Minnesota Democratic leaders are casting a federal Medicaid funding freeze as political payback rather than accountability for fraud, even as $550 million stays locked and up to $2 billion hangs over the state.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has deferred $550 million in federal payments to Minnesota since the start of 2026 over allegations of widespread healthcare fraud, Daily Caller reported.
Temporary Minnesota Department of Human Services commissioner John Connolly, appointed by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz in May, sent a five-page letter on Oct. 2 to CMS administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz seeking the money restored.
Connolly argued the freeze feels less like fraud enforcement and more like something else entirely.
In comments carried by the Washington Sun, he said pressures “feel increasingly like a war on Medicaid, not a war on fraud.”
"We are deeply concerned that this would be another step in a retribution campaign for Minnesota that was promised very publicly,"
Connolly wrote in that vein, tying the freeze to politics instead of the state’s own record.
The Oct. 2 letter claimed Minnesota Department of Human Services had already met fraud-reporting duties by identifying 14 “high risk” Medicaid service providers.
It also insisted the department had asked repeatedly for evidence of the fraud claims so it could stop payments where needed.
"Minnesota has repeatedly asked CMS and federal law enforcement to provide evidence supporting public claims of of fraud in Minnesota’s Medicaid programs so the Department of Human Services can stop payments where warranted,"
the letter stated. It continued that no such evidence had been shared and that CMS had not asked the state to impose any payment withhold on a provider.
State officials have leaned hard on the victim framing even while federal dollars make up 64 percent of Minnesota’s total Medicaid spending, or $11.8 billion a year according to a KFF analysis.
Walz himself answered a June referral the same day by saying the move had “nothing to do with fraud” and calling it a “campaign of retribution.”
That posture fits a pattern already visible in Tim Walz’s mounting fraud scandal coverage as the governor faces sustained scrutiny.
CMS first deferred $259 million earlier in 2026. Of that sum, $243.8 million covered unsupported or potentially fraudulent Medicaid claims and $15.4 million involved claims tied to illegal immigrants, according to a February agency press release.
By June, HHS announced it was deferring $1 billion from both Minnesota and California over Medicaid and social-services fraud.
Minnesota DHS’s own website acknowledges the $550 million already deferred in 2026 and the threat to withhold as much as $2 billion.
In March, then-commissioner Shireen Gandhi and Attorney General Keith Ellison sued CMS, claiming the withhold was illegal. A court denied their bid for a preliminary injunction.
Ellison has filed more than 73 lawsuits against the Trump administration. In 2023 he boasted his office ran the “largest-ever Medicaid fraud prosecution” by a state attorney general, three defendants, 24 counts, $11 million.
That figure sits beside larger federal cases, including the Minnesota Medicaid fraud pleas that keep surfacing in the state.
Vice President JD Vance announced on X on June 9 that he had sent the allegations to the Justice Department’s new Fraud Division for criminal investigation.
"I’ve referred these allegations to DOJ’s new Fraud Division for criminal investigation. Minnesota state officials are not above the law, and if they facilitated fraud, lied under oath about what they knew, or harassed and intimated whistleblowers, they must face justice."
Vance posted. The same month DOJ announced charges against 15 defendants in Minnesota for more than $90 million in fraud.
Minnesota DHS told the Daily Caller News Foundation it “is acting aggressively to detect and prevent fraud and shuts off money to providers when credible allegations of fraud come to light” and works “in close partnership with other state agencies and law enforcement.”
Its website adds that since 2020 the department has run over 3,500 investigations, referred over 1,150 cases to law enforcement, and identified more than $56 million for recovery, returning $2.29 for every dollar spent on investigators.
Those numbers look modest next to the federal freezes and the DOJ’s $90 million case load, a gap that also shadows the $9 billion fraud scandal hanging over Minnesota politics.
A CMS spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation the agency “is committed to safeguarding Medicaid by strengthening program integrity, protecting taxpayer dollars, and ensuring benefits are reserved for those who are eligible under the law.”
"The agency does not comment further on matters in pending litigation."
the spokesperson added. Former Obama-era CMS senior advisor Andy Schneider called the steps against Minnesota unprecedented.
“They have done to Minnesota what CMS has never done to any other state. It’s all uncharted territory,” Schneider said.
Walz’s and Ellison’s offices gave no comment before publication. Connolly’s letter and the state’s public statements keep returning to the same theme: the freeze is unfair targeting, not overdue enforcement.
National pressure for stronger tools continues, including the push seen when Senate Democrats faced anti-fraud division votes after the House acted.
Taxpayers did not create Minnesota’s Medicaid mess, and they should not support excuses that treat basic oversight as an attack.
Former UFC fighter and Green Beret Tim Kennedy is recovering at Walter Reed after three gunshot wounds in a Congo ambush that left roughly 20 dead or wounded.
Kennedy took three rounds to the leg during a September 17 attack in South Kivu province in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Newsweek reported, citing Reuters sources familiar with the incident.
The ambush struck personnel tied to Vectus Global, the security and consulting firm founded by Blackwater founder Erik Prince, while the group traveled between locations in the province. Sources told Reuters that about 20 people were killed or wounded, including a former member of New Zealand’s Special Forces.
Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin said late Sunday he had spoken directly with Kennedy and confirmed the fighter was alive.
Van Orden posted on X:
"I just spoke to my dear friend @TimKennedyMMA,"
He added:
"That means he is not dead and that means I am thankful."
Van Orden also asked the public for prayer:
"I am asking everyone to pray for his healing and that his wonderful family find Peace,"
Sources familiar with the operation said the force was ambushed by M23 rebels. Some of those sources described sophisticated planning and suggested possible Rwandan involvement. Rwanda has long denied backing the M23 group, a claim United Nations and Western governments have leveled for years.
