Katherine Hartley Short, the 42-year-old daughter of comedian Martin Short, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, according to a death certificate obtained by TMZ and released by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health on Tuesday.
The document confirms what had been reported in the days following her Feb. 23 death at her Hollywood Hills home. Katherine, a social worker, was reportedly found behind a locked bedroom door with a note and a gun nearby. Her body was discovered after a close friend called authorities, having not heard from her in 24 hours.
The Los Angeles Fire Department responded to a reported shooting at Katherine's Hollywood Hills address at approximately 6:41 p.m. and confirmed that the death of a female had been reported.
According to the outlet, Katherine has been cremated.
Martin Short and his late wife, Nancy Dolman, adopted Katherine in 1982, as Page Six reported. The couple also adopted two sons, Oliver Patrick, now 39, and Henry Hayter, now 36. Dolman died from cancer in 2010 at the age of 58.
Katherine legally changed her name to Katherine Hartley in 2012. It was reported that she had picked up a service dog in the years leading up to her death to assist with her mental illness.
A neighbor described Katherine to Us Weekly in warm terms:
"Katherine was a private person, but that doesn't mean she wasn't friendly."
The neighbor added that she was "quite outgoing."
The "Only Murders in the Building" star has kept a low profile since his daughter's passing. A representative for Short confirmed the news to Page Six:
"It is with profound grief that we confirm the passing of Katherine Hartley Short."
The family's statement asked for privacy and remembered Katherine for "the light and joy she brought into the world."
Short postponed a series of comedy shows with Steve Martin in the wake of Katherine's death. He was also absent from the SAG Actor Awards 2026 on Sunday night.
There is no political angle here. No policy debate to be won. Sometimes a story simply asks us to sit with the gravity of what happened.
A father lost his daughter. A family that had already buried a wife and mother now carries another loss that no amount of fame or success can soften. Mental illness claimed a young woman who, by all accounts, was trying to get help. She had a service dog. She had a career helping others as a social worker. She had people who loved her.
None of it was enough, and that is the cruelest truth about the crisis of mental health in this country. It does not care about your family name, your support system, or your zip code. It finds people in Hollywood Hills homes and rural towns alike.
Katherine Hartley Short was 42 years old. She deserved more time.
Three people are dead and more than a dozen wounded after a gunman opened fire at a bar scene in Austin on Sunday morning, and the two leading candidates in the Texas Democrat Senate primary have yet to utter the words "Islamic terrorism."
Ndiaga Diagne, 53, carried out the attack wearing a hoodie with the words "property of Allah" emblazoned on the front. Police searching his home with a warrant later discovered an Iranian flag and photos of Islamic leaders. Diagne was shot dead by local police.
Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said her department had invited federal authorities to investigate the attack as a possible act of terrorism:
"We're looking at the totality of this. We see these indicators, we're thinking about events and what's occurring in the country as well. The motives – all of those things, that's what the investigation is about right now."
The shooting came just a day ahead of the Texas Senate primary and in the shadow of strikes carried out by the U.S. and Israel on Saturday that targeted Iran's military leadership and killed its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The timing alone should have sharpened every candidate's focus. Instead, the Democrat frontrunners reached for the same stale playbook they always do.
According to Fox News, James Talarico, one of the two Democrat frontrunners, chose to focus on prayer and gun control. In an interview with MS Now, he turned the tragedy into a sermon against his own voters:
"I believe in the power of prayer. I believe prayer changes lives. But there is something profoundly cynical in asking God to solve a problem we're not willing to solve ourselves."
He followed that by claiming God had "sent lawmakers with commonsense gun safety proposals like universal background checks, red flag laws." Talarico did acknowledge that the U.S. should prevent "dangerous people from entering the country," but spent his airtime doubling down on red flag proposals rather than addressing what the evidence at the crime scene plainly suggested.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who announced her run in the Democrat primary for U.S. Senate on Dec. 8, 2025, took a different but equally evasive route. She warned viewers on TikTok:
"Listen, every time there's some crazy situation like this, black folks sit around and say, 'Oh, I hope they're not black,' because we know that's going to be an additional target on our backs. We know that the immigrant community was probably holding their breath and saying, 'Oh, I hope it wasn't an immigrant.'"
Crockett then pivoted to a familiar statistical claim, asserting that "the vast majority" of mass shooters have been White, male, and homegrown. She did not explain how that insight, even if accurate, would have prevented a 53-year-old man in an "property of Allah" hoodie from killing three people in Austin. She did not address any mention of Islamic terrorism. She did not engage with what the police actually found in the suspect's home.
What she did say was direct enough:
"We need to actually do something about guns. Don't sit there and say that it's the immigrants. Maybe it's your lax laws when it comes to guns."
Neither Talarico's nor Crockett's campaign replied to a request for comment.
