French police arrested a 19-year-old Afghan migrant after shepherds near Marseille set up motion-activated cameras that captured images of a suspect they say had been sexually assaulting their sheep and goats for months.
The anti-crime brigade of France's national police, known by the acronym BAC, took the man into custody last week in the Bouches-du-Rhône region, Breitbart reported. He appeared in court this week and faces up to three years in prison if convicted of animal cruelty under French law.
The case began in early 2026, when shepherds in the southern French countryside first reported the abuse to local police. Farmers had been finding their animals with legs bound and showing unmistakable signs of sexual assault. The attacks escalated sharply in February and March of this year.
Frustrated by the recurring attacks, local farmers installed motion-activated cameras on their properties. The images captured were clear enough for police to identify a suspect and make an arrest.
French newspaper Le Figaro reported that farmers found their sheep and goats with their legs tied up on several occasions, and that the female animals' genitals were left bloody by the abuse. Ouest-France reported that one attack in February against a lamb left the animal in critical condition.
The details are as grim as they are specific. These were not isolated incidents. The pattern of bound legs, injured animals, and repeated assaults stretched across weeks before farmers decided to invest in surveillance equipment themselves.
That the shepherds, not the police, were the ones who ultimately produced the evidence that led to an arrest tells its own story about the state of rural law enforcement in parts of France.
The suspect's nationality has drawn immediate attention in a country already roiled by debates over migration, crime, and assimilation. France has absorbed large numbers of Afghan migrants in recent years, and cases like this one, however unusual in their specifics, feed a growing public frustration with what many French citizens see as a failure of their government to screen, track, and hold accountable those it admits.
That frustration is hardly unique to France. Across the Atlantic, American communities have grappled with similar failures, where lax enforcement and sanctuary policies have allowed suspects in violent crimes to avoid accountability.
The unnamed Afghan male's immigration status, how he entered France, whether he held legal residency, and whether he had prior contact with law enforcement, remains unreported. Those are precisely the questions that citizens in every Western democracy have learned to ask first and expect answered last.
If convicted, the suspect faces a maximum of three years in prison under French animal cruelty statutes. For farmers who watched their animals suffer over a period of months, that ceiling may feel low. For a case involving repeated, deliberate acts of this nature, the penalty raises a question about whether French law treats such offenses with the seriousness they deserve.
The court appearance this week has not yet produced publicly reported details about the specific charges filed, whether the suspect entered a plea, or whether he remains in custody pending trial. No official police or court statements have been quoted directly.
Across Europe and in the United States, the intersection of immigration and public safety continues to dominate political debate. In the U.S., federal authorities have stepped up arrests of illegal immigrants convicted of violent crimes, including offenses against children.
The common thread in every one of these cases is not ethnicity or religion. It is a system that moves people across borders faster than it can vet them, monitor them, or hold them accountable when something goes wrong.
Key details in this case are still missing. The suspect has not been publicly named. The total number of animals allegedly abused has not been disclosed. The precise farms or municipalities within the Bouches-du-Rhône region have not been identified in public reporting.
Nor is it clear whether French authorities had any prior interaction with the suspect, whether through immigration processing, welfare services, or earlier criminal complaints. Those gaps matter, because they determine whether this was a failure of screening, a failure of enforcement, or both.
In the United States, the consequences of similar policy gaps have played out repeatedly. Sanctuary jurisdictions have faced sharp criticism after illegal immigrants were charged with violent crimes that might have been prevented by cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Even prominent voices on the left have begun to acknowledge the costs. Hillary Clinton herself conceded that recent migration policy was "disruptive and destabilizing", a rare admission from a figure not known for granting ground on immigration.
What stands out most in this case is the role of the victims, not the animals alone, but the farmers and shepherds who depend on them for their livelihood. These are people who reported the crimes, waited for a response, and then took the initiative to gather evidence on their own.
They bought cameras. They set them up. They handed the images to police. And only then did the system act.
That sequence, citizens doing the work that institutions won't, has become a recurring theme wherever migration policy outpaces enforcement capacity. The pattern holds whether the setting is a French sheep pasture or an American border town.
When governments import people faster than they can ensure public safety, ordinary citizens end up bearing the cost, and doing the policing.
A federal grand jury has added armed terrorism and weapons of mass destruction charges against Brian Cole Jr., the Virginia man accused of planting pipe bombs near the Democratic and Republican national committee headquarters in Washington on the night before the Capitol riot. The superseding indictment, filed Tuesday, dramatically raises the legal stakes in a case that already ended a nearly five-year manhunt, and now exposes Cole to a potential life sentence.
The new counts land on top of Cole's original charges of transporting explosives and malicious attempt to use them. The indictment accuses Cole of using weapons of mass destruction against interstate and foreign commerce and of committing terrorism "with the intent to intimidate and coerce" civilian populations, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported.
For anyone who wondered whether the Trump Justice Department would treat the Jan. 5, 2021, pipe bomb case as a serious act of domestic terrorism, rather than letting it gather dust, the answer arrived in the form of a superseding indictment that treats two unexploded devices near party headquarters as what they were: an attempted act of political violence aimed at both sides of the aisle.
The FBI arrested Cole in December at his parents' home, closing one of the most high-profile unsolved cases in recent Washington history. Federal law enforcement used phone records, bank data, and vehicle information to conclude that Cole obtained bomb-making parts and planted two devices in D.C. on the eve of Jan. 6, 2021. The devices did not detonate.
Cole has pleaded not guilty to the original charges and remains in custody pending trial, Newsmax reported. Prosecutors said Cole told federal agents in a subsequent interview that "something just snapped" in his mind and made him want to attack both political parties.
That admission, if a jury believes it, paints a picture not of a partisan actor but of someone who allegedly targeted the institutional infrastructure of both major parties. It is precisely the kind of conduct that falls outside any reasonable reading of President Trump's blanket pardon for most pro-Trump protesters arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Cole's defense team asked the court in March to dismiss his charges, arguing that Trump's pardon for election protesters also applies to his alleged conduct. It is a creative legal theory, and one the Justice Department has flatly rejected.
The DOJ wrote that "on January 20, 2025, the defendant belonged to neither category" covered by the pardon proclamation, "and so the proclamation has no bearing on this case." Prosecutors noted that at the time the pardons were issued, "law enforcement had not identified the defendant, much less charged or convicted him, and the pipe bombs investigation proceeded unabated." The Washington Examiner reported that prosecutors argued Cole is "categorically excluded" from the proclamation because it applied only to individuals charged with offenses tied to conduct at or near the Capitol on Jan. 6, not the placement of explosives the night before.
That distinction matters. The pardon was designed to address the sprawling Jan. 6 prosecutions, cases involving trespass, obstruction, and related conduct at the Capitol. Planting pipe bombs near party headquarters the night before is a different category of alleged criminal conduct entirely. The DOJ under Trump's own appointees is making that case aggressively, which undercuts any suggestion that the administration is soft on political violence when the facts warrant prosecution.
The current leadership at the Department of Justice has shown a willingness to pursue aggressive charging decisions across a range of cases. The department recently announced dozens of indictments in connection with a Minnesota church protest, signaling a broader posture of accountability for politically motivated disruption.
Mario Williams, an attorney for Cole, pushed back hard on the escalation. He told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the government changed how it describes the alleged device, and questioned the timing.