One Congolese government source offered a different detail: the attackers may have tracked a surveillance drone. Vectus Global had not previously taken casualties in Congo, according to a source close to the operation.
Prince’s company had been working security around the mineral sector. After diplomatic efforts produced an M23 withdrawal from the strategic city of Uvira, Vectus personnel helped Congolese forces secure the area. The overall size of the Prince operation in Congo remains unknown.
Publicly available information offers no evidence the mission was a U.S. military operation, and it does not explain why Kennedy was moved to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington, D.C. Kennedy had not publicly disclosed any planned trip to Congo before the attack.
Serious medical fights demand clear priorities, the same clarity voters have seen when General Mills stripped artificial dyes from U.S. cereal under a broader health push.
Newsweek contacted Prince, Kennedy, Van Orden, the Congo military, and Walter Reed on Monday for comment. No on-record replies appear in the available reporting.
Kennedy’s path is well known to fans of both special operations and mixed martial arts. He served as a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier before competing in the UFC middleweight division. Later he worked as a commentator, author, entrepreneur, and podcast host.
That record places him among Americans who keep showing up in unstable places long after the cameras leave. Private security work in eastern Congo carries real risk; the September 17 toll shows it.
Families watching a wounded veteran fight through recovery also live through other health alarms, including the stretch that saw Pennsylvania report a fifth measles death in the worst U.S. year since 1991.
Blackwater, the earlier Prince firm, no longer exists. Its contractors became infamous during the Iraq War. Vectus Global is the current vehicle. The Congo ambush is the first reported casualty event for that team in-country.
Key details stay unanswered. Kennedy’s exact contractual role with Vectus is not stated. The breakdown of dead versus wounded is not public. No primary incident report or company statement has surfaced beyond the secondary sourcing.
Rwandan involvement remains a suggestion from some sources, not a settled finding. The drone-tracking claim rests on a single Congolese government source. Absolute calendar dates for the Friday Reuters account and the Sunday Van Orden posts are not fixed in the reporting beyond the September 17 ambush date itself.
Medical systems under pressure force hard choices, the kind visible when a federal judge paused a teen pregnancy grant overhaul while leaving terminated funding in place.
What is established is straightforward: a decorated former Green Beret and UFC veteran took three gunshot wounds in an ambush aimed at a private security element in eastern Congo, roughly 20 people were killed or wounded, and Kennedy is now under care at Walter Reed while a sitting member of Congress confirms he is alive and asks for prayer.
Americans tracking recovery stories also watch broader medical policy shifts, including the decision that cut the CDC childhood vaccine schedule from 18 diseases to 11.
Kennedy’s condition update closes one question and leaves others open. The men who still take these contracts understand the cost. The country that trains Green Berets should keep clear eyes on who is fighting, who is bleeding, and who answers for the aftermath.
President Trump has named Katie Zacharia the next White House press secretary, replacing Karoline Leavitt with a longtime MAGA ally and Trump Media adviser.
President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that he had just hired a new press secretary and that Katie Zacharia would take the job. He framed the pick as a natural fit for the podium and for his team. The New York Post reported the announcement from Washington as Trump moved to fill the vacancy left when Karoline Leavitt stepped away from the role.
Trump also posted the news on Truth Social, stressing Zacharia’s campaign work and her long record of support. The choice puts a familiar conservative communicator in one of the administration’s most visible jobs as the White House heads into a hard political stretch.
Leavitt left the press secretary post in August to spend more time with her family after the birth of her second child on May 1. Zacharia will replace her. That handoff keeps the briefing room in the hands of a loyal Trump ally rather than an outside hire with no stake in the agenda.
Speaking to the White House press corps, Trump cast Zacharia as someone the room already knows.
He told reporters:
"She’s a friend of most of you. I know she likes people. She likes all of you, actually. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but we just hired a new press secretary. And she’s going to be, I think, terrific."
On Truth Social he went further, tying her résumé to his own winning map. Trump wrote that she had helped in key swing states “where we won 7 out of 7,” called her a “loyal and brilliant supporter,” and said she has been a devoted MAGA member “right from the beginning.” He closed with a simple send-off: “Good luck Katie.”
Fox News reported that Trump named the attorney and TV commentator on Friday, and that two White House officials had confirmed the selection before his public announcement. Fox also carried his formal praise of her current role as senior communications adviser to Truth Social at Trump Media & Technology Group.
That loyalty-first pattern matches other recent personnel moves, including the White House’s emphasis on proven MAGA hires for sensitive jobs.
Trump’s public case for Zacharia was straightforward. He wants a press secretary who already shares the mission, knows the media fight, and will not need on-the-job conversion.
Katie Zacharia is 42 and a mother of four. She has been a fixture on conservative media, especially Fox News, and has written op-eds for the Post. She advises Trump Media & Technology Group and works at Fix California, the group founded by Trump special envoy Ric Grenell to push a conservative agenda in the Golden State.
Just the News reported that she previously served as spokesperson and deputy assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, and that she graduated from Pepperdine University and its Caruso School of Law. Leavitt, who left in August after giving birth, is expected to join Fox News as a contributor.
Zacharia spent about three months at DHS earlier this year and left after Markwayne Mullin took over as secretary in March. She was reported to have been close to then-Secretary Kristi Noem and special adviser Corey Lewandowski while there. She later told Just the News the long commute from California put a strain on her family.
Her earlier résumé is classic Republican farm-system work. She interned for the Republican National Committee while at Pepperdine and served in the White House Office of Political Affairs during George W. Bush’s second term. Trump’s own description puts her in the swing-state trenches of his campaigns. That mix of government, media, and movement work is why the pick landed with little mystery inside MAGA circles.
Trump has kept a heavy public schedule while locking in staff and message discipline, the same posture on display when he said he never gets tired of a packed midterm travel calendar.