Notice the structure. A man wearing Islamic insignia murders three Texans. Police find an Iranian flag in his home. Federal authorities are called in to investigate terrorism. And the Democrat response is to talk about background checks and the racial demographics of mass shooters.
This is not a failure of messaging. It is the messaging. The left has constructed a rhetorical framework in which Islamic terrorism simply cannot be named, because naming it would validate the conservative position on border security, vetting, and immigration enforcement. So they change the subject. Every single time.
Gun control becomes the universal solvent. No matter the motive, no matter the ideology, no matter what is stitched across the killer's chest, the answer is always the same: red flag laws, universal background checks, and a lecture about prayer. The facts of the individual case become irrelevant. The template was written before the bodies were cold.
RNC spokesman Zach Kraft did not mince words:
"Absolutely disgusting stuff. James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett are blaming hardworking Texans who go to church and lawfully own guns, instead of the radical Islamic terrorist who committed this heinous act."
The contrast from the Republican side could not have been sharper. GOP Sen. John Cornyn, speaking with Fox News Digital in San Antonio on Sunday, went straight to the core issue:
"Part of the problem is that the Biden administration, for four years, had open border policies and let who knows what into the country."
Cornyn emphasized that the current challenge is not about new arrivals. President Trump has secured the border. The question now is what to do about those already here and "what happens when people become radicalized."
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, speaking in Waco, acknowledged the difficulty of the problem honestly:
"There's no system that's perfect. If we have immigration, there's going to be no system that's perfect. We do need to do a better job of vetting people, and Congress is going to have to figure out how to do that."
Paxton pointed to the scale of the problem, noting that the burden of illegal immigration has made it harder for law enforcement to keep track of everyone. When millions enter the country outside legal channels, the system strains. That is not a talking point. That is arithmetic.
GOP Senate candidate Rep. Wesley Hunt, a West Point graduate who flew Apache helicopters in combat and is a rising MAGA star in his second term in Congress, was the most direct of all. Speaking Monday night in suburban Houston, Hunt laid the blame squarely where it belongs:
"This is what happened when you had four years of an open border. This is what happens when 20 million people enter your country illegally. You have no idea what they are. This is what happens when you have a derelict of duty at the top of the ticket with leadership. And this is why President Trump, quite frankly, got elected. He got elected because he wanted to fix the immigration system."
While the suspect's specific motives remain under investigation, the material evidence is not ambiguous. The clothing. The flag. The photographs. Federal authorities do not get invited to investigate a bar fight.
The question facing Texas voters on primary day is simple: When the evidence points to Islamic terrorism, do you want a senator who says the words or one who talks about red flag laws?
Talarico and Crockett had every opportunity to address the terrorism indicators, express concern about radicalization, and still advocate for whatever gun policies they believe in. They chose not to. Not because the evidence was unclear, but because their ideological commitments will not permit the conclusion the evidence suggests.
Three Texans are dead. A man wearing "property of Allah" killed them. And two people who want to represent Texas in the United States Senate could not bring themselves to say so.
Dr. Jeff Gunter, who served as President Donald Trump's ambassador to Iceland during his first term, went on offense against Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV) on Breitbart News Saturday, accusing the congresswoman of siding with illegal immigrants over the citizens of her own district and voting against the economic interests of Nevada's workforce.
Gunter, who aims to oust Lee if he becomes the Republican nominee in Nevada's third congressional district after the 2026 midterm elections, didn't mince words with host Matthew Boyle:
"Let's face it, she's flooded and aided and abetted Joe Biden in flooding our country with illegal aliens, up to 20 million people. She did not stand, she's an aider and abetter. She's really just chosen illegal aliens over the American people, over her district, over Nevada CD-3, and that's why she's going to lose."
It's a direct indictment, and Gunter backed it up with a bill-by-bill accounting of Lee's record.
Nevada is a hospitality state. That's not a talking point; it's an economic fact. Roughly twenty-five percent of the state's jobs are tied to the hospitality industry, according to Gunter. Tips and overtime aren't abstractions for these workers. They're the difference between making rent and falling behind.
So what did Susie Lee do? She voted against no tax on tips. She voted against no tax on overtime. She voted against the Big Beautiful Bill, which Gunter described as legislation that "really helps workers."
According to Breitbart, Gunter laid it out plainly:
"She voted against no tax on tips — we're a hospitality state. Twenty-five percent of the jobs are tied to the hospitality industry, and she voted against no tax on tips? She voted against no tax on overtime. She voted against the Big Beautiful Bill, which really helps workers; that's what the bill is about. She's out of touch. She supports illegal immigrants over U.S. citizens."
There's a pattern here that goes beyond any single vote. Democrats, including Lee, refused to stand up for Americans over illegal aliens during the State of the Union. The votes against tax relief for tips and overtime weren't accidents or principled stands on fiscal grounds. They were party-line loyalty tests that came at the direct expense of the workers Lee claims to represent.
