The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday in Noem v. Al Otro Lado, a case that could reshape the legal foundation of asylum claims at the U.S.-Mexico border. The central question is deceptively simple: at what point does a person "arrive in the United States" such that asylum protections kick in?
The answer will determine whether foreign nationals who never set foot on American soil can claim the legal rights of those who have.
According to Just the News, the case pits the Trump administration against an immigration advocacy group that argues the U.S. Department of Homeland Security instituted a policy to prevent migrants from attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. According to the advocates' brief to the court, border patrol officers "identified asylum seekers, and prevented them from stepping onto U.S. soil."
The government's position is straightforward. As lawyers for the government stated in their brief to the court:
"An ordinary English speaker would not use the phrase 'arrives in the United States' to describe someone who is stopped in Mexico."
That's the crux of it. The 1990 Immigration and Nationality Act allows an individual who "arrives in the United States" to apply for asylum status and be inspected by an immigration officer. The legal fight turns on whether someone physically present in Mexico qualifies.
Eric Wessan, solicitor general in the Iowa Office of the Attorney General, laid out the constitutional stakes plainly:
"An alien stopped at the border in Mexico is definitionally not in the United States and therefore is not afforded what one would get were that alien in the United States."
Wessan argued that the executive branch holds constitutional authority to manage disputes that occur on the country's borders. His framing cuts through the legal fog that immigration advocates have spent years building. If you haven't entered the country, the country's domestic legal protections don't attach to you. That's not a radical proposition. It's a geographic fact.
But Wessan also acknowledged limits on executive discretion. Federal immigration law requires inspection of all aliens who are applicants for admission, he noted, and once someone presents himself at a port seeking entry, the government cannot simply refuse to acknowledge that person's presence to avoid the statutory processing requirement.
This is a nuanced position, and it matters. The conservative argument here isn't that border officials can ignore people altogether. It's that the legal rights triggered by "arriving" in the United States should not be extended to individuals standing on Mexican soil.
The case also brushes against deeper constitutional territory. Wessan raised the 14th Amendment, noting that while the amendment was designed to confer citizenship for newly freed slaves, its modern application has drifted far from that original purpose.
"It seems unlikely that the 14th Amendment was intended to serve as a magnet for birth tourism or to reward illegal reentry."
He's right that the amendment's framers weren't contemplating a world where its protections would be invoked by foreign nationals who haven't crossed the border. That observation alone won't decide this case, but it speaks to the broader legal trend of stretching constitutional provisions well beyond their original meaning to accommodate open-border outcomes.
The immigration advocacy industry has built an elaborate legal architecture on the idea that asylum protections are essentially borderless. If you're near the border, you're close enough. If an officer prevents you from stepping across, that officer violated your rights. The logical endpoint of this argument is that American legal protections begin not at the border, but wherever someone forms the intent to cross it.
That framework collapses the very concept of sovereignty. A nation that cannot define where its legal obligations begin cannot define where its borders are. And a nation that cannot define its borders isn't much of a nation at all.
The Trump administration's position, and the position of states like Iowa backing it, reasserts something basic: words in statutes mean what they say. "Arrives in the United States" means arrives in the United States. Not approaches. Not intended to. Arrives.
The court also has before it the related case of Trump v. Barbara, described as a landmark decision. Together, these cases represent the judiciary's opportunity to draw a clear legal line that the political branches have fought over for decades.
The justices will likely decide the case by the end of June. Between now and then, the legal briefs, oral arguments, and inevitable media coverage will be filtered through the usual lens: enforcement equals cruelty, borders equal bigotry, and any limitation on asylum access equals a violation of international norms.
None of that changes what the statute says. And for the first time in a long time, the court has a chance to say so clearly.
President Donald Trump flatly dismissed Pope Leo XIV's plea for a ceasefire in Iran, telling EWTN News White House Correspondent Owen Jensen on March 20 that the administration has no intention of stopping military operations against a country he says has already been gutted.
Trump, speaking to MS Now, did not mince words.
"We can have dialogue, but I don't want to do a ceasefire."
The response came five days after the Holy Father urged "those responsible for this conflict" to "let the fire cease and let paths of dialogue be reopened." Trump acknowledged the Pope's message but made clear the United States sees no strategic reason to relent. Not now. Not when the mission is working.
The conflict in Iran broke out on February 28 when the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes against the Middle Eastern country. Iran responded by launching strikes against U.S. and Israeli bases. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the protracted barrage, along with multiple other top-ranking Iranian officials, as NC Register reports.
Trump laid out the damage in blunt, inventory-style terms when asked why a ceasefire was off the table:
"[Iran doesn't] have a navy, they don't have an air force, they don't have any equipment, they don't have any spotters, they don't have anti-aircraft, they don't have radar, and their leaders have all been killed at every level."
That is not the language of a president entertaining negotiation. It is the language of a commander-in-chief cataloging a destroyed adversary. And then the line that carried the most weight:
"You don't do a ceasefire when you're literally obliterating the other side."
The strategic logic is straightforward. Iran's military infrastructure has been dismantled. Its chain of command has been decapitated. Stopping now would hand Tehran a pause it could use to reconstitute. Trump made the calculus explicit:
"If we left right now, it would take them at least 10 years to rebuild, but rebuild they will."
