Michigan Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin voted Thursday to keep the Department of Homeland Security in a partial shutdown. By Friday, after a man rammed a vehicle loaded with explosives into a synagogue in her state, she was at a press conference calling DHS "essential" and urging Congress to fund it.
The reversal took less than 24 hours.
DHS identified the deceased suspect as Ayman Mohamed Ghazali, a Lebanese native who became a U.S. citizen in 2016. According to Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard, Ghazali allegedly rammed his vehicle into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, while several explosives sat in the trunk. He then engaged in gunfire with the building's security team, which caused him to die at the scene. The vehicle caught fire after what Bouchard described as "something ignited" inside.
On Thursday, Slotkin stood with her Democratic colleagues and voted to continue the partial DHS shutdown. On Friday, she stood at a press conference and said this:
"Certainly, we need to fund the Department of Homeland Security and we need, in my view, to cut away all the conversation on ICE, which is its own conversation, from all of the core missions at the Department of Homeland Security."
She also praised the department's workforce in Michigan, noting that DHS employees, including CBP personnel, "are on the call and they are doing their jobs." She called them essential workers. She said they're on the job.
All of which was true on Thursday, too, when she voted to keep their agency unfunded.
Slotkin's stated reason for voting against DHS funding traces back to January, the Daily Caller reported. She said in a Jan. 31 statement that she voted against funding DHS because of the events that took place in Minneapolis, Minnesota, referring to the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both shot by immigration enforcement when they protested operations there.
So the logic, as Slotkin presented it, was this: because immigration enforcement actions in Minneapolis resulted in deaths during protests, the correct response was to defund the entire Department of Homeland Security. Not just ICE. Not just the specific unit involved. The whole department, including TSA, CBP, the Secret Service, FEMA, and every other component that falls under that umbrella.
That position held right up until a man with explosives attacked a synagogue in Metro Detroit. Then, suddenly, the department was essential again.
The partial DHS shutdown marks the third time TSA employees have worked without pay in nearly six months. The agency has called on Democrats to end the shutdown, particularly with the spring break travel season threatening lengthy lines at airports across the country.
The Senate has yet to reach a deal on immigration reform. Democrats have demanded that immigration enforcement ditch masks and stop entering private property without a warrant. A Republican staffer told the Daily Caller News Foundation that Senate Republicans will not negotiate any policies that interfere with Immigration and Customs Enforcement's mission.
That's the impasse. Democrats want to handcuff ICE as a condition of funding the rest of DHS. Republicans refuse to trade enforcement capability for a budget deal. Meanwhile, TSA agents screen bags without paychecks and CBP officers patrol borders on IOUs.
Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman was the only member of his party to support the full-year appropriations bill for DHS. One Democrat out of the entire caucus looked at a department responsible for airport security, border enforcement, disaster response, and counterterrorism and decided it was worth funding without preconditions.
One.
This is what happens when a political party treats homeland security as a bargaining chip. Democrats have spent months framing ICE as a rogue agency that needs to be restrained. They've held up funding for the entire department to extract concessions on enforcement tactics. And when someone with a trunk full of explosives attacks a house of worship, the same senators who starved DHS of resources rush to microphones to declare the agency indispensable.
Slotkin's Friday comments are revealing not because they're wrong. DHS is essential. Its employees do critical work. The department does need to be funded. Every word she said at that press conference was correct.
The problem is that all of it was equally correct on Thursday, when she voted the other way.
The attack on Temple Israel was a horror. A man drove a vehicle into a synagogue with explosives in the trunk and opened fire on its security team. That security team stopped him. The fact that this happened in an American suburb, at a place of worship, during what should have been an ordinary day, deserves gravity and sober reflection.
What it should not become is a convenient excuse for a senator to reverse a vote she cast 24 hours earlier and pretend nothing changed. Slotkin didn't discover that DHS matters on Friday. She knew it on Thursday. She just decided other priorities came first.
A synagogue in West Bloomfield changed the political math. It shouldn't have taken that.
An 18-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador who enrolled as a junior at a Virginia high school has been charged with nine counts of assault and battery after allegedly groping 12 female classmates over a period of several months. Israel Flores Ortiz, who is almost 19, was accused of repeatedly creeping up behind students in crowded hallways and grabbing them between the legs at Fairfax High School, located 20 miles outside of Washington, D.C.
Ortiz entered the country illegally in 2024 and was released under a federal government policy during the Biden administration, according to local outlet 7News. He appeared in court on Friday following his arrest on March 7. A Fairfax County judge denied him bail this week after reviewing surveillance video and determining the proposed conditions did not adequately protect the public.
The prosecutors did not oppose his release. The judge overruled them anyway. That detail alone tells you everything about who was taking this seriously and who wasn't.
Parents say Ortiz's behavior had been going on for months before his arrest. The mother of one alleged victim described the pattern in plain terms:
"He just sneakily walked up behind them and put his hand in between their legs."
She made clear this was not an ambiguous contact:
"It was not just a butt smack or a butt grab. It was a groping of a private area. It had been occurring for several months."