A hospitality-state Democrat voting against no tax on tips tells you everything you need to know about whose interests she's actually serving.
Gunter also raised an issue that should concern every voter in Nevada's third district, regardless of party: Lee's financial disclosure record.
The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012 requires public disclosure of stock trading over $1,000 made on behalf of members of Congress or their spouses within 45 days. The law exists because of a bipartisan consensus that congressional insider trading is corruption, full stop.
A 2021 Business Insider report found that Lee failed to properly disclose as much as $3.3 million in financial trades per the STOCK Act.
Three point three million dollars in undisclosed trades. From a sitting member of Congress. Under a law specifically designed to prevent exactly this kind of opacity.
Gunter channeled the frustration of voters who've noticed:
"I've heard some people not call her Susie Lee, but Susie Madoff. How do you like that one? It's really terrible and shameful what she's done to the voters, what she's done to Nevada, and she is here to represent us, but obviously, she has no desire to do that. She just wants to line her pockets, and she must be very comfortable with Susie Madoff."
The STOCK Act didn't materialize out of thin air. In 2011, Breitbart News senior contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer rocked official Washington with his investigative revelations of insider trading by members of Congress. His book, which Slate described and which earned the Joan Shorenstein Barone Award, led to a segment on 60 Minutes and forced real consequences. Then-chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Spencer Bachus (R-AL) announced he would not seek reelection after the book's revelations. The late Andrew Breitbart called on Bachus to resign.
Notice the key detail: that was a Republican. When a Republican was caught, conservatives demanded accountability, and they got it. Bachus stepped aside. The STOCK Act was passed in 2012 as a direct result.
Now apply that standard to Lee. A Business Insider report surfaces $3.3 million in improperly disclosed trades, and she's still in office, still casting votes, still asking Nevada voters for their trust. The accountability that ended a Republican chairman's career apparently doesn't apply when the offender has a D next to her name.
Nevada's third congressional district sits at the intersection of every issue Gunter raised. It's a district full of workers in hospitality and service industries who would have directly benefited from eliminating taxes on tips and overtime. It's a border-adjacent state dealing with the downstream consequences of Biden-era immigration policy. And it's represented by a congresswoman who, by the numbers, failed to disclose millions in stock trades as required by federal law.
Lee voted against her constituents' economic interests on three separate measures. She declined to stand with Americans over illegal aliens. And her financial disclosures don't add up.
Gunter is building a case that Nevada's third deserves better. The facts suggest he doesn't have to exaggerate to make it.
The ink was barely dry on U.S. and Israeli airstrikes against Iran before the progressive left's most predictable voices lined up to denounce the operation. NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom all condemned President Trump on Saturday, calling the strikes "illegal," "unjustified," and "catastrophic."
Not one of them spared a word for the Iranian regime's decades of sponsoring terrorism, pursuing nuclear weapons, or threatening American allies. The target of their outrage was not Tehran. It was the White House.
Ocasio-Cortez accused Trump of "dragging Americans "into a war they did not want, and alleged the president "does not care about the long-term consequences of his actions." She then delivered the sort of sentence designed more for a fundraising email than a foreign policy debate:
"This war is unlawful. It is unnecessary. And it will be catastrophic."
Omar followed the same script, accusing Trump of "unilaterally dragging this nation into an illegal and unjustified war with Iran without congressional authorization, without a clear objective, and without any imminent threat to the United States."
No mention of Iran's nuclear ambitions. No acknowledgment of the threat a nuclear-armed theocracy poses to every American interest in the Middle East. Just the familiar refrain: America is the problem, as New York Post reports.
The most revealing response came from New York's socialist mayor. Mamdani, the Ugandan-born pol who mere days earlier had briefly bonded with Trump over potential Big Apple housing investments during a visit to the White House, pivoted hard on Saturday. His statement read like a press release from an antiwar nonprofit, not the leader of America's largest city:
"Today's military strikes on Iran, carried out by the United States and Israel, mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression."
He continued:
"Bombing cities. Killing civilians. Opening a new theater of war. Americans do not want this. They do not want another war in pursuit of regime change. They want relief from the affordability crisis. They want peace."
The phrase "illegal war of aggression" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. No court has ruled the strikes illegal. No international body has issued a determination. Mamdani simply declared it so, borrowing the language of left-wing activists and presenting it as fact.
Then came the pivot to local governance. Mamdani said he was in contact with Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and emergency management officials to take "proactive steps, including increasing coordination across agencies and enhancing patrols of sensitive locations out of an abundance of caution." He also addressed Iranian New Yorkers directly:
"Additionally, I want to speak directly to Iranian New Yorkers: you are part of the fabric of this city, you are our neighbors, small business owners, students, artists, workers, and community leaders."
He added, "You will be safe here."
