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.
President Trump declared he never gets tired while leaving the White House for an Alabama rally, after late-night returns and a high-speed motorcade just one month before the midterms.
Standing on the South Lawn on Friday, President Donald Trump told a reporter he does not wear down even as his travel pace picks up ahead of the November 3 elections. Breitbart News reported the comments as he departed for Mobile, Alabama, where he was set to deliver rally remarks that night before flying back to the White House later in the evening.
“I never get tired. If I got tired, it would be a big story, I can tell you,” Trump said.
“I never get tired. If I got tired, it would be a big story, I can tell you,”
The stop came a day after a full swing through Texas and Oklahoma that stretched deep into the night. On Thursday he toured the Peterbilt Motors facility just outside Denton, Texas, and delivered remarks that ran nearly an hour, wrapping at 5:40 p.m. Central Time.
Bad weather then ruled out a flight to the next event. Trump and his team climbed into the presidential limousine known as the Beast for the roughly hour-and-fifteen-minute drive to Durant, Oklahoma. He later recounted the exchange to the crowd there.
“I said, ‘How fast does the beast travel?’ They said, ‘We can go close to 100 miles an hour.’ I said, ‘Get your a**es in that car. We’re going to Oklahoma. We’re going to Oklahoma!’”
“I said, ‘How fast does the beast travel?’ They said, ‘We can go close to 100 miles an hour.’ I said, ‘Get your a**es in that car. We’re going to Oklahoma. We’re going to Oklahoma!’”
The motorcade pushed close to 100 mph. Trump returned to the White House just before 3:00 a.m. Friday morning, then turned around for the Alabama trip the same day. Saturday already carried another leg: evening remarks in Dayton, Ohio.
That kind of back-to-back schedule has become routine. Last month he delivered closing remarks on the evening of September 10 at the Republican National Convention in Dallas, got back to the White House around 2:30 a.m., spoke the next morning at the September 11 memorial ceremony at the Pentagon, and jetted to Ireland later that same night.
With the midterms now one month out, the White House is treating the calendar as a sprint. Trump’s willingness to keep the plane and the motorcade moving stands in contrast to the usual Washington habit of pacing events around comfort and optics. Voters who want energy in the final stretch are seeing it on the ground in places like Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Ohio.
The same administration that keeps the president on the road has also drawn fire over messaging choices, including when the White House spends $1.7 million on patriotic television spots that Democrats immediately attacked.
Family matters continue to create separate headlines even as the president focuses on the trail. Recent coverage has examined how Donald Trump Jr. reimbursed a Russian boxing chief after Bahamas wedding festivities, a story the president himself addressed.
Legal pressure around the family has surfaced in other venues too. One dispute involved claims that the Secret Service blocked a subpoena for Donald Trump Jr. in a multibillion-dollar defamation case.
Business dealings have drawn their own share of attention. Scrutiny of a Trump brothers' Kazakhstan tungsten investment produced more questions than clear proof of wrongdoing, according to at least one securities lawyer who reviewed the public record.
None of that has slowed the president’s own pace. On the trail he continues to frame the choice ahead in sharp terms, the same way he did when he rallied a Georgia crowd against Ossoff and warned that Democrats are pushing the country toward communism.
The pattern is consistent: early-morning landings, same-day departures, and no public complaint about the hours. Trump’s own words on the South Lawn left little room for interpretation. He treats stamina as expected, not exceptional, and he is putting that claim on display one rally at a time.
Americans watching the final month before the midterms can judge the results for themselves. A president who keeps showing up in the heartland after 3 a.m. returns is making a simple argument: the work is not optional, and neither is the energy to finish it.
Gypsy Rose Blanchard blames relentless online harassment for the death of partner Ken Urker at 34, as Louisiana deputies investigate an apparent overdose.
Blanchard posted an Instagram statement Friday morning after Urker was found unresponsive in a Louisiana home on his birthday. She told People magazine he died of an overdose and said she was not sure whether it was intentional. The Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office is investigating.
Newsweek reported that Blanchard described Urker as her soulmate and the father of their infant daughter, Aurora, while pointing to public scrutiny and cyberbullying as a heavy burden on him in his final stretch of life.