Zacharia answered the appointment on X with full-throated thanks and a clear job description.
She wrote:
"President Trump has shown America that we can be great again, and he works to effectuate that greatness every single day. His confidence is a true privilege, and his leadership is a blessing to this country."
She also said she looks forward to working with the White House press corps and reporters across the country “to get that record out,” and called the post “the honor of a lifetime.” Fox carried a parallel line in which she framed service to Trump and the American people at the country’s 250-year mark as that same honor.
The Washington Examiner reported that Trump tapped the conservative commentator and Trump Media adviser as press secretary less than a month before the 2026 midterm elections, and amid lawsuits from Politico, MS Now, and CNN over White House access bans. The timing is not subtle. The briefing room remains a daily battleground over access, framing, and who sets the record.
A press secretary who already knows the media map and the president’s priorities is a practical answer to that fight. Trump said she has the respect of the media, the American people, and his administration, and that she will work “fantastically” with all three. That is the job description in plain English: defend the record, push the facts out, and refuse to let hostile outlets run the room unchallenged.
The same direct public style has marked other recent Trump moves, from hard-edged campaign endorsements in Michigan to sharp responses when critics try to define the story first.
Leavitt’s exit was personal, not political. She left to focus on her family after a second child. The administration did not leave the podium empty of a trusted voice for long. Zacharia’s selection closes that gap with someone who has already worked the DHS beat, the Trump media orbit, and the conservative airwaves.
Voters watching the next year of briefings will judge the results in real time. They will hear whether the White House answers questions cleanly, corrects false frames fast, and keeps the focus on results rather than process theater. Staffing the room with a proven communicator is how an administration prepares for that test.
Trump has also used executive action to deliver concrete relief on costs that hit working Americans, including when he expanded tax-free red diesel for farmers and truckers. Message and policy still have to travel together.
Zacharia now inherits the daily assignment of making that case under lights. Trump’s public bet is that a loyal, media-fluent hire can do it without confusion about whose agenda she serves.
A White House that picks its own messengers, instead of auditioning for hostile approval, is simply doing the job voters hired it to do.
President Trump has picked Katie Zacharia as White House press secretary, rewarding a loyal fighter after higher-profile critics fell out of the running.
President Donald Trump selected Katie Zacharia as his new White House press secretary in a rapid move announced Friday, tapping a conservative commentator and longtime backer who will start Monday.
CNN reported that Zacharia was in the Oval Office with Trump earlier Friday morning and thanked him in a social media post the same day. As of last week, she was not even under consideration.
Trump cast the choice as a vote for proven loyalty. In announcing the selection, he pointed to her work for Truth Social and Trump Media & Technology Group, her frequent appearances on Fox and Newsmax, and a clean record of support from the start.
"She has an unblemished record of support, and has been a loyal and brilliant supporter, right from the beginning."
The hire fills the post left by former press secretary Karoline Leavitt. White House aides had struggled through a search that kept running into higher-profile names who had previously criticized Trump. Lists narrowed, then candidates dropped out over past negative comments.
In recent days, Trump called close allies and advisers for their read on Zacharia. He sought Leavitt’s counsel before making a final decision and offering the job.
Leavitt congratulated the pick on social media and made her backing plain.
"As I told the President, Katie has my full support and I will be cheering for her and the entire team at the White House every day."
Zacharia told Fox News Friday evening how the call landed. She said the president “loved what a fighter I was for him.”
"I got a wonderful phone call from the chief talent recruiter, the president himself, and it turns out that being a huge supporter of all of his policies actually works."
That framing matches the administration’s broader push to staff up with people who will sell results, not undercut them. Readers tracking White House priorities have seen the same pattern in concrete enforcement moves, including how the Trump administration has removed more than 3 million illegal immigrants.
Zacharia first came to Washington in 2006 as an intern for the Republican National Committee during the George W. Bush administration. She later served as legal adviser for Fix California, the conservative group founded by Trump ally Richard Grenell.
She logged a two-month stint as a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security, commuting from California, where she lives with young children. She told a friend that commute was not sustainable. Since June she has worked as a senior communications adviser at Trump Media and Technology Group and Truth Social, work Trump highlighted when he announced the hire.
She has also been a frequent guest on Fox, Newsmax, and CNN. Her DHS background sits alongside other administration actions on borders and workforce rules, such as the decision that pulled 28,000 trucker licenses from non-citizens and opened seats for veterans.
Zacharia said she will start the job Monday. She did not say when her first briefing would occur. On X she framed the assignment as results and communication.
"The work ahead is to continue delivering strong results for our Country and communicating to the American people the major wins that this Administration is making every single day."
She added that she looks forward to working with the White House press corps and reporters across the country “to get that record out,” and said “following the fabulous Karoline Leavitt is a high standard, and one worth meeting.” In a separate social media post Friday she wrote: “Serving President Trump and the American people at this critical 250-year mark is the honor of a lifetime.”
Trump, leaving the White House on Friday, told reporters the new hire already knows the press corps.
“She’s a friend of most of you,” he said. “I know she likes people, she likes all of you. Actually, I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but we just hired a new press secretary, and she’s going to be, I think, terrific.”
While Zacharia was on Fox News Friday evening, Trump delivered remarks in Syracuse, New York. The speed of the selection, from outside the mix last week to Oval Office Friday and a Monday start, underscored how the White House valued a known quantity who had never broken ranks.
That same preference for loyal execution shows up in other recent White House moves, from the deportation of more than 25,000 people to third countries to high-profile economic deals Trump has touted.
Zacharia’s brief now is simple: carry the record into the briefing room every day and keep the focus on what the administration is delivering. After a search that kept discarding critics, Trump chose the fighter who never quit the fight.