Williams said:
"For no logical reason at all, the government has gone from identifying the alleged device as an explosive to now referring to that same device as a 'weapon of mass destruction,' knowing experts have said this device would not have detonated. It raises serious concerns about how this case is being presented and why that shift is being made now."
Williams also injected race into the dispute. He told the Daily Caller News Foundation:
"The government now wants Brian Cole Jr. (a Black man) to go down in history as the only alleged, accused January 6-related individual to serve not only a jail sentence, but to serve the rest of his life in prison."
The defense attorney's framing raises a question worth examining on its own terms. If the devices truly could not have detonated, as Williams claims unnamed experts have said, does the "weapons of mass destruction" label fit? That is a factual question a jury will eventually weigh. But the legal standard does not require a successful detonation, it requires an attempt to use such a weapon. Prosecutors clearly believe the evidence meets that bar.
As for the racial argument, it is worth noting that Cole is not charged because of who he is but because of what he allegedly did. The case rests on phone records, bank data, vehicle information, and Cole's own reported statements to federal agents. If the evidence holds, the severity of the charges reflects the severity of the alleged conduct, planting explosive devices near the headquarters of both national parties in the nation's capital on the eve of a joint session of Congress.
The broader context of recent DOJ leadership changes has not slowed the department's momentum on this case. If anything, the superseding indictment suggests the career prosecutors and political appointees handling the matter are aligned on treating the pipe bomb plot as a top-tier national security prosecution.
The new indictment accuses Cole of using weapons of mass destruction against interstate and foreign commerce and of committing terrorism "with the intent to intimidate and coerce" civilian populations. The Washington Times reported that prosecutors allege Cole aimed to use the bombs to destroy property as a way to intimidate the population and "to influence the policy and conduct of a unit of government" with an act of terrorism.
If convicted on the weapons charge alone, Cole could face up to life in prison. That is a dramatic leap from the original charges, which carried serious but comparatively lesser penalties.
Prosecutors also allege that Cole continued buying bomb-making materials after laying the explosives, a detail that, if proven, would suggest sustained intent rather than a momentary lapse in judgment. The "something just snapped" line from Cole's interview with federal agents may have been intended to minimize his culpability. The government's evidence of continued purchases tells a different story.
The case also sits against a backdrop of ongoing political and legal disputes over how the Trump administration exercises prosecutorial discretion. Democrats have called for investigations into the attorney general's office on unrelated matters, but the Cole prosecution complicates any narrative that the DOJ is selectively lenient toward defendants linked to the Jan. 6 timeline.
Several details remain unresolved. The specific court handling the indictment and its case number have not been publicly identified in available reporting. The identity of the experts Williams referenced, those who allegedly concluded the devices would not have detonated, is unclear. And the exact date of Cole's December arrest has not been pinpointed beyond the month.
The defense's motion to dismiss, filed in March, is still pending. How the court rules on the pardon argument could set a meaningful precedent for the scope of Trump's Jan. 6 clemency. If the court agrees with prosecutors that the pardon does not cover pre-Jan. 6 bomb-planting, it draws a clear line between protest-related offenses and alleged acts of terrorism.
Meanwhile, Trump himself has weighed the question of preemptive legal protections for allies in other contexts. The Cole case stands as a clear marker: the pardon power has limits, and the DOJ under this administration is willing to enforce them.
Cole sits in jail awaiting trial. The government is not asking for a slap on the wrist. It is asking a jury to call what happened on the night of Jan. 5, 2021, exactly what it looks like, an act of terrorism, and to hold the man accused of it accountable for the rest of his life.
That is not selective prosecution. That is the law doing what it is supposed to do.
President Donald Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo that he is "prepared" to nominate as many as three new Supreme Court justices if vacancies open, a statement that lands amid growing speculation about the possible retirement of Justice Samuel Alito, the 76-year-old George W. Bush appointee who has anchored the court's conservative wing for two decades.
Trump did not name anyone on his shortlist. But he made clear he has one, and that the machinery to move a nominee through the Senate is already in place.
Fox News Digital reported that Trump praised Alito in the interview while acknowledging the possibility that the justice could step down. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, separately told reporters this week that his panel is "fully prepared" to process a nominee before the upcoming midterm elections if needed.
For a president who already secured three Supreme Court appointments during his first term, more than any president since Ronald Reagan, the prospect of additional picks would cement a generational shift in American jurisprudence. The current court sits at a 6-3 conservative majority. One or two more Trump-selected justices could extend that alignment for decades.
Trump framed the number of potential vacancies as uncertain but said he was ready for any scenario. In the interview with Bartiromo, he said:
"In theory, it's two, you just read the statistics, it could be two, could be three, could be one. I don't know. I'm prepared to do it. But when you mention Alito, he is a great justice."
He went further in his praise of Alito, calling him a justice who understands the country and follows the law faithfully.
"Justice Alito is an unbelievable justice, and a brilliant justice, and he gets the country."
Trump also acknowledged the tension between wanting a reliable conservative to stay on the bench and welcoming the chance to name a successor. He described the situation with a hint of humor:
"He does what's right for the country. It's the law, and he goes by it as much as anybody, but he gets to the point. That's good for our country. So... one way you should be, 'Oh, I'm thrilled,' but he's so good."
The comment captures the strategic calculus facing the conservative legal movement. Alito has been a dependable originalist vote. But at 76, after two decades on the bench, the window to replace him with a younger conservative, confirmed by a Republican Senate, is finite. That window could close after the midterms if the Senate majority shifts.
Retirement speculation around Alito intensified last month after the justice became ill at a Federalist Society dinner and was treated for dehydration. A Supreme Court spokesperson said Alito was "thoroughly checked" and returned to the bench the following Monday.
A source close to Alito told Fox News Digital that the justice is in the process of hiring the rest of his clerks for the next term, a signal that typically suggests a justice intends to remain. But the health scare, combined with his age and the political calendar, has kept the speculation alive.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Supreme Court's public affairs office for comment Wednesday evening and had not received a reply. Alito himself has not made any public statement about his plans.
Justice Clarence Thomas, at 77 one year older than Alito and a conservative fixture for more than three decades, has drawn less retirement talk. Thomas holds the record as the second-longest serving justice in history. No credible reporting in the current cycle has placed Thomas near the exit.
Grassley offered reporters two names this week when asked who he would recommend if Alito stepped down: Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah. Both are sitting Republican senators with deep ties to the conservative legal movement.
Trump has previously floated Cruz for a high-court seat, as we reported when the idea first surfaced. But Cruz himself poured cold water on the notion in a statement to Fox News Digital.
"The reason I've said no is that a principled federal judge stays out of policy fights and stays out of political fights.... But I don't want to stay out of policy fights. I don't want to stay out of political fights. I want to be right in the middle of them."
Cruz called having his name in the mix a "high honor" but made clear he prefers the Senate floor to the bench. It is a revealing answer, and an honest one. The Supreme Court demands restraint. Cruz thrives on the fight.
Lee's camp was more diplomatic. A spokesman pointed to a remark Lee made to the Washington Free Beacon, the outlet that also tracked how gun-rights groups rallied behind Trump's 2018 nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, saying Lee wanted Alito "to stay on the court forever." Neither senator appears to be actively campaigning for the seat.