TMZ first reported the discovery, citing family sources. Blanchard’s own words quickly followed, framing the loss as both personal tragedy and a warning about what strangers do online.
Authorities have not closed the book. Fox News Radio reported that police have not ruled out foul play pending an autopsy, even as no evidence of foul play has surfaced so far. An autopsy was scheduled.
In her Instagram story, Blanchard did not hedge about what she thinks broke him down.
She wrote:
"Ken was an amazing father and a man who was deeply loved. He will forever be my soulmate and my red string, a connection that time, distance, and even death can never erase,"
She continued:
"Ken endured an unimaginable level of public scrutiny and relentless cyberbullying across social media platforms, including TikTok and Reddit. The cruelty directed toward him was something no human being should have to endure,"
And she tied that pressure directly to the outcome:
"I believe the tremendous weight of that scrutiny and harassment had a profound impact on him, and I hope his passing serves as a reminder that there is a real person behind every screen, every headline, and every comment."
On her main feed, under the handle @gypsyrose.insta, she posted a photo of Urker along with videos of the couple and of their daughter. The caption was short and plain: “You will always be my greatest love story,” and “You will be remembered and loved forever.”
She also wrote that Urker loved Aurora above all, called the little girl a reflection of his spirit, and pledged to raise her knowing who her father was beyond what internet strangers said about him.
Urker was 34. He and Blanchard’s story never existed outside the glare that followed her from prison to parole to parenthood.
Blanchard pleaded guilty in 2016 to second-degree murder for her role in the killing of her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard. She received a 10-year sentence and was released on parole on December 28, 2023, after serving eight and a half years. Her then-boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, was convicted of first-degree murder for carrying out the stabbing and sentenced to life without parole. Dee Dee had allegedly subjected her daughter to years of unnecessary medical procedures and falsely presented her as seriously ill, a pattern often discussed under the label Munchausen by proxy, which the National Library of Medicine describes as a caretaker making up fake symptoms or causing real ones to make a child appear sick.
True-crime fame does not stay in the past. Readers who follow major sentencing cases, including an Arizona man sentenced to life plus 102 years in another high-profile murder, know how quickly public attention hardens into a permanent gallery.
Urker began writing Blanchard in prison in 2017 after watching HBO’s “Mommy Dead and Dearest.” They met that September. They dated, broke up, and Blanchard later married and divorced Ryan Anderson. In April 2024 the pair reconciled. On December 28, 2024, exactly one year after her parole, they welcomed daughter Aurora. People magazine reported that Urker chose the name; both were fascinated by the Northern Lights. The child’s full name appears in coverage as Aurora Raina Urker.
Blanchard was born in Golden Meadow, in southeastern Louisiana near the Gulf. The death under investigation sits in the same state, with the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office handling the case. No street address or specific city for the home has been released in the available accounts.
Blanchard’s statement to People, that the cause was an overdose, intentionality unclear, is her account, not a finished coroner’s ruling. Sheriff’s investigators have not publicly issued a final manner-of-death finding in the material at hand. That gap matters. Online audiences often race ahead of toxicology and autopsy work, especially when a reality figure is involved.
Cases that turn on confirmed medical detail, such as coverage where an autopsy reveals extensive wounds in a separate family killing, show why waiting for official findings is not optional. Rumors fill every silence. Evidence is slower, and slower is the point.
Blanchard’s fame sits in the same entertainment lane as other reality-adjacent names who later surface in hard news. Parallel stories, including when ICE arrests a former dance-show contestant with a violent record, remind readers that camera time is not character evidence and does not suspend ordinary law.
Urker left no public quotes in the reporting. What exists is Blanchard’s description of him as an amazing father, a man deeply loved, and a person who absorbed steady abuse on TikTok, Reddit, and other platforms. She asked the public to remember that a real person sits behind every headline and every comment. That request is not complicated. It is also routinely ignored.
The calendar around this family is stark. Parole on December 28, 2023. Reconciliation in April 2024. A daughter born December 28, 2024. Then Urker found unresponsive on his birthday, with Blanchard’s Friday statement following. Absolute calendar dates for the death itself were not fixed in the initial reports, only the birthday detail and the relative timing of her posts.