Police listed February 25 as the official offense date, but the mother indicated roughly 12 girls had reported the assaults. Principal Georgina Aye sent a letter to parents on March 12, days after Ortiz's arrest, describing the conduct as "inappropriately touching other students" and "touching students' buttocks while they were transitioning in the hallways."
Notice the language. "Inappropriately touching." "Transitioning in the hallways." The principal's letter reads like it was drafted by a liability attorney, not an educator responsible for the safety of teenage girls. A grown man was grabbing children between the legs for months, and the official communication to parents couldn't even describe what happened honestly, as New York Post reports.
Ortiz entered the country illegally in 2024 and was released into the interior under a Biden-era federal policy. He then enrolled as a high school junior despite being nearly 19 years old. Every layer of institutional screening that should have flagged an adult illegal immigrant sitting in classrooms with minors failed to do so, or never existed in the first place.
After his arrest, ICE lodged a detainer seeking custody of Ortiz for deportation. The agency said the Fairfax County Sheriff's Office failed to honor it.
An ICE spokesperson did not mince words:
"Unfortunately, sanctuary politicians like Gov. (Abigail) Spanberger are outlawing cooperation with ICE and choosing to RELEASE criminal illegal aliens from their jails back onto their communities to create more American victims."
"We are calling on Fairfax County to honor our detainer to ensure this violent criminal is removed from our country so he can never claim another victim again."
Fairfax County's refusal to cooperate with ICE is not a passive bureaucratic oversight. It is an active policy choice. Local officials decided that shielding an illegal immigrant charged with serially groping teenage girls from federal immigration enforcement was the moral high ground. That is the logical terminus of sanctuary policy: the people it protects are not the people it claims to protect.
Ortiz faces misdemeanor assault and battery charges, not sexual assault. The maximum penalty is one year in jail. For nine counts. For months of alleged predatory behavior against at least 12 girls.
One parent called the county's response "abysmal" and said officials "attempted to diminish what happened to these girls." That is not an unreasonable reading. When you describe a grown man grabbing minors between the legs as "inappropriately touching" and charge it as simple battery, you are communicating a message to those girls about how seriously the system takes what happened to them.
Fairfax County Public Schools offered the predictable boilerplate in a statement to 7News:
"While Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) is unable to comment on specifics due to federal and state privacy laws, we prioritize student and staff safety and we fully investigate any time someone shares that an incident has occurred at school, or that they do not feel safe at school."
They "prioritize student and staff safety." They "fully investigate." And yet an adult illegal immigrant allegedly groped a dozen girls for months inside their building before anyone was arrested.
Every institution in this story failed in a predictable direction. The Biden administration released Ortiz into the country. The school system enrolled him without catching that a near-19-year-old illegal immigrant had no business in an 11th-grade classroom. The school let the behavior continue for months. The prosecutors didn't oppose bail. The sheriff's office refused to honor the ICE detainer. The principal's letter sanitized what happened.
At no point did any institution prioritize the safety of those 12 girls over the procedural comfort of protecting an illegal immigrant from consequences. Not one flagged his enrollment. Not one acted swiftly on the reports. Not one cooperated with federal authorities after his arrest.
This is what sanctuary policy produces in practice. Not a principled stand for civil liberties, but a cascading series of institutional failures in which every actor defers to the next, and the only people left unprotected are the victims. Twelve teenage girls learned that lesson in the hallways of Fairfax High School.
A Minneapolis health clinic led by Rep. Ilhan Omar's older sister collected millions of dollars in public funding during the congresswoman's time in state and federal office, with Omar herself playing a direct role in securing key appropriations for the facility.
People's Center Clinics & Services, which operates in Minneapolis' Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, received $2.2 million through a 2017 Minnesota capital budget that Omar publicly championed.
She later secured an additional $1 million in congressionally directed federal funding for the facility's upgrades. Omar's sister, Sahra Noor, served as CEO of People's Center from July 2014 until April 2018, a tenure that overlapped with Omar's first term in the Minnesota House of Representatives, which began in January 2017.
The connections between Omar's legislative work and her sister's professional role have drawn renewed scrutiny, alongside long-running allegations surrounding Omar's past marriage.
The numbers tell a straightforward story. People's Center has collected approximately $33 million in grants from the Department of Health and Human Services since 2002. Within that stream of federal dollars, Omar's direct contributions stand out:
Omar celebrated the completion of renovations funded by these appropriations at a 2022 event, appearing alongside Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and state Sen. Omar Fateh. Two years later, in April 2024, the People's Center formally acknowledged Omar's role in securing the $1 million in congressionally directed funding, as KTSA reports.
When questions surfaced about the arrangement, Omar offered a single line of defense. In April 2022, she stated:
"Neither I nor my immediate family has any financial interest in this project."
That claim rests on a narrow reading of "financial interest." Noor served as CEO of the organization that directly benefited from her sister's legislative efforts. Whether or not Omar personally profited, the appearance of a sitting legislator steering public money to an entity run by a sibling is exactly the kind of arrangement that corrodes public trust.