Grassley emphasized that he hoped Alito would not step down. But he made the committee's readiness plain, signaling that Senate Republicans have no intention of being caught flat-footed if a vacancy materializes.
Trump's first term reshaped the court more than any single presidential term in a generation. Three appointments, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, flipped the ideological balance and produced landmark rulings on abortion, gun rights, and executive power. When Trump announced Kavanaugh in a prime-time White House event in 2018, he called the judge the most qualified person in America for the seat. Kavanaugh's confirmation fight previewed the intensity that any future nomination would bring.
By comparison, recent Democratic presidents have had fewer opportunities. Barack Obama and Bill Clinton each appointed two justices. Joe Biden appointed one, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. No Democratic president has matched the pace Trump set during his first four years.
The court's current docket underscores why the composition matters. The justices are weighing major cases on executive authority, including oral arguments on Trump's birthright citizenship executive order. Every seat shapes how those disputes resolve.
Meanwhile, the court's liberal wing has not been shy about dissenting loudly. Justice Sonia Sotomayor has publicly complained about the pace of the administration's emergency appeals, even as the court has repeatedly ruled in Trump's favor on those very motions.
Trump has not disclosed any names from his shortlist. He has not said whether the list overlaps with the Federalist Society, vetted rosters he used during his first term. And Alito has given no public indication that retirement is imminent, or even under consideration.
The clerk-hiring detail, reported through a source close to Alito, cuts against the retirement narrative. Justices who plan to leave typically do not staff up for the next term. But the political logic pushing toward retirement is hard to ignore: a Republican president, a Republican Senate, and a midterm election that could change both.
The broader constitutional landscape adds urgency. Cases involving executive power and birthright citizenship are already testing the court's fault lines. A younger, more reliably originalist replacement for Alito could tip close calls for a generation.
Whether Alito stays or goes, one thing is clear: the White House and the Senate majority are not waiting to find out. They are ready now. That kind of preparation is not speculation. It is governance.
Presidents who reshape the judiciary do not do it by accident. They do it by being ready when the moment arrives, and making sure the Senate is ready, too.
Joe Biden wanted Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on the 2020 ticket, not Kamala Harris. That's the headline finding from a new Atlantic profile of Whitmer, as reported by the New York Post, and it reframes one of the most consequential personnel decisions in recent Democratic politics as something closer to a capitulation than a conviction.
The Atlantic reported Sunday that Biden "wanted it to be Whitmer" when he was selecting a vice presidential candidate during the summer of 2020. Whitmer was being vetted. She flew to Delaware for an in-person meeting with Biden. By August 2020, she was reportedly the first candidate to sit down with him face to face as he weighed his options.
But Biden didn't pick her. A former senior staffer for Whitmer told The Atlantic that "the moment called for a black running mate." Biden chose Harris instead, and the rest, as they say, is a cautionary tale the Democratic Party is still living through.
The profile paints Whitmer as someone who warmed to the idea over time. She wasn't sure about it at first. She reportedly struggled to imagine herself as "a creature of Washington, DC." But she got along well with Biden, and by the time the process was underway, she was prepared to accept.
Whitmer herself confirmed as much in December 2020, telling Fox 2:
"If Joe Biden had called and said, 'I need you to be my partner and be my running mate,' I would have said yes. This election was that important."
That quote, offered just weeks after Biden won the presidency, carries a different weight now. Whitmer was willing. Biden wanted her. And yet the pick went to Harris, not on the merits, not on chemistry, not on governing compatibility, but because of racial politics within the Democratic coalition.
The decision tells you a great deal about how the modern Democratic Party makes its most important choices. Credentials, rapport, and swing-state appeal took a back seat to identity checkboxes. Michigan, a state Biden needed to win and did win, had a popular governor ready to help deliver it. Biden passed.
What followed is now a matter of public record. Harris served as vice president for four years and became the Democratic nominee in 2024 after Biden officially dropped out of the presidential race. The Atlantic reported that Whitmer "never wavered in her support" for Biden until that withdrawal, a loyal soldier to the end, even after being passed over.
Harris, meanwhile, has become a figure of growing frustration within her own party. Democrats have openly expressed irritation with her retreat from the public stage since the 2024 election, raising pointed questions about her political future and relevance.
The contrast between the two women, one who stayed in the arena, one who faded from it, is hard to miss. Whitmer governed Michigan. Harris occupied the vice presidency. The Atlantic now profiles Whitmer as a potential 2028 presidential candidate. Harris, by comparison, faces a far colder reception from her own side.
A former adviser to both Biden and Harris was cited in the reporting, though the adviser was not named. Fox News Digital reached out to both Biden's and Whitmer's offices for comment. Whether either responded was not reported.
The core of this story isn't personal. It's structural. Biden made a vice presidential selection based on what "the moment called for", a phrase that, stripped of its euphemism, means he chose based on race rather than on the candidate he believed was the strongest fit.
That kind of decision-making has consequences that ripple outward. It shapes governance, campaign strategy, and ultimately the credibility of the people holding office. When a president picks his number two not because she's the best person for the job but because she checks the right demographic box, voters notice. And they remember.
The Democratic Party's broader leadership struggles reflect this pattern. Sen. Cory Booker has publicly acknowledged that Democrats "have failed this moment" and called for new party leadership, a remarkable admission from within the ranks.
Meanwhile, veteran Democratic strategists have been grappling with the party's trajectory for years. Obama strategist David Plouffe has said the party still hasn't reckoned with its 2024 failures, failures that trace back, in part, to personnel decisions exactly like this one.
The Atlantic profile positions Whitmer as a serious contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. Whether she runs remains to be seen, but the framing is clear: she's the one who got away in 2020, and her party knows it.
Whitmer campaigned happily for Biden and Harris after being passed over. She didn't sulk. She didn't leak. She governed her state and waited. That kind of discipline is rare in modern politics, and the Atlantic profile reads, in part, as a belated acknowledgment that the Democrats may have made the wrong call.
Harris, for her part, has faced sustained criticism even from friendly quarters. She drew sharp rebukes for skipping a major presidential address and posting a prerecorded video instead, the kind of move that reinforces a perception of political disengagement.
Early hypothetical polling for 2028 has not been kind to Harris either. One Yale-affiliated poll found that Mark Cuban outpaced Harris in a hypothetical matchup against Republicans, a striking data point for a former vice president and recent presidential nominee.
Biden's 2020 VP selection process has been discussed before, but the Atlantic profile puts the sharpest point on it yet. The man at the top of the ticket wanted one person and chose another, not because of qualifications, not because of policy alignment, not because of electoral strategy, but because of pressure rooted in identity politics.
That pressure came from within the Democratic Party itself. It was the party's activist base, its media allies, and its internal power brokers who made clear that Biden's running mate had to be a Black woman. Biden complied. He set aside his own judgment about who would best serve alongside him in the White House.
The result was a vice presidency widely regarded, even by Democrats, as underwhelming, followed by a 2024 presidential campaign that ended in defeat. Whitmer, the candidate Biden actually wanted, spent those years running a major swing state and building the kind of executive record that presidential campaigns are made of.
None of this is hindsight. The information was available in real time. Whitmer confirmed publicly in December 2020 that she had been vetted and was ready to serve. The party knew what it was passing up. It chose ideology over pragmatism anyway.