President Trump branded Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed a radical extremist and terrorist sympathizer while giving Republican Mike Rogers his complete endorsement in Michigan’s open seat race.
Just the News reported that President Donald Trump this week went after El-Sayed on Truth Social, calling the Democrat a poor fit for Michigan and tying him to left-wing Twitch streamer Hasan Piker.
Trump referred to the candidate as “Mohammed El-Sayed” and drew a hard contrast with former Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican in the contest for the open U.S. Senate seat.
Trump posted:
"Mohammed El-Sayed is a terrible Candidate for the Dumocrats. While his opponent, Mike Rogers, is an extremely good one, Mohammed goes back to the days of the Jihad,"
He kept going in the same post, labeling El-Sayed a “RADICAL Extremist, Terrorist Sympathizer” and saying he was “no different from his best friend, America Hating Hasan Piker.” Trump then asked, “How’s France doing?” and said El-Sayed’s values “are not exactly those of Michiganders, or those of our Great United States of America.”
Trump closed with a full-throated endorsement: “He is WRONG for Michigan, and WRONG for America. VOTE FOR MIKE ROGERS, HE HAS MY COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT, AND WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”
El-Sayed has already taken flak during the race for his ties to Piker. The streamer has said America “deserved” 9/11, among other sensational statements that put him far outside mainstream politics.
That association tracks with earlier pushback Trump has leveled at the same circle, including when Trump branded Hasan Piker a communist and said the streamer hurts Democrats.
Rogers, a former Michigan congressman, now carries the president’s explicit backing in what both sides treat as a high-stakes open-seat fight.
Trump’s “How’s France doing?” jab did not appear in a vacuum. The Washington Free Beacon detailed deleted 2022 World Cup posts in which El-Sayed denounced France as a “colonizer,” cheered for Morocco, and claimed to speak for the African and Arab diaspora while offering no support for the U.S. team.
El-Sayed wrote at the time:
"We are all #Morocco. Can't wait to watch them take it to the colonizer in the #WorldCup semifinal."
The Free Beacon also noted El-Sayed’s broader pattern of anti-Western remarks, including criticism of U.S. foreign policy on 9/11 anniversaries and suggestions that Israel posed a greater threat than Iran. Those posts supply the concrete record behind Trump’s France reference and his larger claim that El-Sayed’s outlook clashes with Michigan voters.
Questions about El-Sayed’s network have followed him on other fronts as well, including reporting on CAIR-affiliated donors who backed his Senate bid.
Breitbart reported that El-Sayed answered the Truth Social broadside by focusing on Trump’s use of “Mohammed” rather than Abdul, and by claiming the president is struggling under criticism.
El-Sayed said:
"He thinks my name’s Mohammed... My name’s Abdul, and you know it. And the only reason he won’t say it is I keep ripping you,"
Breitbart framed the Michigan contest as a knife-edge race that could help decide control of the Senate. Trump’s post treated the choice as clear-cut: Rogers as the strong candidate, El-Sayed as the wrong one for the state and the country.
Democratic tension around the nominee has surfaced inside Michigan too, including when state Democrat Karen Whitsett warned Black voters against El-Sayed and tore into the party’s socialist wing.
Trump returned to the race after a Michigan Senate debate and declared that Rogers had dominated. Fox News reported the president’s fresh Truth Social assessment of the matchup.
Trump wrote that Rogers “completely obliterated” El-Sayed and added that “if this was a fight they would have stopped it.” In related posts he again cast El-Sayed as a “RADICAL Extremist, Terrorist Sympathizer” and went further, calling him a “Jihadist lunatic who hates our Country, the Black People of Detroit, and wants to see the U.S. fail.”
El-Sayed, for his part, accused Trump of using his name and faith as a distraction from policy. Trump’s message stayed fixed on the contrast he wants voters to see: Rogers as a steady Republican hand, El-Sayed as a radical out of step with Michigan.
That same scrutiny has hit El-Sayed in other settings, including moments when he faced direct questions about Iran’s regime and declined to give a clear condemnation.
Rogers now runs as the candidate with the president’s “complete and total endorsement.” El-Sayed runs as the Democrat Trump has defined by the Piker association, the old France posts, and a record Trump says rejects basic American loyalties.
Michigan voters get a clean choice between a former congressman Trump trusts and a Democrat whose own words and alliances keep putting him on the wrong side of the country’s core instincts.
Bodycam footage from a Newport News elementary school captures a 6-year-old cursing at staff and daring officers after he shot his teacher, and a jury later hit the assistant principal with a $10 million verdict for ignoring warnings that could have stopped it.
On Jan. 6, 2023, first-grader J.T. pulled a 9 mm Taurus handgun from his jacket pocket during an afternoon reading class at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia, and fired a single round at teacher Abby Zwerner from about 10 feet away, striking her hand and chest in front of 16 students.
Reading specialist Amy Kovac rushed in after hearing the gunshot and seeing blood on the teacher, restrained the boy in a bear hug, and called 911. Police bodycam obtained by local outlets and detailed in a New York Post report shows what happened next: a child still swearing, threatening adults, and showing no fear of jail.
Officers recovered the handgun on the classroom floor roughly 15 to 20 feet from the boy. Radio traffic captured the grim line, “We have the shooter,” followed by questions about the child’s age and a request for small handcuffs. Officer Brian Torrez warned colleagues not to touch the boy’s hands because of gun residue.
Three minutes of that bodycam later became a prosecution exhibit. On the video, J.T. yelled at Kovac and the officers with language no first-grader should know.
Kovac told him to stop. He answered with more abuse.
“Both y’all want a f, king piece of me, b, h?!”
He repeated the same attack on Kovac:
“F, k you, b, h.”
Then he escalated again, daring the adults in the room:
“If you want a piece of me, come get it on, b, h. I don’t care if you call backup. I don’t care if I go to jail, b, h.”