Noor's LinkedIn profile lists her as CEO of People's Center from July 2014 through April 2018. During that window, she signed agreements that expanded the clinic's operations, including a 2015 contract pharmacy arrangement under HHS's 340B Drug Pricing Program with Degdeg's Carepoint Pharmacy. That pharmacy reportedly lost its license in 2017.
After stepping down as CEO, Noor relocated to Africa and launched a healthcare consulting firm in Kenya called Grit Partners. Her husband, Mohamed Keynan, followed a similar trajectory.
Keynan previously held several roles in the Minnesota government before returning to Africa, where he served as chief of staff to then-Somali Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khayre and later as a policy adviser to former Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, widely known as Farmaajo.
The pattern is worth noting. A family occupies positions of influence across Minneapolis politics, a federally funded health clinic, and foreign governments. Public dollars flow. Roles shift. People relocate. And the congresswoman insists there is nothing to see.
In most industries, a leader who directed millions in public funds to an organization run by a close family member would face an ethics inquiry at a minimum.
In Congress, members routinely recuse themselves from votes that touch their personal financial interests. Omar did not recuse. She championed the funding publicly and celebrated the results at a ribbon-cutting event surrounded by fellow Democrats.
No one at that 2022 event appears to have asked the obvious question: Should a congresswoman be steering taxpayer money to a clinic her sister ran? Klobuchar stood beside her. Frey stood beside her. Fateh stood beside her. The Democratic ecosystem in Minneapolis treated the arrangement as unremarkable.
That silence is its own kind of answer.
Omar's defense hinges on the word "financial." She and her immediate family may hold no equity stake in People's Center. But the definition of conflict of interest has never been limited to direct profit.
A sibling's career advancement, an organization's growth under family leadership, the political capital gained from delivering millions to a community institution: these are interests. They may not show up on a financial disclosure form. They show up everywhere else.
Washington is full of politicians who technically follow the rules while violating every principle the rules were written to protect. Omar has built a brand on fighting corruption and demanding accountability from powerful institutions. The standard she applies to others now applies to her.
Millions in public money. A sister at the helm. A pharmacy that lost its license. And a congresswoman who says her family had no interest in any of it. The facts are on the table. The question is whether anyone in a position of oversight will bother to read them.
The Department of Justice filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court to lift a lower court order that blocks the Trump administration from terminating Temporary Protected Status for roughly 350,000 Haitian migrants. The move forces a confrontation over one of the most consequential immigration questions of this presidency: whether the executive branch has the power to end a program that has functioned as indefinite amnesty for decades.
The request, reported by Reuters, targets a decision by a Biden-appointed judge who prevented the administration from following through on its announced plans. The DOJ framed the legal challenge in stark terms, accusing the courts of undermining national sovereignty.
"Again attempting to block major executive-branch policy initiatives in ways that inflict specific harms to the national interest and foreign relations."
That language signals an administration unwilling to let a single district judge dictate the boundaries of immigration enforcement for an entire nation.
Temporary Protected Status was designed to be exactly what its name suggests: temporary. Foreign nationals from countries experiencing armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary conditions receive a shield from deportation and work authorization. The operative word has always been "temporary."
For Haitian nationals, that temporary status has stretched across several decades, Breitbart noted. The federal government has rewarded Haitians, many of whom illegally entered the United States, with rolling extensions that transformed a short-term humanitarian gesture into a permanent residency program that Congress never voted for and no president before Trump has seriously tried to unwind.
In June 2025, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would end TPS amnesty for thousands of Haitian migrants. The policy was clear. The legal authority was grounded in the plain text of the statute. And within weeks, a federal judge stopped it cold.
The Justice Department's filing goes beyond this single case. It identifies a systemic rot in how immigration litigation now operates. The administration argued that the endless legal churn has made governance nearly impossible.
"Unless the court resolves the merits of these challenges, issues that have now been ventilated in courts nationwide, this unsustainable cycle will repeat again and again, spawning more competing rulings and competing views of what to make of this court's interim order."
That sentence describes a judiciary that has effectively seized control of immigration policy from the political branches. District courts in different circuits issue contradictory rulings. Administrations win in one courtroom and lose in another. Nothing resolves. Nothing ends. The status quo, which always favors those already here, wins by default.
The administration put it plainly: the "stop-and-start litigation over TPS terminations has become endemic."
Endemic is the right word. It describes a disease that never fully leaves a population. TPS litigation has become exactly that for the executive branch: a chronic condition that flares every time a president tries to enforce the law as written.
The surface question is narrow: should a judge's order stand while litigation continues? The real question is whether the President of the United States has the authority to end a discretionary immigration program that the statute plainly allows him to end.
If the answer is no, then TPS has effectively become a constitutional right for anyone who receives it. That was never the intent. It was never the law. But it is the practical reality that years of judicial intervention have created.
Every extension, every blocked termination, every nationwide injunction adds another layer of reliance. Migrants build lives. Advocates argue that deportation would be disruptive. Courts weigh equities that were never supposed to enter the calculation. And the program that was meant to last months endures for generations.