Godejohn remains in prison for life without parole for the stabbing. Blanchard’s own second-degree murder plea and sentence are settled history. Violent crime cases that end in life terms, including the Colt Gray life-without-parole sentence in a mass shooting case, stay in the public square for years. So do the people tied to them, whether they seek the attention or not.
Blanchard said she will make sure Aurora grows up knowing how deeply her father loved her and who he was beyond internet chatter. That is a mother’s promise under ugly circumstances. It does not resolve the sheriff’s investigation, the pending autopsy questions, or the separate fact that online mobs rarely pause to ask whether their target can carry the weight.
Louisiana deputies still have work to do. Blanchard has said what she believes happened to the man she called her red string and her greatest love story. The record, so far, shows an overdose claim from her, an open investigation, no public finding of foul play evidence yet, and a family left with a baby and a funeral.
Screens make cruelty cheap. Bodies still pay the bill.
Federal regulators are examining Adam Kinzinger’s Kalshi bets that he would receive a Biden pardon, a move that clashes with his later warning that prediction markets invite corruption.
Career enforcement officials at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission are looking into former Rep. Adam Kinzinger’s trades on the prediction platform Kalshi tied to a pardon he later received from then-President Joe Biden, CNN reported citing two sources familiar with the matter.
Kinzinger, a Republican and prominent Trump critic who left Congress and was a private citizen at the time, placed the wagers in late 2024 and early 2025. He bet that Biden would pardon him. Biden did so in the final hours of his presidency, along with other members of the House committee that investigated efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Kalshi itself uncovered the trades during a broader review of “suspicious” activity and flagged them to the CFTC. The platform tried to reach Kinzinger; he did not respond, according to a source described in the reporting. Both the CFTC and Kalshi declined to comment.
The dollar amounts were small. Kinzinger traded less than $1,000 across two pardon-related Kalshi markets. Screenshots he later shared showed a total wager of $669 and a net gain of $823. Those two trades were among a few dozen political bets he placed on the platform.
In an interview, Kinzinger acknowledged the trades and said he reviewed Kalshi’s rules beforehand. He said he believed the activity did not violate those rules and that he never held insider information about the pardons.
He told CNN:
"It was a dumb bet, to bet on myself,"
He added:
"Looking back, I’m like, yeah, I wish I’d have skipped it. But everything I saw at the time was like, you’re within your right to bet on this."
On contact with anyone who might have known the outcome in advance, Kinzinger was direct:
"At no point, ever, had I had a conversation with anybody in the know about pardons (or) whether I’d get pardoned,"
And:
"Certainly, nobody in the White House or anybody that would know anything."
He also said he has not heard from any government investigators and never heard from Kalshi. No charges, fines, or formal CFTC findings against him appear in the available reporting. The probe remains an inquiry described by people familiar with it, not a completed enforcement case.
In a November 2025 Substack post, Kinzinger went after the industry he had used. He wrote that Kalshi and other prediction sites are a “corruption time bomb” and a “threat to democracy” because politicians can profit from insider knowledge.
That sequence is plain on the record: he placed the pardon-related bets while out of office, collected a modest profit after Biden’s preemptive clemency, then publicly framed the same style of market as a systemic risk. Biden had argued the preemptive pardons were needed to shield the lawmakers from possible retaliation by the incoming Trump administration. Readers can weigh that justification against later Trump clemency actions that have drawn their own political fights.
Politico had previously reported the CFTC inquiry into Kinzinger and described it as the first publicly known federal probe into pardon markets on prediction sites. Career CFTC enforcement officials began scrutinizing Biden pardon markets on both Kalshi and Polymarket after press reports raised questions about potential insider activity. One linked report noted a Polymarket trader who made $300,000 betting on Biden’s pardons.
The Kinzinger matter sits inside a wider enforcement push. The CFTC recently settled a case with a former Trump White House teleprompter operator for “unlawful” bets on Kalshi about what Trump would say in speeches. The agency also settled with former Rep. George Santos over improper trades about whether he would attend the State of the Union.