When a party elevates symbolism over substance in its most important personnel decisions, the results tend to speak for themselves. They certainly have here.
Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped his California gubernatorial bid late Sunday under pressure from his own party's leadership, but the same Democrats who pushed him out of that race have gone conspicuously quiet on the harder question: Should the 45-year-old congressman keep his seat in the House?
At least four women have accused Swalwell of sexual misconduct. The House Ethics Committee announced Monday that it will investigate the accusations. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office is separately probing at least one allegation involving a former staffer in New York, reportedly from 2024. One woman was allegedly left bleeding and bruised.
And yet the top three House Democrats, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Minority Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California, have not called for Swalwell's expulsion or even his resignation from Congress. Their offices did not respond to fresh requests for comment from the New York Post, instead referring reporters back to a joint statement issued last week.
That statement asked for a "swift investigation" and told Swalwell to quit the governor's race. It said nothing about quitting Congress.
The joint statement from Jeffries, Clark, and Aguilar read in part:
"This is unacceptable of anyone, certainly not an elected official, and must be taken seriously. We commend the courageous women for sharing their experiences."
The leaders also called "for a swift investigation into these incidents and for the Congressman to immediately end his campaign to be California's next Governor." Swalwell complied with the campaign demand late Sunday. But the statement drew a careful line: drop the governor's race, not the House seat.
Nancy Pelosi, the top California Democrat in the House and a figure whose political moves always draw attention, also did not respond to the Post's request for comment on possible expulsion. Pelosi, who has faced her own share of public backlash recently, has offered no public position on whether Swalwell should remain in Congress.
A Democratic aide described the situation more bluntly, telling the Post there is "real hesitation" among party leaders to push for expulsion. The aide predicted Swalwell "either resigns or is expelled within a week or so", but that prediction came from a staffer, not from leadership.
Swalwell, a married father of three, has tried to split the difference in his public statements. He pledged to "fight the serious, false allegations" while simultaneously apologizing for "mistakes in judgment I've made in my past." Those two positions sit uneasily together. If the allegations are false, what mistakes in judgment require an apology?
The California Democrat had already been in political hot water before these accusations surfaced. He was previously scrutinized for his interactions with Christine Fang, described as a suspected Chinese spy. That episode raised questions about Swalwell's judgment but did not cost him his seat or his committee assignments in the long run.
Now the stakes are higher. Multiple women have come forward. A district attorney's office is involved. And the House Ethics Committee has opened a formal investigation.
In the House's 237-year history, only six lawmakers have been expelled. The most recent was former Rep. George Santos, the Long Island Republican removed in 2023. That precedent looms over the current debate, and it applies to more than just Swalwell.
The House is currently wrestling over whether to expel four members: Swalwell, Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of New Jersey, and Rep. Cory Mills of Florida. Gonzales, also 45, has been accused of making sexual advances on a subordinate and pestering another staffer for sex several years earlier while married. Cherfilus-McCormick and Mills have long faced scrutiny from the House Ethics Committee for various issues.
Pelosi's silence on Swalwell is notable given her long history of wielding political influence within the California delegation and the broader Democratic caucus. She has been active in backing candidates in competitive primaries and shaping the party's direction, yet on this question she has offered nothing.
Democrats built a significant portion of their political brand in recent years around the idea that accusations of sexual misconduct against public officials must be believed, investigated, and acted upon swiftly. The party pressured former Sen. Al Franken out of office. It made "believe women" a rallying cry.
Now, with one of their own facing accusations from at least four women, with a criminal investigation underway in Manhattan and a formal ethics probe launched, the party's leaders have limited their response to telling Swalwell to stop running for governor. That is the political equivalent of asking someone to return a library book while the building is on fire.
The contrast with the Santos expulsion is instructive. Republicans voted to remove Santos from their own ranks in 2023. Democrats cheered that decision. Now the question is whether Democrats will apply the same standard to Swalwell, or whether "real hesitation" will harden into permanent inaction.
Meanwhile, Pelosi's broader political activity continues apace. She has been endorsing candidates for Congress and making headlines on other fronts, yet she cannot find the words to address whether a colleague accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct should keep his seat.
The ethics investigation announced Monday will proceed on its own timeline. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office investigation adds a criminal dimension that the House process does not carry. Swalwell has signaled he intends to fight the allegations, which means he is unlikely to resign voluntarily.
That puts the decision squarely on Democratic leadership. If Swalwell will not leave on his own, the party must decide whether to push for expulsion, a step that requires a two-thirds vote of the full House. The Democratic aide's prediction of resolution "within a week or so" may prove optimistic if leadership continues to dodge.
The open questions are significant. What specific conduct is the Manhattan DA investigating? What did Democratic leaders know, and when? Will the ethics committee's probe produce findings before political pressure forces a resolution? And will any senior Democrat actually say the word "expulsion" on the record?
So far, the answer to that last question is no. Jeffries, Clark, Aguilar, and Pelosi have all declined to go there. Even as challenges emerge to long-held Democratic seats, the party's leaders seem more concerned with managing the political fallout than with acting on the principles they have loudly claimed to hold.
When Republicans expelled George Santos, Democrats said it proved the system works. Now that system is pointed at one of their own, and the leaders who cheered loudest have gone silent. Principles that only apply to the other party aren't principles. They're tactics.
Two U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers moved into the Arabian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz on Saturday to begin setting conditions for a massive mine-clearing operation, a direct follow-through on President Donald Trump's demand that the critical waterway reopen as a precondition for any ceasefire with Iran.
The USS Frank E. Peterson and USS Michael Murphy are now on station, and U.S. Central Command said additional forces, including underwater drones, will deploy to the strait in the coming days. CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper announced the operation publicly on Saturday.
The mission matters for one simple reason: roughly one-fifth of global energy supplies transit the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel connecting the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. When mines block that passage, the world's energy markets feel it. And right now, the mines are there because Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps put them there.
The New York Times, citing unnamed U.S. officials, reported that IRGC members dropped mines from small boats in the strait in the immediate aftermath of the initial strikes on Iran by Israel and the United States. The paper described the deployment as "haphazardly" executed, a word that carries its own operational risk.
By Friday, reports indicated the American government does not believe the remnants of the regime in Tehran are entirely sure about the location of all the mines its forces dropped. Whether Iran recorded every mine's position, or whether some were deployed in a manner that allowed them to drift, remains unknown.
That uncertainty is the whole problem. A mine whose location is known can be avoided or neutralized. A mine whose location is unknown, or that has drifted from its original position, is a threat to every tanker, cargo vessel, and warship that enters the waterway. The IRGC's reckless deployment turned one of the world's most important shipping lanes into a hazard zone, and the U.S. Navy is now left to clean it up.
Opening the Strait of Hormuz was a key condition laid out by President Trump earlier this week in exchange for a ceasefire. That demand reflected a straightforward calculation: there is no point in halting military operations if the economic chokepoint remains sealed by Iranian ordnance. Trump had previously suspended bombing operations and offered a two-week ceasefire tied specifically to the strait's reopening, making Saturday's naval deployment the operational next step.