This case is about Haitian TPS holders, but the principle extends far beyond Haiti. The administration's ability to manage any temporary immigration program depends on the word "temporary" meaning something. If federal judges can indefinitely prevent termination of a program explicitly designed to be terminated, then the executive branch has lost a core function.
Back in early February, a Biden-appointed judge blocked the Trump administration from terminating TPS for Haitian migrants. That was the opening move. The DOJ's emergency filing at the Supreme Court is a signal that the administration will not accept district courts as the final word on presidential authority over immigration.
Roughly 350,000 people are covered by this single designation. That is not a small humanitarian gesture. That is a mid-sized American city's worth of foreign nationals whose legal status depends entirely on the willingness of one branch of government to act, and the willingness of another to let it.
The Supreme Court now holds that question. The answer will determine whether "temporary" is a policy term or a punchline.
House Speaker Mike Johnson says the federal government's deportation apparatus is shifting gears. In a recent interview, Johnson acknowledged that immigration enforcement drew some blowback from Hispanic and Latino voters who viewed certain actions as "overzealous," and he framed the coming months as a recalibration, not a retreat.
"We got a little hiccup with some of the Hispanic and Latino voters, for certain, because some of the immigration enforcement was viewed to be overzealous," Johnson said. "But here's the good news, we're in a course correction mode right now."
The shift centers on personnel. Johnson pointed to incoming homeland security chief Markwayne Mullen as a steadying hand, while crediting Tom Homan's decades of experience as a stabilizing force already in motion.
Johnson was explicit about what the next chapter looks like at the Department of Homeland Security. According the Breitbart, he praised Mullen's temperament and predicted a smooth confirmation:
"We're going to have a new secretary on Homeland Security. Markwayne Mullen is going to do a great job in that role. I'm sure that he'll be confirmed by the Senate. He's a thoughtful guy. He'll bring a thoughtful approach. [We] have somebody like Tom Homan who has 40 years of experience [in this] field and was decorated by Democrat presidents for his acumen and expertise. He went into Minneapolis and brought calm to the chaos there. That's what you're going to see."
That last line matters. "Brought calm to the chaos" is the framing Republicans want: competence over controversy, order over spectacle. Mullen, for his part, opposes any form of migration amnesty, though he has been ambivalent on his preferred deportation policy. What he inherits is a department under intense scrutiny from both the left and from conservatives who want enforcement executed with precision.
The course correction was also sketched by James Blair, the White House's deputy chief of staff for legislation and political affairs, signaling this isn't freelancing by Johnson. It's coordinated messaging from the top.
Johnson didn't sugarcoat the political reality. Latino voters swung toward the GOP on a constellation of issues: the open border, the cost of living, and the job market. Keeping them means delivering on all of it, not just the enforcement piece.
"I think that Hispanic and Latino voters who came to us came for a number of reasons. They were very animated about the open border and all the negative secondary effects that came from that, but they also concerned about the cost of living and the lack of jobs and all these other things that everyone's concerned about."
This is the tension Republicans have to manage. The voters who elected them want the border secured and illegal immigrants removed. They also want to feel that enforcement is targeted, proportionate, and doesn't sweep up legal residents or naturalized citizens in the process. Those aren't contradictory demands. They're the demands of a serious electorate that expects competence.
And they're very different from what the left wants, which is to use any enforcement friction as proof that enforcement itself is wrong. That argument collapses on contact with the actual voters Johnson is describing: people who fled dysfunction in their home countries and have zero interest in importing it here.
Behind the political maneuvering sits a real economic story that the legacy press largely ignores. A February 10–18 survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found:
Read those numbers again. The ratio has essentially inverted in twelve months. Employers are finding domestic workers, adjusting compensation, and adapting. The sky has not fallen.
A December 2025 report by The Birmingham Group captured the shift in the construction sector:
"The construction industry is experiencing its most dramatic compensation transformation in decades. The current labor shortage is driving unprecedented wage increases across commercial projects. Construction firms report difficulty filling critical positions, with some markets experiencing job opening-to-candidate ratios exceeding 3:1. This imbalance has created a seller's market for skilled workers, enabling significant salary negotiations and competitive pay packages."
For decades, Americans were told that illegal immigrant labor was essential, that crops would rot and buildings wouldn't rise without a permanent underclass working for wages no citizen would accept. What's actually happening is different. Wages are climbing. Employers are competing for workers. The labor market is doing what labor markets do when the supply of cheap, exploitable labor tightens.
One X user captured the populist frustration that drives this realignment with blunt clarity:
"I want the drywallers who loiter around the gas station at 5 am and clog everything up because the cashier can't understand them gone. I want the farmhand who works for $12/hr and no benefits because the taxpayer shells out for his kids' education, health care, and housing. I want them all gone, violent or not. I want my country back."
That's not policy language. It's the sound of a voter who has watched his community change around him while being told he's not allowed to object. The GOP's job is to translate that energy into enforceable law and economic results, not to dismiss it and not to let it curdle into something unproductive.
Johnson tied enforcement policy directly to the broader economic agenda, projecting that tighter labor markets, tax reform, and deregulation would produce results voters can feel in their wallets.