Gesturing toward the gun, he also said he “stole that from my mom.” Kovac later testified he punched her in the face hard enough to send her glasses flying. She tried to calm him and reminded him the language was not appropriate. He did not back down.
Court documents say the boy took the gun from his mother’s purse that morning after climbing on her dresser, put it in his backpack, and brought it to school. Kovac told officers it was his first week without his mother coming to school with him, that he was on a modified schedule, and that his mother was supposed to pick him up at 2:30. She also said she had already told the assistant principal there was a threat earlier.
That earlier warning was not a one-off. Teachers at Richneck warned administrators three times in the hours before the shooting that the six-year-old, described as having an acute disability, was threatening classmates with a gun. Officials brushed the reports aside, with one administrator claiming the student could not be carrying a weapon because he had “little pockets,” and no one contacted law enforcement in time. A Washington Free Beacon account tied the inaction to discipline policies that emphasized reducing disparities over immediate safety reporting, including a district practice of routing firearm concerns through a central office before police.
Former assistant principal Ebony Parker faced eight felony child neglect counts tied to the events before the shooting. Prosecutors introduced the bodycam at her May trial. Days later, before the defense had to put on a case, all charges against her were dismissed. Principal Briana Foster Newton and Parker both left the school afterward.
School violence cases keep forcing the same hard questions about who is held to account when warnings are ignored, a pattern also seen when Colt Gray received life without parole for the Apalachee High School attack.
The criminal case against Parker collapsed. The civil case did not. A jury awarded Zwerner $10 million after finding Parker grossly negligent for failing to act on reports from teachers that the boy had a gun, reports that could have prevented the shooting. Just the News reported the clerk’s reading of the verdict and the plain assessment from Zwerner’s attorney Kevin Biniazan: you cannot stick your head in the sand.
A separate article at Breitbart noted Parker allegedly failed to act despite multiple warnings and did not allow a search, that both sides of the school leadership exited, that Zwerner had sought far more than the final award, and that she still has a bullet lodged in her chest. One of her attorneys said a jury of her peers agreed the tragedy could have been prevented. The civil trial against Parker ended in November 2025.
Parents and taxpayers expect schools to protect classrooms first, the same basic duty that surfaces whenever districts face fallout over student safety and federal education rule changes that reshape how campuses operate.
J.T.’s mother, Deja Nicole Taylor, then 29, was sent to state prison for child neglect and to federal prison in part for lying about drug use on the firearm background-check form when she bought the gun used in the shooting. She was released from prison in February. The boy, now around 9 or 10, lives in Newport News in the custody of his great-grandfather.
Zwerner was severely injured. She is no longer working with the school district. The district and her lawyers have disputed whether she was fired or resigned, a bitter coda reported by the Washington Examiner after the classroom attack that ended her time there.
Tragedies involving students do not stay inside one building. Families already know how fast a school day can turn, whether the headline is a shooting or a middle school athlete collapsing at practice.
Kovac’s bodycam statements remain the clearest snapshot of how little margin the staff had left. She told officers the boy was 6, that he was on a modified schedule, and that she had already flagged a threat to the assistant principal. The gun still came out of the jacket. The round still hit Zwerner. The adults who were supposed to clear the danger still failed to stop it.
Other school-centered scandals, including a Nashville officer who resigned after misconduct tied to a middle school, only sharpen public demand for adults who do their jobs when children are at risk.
A six-year-old should never have had a loaded gun in a backpack, and a wounded teacher should never have needed a jury to force basic accountability after repeated warnings were shrugged off.
Senate Democrats talk up a midterm blue wave, but Pete Buttigieg warns voter anger at Republicans will not automatically translate into trust, and three hard forces could still stop them.
With one month left until Election Day, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is selling momentum. Last week, as the Senate adjourned until after the vote, he told reporters Democrats had “the wind in our sails” and stood “on the edge of taking back the Senate.”
Republicans hold the chamber 53-47. Democrats need a net gain of four seats. Schumer tied his optimism to public frustration with higher costs and a government people do not believe works for them, the same affordability pitch Schumer has pushed as the party’s midterm message.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg delivered a sharper note after keynoting a New Hampshire Democratic Party fundraising gala on Saturday. Speaking with Fox News Digital, he cautioned that outrage at the GOP does not equal a Democratic free pass.
Buttigieg put the problem in plain terms:
"I think just because Americans are outraged because of how Republicans have failed them and made their life more expensive doesn't automatically mean that they're going to embrace and trust Democrats."
He said Democrats must “make sure that our candidates get out there, make it very clear who they are, what they're about, and what we would do differently.” That warning lands against three concrete obstacles: shaky polling history, a damaged party brand, and a large Republican cash edge.
President Donald Trump, nearly two years back in the White House with GOP control of both chambers, is not treating the map as settled. At a rally Saturday night in Ohio, he told supporters critics and pollsters are in for a shock.
Trump’s line was direct:
"I think we’re going to have a big surprise, because they don’t know what’s happening."
Polling analyst Nate Silver noted this past weekend that surveys “considerably underestimated Donald Trump and other Republicans on the ticket with him in 2016, 2020, and, to a slightly lesser extent, in 2024.” Silver added that the 2018 and 2022 midterm polls were essentially unbiased, a distinction that still leaves presidential-year and ticket-wide undercounts as a live risk for anyone reading today’s numbers as destiny.
This summer’s Democratic primaries already produced misses in both directions. Polls overestimated Abdul El-Sayed’s narrow win in Michigan’s Senate showdown. They underestimated Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota’s Senate primary, Angie Nixon in Florida’s Senate contest, and David Crowley’s upset for the Wisconsin gubernatorial nomination. Each of those winners beat an establishment-backed rival. Republicans now argue several of the left-leaning nominees sit too far left for general-election voters, a vulnerability that compounds any soft spots in the horse-race data.