On Truth Social Saturday, Trump framed the broader situation in blunt terms:
"The Strait of Hormuz will soon be open, and the empty ships are rushing to the United States to 'load up.' But, if you listen to the Fake News, we're losing!"
In a separate post, the president wrote that "the United States has completely destroyed Iran's Military, including their entire Navy and Air Force, and everything else."
Those claims will be debated. But what cannot be debated is the fact that two American destroyers are now operating in the strait, CENTCOM has publicly committed additional assets including underwater drones, and the Navy, not Iran, is the force moving to restore safe passage for international commerce.
The CENTCOM commander's statement on Saturday was precise and forward-looking. Adm. Brad Cooper said:
"Today, we began the process of establishing a new passage, and we will share this safe pathway with the maritime industry soon to encourage the free flow of commerce."
That language, "share this safe pathway with the maritime industry", signals the Navy intends to chart and clear a verified route through the strait, then publish it for civilian shipping. It is a practical, operational promise, not a political one. The maritime industry needs a lane it can trust, and Cooper is telling them one is coming.
The political backdrop in Washington, meanwhile, has been anything but calm. Some Democratic leaders have used the Iran conflict to escalate attacks on the president's fitness for office, even as the administration pursues both military and diplomatic tracks simultaneously.
While the Navy began mine operations in the strait, American and Iranian negotiators sat down for peace talks in Islamabad on Saturday. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif hosted the discussions at the Serena Hotel.
Vice President JD Vance led the American delegation, joined by White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law. The Iranian delegation was led by Tehran parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. Both delegations met with Sharif.
The dual-track approach, military pressure in the strait, diplomatic engagement in Pakistan, is the kind of posture that previous administrations talked about but rarely executed with this kind of speed. Trump laid down a condition. The Navy moved. And the talks opened the same day. Critics from various quarters have questioned the pace and risks of the Iran confrontation, but the administration is clearly operating on multiple fronts at once.
Mine warfare is slow, dangerous, unglamorous work. It does not produce the dramatic footage of missile strikes or carrier operations, but it is among the most consequential missions a navy can undertake. A single uncleared mine can sink a tanker, shut down a shipping lane, and spike energy prices overnight.
The challenge is compounded by the IRGC's apparently chaotic deployment. Mines dropped without precise records, or dropped in ways that allowed them to drift, create a problem that cannot be solved by satellite imagery or signals intelligence alone. It requires ships, divers, and unmanned systems working methodically through the waterway.
And America's allies may not be in a position to help as much as one might expect. Earlier this year, the United Kingdom retired its fleet of minesweeping boats before its next generation of sweepers were ready to come online. That gap in British capability means the burden falls even more squarely on the U.S. Navy. While institutional debates play out in Washington and the courts, the operational reality in the Persian Gulf is straightforward: American sailors are doing the work.
CENTCOM has promised additional forces in the coming days. The underwater drones will be essential for surveying the seabed and identifying mines that may have shifted position since the IRGC dropped them. The two destroyers currently on station provide force protection, they are not minesweepers, but their presence ensures the clearing operation can proceed without interference.
Several questions remain unanswered. How many mines did the IRGC actually deploy? Does Tehran have any records of their placement? Will Iran cooperate with the clearing effort as part of the ceasefire framework, or will the Navy have to proceed blind? And how long will it take before Adm. Cooper can deliver on his promise to share a safe passage with the maritime industry?
The Islamabad talks add another layer of uncertainty. The composition of both delegations, Vance, Witkoff, and Kushner for the Americans; Ghalibaf for the Iranians, suggests both sides sent figures with real authority. But talks can stall, and mines do not negotiate. The administration is managing multiple high-stakes decisions simultaneously, and the Strait of Hormuz operation is one where failure carries immediate, tangible consequences for global energy markets.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards mined the world's most important oil chokepoint in haste and without apparent care for the consequences. Now American sailors are in the water fixing it. That tells you everything you need to know about who builds order and who destroys it.
Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democratic frontrunner in the California governor's race, faces fresh accusations that he violated federal immigration and employment law by keeping an illegal immigrant from Brazil on his household payroll, and paying her with donor money during a two-year stretch when she had no valid work authorization, according to a pair of complaints reported by the New York Post.
The allegations land at the worst possible moment for Swalwell, whose gubernatorial campaign was already unraveling Friday after four women came forward with sexual-assault and misconduct claims he denies. Together, the nanny complaints and the misconduct accusations have turned what was supposed to be a triumphant statewide bid into a rolling catalog of liability, with a June 2 open primary fast approaching.
A complaint filed Tuesday with the Department of Labor claims that Eric and Brittany Swalwell lied to federal authorities to keep 33-year-old Amanda Barbosa, their live-in Brazilian nanny, working for them after her temporary work authorization was about to expire in 2022. A separate complaint filed with the Department of Homeland Security in February, dated Feb. 16, accuses Swalwell of paying Barbosa under the table with campaign funds for roughly two years while she lacked legal permission to work.
Federal Election Commission records paint a clear financial picture. The Post reported that Barbosa received $3,914 in campaign funds in 2021, the year Swalwell first hired her to look after his three children. In 2022, that figure ballooned to $46,930. An additional $52,262 in campaign expenses labeled "childcare" were written off to Swalwell himself.
Then the on-the-books payments stopped, right around the time Barbosa's au pair visa expired in December 2022. They did not resume until 2025, when she received $38,905 in campaign funds. The gap matters. Breitbart reported that social-media photos from 2023 and 2024 were cited in the complaints as evidence Barbosa continued performing childcare duties during the very period she allegedly lacked lawful work authorization.
The DHS complaint spells it out:
"Barbosa appears in numerous social media photos with the Swalwell family throughout 2023 and 2024, indicating continued close association and ongoing childcare responsibilities despite the absence of known lawful work authorization."
Those photos, pulled from Barbosa's since-deleted Facebook account, reportedly showed her caring for the Swalwell children at family events, including the annual White House picnic in both 2023 and 2024. In one, she held the youngest child. Another, from Halloween 2024, showed Barbosa taking the kids trick-or-treating while wearing a Brazil soccer shirt.
With Barbosa's au pair visa winding down in December 2022, Swalwell began the process of sponsoring her for a green card, the Post reported, citing a permanent labor certification application the outlet reviewed. The Department of Labor told the Post that the certification was approved in 2024.
But approval of a labor certification does not retroactively authorize employment during the years the application was pending. The complaint's core charge is that Barbosa kept working, and kept getting paid, off the books, throughout 2023 and 2024 while her immigration status left her without valid work authorization. Her LinkedIn page, according to a screenshot included in the complaints, said she worked as a private childcare provider continuously from 2021 to the present.
Swalwell's entanglement with questions about his own transparency is nothing new. He previously threatened legal action over the release of files related to his ties with a suspected Chinese intelligence operative, even as he had spent years demanding full disclosure from political opponents.
Barbosa arrived in the United States from Rio de Janeiro in January 2021 on an au pair visa. Swalwell hired her that fall. The article describes her enrolling at a community college while the green-card process played out, a detail that raises its own questions about whether off-campus employment was permissible under student visa rules.
The nanny payments sit inside a much larger cloud over Swalwell's campaign spending. Joel Gilbert, the California filmmaker and activist who filed the complaints, told the Post that Swalwell is already under FEC investigation for spending more than $200,000 in campaign funds on personal babysitting.