A mayor coordinating with law enforcement during a geopolitical event is perfectly reasonable. The rest of the statement reveals the priority. Mamdani spent far more energy condemning his own country's military action than addressing any threat posed by the regime those strikes targeted.
Gavin Newsom, never one to miss a moment with national implications, attempted a more careful version of the same argument. Writing on X Saturday, the California governor acknowledged what his progressive allies would not:
"The corrupt and repressive Iranian regime must never have nuclear weapons. The leadership of Iran must go."
Strong words. But they lasted exactly one sentence before Newsom retreated to the same conclusion as the rest:
"But that does not justify the President of the United States engaging in an illegal, dangerous war that will risk the lives of our American service members and our friends without justification to the American people."
So the regime must go, but doing anything about it is illegal and dangerous. This is the fundamental unserious posture of the modern Democratic foreign policy wing: acknowledge the threat, then oppose every action that might address it. The regime "must go," but not like this, not now, and never on a Republican president's terms.
Every one of these figures has, at some point, expressed alarm about Iran's nuclear program or its destabilizing influence in the region. Every one of them has demanded that presidents act to protect American interests abroad. Yet when action arrives, the response is instantaneous condemnation, not measured evaluation. Not "let's see the intelligence." Not "what were the objectives." Just: illegal, unjustified, catastrophic.
This is not foreign policy analysis. It is reflexive opposition dressed in constitutional language. Omar invokes "congressional authorization" as though she would vote for it if asked. She wouldn't. AOC frames the strikes as reckless while offering no alternative to a regime racing toward a nuclear weapon. Mamdani, who days ago was talking housing deals with Trump, now calls his military decisions "a war of aggression."
The pattern is always the same:
It costs nothing to say "the leadership of Iran must go" when you intend to block every path to making it happen.
Absent from every one of these statements is a simple question: What should the United States do about a theocratic regime pursuing nuclear weapons, funding terrorist proxies across the Middle East, and threatening the destruction of a key American ally?
The progressive left has no answer. It has only objections. And those objections arrive with suspicious speed, identical language, and zero engagement with the strategic reality that prompted the strikes in the first place.
When the threat is abstract, they talk tough. When the moment demands action, they reach for "illegal" and "unjustified" before the dust has settled. That is not a principle. It is positioning.
The White House delivered a new Homeland Security funding proposal to congressional Democrats late Thursday, marking the latest attempt to end a partial DHS shutdown that has now dragged into its third week.
A White House official called it a "serious counteroffer" and placed the burden squarely on the other side of the aisle.
Politico reported that spokespeople for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries issued a joint statement saying they had "received the White House's counteroffer and are reviewing it closely." Schumer, for his part, seemed less than interested in moving toward a deal.
"They're just trying to pass paper back and forth with no real changes."
That's a curious posture for a party that claims to be worried about critical government services going unfunded. The funding lapse began Feb. 14, and no congressional action is expected until the middle of next week at the earliest, with the Senate out of town until Monday and the House not voting until Wednesday.
Washington is on autopilot. And Democrats seem perfectly comfortable leaving it that way.
The White House official framed the stakes bluntly:
"Democrats need to make a move to end the shutdown before more Americans are harmed by a lack of funding for critical services like disaster relief."
President Trump reinforced the urgency during his State of the Union speech, pointing to a recent snowstorm that hammered parts of the Northeast as a concrete reason to restore DHS funding. The partial shutdown touches agencies responsible for everything from immigration enforcement to airport security to cyber infrastructure.
Yet the agencies Democrats claim to be most concerned about, ICE and Border Patrol, have been largely unaffected. Funding put in place last year by the party-line GOP megabill has kept enforcement operations running.
FEMA officials said earlier this month that the main federal disaster fund "has sufficient balances to continue emergency response activities for the foreseeable future," though expected new disbursements could drain it quickly.
So the shutdown's real pressure point isn't enforcement. It's disaster relief. And Democrats are the ones holding it hostage.
Democrats have vowed to block DHS funding until they get changes to Trump's immigration enforcement tactics. Their joint statement made the goal explicit:
"Democrats remain committed to keep fighting for real reforms to rein in ICE and stop the violence."
The "violence" they reference traces to an incident in January when federal agents killed two people in Minneapolis. No further details about the circumstances were provided. But the framing tells you everything about the strategy: treat enforcement actions as inherently violent, demand concessions on that basis, and hold disaster relief funding as leverage until you get them.
This is not a negotiating position. It is a political campaign disguised as one.
The Senate failed Monday to advance legislation that would restore the flow of cash to DHS. Democrats held the line. They would rather let the shutdown grind forward than allow the administration to enforce immigration law without congressional micromanagement.
Consider what Democrats are asking the public to believe simultaneously:
You cannot claim a crisis demands urgent action while also refusing to act unless your unrelated conditions are met. One of those things is a lie. The shutdown is either an emergency or it's a useful pressure tool. Schumer and Jeffries are treating it as both, depending on which microphone they're standing in front of.