The goal, he said, is to ensure Iran can "never rebuild." That is not an offhand remark. It is a stated war aim.
Pope Leo XIV's March 15 call for peace occupies the space the Vatican has always occupied in wartime: moral witness. The Church calls for dialogue. It calls for the cessation of violence. It grieves for those caught in the crossfire. The conflict has already upended Catholic pilgrimages in the region and sent Catholics scrambling to evacuate the war zone.
None of that is trivial. The human cost of any military campaign deserves acknowledgment, and the Pope's concern for civilians and displaced communities reflects the Church's long tradition of advocating for peace in moments of profound suffering.
But moral appeals and strategic imperatives operate on different planes. The Vatican does not have to worry about what a reconstituted Iranian regime does with ten years of rebuilding. It does not have to calculate the threat of a nuclear-capable Iran reassembling its air defenses, its radar systems, and its proxy networks across the Middle East. The White House does.
The Pope asks for dialogue. Trump says dialogue is fine. But a ceasefire that lets a hostile regime regroup is not dialogue. It is a gift to an enemy that launched strikes against American and Israeli bases. The distinction matters.
There is a certain kind of foreign policy mind that reflexively reaches for "ceasefire" as though the word itself constitutes a strategy. It doesn't. A ceasefire is a tactic, and like all tactics, its value depends entirely on context. When the opposing force has been stripped of its navy, its air force, its radar, and its senior leadership, the ceasefire benefits only one side. It is not hard to identify which one.
The same voices who spent years warning about Iran's growing regional influence, its ballistic missile program, and its march toward nuclear capability now counsel restraint at the precise moment those threats are being neutralized. The contradiction is not subtle.
For decades, American foreign policy in the Middle East has been defined by half-measures. Campaigns that started strong and ended in negotiated settlements that preserved the very regimes responsible for the instability. The pattern is familiar: strike, escalate, grow weary, negotiate, withdraw, watch the problem metastasize. Trump is signaling he has no interest in repeating the cycle.
Trump's remarks leave little room for interpretation. The administration intends to press forward until Iran's capacity to threaten the United States and its allies is not merely degraded but eliminated. Whether that timeline is weeks or months, the president's public posture suggests there will be no premature off-ramp driven by international pressure or papal diplomacy.
The Pope will continue to call for peace. That is his role, and it is an honorable one. But the president's role is different. He is not charged with moral witness. He is charged with the security of 330 million Americans and the stability of a region that has exported terror for a generation.
Iran's navy is gone. Its air force is gone. Its supreme leader is dead. And the President of the United States just told the world he is not finished.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, turned away questions on Wednesday about why her office had hired a security guard with a criminal history, days after the man was shot and killed in an armed standoff with law enforcement in Dallas, Texas.
Fox News reported that the bodyguard, 39-year-old Diamon-Mazairre Robinson, went by the alias "Mike King." He had a track record of run-ins with the law for theft, violating probation, and impersonating law enforcement.
Last week, he was killed in a standoff with SWAT after he barricaded himself inside the garage of a children's hospital while local police were looking to detain him while investigating an active warrant.
Local authorities said they had recovered 11 firearms during their investigation.
A children's hospital. Eleven firearms. An alias. A rap sheet. And this was the man standing guard for a United States congresswoman.
When Fox News Digital pressed Crockett for answers on Wednesday, she offered the kind of non-response that has become a hallmark of officials who know they have no good answer.
"I'm going to refer you to my page."
When pushed further, Crockett escalated from evasive to combative:
"I made a statement and I said there would be no additional statements. You need someone to read it for you? I can find someone to do that."
That's not the tone of someone who followed the rules and got unlucky. That's the tone of someone who wants the story to go away.
Crockett's office did release a statement, and it deserves a careful read. She said she had known Robinson under the name Mike King and that he had been employed by her office "for years." During that time, she said, he had not given her reason to suspect him of wrongdoing.
Her office further claimed that the team had vetted Robinson according to standards laid out for lawmaker security:
"Our team followed all protocols outlined by the House to contract additional security. We were approved to use this vendor who also provided security services for additional entities in the local community and worked closely with law enforcement agencies, including Capitol Police."
So a man using a fake name, with a history of impersonating law enforcement, managed to pass vetting processes designed to protect members of Congress. And he did so not for a few weeks, but for years.
Crockett noted that she was surprised her office hadn't discovered his background until the time of his death. Her office then tried to reframe the scandal as a systemic failure rather than a personal one:
"The fact that an individual was able to somehow circumvent the vetting processes for something as sensitive as security for members of Congress highlights the loopholes and shortcomings in many of our systems."
This is a neat trick. Hire a convicted criminal under an alias to protect you for years, then blame "the systems" when the truth comes out over his dead body. The passive voice does a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.
An individual was able to "somehow circumvent" the process. Somehow. As though it were a mystery of the universe and not a failure that happened on Crockett's watch, with Crockett's money, for Crockett's protection.
Consider the layers of failure here:
Any one of those facts would be a serious story. Together, they paint a picture of either breathtaking negligence or something worse. And when a reporter dared to ask about it, Crockett's response was to mock them.