Gilbert did not mince words:
"It's a brazen disregard for the law. He's harboring and employing an illegal."
The FEC issued a 2022 opinion giving Swalwell the green light to use campaign contributions for overnight childcare, but only if the expenses resulted from travel for campaign events. Whether the payments to Barbosa fell within those narrow bounds is exactly what investigators are now examining. There have been no findings of wrongdoing to date.
The Washington Free Beacon previously reported that FEC disclosures showed Swalwell paid about $17,000 to babysitters from Nov. 14, 2022, through the end of that year, including after Election Day. Kendra Arnold, executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, said at the time that using campaign funds for child care after the election "would be a violation if... they were not directly caused by campaign activity."
The broader pattern of donor-funded personal spending, previously scrutinized over luxury hotels and family payments, only sharpens the question of whether Swalwell treated his campaign treasury as a household checkbook. Eric and Brittany Swalwell had more than $400,000 in combined income, the Post noted, raising the obvious question of why campaign donors were footing the nanny bill at all.
Swalwell called the allegations "absolutely false" and vowed to "fight them with everything I have." His campaign did not respond to the Post's request for comment. Barbosa could not be reached.
Fox News reported that the nanny complaints surfaced as Swalwell was already facing the separate sexual assault and misconduct allegations tied to his gubernatorial campaign. In a video posted Friday, Swalwell addressed those claims directly, calling them "flat-out false." A former staffer alleged a 2024 attack that left her "bruised and bleeding," the Post reported.
The twin crises have battered Swalwell's standing. Online betting odds have shifted toward billionaire progressive Tom Steyer in the California governor's race. Swalwell's own legal entanglements continue to multiply, he recently quietly dropped a lawsuit against FHFA Director Pulte over a mortgage fraud referral, raising further questions about his judgment in picking fights he cannot finish.
Several questions hang over the case. What specific immigration and employment statutes does the government believe were violated? Did Barbosa hold any form of interim work authorization during 2023 and 2024, or was she working entirely without legal permission? And did the Swalwells make false statements on the labor certification application, as the Department of Labor complaint alleges?
The complaints have been filed, but no agency has yet announced an investigation or enforcement action based on them. The FEC inquiry into the broader babysitting spending predates these filings. Whether federal investigators treat the nanny payments as a standalone immigration matter, a campaign-finance violation, or both will shape the legal exposure Swalwell faces heading into the primary.
Meanwhile, a separate court filing has challenged Swalwell's eligibility for the governor's race entirely, another front in a campaign that now seems to be collapsing from every direction at once.
For a congressman who built a national profile lecturing others about accountability and the rule of law, the emerging picture is one of a politician who expected the rules to apply to everyone but himself. Voters in California will get their say on June 2.
A federal judge in Washington ruled Thursday that the Pentagon is obstructing journalists and defying an earlier court order that required the Department of Defense to restore access to credentialed reporters, a finding that sets up a direct clash between the judiciary and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's team over how the military handles the press.
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman ordered Defense officials to comply with his March 20 directive, which had declared the Pentagon's press policy unconstitutional and required the reinstatement of credentials for New York Times reporters and all other journalists who cover the U.S. military from the building. The Hill reported that the Pentagon plans to appeal.
The dispute stretches back to October, when the Pentagon enacted a press policy requiring journalists to sign a pledge not to obtain or use material that wasn't specifically approved by Defense officials, even if the material was unclassified. More than 50 reporters, including from The Hill, refused to sign and were denied press badges as a result.
After Friedman's March 20 ruling struck down that policy, the Pentagon said it would comply. But Hegseth's team then imposed a revised, interim press policy that still kept reporters from working inside the building without an escort. Instead, journalists were directed to a workspace in an annex facility on Pentagon grounds, a facility that, at the time, was not yet prepared.
Attorneys for the New York Times filed a motion challenging the revised rules, calling them an "attempted end-run around this Court's ruling" that "leaves in place provisions that this Court's Order struck."
Friedman agreed. In his Thursday ruling, the judge wrote plainly about what the Pentagon had done:
"The department simply cannot reinstate an unlawful policy under the guise of taking 'new' action and expect the court to look the other way."
He also found that the annex workspace the Pentagon offered reporters was inadequate, describing it as something that "is not even close to as meaningful as the broad access" journalists previously enjoyed inside the building itself.
The broader pattern of leadership changes at the Pentagon under Hegseth has drawn attention for months. He has ordered the removal of the Army's chief spokesman and pushed other senior officials toward the exits as part of a wider institutional overhaul.
Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell pushed back hard on the ruling in a statement to The Hill's partner NewsNation:
"The Department has at all times complied with the Court's Order, it reinstated the PFACs of every journalist identified in the Order and issued a materially revised policy that addressed every concern the Court identified in its March 20 Opinion. The Department remains committed to press access at the Pentagon while fulfilling its statutory obligation to ensure the safe and secure operation of the Pentagon Reservation."
That framing, compliance while maintaining security, is the Pentagon's core argument. And it's not an unreasonable one on its face. The Pentagon is a sensitive facility. Security protocols are legitimate. No serious person disputes that.
But the judge's finding tells a different story. Friedman concluded that the revised policy didn't merely address security concerns; it effectively reimposed restrictions that his earlier order had already declared unconstitutional. Whether or not the Pentagon technically reinstated credentials, the practical effect, reporters barred from the building, shunted to an unfinished annex, unable to work without escorts, amounted to the same restriction the court struck down.
Hegseth has also moved to oust an Army colonel who served under Gen. Mark Milley, part of a series of personnel decisions that have reshaped the Defense Department's internal leadership structure in recent months.
Friedman grounded his ruling in constitutional terms. He wrote that "a primary purpose of the First Amendment is to enable the press to publish what it will and the public to read what it chooses, free of any official proscription."
Times attorney Theodore Boutrous celebrated the decision:
"This ruling powerfully vindicates both the court's authority and the First Amendment's protections of independent journalism."
Here is where conservatives should think carefully. The instinct to cheer when hostile media outlets get pushed back is understandable. The New York Times is not a neutral actor. Its editorial choices and political leanings are well documented. Many Americans, rightly, distrust its coverage.
But the principle at stake is bigger than the Times. The October policy required all credentialed journalists, not just Times reporters, to sign a pledge restricting what information they could even seek, including unclassified material. More than 50 reporters across multiple outlets refused. That's not a targeted response to biased coverage. That's a blanket restriction on how the press operates inside a public building funded by taxpayers.
The friction at the Pentagon extends well beyond press policy. Hegseth forced the Army chief of staff into immediate retirement as part of an accelerating overhaul that has generated pushback from both sides of the aisle.
Parnell confirmed the Pentagon will appeal. That's its right, and the appellate courts may see the security argument differently than Friedman did. The case could ultimately test how far executive authority extends in managing physical access to a military facility when press freedoms are at stake.
But the timeline matters. The original policy went into effect in October. The Times sued in December. Friedman ruled in March. The Pentagon responded with a revised policy that the court found was still noncompliant. Now, in April, Friedman has ruled again, more firmly, and the Pentagon is heading to an appeals court rather than simply opening the doors.
That's six months of litigation over whether reporters can walk into the Pentagon and do their jobs. Six months during which the Defense Department has been found, twice, to have imposed unconstitutional restrictions on press access.