The honest answer: not much, at least for several days. Congress is scattered. The Senate won't reconvene until Monday. The House won't vote until Wednesday. The White House has put an offer on the table. Democrats say they're "reviewing" it.
The pattern here is familiar. Democrats slow-walk negotiations, blame the administration for the shutdown they themselves are sustaining, and wait for media coverage to build pressure in their direction. The strategy depends on one assumption: that voters will blame the party in the White House for any disruption, regardless of who is actually blocking the funding bill.
That assumption may have worked in previous eras. It's harder to sustain when the enforcement agencies at the center of the dispute are still operating, and the funding being held up is for disaster relief that Americans across the political spectrum depend on.
The White House made its move. The offer is on the table. The only question now is whether Democrats want to govern or whether they'd rather keep passing paper back and forth while the clock runs.
The Department of War is moving U.S. military assets toward Iran and putting options in front of President Donald Trump, according to press secretary Kingsley Wilson, who said the goal is to make clear that America “means business” as negotiations with Iran intensify.
Wilson told The Daily Caller that the Department of War’s role is to prepare, not posture. The message to Tehran, she suggested, is that diplomacy is on the table, but it is not the only tool in the box.
Speaking “at the White House’s media row” following the president’s State of the Union address, Wilson framed the military buildup as readiness built for a commander in chief who sets the direction, then expects the bureaucracy to execute. The Daily Caller shares.
Wilson put it plainly:
"At the Department of War, our job is to plan. We have contingency plans for every operation and every scenario. If the president says go, we need to be ready to go whatever option he chooses. So we are presenting options to the president,"
That is how serious governments operate. They do not outsource national security to vibes. They do not confuse speeches with strategy. They plan, they position, and they ensure the president has credible choices in real time.
Wilson emphasized that Trump’s instincts run toward peace and diplomacy, but she also made the Department of War’s mission clear: prepare for whatever comes next, including the possibility that Iran refuses to deal.
"This is a president who seeks peace and who always pursues diplomacy first, but it is our job to make sure that we’re prepared should he choose a different course of action, and we have to have the assets in place to do it,"
The sequence matters. Diplomacy is not “forever talks.” It is talks backed by consequences. In the real world, the credibility of your diplomacy depends on whether your adversary thinks you can and will act.
The White House is “trying to make a nuclear deal with Iran,” and it is not pretending that America is out of options if Iran declines to commit.
In a comment to Reuters, the White House warned that if no deal is made, it “will have to do something very tough like last time,” a reference to “the June strikes on the country’s nuclear facilities.”
That is not inflammatory language. It is an attempt to restore a basic reality that too many foreign regimes and too many American elites forgot: U.S. warnings are supposed to mean something.
Wilson argued that Iran’s leadership, and the Iranian people, are not guessing about what American power can look like when it is actually used. She said the administration is moving aircraft and other assets so the message lands before a shot is fired.
"We’ve got a lot of assets over there, a lot of aircraft over there, and we’re going to make sure that the Iranian people know we mean business, and the regime and the mullahs there particularly, know we mean business. They remember midnight hammer and the success of that operation. They also, like the rest of the world and our enemies, watched the Maduro raid,"
The specifics of “midnight hammer” and “the Maduro raid” are not spelled out in the provided material, but Wilson’s intent is unmistakable. She is invoking recognizable demonstrations of U.S. capability to shape Iran’s decision-making now.
Deterrence is not a slogan. It is a reputation that has to be maintained. When it fades, adversaries test you. When it is restored, they start looking for exits.
The center of gravity in this story is Trump’s red line. The material states that during his Tuesday State of the Union address, Trump “drew a red line on negotiations with Iran” and said Iran must commit to not building a nuclear weapon.
Wilson echoed that and urged Iran to choose the deal while it can:
"They see what the United States military, and only the United States military is capable of doing so, it would be very wise for them to make a deal with this president. And I would also add that the president has been clear, whether on the campaign trail or throughout his entire presidency, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. That is a red line, and we at the Department of War are in full support of that initiative,"
This is what serious leadership looks like. A line is drawn, publicly, and the apparatus of the state is aligned behind it.
America can debate tactics. It should. But a nuclear Iran is not the kind of problem you solve with clever messaging or another round of bureaucratic process. You prevent it, or you live with the consequences.
Wilson’s comments also land as an indictment of a broader habit in Washington: to treat hard problems as permanent, and to treat American strength as something embarrassing that must be apologized for before it is deployed.
Here, the posture is different. The Department of War says it is moving assets. The White House says Iran must commit. And the administration is signaling that if diplomacy fails, decisions will not be deferred indefinitely.
That does not guarantee an outcome. It does restore leverage.
And in a world where adversaries watch for hesitation, leverage is the difference between peace through strength and chaos through wishful thinking.