"We're anticipating extraordinary economic growth going into this year. In the midterm all boats will raise. Salaries and wages will go up. You have bigger tax refunds and bigger paychecks, and the average family $10,000 more money in the pocket because of Republican policies. I think these people will see we did what we said we're going to do."
Trump himself offered a characteristically bold vision for what comes after the labor market tightens. Speaking to Breitbart News, he leaned into automation as the long-term answer:
"We're going to need robots … to make our economy run because we do not have enough people. We have to get efficient … we'll probably add to [the existing workforce] through robotically — it's going to be robotically … It's going to be big. Then, somebody is going to have to make the robots. The whole thing, it feeds on itself … we're going to streamline things. We need efficiency."
The logic is straightforward: remove the artificial suppression of wages created by mass illegal immigration, let the market correct itself, and invest in technology to handle the gaps. It's the opposite of the left's preferred model, which is to import an endless stream of cheap labor, subsidize it with taxpayer-funded services, and then call anyone who objects a bigot.
The key distinction in everything Johnson laid out is the difference between adjusting tactics and abandoning the mission. The rule of law still applies. Illegal immigrants who are here unlawfully are still subject to removal. What changes is the tone, the targeting, and the public face of enforcement.
Johnson closed with a line aimed squarely at the voters the GOP is courting:
"We uphold the rule of law, but we do it in a way that honors the dignity of everyone, and they'll understand that our party is with them, cares about them. This is the permanent home where they should be okay."
That's the pitch: a party that enforces the law, grows the economy, and treats legal immigrants as full partners in the American project. Whether the execution matches the rhetoric will determine whether the GOP's gains with Latino voters harden into a durable coalition or evaporate by the midterms.
The Dallas Fed data and rising construction wages suggest the economic argument is already building itself. Now the question is whether Washington can get the politics right without losing its nerve.
The sheriff running the investigation into the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of "Today" show co-host Savannah Guthrie, resigned from his first law enforcement job in 1982 after a string of workplace infractions and was given the choice to step down or be fired.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos left the El Paso Police Department more than four decades ago under circumstances that remained largely buried until now. According to reporting by the Arizona Republic, Nanos accumulated a laundry list of infractions during his time in El Paso, including an allegation that he kicked a suspect in the head so severely the person was hospitalized. He received 37 days of unpaid leave before finally being told to either step down or get canned.
He took the resignation option. Then, apparently, he rewrote the story.
Nanos's publicly posted resume listed him as remaining with the El Paso Police Department until 1984, two years longer than he was actually there. He joined the Pima County Sheriff's Department as a corrections officer in 1984, meaning the inflated dates conveniently closed the gap between an inglorious exit and a fresh start in Arizona.
According to the New York Post, when confronted with the discrepancy, the Pima County Sheriff's Department acknowledged the inaccuracy, calling it and another missed date "clerical errors" that had been corrected. Two years is a generous clerical error. Most clerical errors involve a misplaced digit, not a fabricated timeline that papers over a forced resignation.
Nanos himself was less diplomatic about the scrutiny. When pressed by reporters, he offered this:
"That's your 'urgent' request? You sure you don't want to go back to my high school and ask why I got swats from the principal? Good luck with your hit piece."
That's the lead investigator in a case involving an elderly woman who vanished from her Tucson home on February 1 and has now been missing for over five weeks. The tone is not reassuring.
The resume revelation lands in the middle of an investigation that has already drawn sharp criticism. Nanos has been accused of making confusing and contradictory statements about the Guthrie case. The scene at Nancy Guthrie's home was reportedly left so unsecured that reporters and even pizza deliverymen were able to walk up to the front door. Several "persons of interest" were questioned, but all were cleared.
Five weeks. No arrests. No publicly identified suspects. And the man overseeing it all brushes off questions about his professional history with sarcasm.
None of this means Nanos is incapable of running an investigation. People grow over four decades. His department issued a statement emphasizing exactly that:
"Sheriff Nanos has dedicated more than four decades to law enforcement and public service. Throughout his career, he has demonstrated a steadfast commitment to professionalism, accountability, and the safety of the communities he serves."
The statement continued, asserting that he "continues to lead the department with experience, integrity, and a clear focus on protecting the residents of Pima County." Fair enough. But integrity is a word that sits uncomfortably next to a resume that added two phantom years to a job you were forced out of.
Nanos has been the sheriff of Pima County since 2021 after winning two consecutive elections. He first joined El Paso law enforcement in 1976 and later led the investigation into the 2011 shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords, an attack that left six dead and 13 injured. He received accolades, including "Officer of the Year," during his time in El Paso. The career arc is long enough to contain both genuine accomplishment and the kind of early failures that people move past.
But moving past something and lying about it are different things. A corrected resume is not the same as a clean one. And a sheriff who responds to legitimate questions with dismissiveness during a high-profile missing persons case is inviting exactly the kind of scrutiny he claims to resent.