Favorability numbers back the caution. In the most recent Fox News national poll, Democrats stood at 44% favorable and 55% unfavorable. The latest Wall Street Journal national survey was worse: 38% favorable and 58% unfavorable. A party that needs ticket-splitters and soft partisans is asking voters to hand it the Senate while a clear majority views it unfavorably.
Primary results have not helped the center-lane problem. Michigan’s El-Sayed, Minnesota’s Flanagan, Florida’s Nixon, and Wisconsin’s Crowley all defeated establishment-aligned opponents. In Texas, a Fox News poll found 53% of voters extremely or very concerned that Democrat Talarico is too liberal, while 51% were extremely or very concerned that Republican Paxton is too close to Trump. Even in a race with mutual baggage, the liberalism worry is a live messaging gift for the GOP.
That leftward pull tracks a broader fight over who steers the party, the same struggle captured when Ted Cruz warned Democrats are ceding ground to their progressive wing. Candidates who win activist primaries still have to clear swing-state general elections. Brand damage makes that climb steeper.
Longtime New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley told Fox News Digital the party is not sleepwalking into November after 2024.
Buckley said:
"I don't think any Democrat is over optimistic after... 2024. We all understand that anything can happen in the closing days, and we're preparing for that."
Preparation is not the same as a wave. Schumer’s “edge of taking back the Senate” line assumes voters who dislike the status quo will default to the minority party. Buttigieg’s point is that default is not automatic when trust is missing. Party fractures and discipline fights, including the kind of Senate turmoil around figures like Fetterman, do not rebuild that trust on their own.
The third force is cash. AdImpact, the top ad-tracking firm cited in the reporting, shows Republicans holding large spending leads in the states Democrats must win or flip. The GOP edge is roughly $70 million in Ohio, nearly $30 million in Maine and Texas, and about $25 million in Michigan. MAGA Inc. and other leading Republican groups and donors have poured money into that advantage.
Democrats are working to flip seats in places like Maine and Iowa and must hold ground in Michigan. Several of those contests sit inside the margin of error in the latest Fox News polls. Alaska, Kansas, Minnesota, Florida, Wisconsin, and the New Hampshire race to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen are also in the mix. Money does not guarantee a win. It does buy message volume in the final month, especially when the other side is already explaining unpopular primary nominees.
Buckley conceded the air war is ugly for Democrats in New Hampshire while insisting the ground game is not.
"The amount of money being spent is enormous. We might not be as competitive as we'd like on television, but we're certainly competitive knocking on the doors. We've got the energy out there. The voters are excited. You saw that with the turnout in the primaries throughout the country."
Door knocks matter. So do paid ads when undecided voters are still making up their minds. The spending gap is not a press release problem. It is a reach problem in the states that decide Senate control. Democratic institutional strain, including the kind of financial and leadership turmoil at the DNC, does not shrink that gap.
Political history often punishes the party in the White House at the midterms. Republicans know that. They are mostly on defense while Democrats probe red and purple turf. Schumer is counting on cost-of-living anger to finish the job. Trump is counting on a late surprise. Silver’s record of Republican undercounts in recent presidential cycles is a reminder that published polls are not ballots.
Buttigieg, a 2020 presidential candidate who is considering another White House run in 2028, framed the Democratic task as clarity: who the candidates are, what they stand for, and what they would do differently. That is a brand repair job, not a wave assumption. A party underwater on favorability, carrying several hard-left primary winners, and getting outspent by tens of millions in the decisive states is asking voters for a leap.
Schumer hears wind in the sails. The numbers still show headwinds, and headwinds decide close Novembers.
Voters angry at Washington rarely reward a party that cannot explain itself, police its own lane, or match the other side’s war chest.
A former Wall Street managing director who took 2018 emails linking Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to Jeffrey Epstein before Congress has died in an apparent suicide, his advocates confirmed.
Daily Caller reported that Simon Andriesz, the 57-year-old British banker and onetime Lutnick employee, was found dead after The Banker first carried the news on Friday.
Andy Agathangelou, head of the Transparency Task Force, confirmed the death and said Andriesz had been a valued member of the whistleblowing community the group supports.
Agathangelou stated:
"It is with great sadness that we share the news that Simon Andriesz, a valued member of our community, passed away last week,"
Andriesz had raised alarms about business links between Lutnick and the convicted sex offender Epstein, then shared those findings with the House Oversight Committee ahead of a scheduled May meeting with the Commerce secretary.
Andriesz discovered a 2018 email chain between Lutnick and Epstein discussing plans for a startup business they were working on together. He also located earlier material showing Lutnick’s firms had planned in 2013 to go into business with then-Prince Andrew, who himself carried documented Epstein connections.
Those discoveries sat inside a larger pattern of elite names that keep surfacing around Epstein’s network, including the legal fights that followed related arrests.
Readers tracking similar fallout can see the same orbit in coverage of how Mountbatten-Windsor takes Thames Valley Police to court after Epstein arrest.
Andriesz went further. While locked in a dispute with his former employer BGC Partners, part of Lutnick’s Cantor Fitzgerald group, he had given interviews to the FBI. He later found his own name inside Epstein files that referenced those interviews, a discovery he described as completely shocking.
On Aug. 9 he summarized the personal cost:
"The personal consequences of whistleblowing, and the retaliation I say followed, have been devastating for my family and me,"
Lutnick, now serving as Commerce Secretary, issued a clear public rejection of Epstein’s crimes. According to The Banker he said:
"I unequivocally condemn the conduct attributed to Jeffrey Epstein and everyone who participated in his illegal activities,"
He added:
"The survivors of his crimes deserve our respect and support."