Kalshi, for its part, last month fined several political candidates for betting on their own campaigns in violation of the company’s insider-trading rules. Sources familiar with Kalshi’s practice say the firm often tries to resolve smaller matters internally when the sums are modest and the trader cooperates.
Prediction platforms have exploded in popularity this year and now see billions of dollars in weekly trading volume. A bipartisan coalition of 44 states has urged the CFTC to rein in the platforms. Dozens of lawmakers on Capitol Hill are backing legislation that would stiffen penalties against insider trading on these markets.
Presidential clemency itself remains a flashpoint. Debates continue over how far a pardon reaches when new questions arise, a tension also visible when Comer warned Fauci that Biden’s blanket pardon would not shield false testimony under oath.
Kinzinger is a CNN contributor. CNN has maintained a partnership with Kalshi since December and uses the platform’s data to cover major events. The network’s own editorial employees are not permitted to use prediction markets. That separation does not erase the optics of a contributor’s trades becoming the subject of a regulator’s review while the network both employs him and partners with the exchange.
Other recent clemency stories show how quickly pardon politics can rebound on the people involved. Trump has issued multiple rounds of relief in emissions and corruption cases, and he has also criticized a pardoned congressman while backing a Republican challenger. Separate commutations, including one for a Philadelphia union boss citing a spouse’s terminal illness, keep the same accountability questions in front of voters.
What remains unsettled in Kinzinger’s case is the formal status of the CFTC work, whether it is a preliminary look, a full investigation, or something short of an enforcement action, and whether any subpoena or charging paper will ever name him. The reporting does not show a finding that he possessed or used insider information. It does show the trades, the profit, the self-described “dumb bet,” the later lecture about corruption, and a federal regulator now examining the paper trail.
Further Trump clemency rounds, including pardons for emissions convicts and other contested grants of mercy, ensure the public will keep comparing who gets relief, who profits around it, and who faces scrutiny afterward.
Betting on your own pardon and then preaching about prediction-market corruption is a hard sell to taxpayers who expect one standard for political insiders.
Senate Democrats led by Chuck Schumer are poised to block a Republican data-center bill aimed at electricity costs, even as the party campaigns on affordability ahead of the midterms.
Fox News Digital reported that Senate Republicans planned a Wednesday push on legislation from Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, focused on large-load customers such as data centers and related power costs. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his caucus were described as ready to stop it.
The fight lands squarely inside the Democrats’ midterm message. Party leaders talk nonstop about household bills and soaring costs. At the same time, they are preparing to kill a measure Republicans say would ease pressure on the grid and on ratepayers.
The same bill already cleared the House earlier this month. Only three House Democrats voted against it. In the Senate, the path is different. Republicans hold 53 seats. They still need 60 votes to break a filibuster, which means Democratic cooperation, or a Democratic block.
Schumer did not soften his line. He trashed the proposal as empty and politically timed to help a vulnerable Republican.
Schumer said:
"Because we don't vote for frauds,"
He added:
"It's voluntary. Not a single company has to comply with it."
Democratic senators echoed that attack. They argued the bill lacks force and mainly serves Husted’s tough Ohio race against former Sen. Sherrod Brown. That posture fits a wider pattern of party hardball as factions jockey for control, including fights over how far left the Democratic brand is drifting.
Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., waved off any worry that killing the bill would undercut the party’s affordability pitch.
Kim said:
"Absolutely not."
He went further:
"The American people can see through just the politics of this. They know that this bill is good for Senator Husted, but not necessarily for them, because it's not, it doesn't have anything that would actually force change,"
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., struck a similar note. He told reporters the political downside for Democrats stays low if they explain the bill’s limits.
Murphy said:
"It does nothing, and so people know that, but there's more political risk for them than for us,"
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., framed the standoff as pure election-season politics. He said Democrats refuse workable steps and prefer talking points through November.
Thune said:
"I think right now, the whole thing is just, you know, play politics with all these issues and get to the election,"
He continued:
"I think that, you know, what you're seeing is that this is the party of no, can't take yes for an answer, and is interested in just trying to politicize everything going into the election."