This is the same Jasmine Crockett who has built a media profile on fiery rhetoric and moral certainty. She is never short on opinions when the cameras are rolling in committee hearings. But when the questions land on her own doorstep, she retreats behind a prepared statement and tells journalists to find someone who can read it to them.
The "loopholes and shortcomings in many of our systems" line is doing exactly what it's designed to do: diffuse responsibility across an abstraction. Nobody is accountable when "the system" fails. It's the Washington equivalent of a shrug.
But someone hired this vendor. Someone approved Robinson, or "Mike King," or whatever name he presented. Someone in Crockett's office worked alongside this man for years and never ran the kind of background check that would have flagged a criminal history and an alias.
If the House protocols are truly that porous, that is itself a scandal. But it does not absolve the office that benefited from the arrangement.
Crockett wants it both ways. Her team "followed all protocols," and yet the protocols failed. The system has "loopholes," but she bears no responsibility for falling through them. She is both compliant and a victim.
The larger question now is whether anyone in Congress plans to investigate how a man with a criminal record and a false identity embedded himself in the security apparatus surrounding a member of the House.
The statement references Capitol Police as one of the agencies the vendor "worked closely with." If that's true, the breach extends well beyond one congresswoman's office.
But accountability starts at the top. Crockett employed this man. Crockett's office paid this vendor. And when the story broke, Crockett's first instinct was not transparency or contrition. It was contempt for the reporter asking the question.
A man with a fake name and a real criminal record guarded a congresswoman for years, then died in a hail of gunfire at a children's hospital. And the congresswoman wants you to know she has no additional statements.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) said Thursday that if Democrats win back the House in November's midterm election, impeaching Attorney General Pam Bondi is "on the table."
Garcia made the remarks on CNN's "The Lead," where host Jake Tapper asked him directly what House Democrats would do with majority power if the administration declined to comply with congressional demands. Garcia didn't flinch from the implication.
"That has to be on the table. I think step one is a contempt process. She has to show up to the deposition. I think we in the majority will have direct subpoena power to get so many more documents, not just from the DOJ, but from the state and other places. That's going to be important."
So there it is. A House Democrat openly gaming out impeachment of the sitting Attorney General, eight months before voters even go to the polls.
According to Breitbart, Garcia told Tapper that a subpoena has already been sent to Bondi, with a tentative date of April 14th for her to testify under oath. He framed the escalation ladder plainly: first, the subpoena. Then contempt. Then, if Democrats retake the majority, "stronger ways of either removing her or having the president remove her."
"Well, one she would be held in contempt immediately to not comply with the subpoena to not turn over the documents. That would be number one. And if that were to continue, I think folks were talking about other more and stronger ways of either removing her or having the president remove her."
Tapper helpfully supplied the word Garcia was circling: "Impeaching her." Garcia agreed.
Notice the construction. Democrats haven't won anything yet. They don't hold the gavel. They don't chair the committees. But Garcia is already describing what he'd do as chairman of Oversight, how he'd wield subpoena power, and which punishment he'd impose on a cabinet official who serves at the pleasure of the president. The campaign hasn't started, and the conviction is already written.
This is a revealing moment, not because it's surprising, but because it's so brazen. Democrats spent years insisting that impeachment was a solemn constitutional remedy, never to be wielded for partisan purposes. They lectured the country about the gravity of the process, the weight of the oath, the sacred trust of congressional authority.
Now it's a midterm campaign pitch.
Garcia isn't reacting to a crisis. He's not responding to evidence of criminal conduct. He's floating impeachment as a carrot for Democratic voters: give us the House, and we'll go after the Attorney General. The substance of the underlying dispute barely matters. What matters is the promise of confrontation, the guarantee that a Democratic majority would spend its energy on political warfare rather than legislation.
This is the pattern. Democrats don't campaign on what they'll build. They campaign on who they'll destroy.
Garcia's comments are useful because they strip away the pretense. If Democrats win the House, the first order of business won't be the economy, the border, or the cost of groceries. It will be investigations, subpoenas, and impeachment proceedings against officials who are doing exactly what they were appointed to do.
Voters should take Garcia at his word. He's not hiding the ball. He's telling you what the next two years would look like under a Democratic majority: an endless chain of contempt votes and removal threats designed to paralyze the executive branch.
The subpoena to Bondi already exists. The tentative date is already set. The escalation ladder is already mapped. All Democrats need is the votes.
There's a deeper problem with the Garcia approach, and it goes beyond Pam Bondi. Democrats have increasingly treated the impeachment power not as an emergency brake but as a routine gear in the legislative machine. Disagree with a cabinet member's priorities? Impeach. Don't like the administration's document production timeline? Contempt, then impeach. Lost the last election and can't accept that the other side gets to govern? Win a midterm, then impeach.
None of this solves a single problem for American families. It doesn't lower energy costs. It doesn't secure the border. It doesn't address the national debt. It does, however, generate CNN segments. And for a certain kind of Democrat, that appears to be the point.