The regime in Tehran is being handed a choice, and the clock is not going to stop for another round of talking points.
Savannah Guthrie posted an emotional video to Instagram on Tuesday, Feb. 24, pleading for the public's help in finding her mother, Nancy Guthrie, who has been missing from her Arizona home since the early morning hours of Feb. 1. The Today anchor announced the family is offering a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to Nancy's recovery.
Nancy was last seen on Jan. 31. Nearly a month later, local, state, and federal authorities have flooded the area, combing rugged desert terrain for any sign of her or clues that could lead investigators to answers. So far, no resolution.
In the same video, Guthrie said the family is donating $500,000 to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Guthrie's message carried the weight of someone who has spent weeks oscillating between faith and grief. She acknowledged that her mother may never come home alive, but refused to abandon hope entirely.
"We also know that she may be lost; she may already be gone. She may already have gone home to the Lord that she loves, and is dancing in heaven with her mom and her dad and her beloved brother, Pierce, and with our daddy."
She followed that with a statement that captured the unbearable limbo of a family with no answers:
"And if this is what is to be, then we will all accept it. But we need to know where she is. We need her to come home."
That need, the need simply to know, is something that transcends celebrity. It is the most basic human demand in the face of loss: give us certainty, even if it's the worst kind. People reported.
Guthrie said she and her siblings still believe a miracle is possible, invoking her sister's phrase to describe where the family stands spiritually.
"We still believe. We still believe in a miracle. We still believe that she can come home. Hope against hope, as my sister says. We are blowing on the embers of hope."
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told NBC News on Feb. 20 that the investigation is "still growing." He acknowledged the frustration that comes with a case this prolonged.
"It's never fast enough for the sheriff. I want it like you: 'Come on, guys, let's go, let's go, let's find her.' But the reality is that I also know that sometimes things take time."
The sheriff's department previously asked residents in Nancy's neighborhood to submit surveillance footage dating back to Jan. 1. Authorities zeroed in on two specific time windows:
They specifically requested a video showing cars, traffic, pedestrians, or anything unusual.
There has been speculation about a masked man captured on doorbell camera footage near Nancy's home. When asked on Feb. 23 whether that individual had also been caught on camera at the home on a prior occasion, Nanos was direct.
"There is no evidence to support that. It is speculative at best and remains part of an ongoing investigation."
That answer tells us the investigation remains open and active, but offers little comfort to a family running out of days to hope.
What elevates Guthrie's appeal beyond a personal tragedy is her willingness to point beyond her own family's pain. She acknowledged the countless Americans who live in the same terrible uncertainty, families without national platforms or million-dollar rewards.
"We also know that we are not alone in our loss. We know there are millions of families that have suffered with this kind of uncertainty."
"We are hoping that the attention that has been given to our mom and our family will extend to all the families like ours who are in need and need prayers and need support."
That is a statement worth taking seriously. The disappearance of a television anchor's mother commands resources and coverage that most missing persons cases never receive. The $500,000 donation to NCMEC suggests Guthrie understands this disparity and is trying to use her visibility to widen the circle of attention.
Every community in America has families living in this limbo. Many of them will never trend on social media. Their cases will never warrant a press conference from a county sheriff. That is a failure worth reckoning with, and it does not diminish what the Guthrie family is enduring to say so.
Guthrie closed her video with the kind of plea that needs no editorial commentary:
"Help us bring our beloved mom home so that we can either celebrate a glorious, miraculous homecoming or celebrate the beautiful, brave, courageous and noble life that she has lived."
Nearly a month of searching. Federal, state, and local agencies are deployed across the Arizona desert. A family offering everything it has for a single piece of information. And still, silence from the terrain that swallowed Nancy Guthrie.
The embers are fading. But they haven't gone out.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) rose to her feet for Donald Trump on Tuesday night. Read that again.
The progressive icon from Massachusetts gave the president a standing ovation during his State of the Union address after he called on Congress to pass the Stop Insider Trading Act. Other Democrats similarly stood in applause. The moment was brief, bipartisan, and deeply telling.
Trump's appeal was direct and left little room for evasion:
"As we ensure that all Americans can profit from a rising stock market, let's also ensure that members of Congress cannot corruptly profit using inside information. Pass the Stop Insider Trading Act without delay."
The chamber responded. Warren, who has long backed similar legislation, was among the Democrats who couldn't stay seated. She was cheering him on.
Trump noticed. And he couldn't resist.
"They stood up for that — I can't believe it."
Then came the knife. "Did Nancy Pelosi stand up for that?" the president asked. His own answer: "Doubt it."
There's a reason Trump singled out the former House speaker, the New York Post reported. Republicans have long needled Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) over well-timed trades both she and her husband have made over the years. Her net worth sits at more than $269 million, according to Quiver Quantitative. That's a staggering sum for someone whose career has been in public service.