This is a broader pattern that conservative voters recognize instinctively: the public official who insists on deference while delivering diminishing returns. The credentials are polished. The statements are boilerplate. And the results speak for themselves, or in this case, don't speak at all. When accountability becomes an inconvenience to the people in charge of enforcing it, the system has a credibility problem that no press release can fix.
Nancy Guthrie is still missing. That fact should dwarf every other element of this story. An 84-year-old woman vanished from her home, and over five weeks later, the public has no answers.
The families of missing persons deserve investigators who welcome scrutiny because they have nothing to hide. They deserve transparency, not posturing. They deserve a lead investigator whose first instinct, when asked a hard question, is not to mock the person asking it.
Whatever happened in El Paso in 1982 may be ancient history. But the instinct to obscure, deflect, and rewrite the record is very much present tense.
President Trump will travel to Hebron, Kentucky, on Wednesday to rally support for Ed Gallrein, the former Navy SEAL he endorsed to unseat Rep. Thomas Massie in the state's upcoming Republican primary. Gallrein's campaign confirmed he will be at the event. Massie will not.
The visit marks a rare move by a sitting president: campaigning directly in a fellow Republican's home district to end his career. Hebron sits in Boone County, just south of Cincinnati, squarely inside Massie's turf along the Ohio River. The primary election is May 19th, just a little more than two months away.
Trump will also make a stop in Ohio. White House spokesperson Liz Huston framed the trip in economic terms:
"President Trump will visit the great states of Ohio and Kentucky on Wednesday to tout his economic victories and detail his administration's aggressive, ongoing efforts to lower prices and make America more affordable."
But the Kentucky leg of the trip carries a message that has nothing to do with grocery bills.
Thomas Massie is a seven-term congressman who has refused to support Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill," criticized the president's foreign policy, and accused him of executive overreach on military actions, including operations against drug boats and Iran. Trump has railed against Massie as "the worst Republican," and the frustration has only deepened.
As the New York Post reported, speaking to House Republicans at their retreat at Trump Doral on Monday, Trump didn't name Massie directly but left little mystery about his target:
"We have to get a couple of people on board, which at least one case is virtually impossible. I wonder who that might be, sick person."
A senior administration official was more explicit, telling The Post that Massie's opposition has crossed a line from principled disagreement into something less useful:
"You can have differences, but you have to be constructive. He is not constructive. In fact, he's the Democrats' favorite member."
That last line deserves attention. In a House where margins are razor-thin, a Republican who consistently hands the opposition its talking points and its votes isn't a maverick. He's a liability.
There is a long and honorable tradition of intraparty disagreement in American politics. Nobody expects 100 percent loyalty on every vote. But there is a difference between a member who negotiates behind closed doors and ultimately gets to yes, and one who builds a brand around being the loudest "no" in the room.
Massie has positioned himself as the latter. He has:
To his credit, Massie led the charge on demanding the Justice Department release all its files in the Jeffrey Epstein case. That's a position with broad support on the right. But one good call doesn't erase a pattern of obstruction on the issues that matter most to the GOP agenda right now.
His campaign's response to the Hebron rally was telling: "Congressman Massie will not be attending as he has a previously scheduled official event." Clean, bloodless, and entirely beside the point. The president of the United States is coming to your district to tell your voters you need to go. Whether you attend is not the story.
Ed Gallrein offers the kind of profile that Republican primary voters in a district like this tend to reward: a former Navy SEAL who has praised Trump, his policies, and his handling of the conflict with Iran. Where Massie criticizes, Gallrein supports. Where Massie obstructs, Gallrein signals he'll execute.
That contrast is the entire campaign in miniature. Trump doesn't need members who agree with him privately and grandstand publicly. He needs votes. With the legislative calendar pressing forward and the "Big Beautiful Bill" still in play, every seat matters, and every reliable vote matters more.
Trump told the House Republican retreat that the party's unity is historic:
"The Republican Party has fantastic spirit, the level I don't think has been seen before."
A Wednesday rally in Boone County is how you make sure that spirit translates into results. Massie's district will decide on May 19th whether it wants a congressman who fights the president or one who fights alongside him.
The president just made that choice a whole lot easier to see.
U.S. figure skating star Alysa Liu has pulled out of the world championships in Prague, only days after describing a disturbing encounter with fans at an airport. Liu's name has disappeared from the International Skating Union website for the event scheduled for the Czech Republic, according to Fox News.
The reason for the star skater's withdrawal was not explained.
Last week, Liu wrote in an Instagram story post describing what happened when she landed at the airport.
"So I land at the airport, and there's a crowd waiting at the exit with cameras and things for me to sign."
"All up in my personal space. Someone chased me to my car, bruh. Please do not do that to me."
And then she was gone from the competition roster. No official statement from the ISU. No public explanation from Liu's camp beyond the Instagram post. Just a vanished name on a website and an athlete who has been here before.
This is not the first time Alysa Liu has stepped away from the sport under pressure that had nothing to do with the ice. After her first Olympic appearance in 2022, Liu temporarily retreated from skating entirely. Her father, Arthur, told USA Today at the time that the withdrawal ran deeper than burnout.