Garcia gave the game away on national television. The rest is up to voters in November.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has denied California's emergency request to modify language from a U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down policies allowing public schools to hide a student's gender transition from parents. The ruling is another decisive loss for a state that has spent years trying to insert itself between parents and their children.
California filed the emergency motion seeking to revise the language of a permanent injunction against the policy. The 9th Circuit wasn't having it, ruling that any effort to modify the injunction in Mirabelli v. Bonta must be addressed by the district court, not the appellate court.
The state tried to go over the lower court's head. The appellate court sent it right back down.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that California's policies violated the First and 14th Amendments. The decision vacated a 9th Circuit stay order that had paused a lower court injunction blocking the gender policy. That injunction, issued by U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez, came after he certified the case as a class action in December and issued a permanent injunction against the state's policies.
The permanent injunction's language is unambiguous, Center Square noted:
"Parents and guardians have a federal constitutional right to be informed if their public school student child expresses gender incongruence, teachers and school staff having a federal constitutional right to accurately inform the parent or guardian of their student when the student expresses gender incongruence."
The injunction went further:
"These federal constitutional rights are superior to any state or local laws, state or local regulations, or state or local policies to the contrary."
That's the Supreme Court of the United States, with a commanding 6-3 majority, affirming that parents have a constitutional right to know what is happening with their own children in public schools. And that no state law, regulation, or policy can override it.
Paul M. Jonna, special counsel for the Thomas More Society, didn't mince words about California's maneuver. He called the motion a "desperate attempt" and laid out why the 9th Circuit was right to reject it:
"It was obviously a very desperate attempt to have the 9th Circuit improperly rewrite the injunction."
"We're glad that the 9th Circuit did not accept that invitation into error."
Jonna also pointed to language in the Supreme Court's ruling that undercuts California's apparent concern that the injunction somehow endangers children in abusive homes. Quoting the ruling, he noted that the injunction "permits the state to shield children from unfit parents by enforcing child abuse laws and removing children from parental custody in appropriate cases."
In other words, the safeguard California claimed to be worried about already exists. The state just didn't want to acknowledge it because doing so would strip away its last rhetorical justification for the policy.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta's office was contacted for comment. No response. The California Department of Education said it "cannot comment on pending litigation."
That's convenient. A state that spent enormous political capital defending a policy of keeping secrets from parents now has nothing to say when the courts dismantle it at every level. The Supreme Court ruled against them. The 9th Circuit, a court not exactly known for its conservative leanings, refused to bail them out. And the officials who championed these policies have gone quiet.
Strip away the legal procedural maneuvering, and the core question here is simple: Do parents have the right to know what is happening with their children in government-run schools?
California's answer, for years, was no. The state built a framework that empowered school staff to act as ideological gatekeepers, deciding what information parents deserved to receive about their own kids. Teachers were placed in the impossible position of being required to conceal information from the very people legally responsible for a child's welfare.
The constitutional problems with this arrangement were always obvious. The First Amendment protects the right of school staff to communicate truthfully with parents. The 14th Amendment protects parental rights over the upbringing of their children. California's policies ran headlong into both.
What's remarkable is how far California was willing to go to defend the indefensible. After losing at the district court level, after losing at the Supreme Court in a lopsided 6-3 decision, the state's response was to rush to the 9th Circuit with an emergency motion to rewrite the terms of its own defeat.
Three courts. Three losses. And still no willingness to accept that parents come first.
The Supreme Court's ruling keeps in place a statewide block on these policies, and the 9th Circuit's refusal to intervene reinforces the finality of that decision. For families across California and potentially across the country, this establishes a clear constitutional floor: schools cannot build walls of secrecy between children and their parents on matters this significant.
Other states that have pursued similar policies should take note. The highest court in the land has spoken, and the legal architecture supporting parental notification is now reinforced at every level of the federal judiciary.
California gambled that it could use the machinery of public education to override the most fundamental relationship in a child's life. The courts told them, three times over, that the Constitution disagrees.
Starbucks is hunting for office space in Nashville that could house upward of 2,000 employees, according to sources close to the property search cited by CoStar. The coffee giant has reportedly hired CBRE and is looking into leasing the new Peabody Union complex, a nearly 300,000 square foot development completed last year.
The move would dwarf the company's earlier announcement this month that it planned to relocate its logistics operations from its Pacific Northwest offices to Nashville, a shift affecting around 300 workers. If the larger expansion materializes, it would represent a stunning migration of corporate talent away from the city where Starbucks opened its first coffee shop in 1971.
Starbucks has vowed to maintain its headquarters in Seattle. But the math tells a different story. The company currently employs around 3,000 corporate staff in Seattle. A Nashville office housing 2,000 would make Tennessee the de facto center of gravity.
CEO Brian Niccol framed the strategic shift in a September letter to employees, according to the Daily Mail:
"Putting our resources closest to the customer so we can create great coffeehouses, offer world-class customer service, and grow the business."
The company pointed to "rising customer demand, in particular, the southeast region of the US" as the driving force. Niccol added that more coffeehouses would open in 2026.
On the surface, it's a straightforward business decision. Companies follow growth. The Southeast is booming. Tennessee is deep red, business-friendly, and doesn't punish success with punitive tax regimes.