Rep. Thomas Massie noted on X that Lutnick later admitted visiting the island yet denied the business dealings Andriesz had flagged. Massie wrote that Andriesz “uncovered 2018 emails linking Howard Lutnick to Jeffrey Epstein’s Adfin investment and took them to House Oversight,” and that the BBC had reported the findings before the banker’s death at 57.
Transparency fights over the broader Epstein record have already produced public friction inside the current administration, including moments when Vance concedes Trump administration botched Epstein files rollout.
Andriesz had worked as a Wall Street managing director before turning to these disclosures. He participated in Transparency Task Force events focused on financial wrongdoing and spoke openly about the toll the process took on his family.
The sequence matters. Andriesz delivered his research to House Oversight before Lutnick’s planned appearance. Lutnick also testified on February 10, 2026, before a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies in Washington.
No new official determination on the precise manner or location of Andriesz’s death appears in the available accounts beyond the description of an apparent suicide and Agathangelou’s confirmation that he passed away last week. Law enforcement statements, a coroner’s ruling, and the full authenticated text of the 2018 emails remain outside what has been published so far.
What stands is the paper trail Andriesz said he recovered: the 2018 startup discussion, the 2013 Andrew plans, the unexpected appearance of his own FBI interviews inside Epstein’s files, and his decision to carry those items to Congress.
Epstein’s crimes already produced one high-profile conviction of associate Ghislaine Maxwell on sex-trafficking charges. Every fresh document drop and every witness who steps forward keeps forcing the same demand, full release of the remaining files and equal application of the law to every powerful name that surfaces.
Whistleblowers who drag hidden business ties into daylight deserve protection and answers, not silence after they are gone.
Ken Paxton told donors he feels less control over his Texas Senate campaign than any race before, per a second leaked recording from a private lunch weeks from Election Day.
Audio obtained from a September 24 fundraising lunch shows Texas Attorney General and Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton telling a room of about a dozen donors and D.C. lobbyists that he no longer directs the campaign’s message or day-to-day moves.
“I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign,” Paxton said, according to the recording. He added, “I don’t control message or what we’re doing,” and “I don’t have ability to change anything.” The remarks came at a private event hosted by a well-known D.C. lobbying firm.
Reporting on the audio frames it as the second damaging leak from that same lunch in less than a week, landing with less than a month left in the race.
A defense contractor executive at the lunch asked how the campaign’s message lands with “real people” back home in Texas. Paxton’s answer circled back to the same point: the direction was not his to set.
Paxton adviser Nick Maddux insisted the candidate was “obviously” talking about super PACs. Campaigns cannot coordinate with those outside groups under federal rules. Maddux also dismissed a separate New York Times account of lunch remarks as “manipulated nonsense.”
That New York Times recording, distinct from the Politico audio, captured Paxton saying a Trump midterm convention held in Texas “dropped our numbers.” The same period saw Paxton roll out a $20 million ad buy last month while receiving millions more from Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s GOP fund since the beginning of September.
Paxton still holds a cash edge in the contest. Yet the latest New York Times/Siena poll shows him trailing Democrat James Talarico by six points with the clock running down.
During the primary, Paxton branded incumbent John Cornyn a Washington insider and a RINO while chasing a Trump endorsement. He told the AP then, “I’m not their person and I’m never going to be their person.”
"I'm not their person and I'm never going to be their person,"
The September 24 lunch put him in a room full of the same D.C. lobbyist class he once ran against. Messaging complaints he voiced to those donors tracked the same federal-race frustration he had raised with lobbyists the month before.
Trump has kept a heavy midterm travel schedule through deep-red states even as approval numbers face pressure. Trump says he never gets tired on that packed trail, a contrast to the control problems Paxton described inside his own operation.
Cash from Thune’s fund and the large ad reservation show national Republican infrastructure is still feeding the Texas race. The leaked audio, however, left donors hearing the candidate say the message itself sits outside his reach.
Two separate recordings from one lunch, Politico’s audio and the New York Times version, surfaced inside a single week. That pace matters when early voting windows open and the poll gap sits at six points.
Maddux’s super PAC explanation tracks the legal wall between campaigns and independent spenders. It does not erase the plain words Paxton used in front of the donors: he felt less control than in any prior race and could not change the message or the operation.
"I've never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign,"
The same lunch produced the line about lacking ability to change anything. Those fragments are what the second leak delivered to voters already looking at a tightening calendar.
White House communications choices have drawn their own scrutiny this cycle, including decisions on press access and staffing. White House bars on CNN access show how tightly message control is guarded at the top. Paxton’s leaked remarks pointed the other direction, toward a candidate who said the message was no longer his.
National party money continues to flow. Thune’s fund alone moved millions into Paxton’s column after September began. The $20 million ad flight was already in the market when the lunch audio surfaced.
Media spending fights have marked the broader midterm environment. White House spending on Trump TV spots triggered Democratic complaints even as Republican candidates locked in their own airtime. In Texas the airtime is real; the candidate’s own description of who steers it is now on tape.
Talarico’s six-point edge in the New York Times/Siena survey arrived with less than a month to go. Paxton’s cash position and the Thune infusion give him tools. The leaked language gives opponents a clean sound bite about a campaign the nominee said he does not control.
Primary-season defiance toward the D.C. establishment helped Paxton clear Cornyn. The September lunch returned him to that same donor circuit, this time describing message direction as “all coming from D.C.” His adviser later folded that complaint into the super PAC box.
Staffing and press roles remain central to how campaigns project strength. Trump’s hire for assistant press secretary underscored the premium placed on disciplined communications. Paxton’s hot-mic moment handed the opposite image to anyone listening to the lunch tape.
No full transcript beyond the quoted fragments has been released in the available accounts. The named lobbying firm that hosted the event is not identified. The defense contractor who asked about “real people” back home also remains unnamed. What is on the record are Paxton’s own sentences about control, message, and the inability to change course.