The Stop Insider Trading Act would bar lawmakers, their spouses, and dependent children from buying publicly traded stocks. It also mandates that lawmakers, their spouses, and dependent children give a seven-day public notice before selling off a stock. The bill has cleared a House committee but is awaiting a full vote in the lower chamber.
Pelosi, for her part, glared at Trump. She sat next to Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), took some notes, and wore a "Release the Files" button. She did not, apparently, stand.
The visual contrast told the whole story. Warren, the leftist firebrand who has built a brand on fighting corporate greed, applauds a Republican president. Pelosi, the woman whose household has profited handsomely from the stock market while she helped write the rules governing it, sat stone-faced.
If you ever wanted proof that congressional stock trading reform cuts across ideological lines and threatens the right people, Tuesday night was it.
Warren's moment of agreement didn't last long. She later ripped into President Trump's State of the Union address. The standing ovation was a momentary concession to policy reality before the partisan programming kicked back in.
But that's exactly what makes the moment valuable. Warren has long backed similar legislation. She knows the issue polls well. She knows the public is furious about lawmakers trading on information unavailable to ordinary Americans. When Trump put it on the table in front of 50 million viewers, she couldn't pretend otherwise.
Warren was also seen standing after Trump said that Iran can't be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. Two standing ovations for Trump in one night from a woman who has made opposing him a central feature of her political identity. The issues were simply too popular, and the audience too large, to sit through.
That's the power of picking the right fights. When you champion policies that Americans overwhelmingly support, you force your opponents into uncomfortable positions. They can either applaud and concede the point or sit on their hands and explain to voters why they oppose banning congressional insider trading.
Not every Democrat handled the evening with Warren's pragmatism, however brief it was.
For the second year in a row, Rep. Al Green was ejected from the House chamber during Trump's speech, this time for waving around a sign that read, "Black People Aren't Apes!" The interruption was a stunt in search of a moment that existed only in Green's imagination. No one in the chamber called anyone an ape. The sign responded to an argument no one was making.
Reps. Ilhan Omar(D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) left early after repeatedly heckling Trump throughout the speech. They interrupted, they shouted, and then they walked out.
This is the state of the Democratic caucus in 2026. One faction stands and applauds when the president champions popular reform. Another faction waves signs, screams into the void, and storms out of the building. The serious members and the performative members are increasingly impossible to tell apart from a distance, which is precisely the problem for a party trying to rebuild credibility with the American middle.
The Stop Insider Trading Act deserves a vote. It's sitting in the lower chamber right now, already through committee, waiting for leadership to bring it to the floor. The policy is straightforward:
This isn't complicated. Americans understand, instinctively and correctly, that the people writing regulations for industries shouldn't be trading stocks in those same industries. The fact that it took this long to get a serious push tells you everything about who benefits from the status quo.
Pelosi's 2020 State of the Union moment was tearing up Trump's speech in full view of the cameras. In 2026, she sat silently while her colleagues applauded a bill designed to end the exact kind of trading that made her household fabulously wealthy.
Some protests are louder when they're quiet.
Vice President JD Vance has been quietly perfecting shokupan, the pillowy Japanese milk bread that commands cult followings at high-end bakeries, and his wife just told the world about it.
Usha Vance shared the details during a joint appearance with the Vice President on Saturday's episode of "My View With Lara Trump," praising her husband's dedication to the craft.
"He's been working on it for a while and he does it really well. Almost as well, or as well, as some of the restaurants that we get it from."
The Vice President, never one to undersell himself, interjected: "I'd say almost as well."
The couple's appearance painted a picture of domestic normalcy that stands in sharp contrast to the gossip mill that churned around them over the past year.
Vance's baking skills have apparently come a long way, the Daily Beast reported. When Lara Trump asked him to name the best and worst dish he ever cooked for his wife, the Vice President didn't hesitate to revisit the disaster.
"Usha is a vegetarian, and I am not. So, I'm thinking to myself, what does a vegetarian eat? Vegetables, dairy, and bread. I got crescent rolls, rolled them out into a pizza shape, and put vegetables and ranch on top, and stuck it in the oven for 30 minutes."
The verdict was swift and self-inflicted.
"It was disgusting. Like, it was actually inedible."
Vance chuckled at the memory, adding that "it's amazing that the relationship lasted." Twelve years of marriage and a fourth child on the way suggest the relationship has done more than last. Usha added that her husband "doesn't believe in recipes," and the pair laughed off the incident together.
The appearance matters beyond its lighthearted content. Usha Vance was spotted several times without her wedding ring last year, feeding speculation that the couple's marriage was under strain. Vance was also the subject of tabloid chatter after being filmed in what was described as an intimate embrace with Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk, during a Turning Point USA event.
None of that seemed to register on Saturday's episode. The Vances looked like what they presented themselves as: a married couple expecting another baby, ribbing each other about bad cooking.