But the other half of this equation is what Starbucks is leaving behind. Last year, the company laid off more than 1,100 corporate employees globally, including 900 in Seattle and nearby Kent, Washington. It shuttered 1 percent of its shops, more than 430 across North American locations, including its Seattle Reserve Roasteries.
That's not a company expanding out of abundance. That's a company restructuring away from a city that made doing business painful.
Starbucks founder Howard Schultz didn't wait around for the corporate relocation. He and his wife, Sheri, relocated to Miami earlier this year after nearly five decades in Seattle, citing closeness to children and grandchildren. He moved his private office to Miami as well.
Schultz, whose Forbes-estimated net worth sits at $4.3 billion, publicly announced his retirement plans the same day Washington state passed its first-ever income tax. The new levy goes into effect in 2029 and imposes a 9.9 percent tax on households earning more than $1 million annually. Florida is one of eight US states without a state personal income tax.
The timing speaks for itself.
But Schultz's frustrations with Seattle predate the tax question. Four years ago, he closed five profitable Seattle stores, citing rising crime. When Starbucks shuttered 16 stores across the country in 2022, Schultz blamed city leaders directly. He accused lawmakers in Seattle, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland, and Washington DC of "abdicating their responsibility." He alleged the stores had become "unsafe." He warned it was "just the beginning" of store closures and said there "would be many more."
He was right.
While Starbucks eyes the exits, Seattle's leadership is doubling down on the policies that accelerated the decline. Mayor Katie Wilson, a 43-year-old Democrat, issued a police order that allows drug users to avoid prosecution for using illegal substances in the streets.
A memo filed by progressive city attorney Erika Evans on January 1 says anyone arrested for doing drugs in public must be referred to the city's "LEAD" diversion program. Only users whose circumstances are deemed "acute or problematic" would be referred to Evans' office for potential prosecution. Prosecutors would consult with LEAD officers before making a final charging decision.
Read that again: the default response to public drug use in Seattle is now diversion, not prosecution. The city attorney's office has essentially made itself a last resort rather than a first responder to lawlessness.
Meanwhile, Seattle's homeless population has surged by 88 percent in the past 10 years.
The Starbucks migration fits a pattern that progressive leaders refuse to acknowledge. Companies don't flee cities because of geography. Seattle has mountains, water, a tech workforce, and cultural cachet that Nashville can't replicate overnight. Businesses leave when the cost of staying, measured in crime, regulation, taxation, and ideological hostility to commerce, exceeds the benefits.
What makes this case particularly striking is the symbolism. Starbucks isn't just any Seattle company. It is Seattle's company. Pike Place Market. The green mermaid. The whole mythology of Pacific Northwest coffee culture starts at that counter. When even the company synonymous with your city's identity starts shipping thousands of jobs to Tennessee, the problem isn't corporate greed. The problem is governance.
Nashville didn't poach Starbucks. Seattle pushed it away. The city chose:
Every one of those choices has a price. The bill is arriving in the form of moving trucks headed southeast.
The Schultz Family Foundation, which Sheri started in 1990, will continue to operate from Seattle under the leadership of CEO Vivek Varma, who has served in the role since July 2023. It's a small anchor in a city losing its biggest ones.
But foundations don't employ thousands. They don't fill office towers or generate the commercial activity that sustains a downtown. The people who write the checks are in Miami now. The people who fill the desks may soon be in Nashville.
Tennessee offers Starbucks something Seattle can't: a government that treats businesses like assets rather than problems to be managed. No state income tax. A growing population. A workforce that doesn't require hazard pay to commute through open-air drug markets.
The Southeast has been absorbing corporate refugees from blue states for years. What's different here is scale and speed. Starbucks isn't relocating a satellite office. It's potentially building a second headquarters in all but name, one that could rival Seattle's footprint within a few years.
Niccol can frame it as following the customer. Schultz can frame his move as being closer to grandchildren. The framing doesn't matter. The direction of travel is unmistakable, and it runs from blue to red, from permissive to orderly, from taxed to free.
Seattle built something extraordinary over the decades. Its leaders are dismantling it in real time, one policy at a time, and wondering why the golden goose stopped laying eggs. It didn't stop. It moved to Tennessee.
President Trump revealed Monday that Rep. Neal Dunn of Florida (R) had received a terminal heart diagnosis, a fact that had never been made public, and described how he personally intervened to get the congressman emergency surgery at Walter Reed.
Speaking in the White House East Room ahead of a Kennedy Center board meeting, Trump initially declined to name the ailing lawmaker. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), standing nearby, filled in the blank.
Trump had begun by alluding to the political stakes of losing a member of a razor-thin majority.
"We had one man who was very ill. It looked like he wasn't going to make it. I don't know. I don't I won't mention his name."
Johnson then identified the congressman as Neal Dunn and confirmed the severity of the situation.
"OK, that wasn't public, but, yeah, OK, it was grim."
Dunn, 73, represents part of the Florida panhandle, including Tallahassee, and is himself a medical doctor. He announced in January of this year that he would retire rather than seek a sixth term in the House. A spokeswoman for Dunn did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to both Trump and Johnson, the chain of events started when the Speaker mentioned Dunn's condition to the president. Johnson described Dunn as someone who kept showing up to work despite a diagnosis that would have sent most people home, the Post reported.