"She became really unhappy. She avoided the ice rink at all costs. She's traumatized. She was just traumatized. She was suffering from PTSD, and she wouldn't go near the ice rink."
The backdrop to that 2022 retreat was not just the pressure of Olympic competition. Arthur Liu and his daughter were reportedly targets of Chinese spying during the 2022 Beijing Olympics. That revelation hit the young skater hard. Liu told Fox News at the time how surreal the discovery felt.
"You know what I mean? It's so … unbelievable. You know what I mean, like, that's crazy. Like, imagine finding that out at such a young age, I mean, like, in a weird way, I was like, 'Am I like in some prank show?' Like, is this world real?"
A teenager learning she was surveilled by a foreign government while competing on its soil. That is not a normal occupational hazard for an American athlete. And it left marks that took years to fade.
Despite stepping away from skating in 2022, Liu was back by 2024, Breitbart reported. And in 2025, she became the first American to win at the World Figure Skating Championships in 19 years. Then she headed to the Olympics this year.
That trajectory matters. This is not a skater on the decline looking for an exit. This is an athlete who clawed her way back from genuine psychological distress, reached the pinnacle of her sport, and then pulled out of a major international competition because someone chased her to her car at an airport.
The instinct here is to separate the fan incident from the earlier trauma. Maybe it was just an overzealous autograph seeker. Maybe it was nothing. But for someone who already carries the weight of having been a target of foreign espionage as a minor, "nothing" doesn't register the same way. Context changes the threat calculus. A crowd pressing in on a young woman who knows what it feels like to be watched by people with far worse intentions than getting a signature is not the same experience it would be for someone without that history.
There is a broader question here that tends to get lost when the story is framed as a celebrity reacting to fans. American athletes competing internationally, particularly those with backgrounds that make them targets of foreign intelligence services, operate in an environment where personal security is not guaranteed and often not prioritized.
The Chinese spying allegations from the 2022 Beijing Olympics were serious enough to be reported publicly. Yet there is no indication from the available information that any institutional structure exists to ensure athletes like Liu feel safe when they travel internationally for competition. The ISU has offered no public comment. The apparatus around elite American skating appears to have shrugged.
Liu's withdrawal from Prague is a loss for American figure skating. She earned her place there. She earned it the hard way, through a comeback most athletes never manage. The fact that she is not competing is not a story about a fragile athlete. It is a story about a young woman who has already endured more than most competitors ever face, and who reached a point where the cost of showing up exceeded what she was willing to pay.
President Trump on Saturday pointed the finger squarely at Iran for the destruction of Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School in Minab, an attack that killed over 165 people, mostly children. Asked aboard Air Force One whether U.S. forces were responsible, Trump was unequivocal.
"No, and based on what I've seen, that was done by Iran."
The President added that Iran is "very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions" and that the regime has "no accuracy whatsoever." Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth backed that assessment with a sharper edge, stating plainly: "The only side that targets civilians is Iran."
Neither the United States nor Iran has accepted responsibility for the attack. But the administration's posture is clear: this was Iran's doing, and the investigation will bear that out.
The strike on Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School produced the highest reported civilian death toll since the joint U.S.-Israeli operation began. According to The Associated Press, citing Iranian state media, over 165 people died, the vast majority of them children.
Sources cited by Middle East Eye said the school was struck twice. The second strike killed survivors who had been sheltering in the rubble. That detail alone should command the world's attention, and it demands a serious, transparent investigation into who launched the munitions, as The Hill reports.
Several media outlets, including The Associated Press and Reuters, reported that the explosions were likely caused by U.S. airstrikes. The AP cited experts reviewing satellite imagery. Reuters reported that U.S. military investigators said a U.S. strike likely destroyed the school, though the investigation remains ongoing.
Wes J. Bryant, a former senior adviser on civilian harm at the Pentagon, told The New York Times that the school and nearby buildings were hit with "picture-perfect" targeted strikes but attributed the school's destruction to "target misidentification," suggesting U.S. forces did not realize civilians were inside.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked on Wednesday whether U.S. airstrikes hit the school. Her answer: "Not that we know of." She confirmed the Department of Defense was investigating and accused reporters of falling for Iranian "propaganda."
"So I would caution you from pointing the finger at the United States of America when it comes to targeting civilians, because that's not something these armed forces do."
Hegseth, for his part, acknowledged that the inquiry is active. "We're certainly investigating," he said. But he left no ambiguity about where the administration believes moral culpability lies.
There is an important distinction between what happened operationally and who bears strategic responsibility. Even Bryant's assessment, the most critical analysis cited in reporting, described precision strikes that hit their intended coordinates. If civilian deaths resulted from misidentification of a target, that is a question about intelligence sourcing, not about American forces deliberately targeting children. Iran, which embeds military infrastructure in civilian populations and has spent decades perfecting the art of human shields, understands this distinction perfectly well. It counts on the Western press not to.
The rush to pin this on American forces follows a familiar pattern. Iranian state media produces casualty figures. Western outlets amplify them with minimal independent verification. Reporters then confront U.S. officials with those figures as fact, demanding they accept blame in real time while an investigation is still underway.