Asked whether blocking the data-center bill, and a separate measure to ban members of Congress from trading stocks, would undercut Democratic messaging on costs and clean government, Thune did not hedge.
Thune said:
"Well, it makes it pretty hard for Democrats to make that argument."
That contrast is simple. One side passed a House bill with near-unanimous support and wants a Senate vote. The other side calls the same product fake and prepares to stop it cold. Voters who pay electric bills can judge which side matches its ads. Similar fractures have already surfaced when House Democrats broke with leadership on key procedural votes.
The data-center clash is not the only cost-related fight Democrats walked away from. Last week, Democrats pulled back from a permitting-reform deal Republicans wanted on the floor before the election. Sen. Alan Armstrong, R-Okla., had led that push and said the conditions for agreement were unusually strong.
Armstrong said:
"I would tell you, all the chemistry, I think, was perfect for getting this deal done,"
He added:
"And that doesn't happen very often on such a complex issue. So it's very disappointing."
Reporting now indicates the permitting package may return after Election Day, during the lame-duck session. In plain terms, that means any relief for energy projects and infrastructure waits until after voters have already cast ballots. Campaign rhetoric stays loud. Floor action gets deferred.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., left a narrow opening on the data-center bill itself. He said he was not totally opposed to letting legislation move, if Republicans first guarantee a vote on a Democratic priority, the Power for the People Act.
Van Hollen said:
"You want to address the affordability issue, you need to do something real,"
And:
"As soon as Senator Thune says he'll have a vote on Power for the People Act, then for sure, we should go forward."
That is a classic Capitol trade: hold one bill hostage to force a vote on another. It is not the same as clearing a path for cost relief on the merits. It is leverage timed to an election calendar. Party discipline around those trades has grown harder to maintain, even as figures like Sen. John Fetterman refuse to follow every partisan script.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., put the arithmetic in blunt terms. Republicans have 53 votes. They still need 60. Without Democratic votes or a rules change, major bills die on procedure.
Tuberville said:
"I mean, we got 53 Republicans, you got to have 60. I’d have busted the filibuster a long time ago, and we would've had a lot more done,"
He added:
"But we wasted a year and a half of President Trump."
Whatever one thinks of the filibuster, the practical result is clear. Energy-cost legislation that already passed the House faces a Senate wall. Permitting reform that senators said was close got postponed. Democrats keep the affordability theme for ads from Michigan to Texas while treating Republican cost bills as optional props.
Husted’s bill centers on data centers and large electricity users, the kind of loads tied to AI growth and industrial demand. Supporters say customers should face clearer rules on repaying grid costs so ordinary ratepayers do not swallow the entire spike. Critics inside the Democratic caucus call the language toothless because compliance is optional. That dispute is exactly why a floor vote would matter. Blocking the vote keeps the argument in press conferences instead of statute.
Internal Democratic strain is not limited to this bill. Leadership already faces restless members, fundraising trouble, and public breaks on endorsements and procedure, including the uproar after a retiring Democrat backed a Republican and drew a sharp rebuke from party leaders. A caucus that cannot hold every vote still wants full control of the affordability narrative.
Election Day in November will test whether voters buy the split-screen. Democrats plan to run on prices. Republicans will point to bills stopped in the Senate and deals kicked into the lame duck. Thune’s charge is that the “party of no” would rather keep the issue than solve part of it before voters speak.
Schumer’s answer is that voluntary language equals a fake fix, and that real affordability work runs through Democratic vehicles like the Power for the People Act. Kim and Murphy say the public will see through a bill they call a gift to Husted. Armstrong says a rare permitting consensus was thrown away for calendar politics. Tuberville says the 60-vote rule has burned time that could have produced results.
None of those claims erase the basic sequence. The House passed a data-center measure with only three Democratic no votes. The Senate teed up related action. Democrats prepared to block it. A separate permitting deal slipped past the election. The stock-trading ban floated as another casualty of the same dynamic. Affordability remains the slogan. Floor cooperation remains the missing piece.
When leaders sell cost relief on the trail and stall cost bills in the chamber, voters are right to ask which one is the product and which one is the pitch.