Recordings and document fights have followed the Trump orbit in other settings this year. BBC claims over a blocked subpoena show how quickly private material becomes public ammunition. In Paxton’s case the ammunition came from his own donor lunch.
Texas remains a deep-red state on the map. A six-point deficit against a Democrat, paired with the candidate saying he does not run his own message, turns a safe assumption into a late-cycle problem that money alone may not fix.
Voters heard the nominee say the campaign is not in his hands. That is the record the leaks left on the table.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered Iran’s UN delegation to leave the United States immediately after stalled negotiations produced no breakthrough, a sharp diplomatic rebuke Tehran denies.
The Hill reported that Rubio directed the Iranian team to depart Monday once high-level meetings around the United Nations General Assembly had wrapped up and indirect talks went nowhere.
Associated Press reporting, citing two officials familiar with the order, said Rubio concluded the visitors should go. One official said the delegates had “overstayed their welcome.” NewsNation later confirmed the order with the State Department. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and his team left New York very early Tuesday, after he had planned to remain until Wednesday.
The move lands more than seven months into a grinding U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran and after months of talk about a possible deal. President Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian have both said they want an agreement. Results have not matched the rhetoric.
The State Department had approved visas last month for the “core” Iranian delegation to the United Nations. Pezeshkian spoke before the General Assembly last week, then left New York the next day. Araghchi stayed behind for indirect talks with the U.S. side through intermediaries.
The Washington Examiner reported that Pezeshkian and Araghchi met U.S. officials in New York during the assembly period before the effort halted and Rubio ordered the delegation out.
Those informal contacts covered heavy ground: reopening the Strait of Hormuz, ending the fighting, and nuclear talks. Progress did not follow. Trump had already rejected an Iranian peace proposal that would reopen the strait and put a ceasefire in place.
Iranian government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani said Wednesday that negotiators received an official U.S. response to the proposal. She offered no further detail. That silence left the public record thin while the diplomats’ calendars kept moving.
Rubio has spent recent months focused on the demands of dual high office rather than side dramas about 2028. Sending a foreign delegation home when talks stall fits that posture: run the job, enforce the terms, move on.
Fox News reported that Rubio abruptly ended the stalled negotiations and ordered the Iranian delegation to leave after no clear breakthrough more than seven months into the conflict. An official confirmed the account to Fox News Digital. Rubio told Araghchi and his team they needed to leave New York once the high-level U.N. meetings were done.
The same core sequence appears in other coverage. The New York Post reported that Rubio ordered Araghchi and his delegation to leave New York immediately Monday after little progress in weekend meetings, with one official again using the “overstayed their welcome” line after the U.N. sessions ended.
Just the News reported that informal peace talks on the strait, the conflict, and nuclear negotiations made no progress, and that Araghchi’s team departed early Tuesday after being told Monday to leave right away.
Across those accounts, the mechanism is consistent. Visas got the Iranians in for the U.N. calendar. Stalled diplomacy, not hospitality, decided when the visit ended. Rubio did not wait for a Wednesday farewell.
The Iranian delegation denied it had been ordered out. In a statement on X, the mission said it left on its own timetable:
"The Iranian delegation left New York on Monday evening, in accordance with the schedule that had also been communicated to the U.S. Department of State in advance on September 17,"
The same statement went further:
"Having achieved nothing, the State Department has resorted to propagating baseless and worthless news."
U.S. officials described an order. Iranian diplomats described a pre-planned exit. Both sides agree on one practical fact: the team is gone, and it left earlier than Araghchi’s Wednesday plan. Americans can weigh which version explains a foreign minister cutting a stay short after fruitless talks.
Visa fights are not new territory for this State Department. Rubio has already drawn furious pushback in other cases, including when a former Mexican president’s son attacked a U.S. visa revocation in extreme language. The Iran episode follows the same principle with higher stakes: entry is a privilege, not a stage for endless stalling.
The diplomatic track was not the only Iranian message aimed at America. Earlier this week, Gen. Hossein Mohebbi, a spokesperson for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, issued a letter to American voters obtained by the Times of Israel. He urged them to turn against Trump and change U.S. policy toward Tehran.
Mohebbi wrote:
"Although American politicians often win your votes through deception and false promises, as Trump did, you can change the makeup of the government if you apply the criteria for good leadership in choosing the people you vote into office,"
That is not the language of a government racing toward a serious bargain. It is the language of a regime working the American political calendar while its diplomats linger in New York. Rubio’s order closed the hospitality window. It did not invent the hard line already visible in Iranian public messaging.
Rubio’s broader record on status and removals has followed a similar accountability track, including cases where legal status decisions cleared the way for ICE removals of serious offenders. Foreign policy and immigration enforcement both rest on the same idea: U.S. permission is conditional.
Trump has said he is looking for a deal. Pezeshkian has said the same. The rejected strait-and-ceasefire proposal, the thin U.S. response Mohajerani described, and the empty weekend talks all point the other way. Mediators kept channels open. The substance did not move.
Some Republicans have pressed to ease a U.S. naval blockade off Iranian ports as prices and energy markets feel the strain. That political pressure sits in the background of a conflict that, by The Hill’s account, hit a seven-month mark on the same Monday Rubio acted. None of that obliged the United States to host a foreign minister through the middle of the week after high-level U.N. business ended.
In public remarks on other fronts, Rubio has framed American self-government as duty, not performance, a theme he struck again when he marked the Declaration’s 250th anniversary with a call to responsibility. Ordering a stalled adversary delegation home is the hard-edged version of that same standard.
Iran wanted time, headlines, and leverage in New York. Rubio gave them a departure time instead. Regimes that lecture American voters while their diplomats overstay do not deserve the benefit of the doubt, or an extra night in Manhattan.