"I mentioned it to the president, and I said, 'Congressman Dunn is a real champion and a patriot, because he's still coming to work, and if others got this diagnosis, they would be apt to go home and retire.'"
Trump asked what the diagnosis was. Johnson replied that he believed it was terminal. Trump then described the call he made to Dunn and the realization that followed.
"I said, 'That's bad.' Number one, it was bad because I liked him. Number two, it was bad because I needed his vote."
What happened next moved fast. Trump said he remembered the White House medical team and reached out immediately.
"And I said, 'I have to call them.' And I called the two doctors, they're both great, and they immediately went over to see the congressman, and he was on the operating table like two hours later, and it was a long operation."
Trump described the surgery as extensive, involving stents and other interventions. He said Dunn now has "a new lease on life" and "more energy than a man half his age."
Trump made no effort to disguise the political dimension of his concern. The Republican majority in the House currently stands at four seats. Losing even one member, whether to illness or death, narrows the margin to a point where a single defection on any vote can kill legislation.
Trump put it bluntly.
"Death is very bad when you're the speaker, and you have a majority of two or three. But we had it, and then we had another death."
He also acknowledged the dual motivation with characteristic candor, saying he acted for Dunn first and for the vote second, "but it was a close second, actually."
This is the kind of honesty that drives Washington commentators to distraction but registers as plain dealing with everyone else. Of course, a president cares about keeping his majority intact. Pretending otherwise would be the actual scandal. Trump simply said what any honest leader in his position would think, and did so while also acting to save a man's life.
One of the more interesting threads in Trump's remarks was his praise for the White House medical team and his willingness to deploy them on behalf of others. He described the doctors as "miracle workers" and indicated this was not an isolated case.
"And I realized I have doctors in the White House, and White House doctors are incredible and they've helped me with other people. They're helping me with people right now, people that are very sick."
The fact that Dunn, a physician himself, was apparently unable to secure the kind of rapid intervention that the White House medical apparatus delivered says something about the speed at which government healthcare can move when the president picks up the phone. It also says something about the dysfunction of the system when he doesn't.
Dunn's January retirement announcement takes on a different complexion in light of Monday's revelations. What might have looked like a routine decision by a senior member not to seek reelection now appears to have been shaped, at least in part, by a life-threatening medical crisis.
Johnson's initial reaction to Trump's disclosure, the resigned "OK, that wasn't public," captured the moment perfectly. This was a private matter that became public in the most Trumpian way possible: on stage, in real time, with the Speaker of the House wincing through confirmation.
Trump told the story because it illustrated something he wanted people to understand about how he operates. He sees a problem. He remembers he has resources. He uses them. The congressman was described as terminal. Now he has more energy than a man half his age.
Neal Dunn is alive, and he's still casting votes. That's the story.
Costco is pulling ready-to-eat meatloaf meals from shelves across 26 states and two territories after an ingredient supplier flagged possible salmonella contamination. The retailer sent a notice to members warning them not to eat the affected product and to return it for a full refund.
The recalled item is Costco's "Meatloaf with Mashed Yukon Potatoes and Glaze," sold between March 2 and March 13, 2026, with sell-by dates ranging from March 5 through March 16. That means some of these meals are still sitting in customers' refrigerators right now.
No illnesses or injuries have been reported at this time.
According to Newsweek, The recall traces back to Griffith Foods Inc., one of Costco's ingredient suppliers for the meatloaf product. Griffith Foods announced a recall of one of the ingredients used in the meatloaf due to the potential presence of Salmonella, which prompted Costco to act.
Costco did not specify how many units were sold during the nearly two-week window, nor did it identify which specific ingredient was the source of concern. What the company did make clear is that customers should stay away from anything covered by the recall.
"Do not consume any product that is part of this recall."
Costco added that customers can return the product to their local store for a full refund.
The affected meals were sold at Costco locations across a wide geographic footprint. The full list of states and territories includes:
That covers a substantial chunk of the country, from the Pacific to the Atlantic and down to the Caribbean.
Salmonella is no minor inconvenience. Symptoms can appear anywhere from several hours to a few days after exposure and can range from gastrointestinal distress to severe illness, particularly in the elderly, young children, and those with compromised immune systems. The potential for fatal infections is what gives recalls like this their urgency.
The fact that no illnesses have been reported is good news. But the sell-by dates on these meals run through today, March 16, which means the window for exposure hasn't closed. Anyone who purchased the product during those two weeks and hasn't eaten it yet should check the packaging carefully.
This recall is a useful illustration of how modern food supply chains work, and where they can break down. Costco didn't produce the contaminated ingredient. Griffith Foods did. But the product carried Costco's name, sat in Costco's deli cases, and went home with Costco's members. The retailer owns the customer relationship, and to its credit, it moved to notify members and offer refunds.
Still, the episode raises a fair question: how much visibility do major retailers actually have into the ingredients that go into their prepared foods? Costco hasn't disclosed which ingredient triggered the concern or when Griffith Foods first identified the problem. The gap between when the meals started selling on March 2 and when customers received the recall notice matters. Every day of delay in a Salmonella situation is a day someone might get sick.