Some of those personnel battles have drawn bipartisan concern. Republicans rallied behind Gen. Randy George after his forced departure, a sign that not all of Hegseth's moves have landed cleanly even within his own party.
Conservatives who want a leaner, more accountable Pentagon, and there are good reasons to want one, should recognize that restricting press access doesn't advance that goal. It undermines it. A Pentagon that can control what reporters see, where they go, and what information they're allowed to seek is a Pentagon that is harder to hold accountable, not easier.
The Defense Department's budget runs into the hundreds of billions. Waste, fraud, and mismanagement don't get exposed by press offices issuing approved statements. They get exposed by reporters walking hallways, reading documents, and asking uncomfortable questions.
If the Pentagon's legal position is sound, the appeals court will say so. But if the department keeps losing in court while insisting it has complied all along, at some point the gap between the claim and the record becomes its own problem.
Accountability doesn't work when the people doing the accounting need permission slips from the people being watched.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) laid out a governing vision on April 6 built on two pillars: higher taxes on top earners and a racial equity framework that explicitly centers city policy on outcomes for "black and brown New Yorkers." The combination amounts to something familiar in American urban politics, a race-conscious political machine dressed in the language of social justice, funded by other people's money.
Mamdani's remarks, delivered as part of what his office called a "Preliminary Racial Equity Plan," did not mince words about who should pay and who should benefit. The mayor cited a yawning wealth gap, median white household wealth in the city exceeding $200,000 versus less than $20,000 for black households, and cast higher taxes as the obvious remedy.
Breitbart News reported on the mayor's remarks and the broader political dynamics at play. What Mamdani described is not merely a budget proposal. It is a framework for redistributing wealth along racial lines, wrapped in the rhetoric of affordability and corporate competitiveness.
The mayor framed the affordability crisis as universal but its effects as racially targeted. In remarks tied to the release of the equity plan, Mamdani stated:
"We know that these effects are not applied evenly: So often it is black and brown New Yorkers who are hit the hardest. This Preliminary Racial Equity Plan is the first in developing a whole-of-government approach to tackling that reality... to solve decades of neglect and discrimination."
That phrase, "whole-of-government approach", deserves attention. It signals not a single program or pilot but a systematic reorientation of city services, hiring, contracting, and spending around racial categories. Mamdani went further, framing the wealth gap as a matter requiring active government correction.
He told listeners:
"The wealth of a median white household in the city is more than $200,000, while that of a black household is less than $20,000... We are reckoning with the long history of racism here and starting to act upon a framework that puts equity right at the center of it."
The statistics are real enough. But the leap from describing a disparity to building an entire governing apparatus around racial categories is a political choice, not an inevitability. And it is a choice with consequences for every New Yorker who does not fit neatly into the mayor's favored demographic boxes.
On the revenue side, Mamdani made no effort to hide his target. He wants higher earners and profitable businesses to foot the bill for expanded city services, services he frames as necessary to keep working- and middle-class residents from fleeing.
"Amidst being in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we already see an exodus of working and middle-class New Yorkers. So I don't have a hesitation in asking those who make the most amount of money in the city or the most profits in the city, to pay a little bit more so that everyone can actually stay in the city."
Notice the framing. The exodus of the middle class is real, and it accelerated under years of progressive governance, rising crime, pandemic lockdowns, and already-high taxes. Mamdani's answer is not to address the policies that drove people out. It is to tax those who remain even more heavily.
He also made a corporate pitch, arguing that sky-high childcare costs, more than $20,000 a year, by his own figure, make it harder for companies to recruit talent. The pattern of Democratic governance in cities like New York has long followed a familiar loop: taxpayers fund the machine, the machine expands, costs rise, and the next round of tax hikes is justified by the problems the last round failed to solve.
Mamdani put the corporate case this way:
"Is also something, not just about justice or the ability for working-class people to live here., is also actually about ensuring that corporations can continue to attract the top talent to the city because in a city where child care costs more than $20,000 a year, I've heard from corporate leaders about how difficult it is for them to attract individuals who would work at their companies but [also] want to raise a family, because you could be making $300,000 a year, and you will feel that $20,000 a year because of the fact that we have allowed for the absence of affordable child care to become reality here in this city."
The logic is circular. The city's cost of living is crushing. The mayor's solution is more government spending. The spending requires more taxes. The taxes raise the cost of doing business. And the cycle continues.
Mamdani's racial equity framework did not escape federal attention. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon responded directly after the mayor's remarks, posting on X: "Sounds fishy/illegal. Will review!"
That is not an idle comment from a minor official. Dhillon sits at the Department of Justice, and her willingness to flag the plan publicly suggests the administration sees potential legal exposure in a city government organizing policy explicitly around race.
Trump's deputies have set up a task force under Vice President JD Vance, and the administration may file lawsuits if Mamdani's race-based policies cross the line into illegal discrimination. The Supreme Court's 2023 decision striking down race-conscious college admissions has already shifted the legal landscape. A city government openly building a "whole-of-government" racial framework invites the kind of scrutiny that Dhillon signaled.
The broader pattern of Democratic officials directing public resources through politically favored channels is not new. What Mamdani adds is the explicit racial architecture, not as a side program, but as the stated organizing principle of city government.
Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told Breitbart News that Mamdani's approach fits a well-worn pattern in American cities where large-scale immigration reshapes the electorate and creates opportunities for ethnic coalition-building.
"When you have large-scale, ongoing immigration, you're going to have this kind of thing. There's no real way around it. No appeal to ethnic neutrality is going to prevent it. You're going to have politicians who are going to appeal to this [ethnic] impulse [because they] see it as a way to build coalitions, and some are going to win elections and do this kind of thing."
Krikorian drew a historical comparison. Tammany Hall dominated New York's Democratic Party from 1854 to 1932. In Boston, Mayor James Curley intermittently ran the city from roughly 1914 to 1950, building a political machine that benefited immigrant Irish voters at the expense of the old Yankee establishment. The mechanics change; the incentive structure does not.
He also noted how the scope of race-based politics has expanded far beyond its original boundaries. When Democratic officials face accountability questions, the defense often leans on identity rather than substance, a pattern Krikorian sees as structurally embedded in the current political landscape.
"Affirmative action, whatever you think of it, was a relatively manageable issue when it applied to 10 percent or so of the population. Now, with the expansion of the 'victim groups,' partly through immigration, and also just sort of [progressive] mission creep, [the race-based politics covers] a large share, certainly in New York City, of the population."
Krikorian offered a counterpoint to the inevitability of ethnic machine politics: assimilation works, but only when immigration pauses long enough to let it happen.
"We have pretty strong assimilationist [cultural] forces that can bring immigrants, and especially their children and grandchildren, into becoming part of the majority population."
He pointed to the period from 1925 to 1965, when Congress sharply restricted immigration and previously distinct ethnic groups, Sicilians, Armenians, and others, gradually became part of mainstream American life. Krikorian noted that his own Armenian cousins in California own houses that still carry old restrictive covenants against selling to Armenians. "They're now seen as Anglos," he said.