There's a lesson here about the political media ecosystem. Every awkward photo and missing accessory gets fed into a narrative machine that runs on inference and innuendo. Sometimes the simplest explanation is the correct one. Sometimes a ring is at the jeweler. Sometimes a hug is a hug.
The shokupan detail is the kind of biographical color that humanizes a political figure without the usual stagecraft. Vance has long introduced himself as a "conservative hillbilly from Appalachia," a framing that served him well on the campaign trail and in the cultural conversation around his memoir. The self-taught baker working his way through Japanese bread techniques doesn't contradict that identity. It rounds it out.
Curiosity is not a betrayal of where you come from. A guy raised in a middle-class Ohio family who picks up a demanding baking technique because he wants to is the kind of story that cuts against every lazy caricature of conservative America as intellectually incurious or culturally monolithic. The left loves to sort people into boxes. Vance keeps refusing to fit.
Lara Trump, who has hosted "My View" since February of last year, drew out the couple with the kind of ease that comes from shared familiarity. She recently recounted her own early dating stories with Eric Trump on Miranda Devine's podcast, including his memorable first impression after learning she attended culinary school.
"He looked at me, and he grabbed my stomach, and said, 'Wow, you're too skinny for any of your food to taste good. You must be a horrible chef.'"
Bold opening line. It apparently worked.
Saturday's episode was not hard news. It was not meant to be. But in a political climate that treats every personal detail as ammunition, two couples trading embarrassing kitchen stories on camera carries its own quiet weight. The Vances showed up, laughed at themselves, and let the bread speak for itself.
Crescent roll pizza with ranch. Twelve years later, shokupan. People grow.
A Tucson couple discovered a pair of blood-stained gloves and a rock with dried blood in the Arizona desert, roughly a mile from the home of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie. The couple, who asked to remain anonymous, informed the Pima County Sheriff's Department after stumbling upon the suspicious black gloves on the ground about 10 feet apart near Guthrie's Tucson neighborhood.
Guthrie was reported missing three weeks ago. Ring camera video from the night of her disappearance captured a pair of gloves on the hands of an armed intruder. Drops of blood identified as belonging to Guthrie were discovered just outside the front door of her home.
Investigators interviewed the couple, and evidence collection personnel remained at the scene until 2 a.m. The rock reportedly bore at least one blood splatter, and some analysts say it resembled blood spatter patterns. Whether the gloves and the rock are connected to Guthrie's case remains to be determined.
This is not the first set of gloves recovered. Several gloves have been found by investigators, including at least one sent to a DNA lab for testing. According to authorities, those results did not produce a hit in the federal DNA database of known criminals or match other DNA found inside the Guthrie home.
That dead end has pushed the investigation into more advanced territory, as Breitbart reported. Further searches in genealogical databases for possible matches to a suspect's relatives are reportedly underway. Genealogical DNA tracing has cracked cold cases before. Whether it yields results here depends on the quality of the sample and the breadth of the database matches available.
The Feb. 11 discovery in the Catalina Foothills adds another data point for investigators working on a case that has generated enormous public interest. The reward for information has increased from $50,000 to more than $200,000.
Public engagement in the case has been extraordinary and, in some ways, a double-edged sword. The Sheriff's 911 Communications Center has fielded hundreds of daily calls related to the case, with more than 32,000 to date. That figure is 10,000 more than the same period from a year ago.
The volume reflects genuine concern, but it also strains resources. Investigators have urged the public to submit only actionable tips to keep emergency lines available. The FBI tip line, 1-800-CALL-FBI, remains active for anyone with substantive information.
There is a tension in cases like this between the public's desire to help and the operational reality that law enforcement faces. Every call has to be processed. Every lead has to be assessed. When tens of thousands of those calls come in, the ones that matter can get buried under the ones that don't. Good intentions can slow the very investigation people are trying to support.
The Pima County Sheriff's Department is investigating what all available evidence points to as an abduction. An armed intruder on camera. Blood at the front door. An 84-year-old woman is gone.
The gloves found a mile from her home may prove critical, or they may prove coincidental. The desert terrain around Tucson is vast. Items turn up. But the proximity to Guthrie's home, combined with the blood staining, makes them worth every hour investigators spent at that scene.
The lack of a DNA match in federal databases is notable. It means that whoever was inside that home, assuming the tested gloves are connected, has no prior criminal record flagged in the system. That narrows some possibilities and opens others. The genealogical database search is the next logical step, a method that relies not on the suspect having a record but on a relative having submitted DNA to a commercial testing service.
An 84-year-old woman does not vanish from her home without someone knowing something. The physical evidence is accumulating. The public attention is immense. The reward money is substantial. Somewhere between the ring camera footage, the blood at the door, the gloves in the desert, and 32,000 phone calls, there is a thread that leads to Nancy Guthrie.
Investigators need to find it before the trail goes cold.