Consumers who bought the meatloaf should not eat it, should not try to cook it to a higher temperature as a workaround, and should return it to Costco or dispose of it. When a company tells you to throw something away and come get your money back, take them up on it.
President Trump declared Saturday that Iran wants to negotiate a ceasefire, but he's not biting. Not yet.
In a nearly 30-minute telephone interview with NBC News, Trump laid out his position plainly: Iran is feeling the pressure, but the deal on the table doesn't meet his standards. He declined to specify what terms he's seeking.
"Iran wants to make a deal, and I don't want to make it because the terms aren't good enough yet."
That single sentence captures the posture of the entire operation. Two weeks into a joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran, the administration is negotiating from a position of overwhelming force, and it intends to stay there until the terms reflect it.
The facts on the ground back up the confidence. U.S. Central Command announced Saturday morning that it had conducted precision strikes on 90 military targets while preserving Iran's oil infrastructure. Trump confirmed strikes on Kharg Island, Iran's critical oil export hub, though he noted the deliberate restraint around energy infrastructure, as NBC News reports.
"We totally demolished Kharg Island, but we may hit it a few more times just for fun."
Behind the bravado is a calculated strategy. Trump explained that he spared Iran's energy lines because rebuilding them "would take years." The goal isn't to destroy Iran's economy permanently. It's to destroy Iran's capacity to project military power.
And on that front, the progress is striking. Trump told NBC that U.S. forces have knocked out most of Iran's missiles, most of its drones, and most of its manufacturing capacity for both. He said that within two days, those capabilities would be "totally decimated."
"The only power they have, and it's a power that can be closed off relatively quickly, is the power of dropping a mine or shooting a relatively short-range missile. But when we get finished with the shoreline, they're not going to have that power either."
The message to Tehran could not be clearer: every day you wait, you have less to bargain with.
One of the most significant developments from the interview was Trump's plan to internationalize the security of the Strait of Hormuz. He posted on Truth Social Saturday morning that multiple countries would be sending warships to keep the strait open.
"Many Countries, especially those who are affected by Iran's attempted closure of the Hormuz Strait, will be sending War Ships, in conjunction with the United States of America, to keep the Strait open and safe."
He specifically called on China, France, Japan, South Korea, and the UK to contribute, and said the U.S. would be "sweeping the strait very strongly." When pressed on which countries had already committed, Trump declined to name them but described their response as "very solid." He said the nations involved "think it's a great idea."
This is exactly the kind of burden-sharing that American foreign policy has needed for decades. The Strait of Hormuz isn't an American waterway. It's a chokepoint for global energy, and the nations that depend on it should bear the cost of keeping it open. Trump is forcing that conversation in real time, under live-fire conditions.
The stakes are not abstract. According to UAE data, 1,475 unmanned aerial vehicles had been fired at the country as of March 10. Iran's campaign of regional intimidation has hit real targets in real countries, and the coalition forming around the Strait reflects the reality that Iran's "thuggery," as Trump called it, affects far more than just the United States.
Perhaps the most revealing exchange in the interview concerned Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran's newly named supreme leader. Khamenei was elevated earlier this week after U.S. and Israeli strikes killed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But the new leader's first public statement was conspicuously delivered in writing, not on camera.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed this on Friday with characteristic directness:
"Iran has plenty of cameras and plenty of voice recorders. Why a written statement? I think you know why. His father: dead; he's scared, he's injured, he's on the run, and he lacks legitimacy."
Hegseth described Mojtaba Khamenei as "wounded and likely disfigured" and called his statement "a weak one." Trump went further, saying he's "hearing he's not alive" but acknowledged it was "a rumor." Then he added a line that doubles as both diplomacy and a threat:
"I'm hearing he's not alive, and if he is, he should do something very smart for his country, and that's surrender."
Trump also mentioned that there are people "living that would be great leaders for the future of the country," but declined to identify them, saying he didn't want to "put them in jeopardy." The implication is unmistakable: the U.S. has a vision for a post-theocratic Iran, and it involves people who already exist inside or near the regime's orbit.
None of this comes without a price. Thirteen active U.S. service personnel have died since the conflict began, including six crew members killed Friday when their military refueling plane crashed in Iraq. Trump said of the troops involved that they "have been terrific" but that "they got shot at unnecessarily."
Iraqi officials reported Saturday that an Iranian strike hit a helipad inside a U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad. The conflict is not one-sided, and the administration isn't pretending otherwise.
There is also the question of gas prices. On March 1, the day after the U.S. and Israel began operations, gas averaged $2.94 a gallon nationally. By Saturday, it had risen to $3.66. Trump, who hammered Biden over gas prices throughout 2024, dismissed concerns.
"I think they'll go lower than they were before, and I had them at record lows."
He pointed to global oil supply as a reason for optimism, saying there's "so much oil, gas" available but that "it's being clogged up a little bit. It'll be unclogged very soon." He also referenced a decision to temporarily lift some sanctions on Russian oil, a move clearly designed to stabilize global markets during the conflict.