This is not journalism. It is a laundering operation for regime propaganda, and every cycle works the same way.
Consider the sourcing chain: Iranian state media provides the death toll. The AP cites Iranian state media. Reporters cite the AP. And suddenly the White House press secretary is being asked to answer for numbers produced by a theocratic regime that executes its own citizens for not wearing hijabs. The same regime that has no free press, no independent coroners, and every incentive to maximize reported casualties for global sympathy.
None of this means the deaths aren't real or that the loss of children isn't horrifying. It is. Over 165 dead, mostly children, is a catastrophe regardless of who is responsible. But grief and accountability are not the same thing, and allowing a terrorist-sponsoring government to dictate the narrative of accountability is a choice the press keeps making.
The President attended the dignified transfer of six U.S. service members killed in Kuwait on March 1. Six Americans came home in flag-draped coffins. That is the reason this operation exists. American men and women died, and the United States responded.
Iran's regime funds, arms, and directs proxy forces across the Middle East. It has done so for decades. When those proxies kill Americans, the United States has every right, and every obligation, to respond with overwhelming force directed at military targets. The question of whether a specific strike hit an unintended civilian site is a serious operational matter that deserves a thorough investigation. It is not, however, an indictment of the mission itself.
The press would like to collapse those two things into one. They want the horror of dead children to retroactively delegitimize the entire campaign. That framing serves Tehran's interests, not America's, and not the truth's.
The Department of Defense investigation is ongoing. If American munitions struck that school due to faulty intelligence or target misidentification, the facts will emerge through that process. The U.S. military, unlike Iran's, investigates its own actions and publishes findings. That distinction matters more than any reporter's gotcha question at a press briefing.
Meanwhile, the regime in Tehran will continue to exploit every civilian death it can, including the ones it causes itself. It has done so in Lebanon, in Yemen, in Iraq, and in Syria. The playbook never changes. Only the credulity of the audience varies.
Over 165 people are dead, most of them children who walked into a school and never walked out. Someone is responsible for that. The administration says it was Iran. The investigation will determine the truth. But the American press might consider, just once, waiting for the facts before delivering Tehran's verdict for them.
Sanford "Sandy" Wernick, the longtime talent manager who helped shape some of the most recognizable names and shows in American entertainment, died Thursday in Rancho Mirage, California. He was 86.
A family representative told The Hollywood Reporter that Wernick passed after a brief illness, surrounded by his family and loved ones. A private service will be held in Palm Desert, followed by a memorial celebration in Los Angeles.
Born on March 22, 1939, in the Bronx, Wernick's biography reads like the kind of American life that doesn't get built anymore. He served in the Army from 1960 to 1962, graduated from NYU, and then did what ambitious young men in mid-century New York did: he went to work.
Before becoming a manager in the 1970s, Wernick worked as an agent, climbing from the mailroom at MCA to vice president of the TV division at ICM. That trajectory alone tells you something about the man. He didn't skip steps. He learned the business from the ground up, in an era when that phrase still meant something.
He eventually became a partner and senior executive vice president at Brillstein Entertainment Partners, a firm whose fingerprints are on a staggering number of projects that shaped American pop culture.
The list of shows Wernick was involved in packaging and producing is not a résumé. It's a cultural inventory:
He co-created and executive-produced Def Comedy Jam. He served as an executive producer on several of Adam Sandler's most iconic films, including Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, The Wedding Singer, and Bulletproof. He also made cameos in several films and TV shows along the way.
His client list ran deep: Lorne Michaels, Rob Schneider, Jeff Ross, Colin Quinn, Peter Falk, Don Mischer, Stan Lathan, and many others. The range alone, from comedy to drama, from live television to film, reveals a manager who understood talent in all its forms, not just the bankable kind.
What stands out about Wernick isn't just the professional success. It's the texture of the life around it.
He spent years as an adjunct professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts' Peter Stark Producing Program, passing along hard-won knowledge to the next generation. He volunteered in the Cedars Sinai emergency room. He liked to golf. He was, according to the source material, a former yo-yo champion.
That last detail is the kind of thing that makes a man real. Not a brand. Not a LinkedIn profile. A person with hobbies and quirks and a life that extended well beyond the deal table.
There's something worth noting in the arc of Wernick's career. He came up through institutions, the Army, NYU, the agency mailroom, and built something durable.
He stayed married to his wife, Barbara, for 64 years. He raised a family. He gave back. In an industry that chews people up and rewards narcissism, Wernick apparently managed to do the work without losing himself in it.
That kind of steadiness is increasingly rare in Hollywood and everywhere else.
Wernick is survived by his wife Barbara, daughter Michele, son Barry, daughter-in-law Jillian, grandson Sammy, sister Joyce, and brother-in-law Jules.
In a town that confuses fame with significance, Sandy Wernick built something that actually mattered: a body of work, a family, and a reputation earned over decades. The Bronx kid who started in the mailroom left behind a legacy that most people in entertainment can only talk about wanting.
He didn't talk about it. He built it.