to do, and precisely what Sacramento's Democratic establishment is fighting to prevent.
Consider the logic at work here. If the count is accurate and the Election Integrity Team's concerns are overblown, a physical recount proves it. The matter is settled. Public confidence is restored. Everyone goes home. The only scenario in which a recount is a threat is one where the numbers don't match.
The pattern is by now unmistakable. In California, election integrity concerns are not treated as questions to be answered. They are treated as heresies to be suppressed. The instinct is never to verify. It is to discredit, delay, and bury.
Weber's response did not say "count them and prove us right." It said the sheriff lacks "expertise in election administration." Bonta's office did not say "we welcome transparency." It demanded the sheriff's investigative files and questioned the legal sufficiency of his warrants. The message from the state is unified: stop looking.
This is the same state where one-party rule has produced a housing crisis, an exodus of businesses, and a budget deficit that would embarrass a mid-sized nation. The idea that California's elections bureaucracy alone operates with flawless precision requires a degree of faith that the state's track record does not support.
Meanwhile, Bianco has clashed on social media with Rep. Eric Swalwell, the Democrat from California who is also running for governor. The gubernatorial dimension adds political charge to an already volatile situation, but it does not change the underlying question: are the numbers right or aren't they?
The standoff is heading somewhere it cannot be papered over. Bianco has the ballots. Bonta wants them back, or at least wants the investigation killed. Weber insists the sheriff has no authority. The sheriff insists he has warrants. Something will give.
If Bianco completes the count and the numbers match the official tally, he will have done Sacramento's job for it. If the numbers don't match, California has a crisis that no press release from the secretary of state's office can dismiss.
Either way, the people of Riverside County will know. And that, apparently, is what Sacramento finds so threatening.
The Department of Justice filed a motion Friday urging a federal judge to dissolve the injunction that prevents the Trump administration from detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia and deporting him to Liberia. The filing, obtained by Fox News Digital, argues that the court's own order is the sole obstacle to his removal, creating a legal contradiction that the government wants resolved by April 17.
The DOJ's argument is straightforward: a court cannot block deportation and then hold the government responsible for the prolonged detention that results from the block.
"The Court cannot both impose the impediment that delays removal and consequently prolongs detention and, at the same time, hold that the resulting detention is impermissibly prolonged."
That framing matters. It exposes a judicial catch-22 that the administration is now forcing into the open.
Abrego Garcia, 31, has become one of the most contested figures in the national immigration debate since March 2025, when the administration deported him to a prison in his native El Salvador. Officials acknowledged the deportation was an "administrative error," given a 2019 court order that prevents his removal to El Salvador. The Supreme Court later ruled the administration had to work to bring him back to the United States, as Fox News reports.
He was returned to the U.S. in June to face human smuggling charges in Tennessee related to a 2022 traffic stop. He has pleaded not guilty and is seeking dismissal of the charges on grounds of vindictive and selective prosecution.
He was released from detention in December after the administration had not obtained the final notice of removal order needed to deport him to a third country. Since then, he has been under the supervision of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Let's be clear about who we're talking about. This is someone the administration claims is a member of MS-13. He immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager. He is facing human smuggling charges. And yet the judicial machinery has spent months ensuring his continued presence in this country.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis last month converted her previous emergency order blocking ICE from immediately detaining Abrego Garcia into a longer-term form of injunctive relief sought by his lawyers. She stated the Trump administration failed to provide the court with any "good reason to believe" it plans to remove him to a third country in the "reasonably foreseeable future."
Xinis did not hold back. She accused the administration of making empty threats about African countries that never agreed to accept him, while ignoring a seemingly available alternative.
"Their persistent refusal to acknowledge Costa Rica as a viable removal option, their threats to send Abrego Garcia to African countries that never agreed to take him, and their misrepresentation to the Court that Liberia is now the only country available to Abrego Garcia, all reflect that whatever purpose was behind his detention, it was not for the 'basic purpose' of timely third-country removal."
Abrego Garcia's attorney said in December that Costa Rica had given him asylum status months ago and that Abrego Garcia himself has said he's willing to be sent there. Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons has said he will instead be removed to Liberia.
The legal specifics here are important, but the broader picture is more telling. A federal judge is functionally shielding an illegal immigrant with alleged gang ties and active human smuggling charges from deportation, then criticizing the government for not deporting him fast enough to the judge's preferred destination.
The DOJ's filing cuts through this neatly:
"Any attempt by this Court to permanently enjoin the government from exercising its authority to remove the Petitioner from this country is in direct contradiction to established judicial norms, and a clear error of law."
The administration is not asking for extraordinary power. It is asking to exercise the ordinary authority that the executive branch holds over immigration enforcement, an authority that has been confirmed by decades of precedent. Deciding where to deport someone is a sovereign function. A district court second-guessing which third country the government selects is a remarkable expansion of judicial reach into foreign affairs and immigration operations.
The administration has asked the judge to rule on its motion by April 17. That deadline will test whether the court is willing to release its grip on a case that has stretched well past the original emergency posture.
Every month this drags on, the case drifts further from anything resembling immigration enforcement and closer to a sustained judicial veto over executive deportation authority. That should concern anyone who thinks the elected branches of government, not individual district judges, should set immigration policy.
Abrego Garcia entered this country illegally. He faces serious criminal charges. A court order created a narrow restriction on where he can be sent. The government is trying to comply with that restriction and still remove him. And somehow, the result is that he walks free under ICE supervision while lawyers argue about whether Liberia or Costa Rica is the appropriate destination.
The system isn't broken by accident. It's performing exactly as certain people designed it to perform.