In one of the more unexpected turns in the interview, Trump addressed Ukrainian President Zelenskyy's offer to help U.S. forces intercept Iranian drones. Zelenskyy posted on X Friday that Ukraine had already sent expert teams to three countries in the Middle East to share drone interception expertise.
Trump was unimpressed.
"We don't need help. Last person we need help from is Zelenskyy."
He then pivoted to the broader conflict between Russia and Ukraine, saying he was "surprised that Zelenskyy doesn't want to make a deal" and that "Zelenskyy is far more difficult to make a deal with" than Putin. An unnamed Iranian politician called Ukraine a "legitimate and lawful target," a statement that underscores how tangled these overlapping conflicts have become.
Trump acknowledged reports that Russia may be sharing intelligence with Iran but was measured in his response, saying, "Russia is perhaps giving information, perhaps they're not." He noted that the U.S. is "giving a little information to Ukraine" while trying to broker peace between the two nations.
The geopolitical web is thick: the U.S. is striking Iran, coordinating with Israel, easing sanctions on Russia to manage oil prices, and fending off Ukrainian attempts to insert itself into the Middle East theater. It's a lot of spinning plates. But the through line is consistent: Trump is managing each relationship on American terms, not getting pulled into anyone else's preferred framing.
Trump said the conflict is "way ahead of the timetable," faster than the month or longer he had initially suggested it might take. He described Iran's remaining military capability in terms that suggest the campaign's kinetic phase is nearing its conclusion. There is, he said, "practically nothing left to target."
But the military campaign was never the hard part. The hard part is what comes after: the deal, the diplomatic architecture, the question of who governs Iran and under what constraints. Trump made clear Saturday that he's in no rush.
"The only thing I want to do is make sure that Iran can never be the bully of the Middle East again."
That's not a ceasefire condition. That's a strategic objective. And it requires patience, leverage, and a willingness to walk away from a bad deal. Saturday's interview was Trump telling the world he has all three.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has endorsed former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn in his bid for Maryland's 5th Congressional District, marking the second time she's thrown her weight behind a candidate whose entire political identity rests on a single day five years ago.
Pelosi, who is not seeking re-election, announced the endorsement in a release, according to The Hill.
"On January 6, 2021, Harry Dunn bravely defended our democracy from Donald Trump's violent MAGA mob. Since then, Harry's been called to do everything he can to protect Marylanders and all Americans from extremists like Donald Trump. I'm proud to endorse Harry Dunn for Congress."
Dunn returned the favor, saying Pelosi "stood firm when our democracy was under attack and helped lead the country through one of the most difficult moments in our history."
This is not Pelosi's first time endorsing Dunn. She backed him in 2024 as well. That endorsement didn't carry him very far. Dunn failed to win the Democratic primary that year in Maryland's 3rd Congressional District.
Now he's running in a different district entirely. The 5th is opening up because Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer is not seeking re-election.
Hoyer, for his part, has endorsed his own former campaign manager, Maryland Delegate Adrian Boafo, for the seat. So Dunn isn't just running against the Republican field eventually; he's navigating an intraparty fight where the outgoing incumbent's preferred successor is someone else, as Fox News reports.
Pelosi called Dunn "a true American hero and exactly the right person to represent Maryland in Congress." The question Maryland Democrats will have to answer is whether being present at the Capitol on January 6 constitutes a congressional résumé, or whether voters in the 5th District want something more from their representative.
Dunn's candidacy is a case study in a particular kind of Democratic branding that emerged after 2021: take a figure associated with January 6, elevate them to symbolic status, and convert that symbolism into political office. It worked for some. It hasn't worked for Dunn, at least not yet.
The language of the endorsement tells the story. Pelosi's statement doesn't mention a single policy position. Not healthcare. Not taxes. Not infrastructure. Not education.
Not anything that a voter in Bowie or College Park or Upper Marlboro might actually care about when deciding who represents them in Washington. The entire pitch is January 6, five years later.
There's a shelf life on that argument, and Democrats seem unwilling to test whether it's already expired. Dunn already lost one primary with this exact framing. Switching districts doesn't change the product. It just changes the audience.
Pelosi's endorsement matters less for what it says about Dunn than for what it reveals about the state of the Democratic bench. When a former Speaker of the House, one of the most powerful figures in modern Democratic politics, is spending her remaining political capital on a candidate who already lost a primary, it raises a straightforward question: Who else do they have?
The Democratic Party has spent years investing in narrative over governance. The January 6 committee. The endless hearings. The made-for-television moments. Dunn's candidacy is an extension of that project. It treats political theater as a qualification.
Hoyer's endorsement of Boafo suggests that at least some Maryland Democrats understand the district needs a candidate with actual legislative experience and local roots, not a national symbol parachuting into an open seat. Whether primary voters agree will say something about where the party's base actually is.
Fox News Digital reached out to Dunn's campaign but received no response as of the time of reporting.
Dunn served as a Capitol Police officer. That's an honorable profession. But honorable service in one role does not automatically translate into competence in another, and voters who lived through a primary where this same pitch fell short have every reason to ask what's different this time.
The answer, apparently, is the district. The messenger hasn't changed. The message hasn't changed. Pelosi hasn't changed. Only the zip codes have.