The point is not that discrimination was acceptable. It is that time, cultural integration, and reduced immigration flows allowed groups once treated as outsiders to become insiders, not through government-mandated racial frameworks, but through the ordinary process of becoming American. That process is precisely what ethnic machine politics works to prevent, because assimilated voters are harder to organize along racial lines.
Krikorian argued that Trump has shown this dynamic in action, successfully appealing to Hispanic legal immigrants as Americans rather than as members of a separate ethnic bloc. That, he said, is what Democrats fear most, "that the people they pretend to represent will just kind of shrug [off ethnic politics] and become Americans."
What Mamdani is building in New York is not subtle. He has told the city, in plain language, that he intends to organize government around racial categories, raise taxes on high earners to fund the project, and frame the entire effort as a matter of historical justice. The growing scrutiny of Democratic officials who blur the line between public service and political self-dealing makes the timing particularly notable.
The mayor's office released the equity plan through official city channels, with transcripts posted on the NYC Mayor's Office website. This is not back-room dealing. It is announced policy, which makes the legal and political questions all the more pointed.
No specific tax rate or legislative vehicle has been identified. No lawsuits have been filed yet. But the trajectory is clear: a mayor who sees racial categories as the organizing principle of city government, funded by taxpayers who are already leaving, defended by a political coalition built on identity rather than shared civic interest.
Boston's political machine is being rebuilt by Michelle Wu along similar lines, and the pattern extends to Democratic power brokers across the country who use government authority to reward favored constituencies while demanding that everyone else pay the freight.
New Yorkers who still believe in colorblind governance, manageable taxes, and a city that works for everyone, not just the mayor's preferred demographic coalition, should pay close attention. The machine is being assembled in broad daylight. The only question is whether anyone will stop it before the bill comes due.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday urged members of President Trump's Cabinet to strip him of his powers under the 25th Amendment, citing his remarks about wiping out Iran's civilization. The California Democrat posted her demand on X, escalating a pattern of confrontation she first attempted during Trump's first term, and one that carries no more constitutional plausibility now than it did then.
Pelosi framed the call as a matter of national safety. In a post on her SpeakerPelosi account, she wrote:
"Donald Trump's instability is more clear and dangerous than ever."
She followed that with a second demand aimed at congressional Republicans:
"If the Cabinet is not willing to invoke the 25th Amendment and restore sanity, Republicans must reconvene the Congress to end this war."
The remarks that triggered Pelosi's outburst centered on Trump's threat to wipe out a "whole civilization" if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened. House Democrats had warned that the president's plans to bomb infrastructure in Iran could constitute war crimes if carried out. But Pelosi went further than most of her colleagues, reaching for the most dramatic constitutional remedy available, one that requires the vice president and a majority of the sitting Cabinet to declare a president "unable to discharge" his powers and duties.
The 25th Amendment was designed for genuine incapacity, a president in surgery, in a coma, or otherwise physically unable to govern. Pelosi's use of it as a political weapon is not new. She previously pushed for the same remedy during Trump's first term, touting support from other lawmakers at the time. That effort went nowhere.
This time, the odds are even longer. There are no signs that anything resembling a 25th Amendment effort is underway inside Trump's Cabinet. The vice president would need to agree, and a majority of Cabinet secretaries would need to sign on. Even then, if the president objected, which any functioning president would, Congress would have to vote, and a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate would be required to sustain the removal of presidential powers.
In a Congress where Republicans hold the majority in both chambers, that threshold is not a long shot. It is a fantasy. Pelosi knows this. The call is not a serious constitutional proposal. It is a messaging exercise, and one that tells voters more about the Democratic opposition's posture than about any genuine threat to the presidency.
Pelosi's recent public appearances have drawn their own share of criticism, but she remains one of the most visible figures in the Democratic caucus and clearly intends to stay that way.
The backdrop to Pelosi's demand is an active and fast-moving standoff with Iran. Trump set an 8 p.m. EDT deadline on Tuesday. Around midday, Pakistan asked for an extension on that deadline. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president had received Pakistan's proposal and would respond soon.
It was not clear as of Tuesday evening whether Trump would proceed with more intense bombing of Iran. The uncertainty itself has fueled anxiety on Capitol Hill, not just among Democrats, but among some Republican lawmakers as well. GOP members of Congress have been growing more anxious over the Iran conflict, though they appear unlikely to force Trump's hand.
That anxiety is real, and it deserves honest debate. But honest debate is not what Pelosi offered. She offered a constitutional shortcut that does not exist, wrapped in language designed for cable news and social media engagement. The 25th Amendment is not a vote of no confidence. It is not a policy disagreement tool. And treating it as one cheapens the document it comes from.
Pelosi has spent the post-speakership phase of her career positioning herself as a senior party voice willing to make the sharpest possible attacks on the Trump administration. She has endorsed candidates and inserted herself into primaries across the country, maintaining influence even without the gavel.
Her willingness to invoke the 25th Amendment, twice, across two different Trump terms, raises a question about whether the Democratic leadership has any tool in its kit besides escalation. When every policy disagreement becomes an existential crisis, the language of genuine crisis loses its meaning.
She is not alone in the tendency. Some Democrats have openly admitted their party has failed the moment and called for new leadership. Whether Pelosi's approach represents that failure or simply illustrates it is a question her own party will eventually have to answer.
Pelosi's fallback demand, that Republicans reconvene Congress to end the Iran conflict, acknowledges, implicitly, that the 25th Amendment gambit is performative. If she believed the Cabinet would act, she would not need a backup plan in the same sentence.
Republican lawmakers face a genuine tension. Some are uneasy about the scope of military action against Iran. But unease is not the same as opposition, and GOP members have shown little appetite for a public break with the president on foreign policy. Occasional bipartisan friction on national security questions has surfaced in recent months, but it has not translated into the kind of organized congressional pushback Pelosi is demanding.
The two-thirds threshold in both chambers makes Pelosi's ask a nonstarter even if a handful of Republicans broke ranks. She is asking for something she knows will not happen, then blaming Republicans for not delivering it.
Meanwhile, Pelosi continues to shape Democratic primary contests behind the scenes, a reminder that her influence operates on multiple tracks at once, some visible, some less so.
For readers unfamiliar with the mechanics: the 25th Amendment allows the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet to transmit a written declaration to Congress stating that the president is unable to discharge his powers and duties. The vice president then immediately assumes acting presidential authority.
If the president disputes the declaration, which he may do by sending his own written statement to Congress, the vice president and Cabinet have four days to reassert their claim. Congress then has 21 days to vote. A two-thirds majority in both chambers is required to keep the president sidelined. Anything short of that, and the president resumes his powers.
The amendment was ratified in 1967, in the shadow of the Kennedy assassination and concerns about presidential succession. It was not designed as a partisan override mechanism. Pelosi's repeated attempts to repurpose it as one reflect a broader Democratic instinct to treat constitutional tools as political levers when the normal democratic process does not deliver the result they want.
There are legitimate debates to be had about the scope of presidential war powers, the proper role of Congress in authorizing military action, and the strategic wisdom of any given foreign policy. Those debates matter. They deserve serious legislators making serious arguments grounded in law and strategy.
What they do not need is a former Speaker reaching for the constitutional equivalent of a fire alarm every time she disagrees with the commander-in-chief. The 25th Amendment is not a policy tool. Treating it as one does not constrain the president. It only reveals how little the opposition has left to offer.